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Hey,
First off, i have used the search feature and found nothing helpful. Secondly im a Plat Terran who has been having issues lategame in TvP due to my inability to EMP.
Its not that i cant EMP well, its just that i cant do it. Maybe im shift clicking, maybe im doing something i dont know about at all. It just doesnt work for me.
I know the general idea of cloak ghosts, walk up to his army and emp everything, then stim up and kill him.
My replay seems to be a good example, while my engagement is poor, and i still won the fight, the emps all went off AFTER everything was dead.
Sure in this game my macro wasnt perfect, i got SB etc, but that not my question. My question is looking at the replay, can anyone interpolate what im probably doing which will cause me to just not cast the emps?
If you fancy commenting on my army comp go ahead, thats the other main area im not sure on
Also, the guy im playing against is hilarious 
Replay: http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/8607 (Its right at the end)
EDIT: Actually ill take any advice people have if they cant help me with the ghost problem XD
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i didnt watch it yet but if you attack and then shift click that means the ghosts will EMP AFTER they are done with the attack move command
edit: yeah for some reason you had most of them on move command on a marauder and then you shift clicked emp, so they would only emp after they were done with the command you gave them first
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Yeh. I just watched that battle, you shift queued EMP so it executed after attack commend.
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Well then i see this getting closed rather soon if thats all it is. Cheers.
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I'm going to grab my lunch right now, but maybe I can help without seeing the replays because I too had tons of problem with EMPing properly.
1 - You have to have all the ghosts in one key. (sometimes you can split them in two differents key, also, one group for ambush and the other with the main army).
2 - Your ghosts shouldn't be in your ball, they will be dragged to the middle of the ball, and will no be in range to EMP HTs (because they will be in the back of your opponents army).
3 - Setup is very important, battle where YOU want to battle, and have a good position on your ghosts, don't guess he won't have obs and try to run with cloaked ghosts into him. It is better to lure a fight where your ghosts are already positioned to EMP whatever the fuck he has.
4 - Have at least 5 ghosts for late game. EMP on the HTs are cool yes. But EMPing his WHOLE army is a winning factor.
5 - When the actual fight starts what I do is, my ghosts will already be in a position where they won't be killed easily and in range, but most importantly they won't be inside the ball, they will be safe and in range.(high ground is always beautiful) Be fast with the emps - let your units fight while you repeatedly EMP different chunks of his army(lots of EMP on Archons also!). It is not that hard as it may sound, just spam the hotkey you assigned and go crazy on his army. Make sure your EMPs go before he can feedback you(that's why you want to lure him into a fight not the opposite, you will be the one waiting for the HTs to pop, while he'll be dragged into a big fight).
6 - Always cute to scan and snipe the observer so you have cloaked ghosts hitting him.
7 - Cloak is not essential. EMPing efficiently is.HTs are able to feedback without cloak, why wouldn't ghosts?
Hope I helped, I know it is pretty obvious, but this guidelines really made TvP from my worst MU to my best MU.
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I watched your rep and it seems like you're right about shift clicking. Since you queue up the emp, it moves somewhere first or attacks something first before you emp. You have your ghosts on a different control group so I don't see why this is a problem - just select then and press E and try to land on his sentry/collusi. Don't shift queue them up.
In general, in the battle focus fire his collusi, don't just amove them with vikes. Try to spread your troops a bit into an arc too. Don't waste scans on the watchtower - scan his base and stim a rine forward to check army composition. You let him take watchtower with like 2 units - take them back. Until the end of the game you had no vision of his main which kind of bothers me but you kept putting scans on the army so you got a decent idea of his army comp so that's ok. Decent army comp and decent upgrades (could have been faster though - it was a while between the armory finishing and you starting 2/2). Just work on that arc - spread your troops a bit while they're chilling at the gold. That gives you a huge advantage if he attacks into you (that's why in pro games you see them dance around a bit before the fight - neither wants to really attack into the other cause then they have their preset arc).
I don't know why you took the other base as your 3rd instead of the gold in the first place really - gold bases are great for Terran going bio cause you get all that extra minerals which you need for bio. If toss was better you should have lost that main fight for sure. His ff were pretty bad, he had no psi storm, and only two collusi (lack of psi storm real problem though as you had dual reactor starports, even though you didn't use them that much).
Also, scout more. Your scv scout can stay in his base till you see the cyber core finish (zlot is going to kill you) and it lets you see if he gets a stalker out first or sentry. You kept having zlots in your mineral line and didn't ever scout his proxy pylon. Toss always put pylons around there. And then when the zlots came into your mineral line you sent your WHOLE army back. Toss coulda walked in and sniped your 4th coming up at least, if not your 3rd. Toss also did not DT harass even though he had templar tech out, which is disappointing from him. Given how your 3rd was an OC that would have been a problem, also given that you had no turrets outside your nat.
Overall decent game, you were ahead after you survived his opening. Normally toss build more sentry at the game start though, so have more FF energy and do way more damage with that opening versus yours. He didn't have enough FF to make it effective even though Shakurus natural is huge.
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You queued incorrectly (a lot of players do that). Don't use shift, just move the ghosts where you want them to be (preferably at a distance), and then E-click (emp is smartcast so only one ghost will move per cast) as needed
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If you hit E and click on the same spot over and over again (common thing to do) you will shoot 10 emps at the exact same spot. Make sure you spread them out.
Oh, and make sure your ghosts are relatively close to their targets. Nothing sucks worse than giving emp commands from a distance, then watching ghosts spam emp on empty space.
Check out sc2rep.com and search for Thorzain vs Minigun (uploaded the last few days) on shakuras. Thorzain has the most gosu emps of all time. Copy him.
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if you make the ghosts hold fire and stand still, you can shift click them effectivley
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You indeed have a Shift-queue problem. The second you hit shift, the unit interprets the order as following "I'll continue with what I was doing, THEN i will execute what you ordered me to do while holding shift". In this case, the ghosts continue walking to the point you clicked, THEN launch the EMP.
The two ways to solve the problem are the following :
1°) Don't use shift, maintain the EMP hotkey and click several times.
2°) Use shift, but click the EMP hotkey FIRST ! This way, the EMP order will first overwrite the Move Order, and you won't have any more problems.
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You can just select your ghosts and hold down E then click as many times as you want, wherever you want, and they will fire out EMPs very quickly.
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Cheers for the advice. Just had a TvP where i emp'd the crap out of his entire archon HT army and rolled. You guy shave been seriously helpful!
Now all i have to deal with is the most OP unit ever, the DT! yay!  At least i can emp them now
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Just as a bit of an FYI/bonus trivia, the Snipe spell has the same problem, or rather it has a weird similar problem. I've tested snipe and EMP extensively with a buddy, and I found that even if your ghosts are standing there, not on hold pos not doing anything, and you try to shift-queue some snipes, a lot of them will just not snipe at all. So just like EMP, you have to R+click R+click R+click.
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On July 10 2011 13:12 Sententia wrote:
Just as a bit of an FYI/bonus trivia, the Snipe spell has the same problem, or rather it has a weird similar problem. I've tested snipe and EMP extensively with a buddy, and I found that even if your ghosts are standing there, not on hold pos not doing anything, and you try to shift-queue some snipes, a lot of them will just not snipe at all. So just like EMP, you have to R+click R+click R+click.
Increase your keyboard repeat rate and decrease the repeat delay and you'll be able to hold down the key and spam the spell without having to hit the key over and over
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On July 10 2011 19:49 vincom2 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 10 2011 13:12 Sententia wrote:
Just as a bit of an FYI/bonus trivia, the Snipe spell has the same problem, or rather it has a weird similar problem. I've tested snipe and EMP extensively with a buddy, and I found that even if your ghosts are standing there, not on hold pos not doing anything, and you try to shift-queue some snipes, a lot of them will just not snipe at all. So just like EMP, you have to R+click R+click R+click. Increase your keyboard repeat rate and decrease the repeat delay and you'll be able to hold down the key and spam the spell without having to hit the key over and over This, for all your spellcasting needs this!
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Screw shift clicking and just hold down emp with all ghosts selected. Smart casting will just emp for each click you make.
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I see a lot of advice to have your ghosts and vikings in a different hotkey than your main army.
If you have #1 MMM, #2 ghosts, #3 vikings
How do you manage to move them all when you are navigating the map?
Do you just set your ghosts and vikings to follow your MMM army then break away when you need them?
Do you move them all manually then hit 1 move, 2 move, 3 move each time you're changing your route?
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Watch the PuMa games versus MC in the NASL Season 1 finals! Excellent ghost usage, and a couple of games also show you what happens when ghosts get feedbacked and such.
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On July 12 2011 08:13 BigBoyBoobs wrote:
I see a lot of advice to have your ghosts and vikings in a different hotkey than your main army.
If you have #1 MMM, #2 ghosts, #3 vikings
How do you manage to move them all when you are navigating the map?
Do you just set your ghosts and vikings to follow your MMM army then break away when you need them?
Do you move them all manually then hit 1 move, 2 move, 3 move each time you're changing your route?
The second method of moving them around is much better, though it will feel really akward and clunky at first but once you get used to it you will be able to control your army much better. Though I prefer not to hotkey my medivacs at all and just have them following a unit in my bioball. I do this so they will still heal when you are doing stutterstep micro. Though you have to watch out so they dont get left behind if the unit they are following dies.
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Hey guys, I'm a mid diamond Terran that has a lot of problems with doing EMPs. First of all I had (and still have) 1 group syndrom. I used to put all my MMM+ghosts in ctr group 1, and was doing tabbing. But in big engage there has been some huge problems like pressing tab 2 times more than I should and switch from MM to medivacs/vikings etc. I thought of maybe changing soem hotkeys that could help, because its hard to do something like 1-a-t-tab-tab-tab-E-E. by the time I got my ghosts they were already be dead or they would be in the middle of ball so they cant reach anything more than chargelots.
this is my latest replay of failing a standard TvP game, when I played good for my skill (droping, macroing, expanding). But in the end every TvP has the same end, deatball overruns me ( I got really depresed in this matchup because every game I see my opponent is protoss i know im gonna lose. But for start huge progress would be just to throw some good emps. I must admint, Im realy clumsy with fingers when It comes to big engagement, because my fps rate drops to 10 fps and i start to press lots of wrong keys . In other matchups I'm fine.
The problem is with hotkeyeing ghosts, normal players use 1 for main, 2 for ghosts. Problem is i get used to use 2 for CC.s, 3rax, 4fact, 5star. Since I dont use factory in TvP i arranged ghosts to 4, but still it hasnt show any results. Its killing me because Im not allinish type of player, love to macro, and play long games, but where it comes to protoss, there's only one thing LOSS! any comments and advices would be hapefull, hope you can help. ty
http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/8861
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Never use shift on smart cast. Select Ghosts Hold down E and click locations you wish to EMP, THEN shift move them behind your army so they get out of the way for your stimmed bio to clean things up. Course this all needs to happen in a second or two. Practice.
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This thread has been very helpfull for me as well (High Gold)
Thanks guys!
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EDIT: super-ninjaed, I forgot how long ago I opened this thread >.<
You spam 123123123 as you click for your army to move, place them on a fourth hotkey containing all your army, or use the follow command (but I think that's the least elegant solution).
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can someone reply to my post, on the end of first page =&
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Some really good responses so far. To reiterate:
1) Split ghosts onto a separate hotkey (easiest). This can be in addition to having them part of your "1a" army (bulk) but being able to select only the ghosts on 2 & 3, for example.
2) Position prior to the battle and scan his forces. You need to figure out where the HTs are, where his big gateway blob is, if he's attempting to snipe your ghosts with feedback. Remember that you can always do a 1-2 medivac drop to force his units out of position if they're appropriately scattered to mitigate EMP.
3) Ghost hotkey, EMP the scanned clumps, HT's, Archons. If you have a surplus of EMP energy compared to unit area encountered, double EMP the sentry blob (full energy removal) and any archons (double the damage to shields).
4) Engage. Stutter step stim kite if there's chargelots, use your mobility to HEAVILY punish any retreat by picking off units. You've done your job if he went from 7 storms to 0-1, from 6 sentries to just a precast guardian shield (No FF) and if you destroy the bulk of his army easily.
Scan very important, ghosts on separate hotkey very important
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On July 12 2011 09:01 Marine420 wrote:Hey guys, I'm a mid diamond Terran that has a lot of problems with doing EMPs. First of all I had (and still have) 1 group syndrom. I used to put all my MMM+ghosts in ctr group 1, and was doing tabbing. But in big engage there has been some huge problems like pressing tab 2 times more than I should and switch from MM to medivacs/vikings etc. I thought of maybe changing soem hotkeys that could help, because its hard to do something like 1-a-t-tab-tab-tab-E-E. by the time I got my ghosts they were already be dead or they would be in the middle of ball so they cant reach anything more than chargelots. this is my latest replay of failing a standard TvP game, when I played good for my skill (droping, macroing, expanding). But in the end every TvP has the same end, deatball overruns me ( I got really depresed in this matchup because every game I see my opponent is protoss i know im gonna lose. But for start huge progress would be just to throw some good emps. I must admint, Im realy clumsy with fingers when It comes to big engagement, because my fps rate drops to 10 fps and i start to press lots of wrong keys . In other matchups I'm fine. The problem is with hotkeyeing ghosts, normal players use 1 for main, 2 for ghosts. Problem is i get used to use 2 for CC.s, 3rax, 4fact, 5star. Since I dont use factory in TvP i arranged ghosts to 4, but still it hasnt show any results. Its killing me because Im not allinish type of player, love to macro, and play long games, but where it comes to protoss, there's only one thing LOSS! any comments and advices would be hapefull, hope you can help. ty http://www.sc2replayed.com/replay-videos/8861
How about you change your hotkey style to this? It will definitely increase your gameplay. Your hotkeys is the main reason why you have the 1 control group syndrome imo. 4 for CC, 5 for raxs, 6 for facts and starports (just use tab to switch from facts to starports). That way, you have1 2 and 3 left for army. If you still need more, use this ~ button next to 1 and change it to 9 or something. That way, you'd have ~,1,2, and 3 to hotkey different groups of units.
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I have 1a big-ball syndrome because my APM is not that high, but I don't have too much problem getting EMP's off.
When ghosts are mixed with the rest of your army, they will be the unit selected when you press the hotkey for your bio ball. When I attack, I basically hit 1 e-e-e-e...all over their army, then TAB T (for stim) and go from there. Sometimes it takes a couple of seconds for the EMP's to go off if the ghosts are not close enough. If I need more EMP, I hit 1 again to reselect the ghosts, then TAB to get back to the marines and marauders for more stim if necessary.
I plan to practice more with having them on a seperate hotkey though. I like the idea of the whole army on 1, and then MMM on 2, ghosts on 3, vikings on 4, etc. Easy enough to 1a when you want to, but can still micro individual units if necessary.
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EPT
