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Greetings TL community! A while back I wrote a mini tutorial on proper use of infesters/infested terrans. I figured I would do the same thing for high templar. While a lot of it is redundant with the previous article, I am redoing it because I figured a lot of protoss players would skip an article about a zerg unit. The original article can be found here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=134647
1) Stop - Before using storm or feedback, always hit the "S" key. This is the stop command. This cancels previous orders (freeing use of shift commands), and prevents the HT from running in front of your army.
2) Keep the High templar in their own control group. This is for easy access, as well as easy spell casting. Also, you don't want to s command your whole army. I keep my HT in control group 3.
Novice tip - If you are a total newb, you can also keep your HT in you main control group so less "apm" is required to move your army. Use 1a2a3s to prevent them from running infront of everything.
Pro tip - Against terran, have HT's follow different units. If I have 2 temps following a zealot, 2 following a stalker, and 2 following an immortal, they are much less resistant to EMP. This is the best of both worlds, as you do not sacrifice any control over them during battle by splitting them up into multiple control groups. Remember, after you cast storm, they cancel their follow command.
Alternate pro tip - Some people keep them in separate groups to avoid EMP, such as groups 3, 4, and 5. I dislike this though due to imprecise control. If groups 3 and 4 are out of energy, and group 5 has enough for 3 storms, it is difficult to cast all three storms without stopping and thinking, "Okay, which group has the most energy?" they are also harder to control and will constantly run out in front, unless you are far better at controlling them than I am.
Alternate pro tip - You can have a "master" HT group, and several subordinate groups. Have all your temps in group control group 3 (so you have access to storm when you need it), and split them up into groups 4, 5, and 6. Use groups 4, 5, and 6 when moving to prevent EMP, and group 3 when storming.
3) Prioritize - Know the situation. Know when feedback is more useful, and when storm is more useful. Storm the bioball 1st, feedback the medivacs 2nd, etc..
Example:
1a2a (attacks with whole army)
3s (tell templar to stop)
t (psi storm)
(holding shift) click click (two applications)
s (stop)
f (feedback)
(holding shift) clickclickclick
s
t
(holding shift) click click
Why use stop command? I got this question a lot on the infester article, so I'll preemptively answer it here. Take the following scenario:
You have zealots, stalkers, high templar, sentries, and immortals in group 1. You have sentries in group 2. You have five HTs in group 3. if you "1a" into the battle, your HTs will run directly in front of everything and be slaughtered. If you "1a 3tclick tclick tclick" (cast 3 storms), two of your high templar will run out in front of your main army, because they have not been given overriding orders. If you "1a 3t (holding shift) click click click" all five templars will run out in front of your army, then three will try to cast storms. In either situation, its best to use the s command.
If you've ever watched White-ra throw away his high templar, you know how critical the use of the stop command is.
Dense, I know, but I swear it makes sense. I recommend practicing this in the unit tester, so it will be second nature during real combat.
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I'm at work so I can't play with the stop command, so I just want to clarify. From your order queue, are you waiting until the first storms are cast before you hit s? Otherwise if you cast 3 storms and the HT arent in range yet and hit stop, the storm order will be cancelled correct?
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No, he's making them stop before giving the storm command. This makes it so that they don't run out in front needlessly. Instead, once the storm command is given, the 1 templar will walk just enough to be in range and then cast it.
edit: whoops, looks like he's telling them to stop after the storm too... I don't get why you wouldn't just continue shift-clicking spells at that point though since they've already been told to stop once and won't run into the fray needlessly unless you're still spamming general orders with 1a2a as well.
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I do not know if i like the shift click idea for storms. smart cast is fast enough and if you start shift clicking the storm dodge may be a bit easier than if you storm a few and wait a second... storm some more
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A strategy I feel like is underused is clumping your army into sections, to avoid overpowering emps.
For example having 5-6 zealots 2-3 stalkers 1-2 templars in each of 3 different control groups. Then when engaging come in at 3 angles.
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On July 17 2010 03:16 psychopat wrote:
No, he's making them stop before giving the storm command. This makes it so that they don't run out in front needlessly. Instead, once the storm command is given, the 1 templar will walk just enough to be in range and then cast it.
edit: whoops, looks like he's telling them to stop after the storm too... I don't get why you wouldn't just continue shift-clicking spells at that point though since they've already been told to stop once and won't run into the fray needlessly unless you're still spamming general orders with 1a2a as well.
I guess it's a matter of personal preference. I always hit s before issuing commands as a habit. I figure if it takes more than a second for the HT to cast, I don't want them to cast it at that spot anyway. I am paranoid about missing storms, or worse, storming my own chargelots.
Plus, its a bit simplified. I'll usually macro or something before casting feedback.
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Great advice. I've just now started to experiment with ways to avoid suiciding my HT's. I will definitely take this info into my future games.
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The biggest problem I have atm is actually pretty stupid. My army engages (generally chargelot core) and my templar are too far back and storm late, which is not optimal. Not only is storm effective vs medivacs but stim + storm + army dps is a good amount of burst. The fast his units fall the less effective dps he has and the more cost effective my army is. Waiting 3-4 seconds doesn't seem like much but its 1-2 attacks per unit at least (depending on how long surrounds take). Sometimes my temps run forward and die but it happens less and less. so I would say spread your army into a semi concave, select them all and attack move then micro your temps.
My control groups are generally as follows
1 Zlot (+sentries if I have blink, +sometimes immortals)
2 Stalker (+sentries if I don't have blink or vs mutas)
3 Templar (sometimes immortals)
4 Collo or Warp Prism or Phoenix
5 Observer
6 Observer
7 Observer
0 Nexus
These hotkeys work well with the builds I do and there is rarely conflict, and keeping same units on same keys provides for excellent muscle memory. They are divided into how I make sense of what I want to do so your own hotkeys are probably best. I played a hunter in wow to 2200+, and not some ezmode stuff either, had 50+ keybinds with modifiers and everything rofl. I'd say keybinds are extremely important in SC for reaction speed (although my APM is a laughable 75 average).
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Also magic boxes are smaller, but still exist in SC2, so you can keep your HTs in a spread out formation and move them without clumping them. Ref: magic box in SC2 This protects you better from splash damage and AoE spells, and gives wider range for your spells.
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On July 17 2010 03:27 [RB]Black wrote:
I do not know if i like the shift click idea for storms. smart cast is fast enough and if you start shift clicking the storm dodge may be a bit easier than if you storm a few and wait a second... storm some more
IMO this is a bad way of thinking about storm usage. Ideally you want to blanket their entire army with storms, with the lag between each storm as small as possible, as this ensures the most DPS in the shortest amount of time which should be your goal.
Now on that point there are obviously some things you need to keep in mind when implementing this in-game. First is storm has a cooldown of 2 seconds, so you can only simultaneously cast storms equal to the amount of HTs you have in the vicinity.
Second is about proper usage. I've found the best way to do this move your entire army forward, hit s for stop as mentioned in the OP, then shift-t click from the furthest (safe) location from your HTs, with each click progressively to the next location toward HTs. This will ensure the tightest storm casts possible as each storm command issues the command to the closest HT with energy, so each next command will issue it to the next closest and so on and so forth. Try it in the unit tester.
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On July 17 2010 04:06 zomgtossrush wrote:
A strategy I feel like is underused is clumping your army into sections, to avoid overpowering emps.
For example having 5-6 zealots 2-3 stalkers 1-2 templars in each of 3 different control groups. Then when engaging come in at 3 angles.
Just to add to this, to help avoid emps when your army is sitting idle, you can use the patrol command on your HT. Particularly by shift-patrolling in a "box" you can get a very nice spread on your HT.
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EPT
