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Right off the bat, I'd like to make it clear that this is not a "which key should I bind my army to" thread. Searching found plenty of those. What I'd like to discuss is a more in-depth look into what exactly goes into an "army" control group. Also note that this one is for Protoss.
I find it intuitively clear that you'll want your control groups to contain the units that you always want moving in the same direction or standing in the same spot. Here's the groups I generally use (and what I choose to call them):
Meatshield: Zealots and Immortals, plus Sentries to drop guardian shields on them. Also, Archons if I warp any in, to get them in range of the enemy.
Stalkers: Keep them in their own group, so I can blink without sending anything else going the long way round.
Siege: Colossi. I want to keep them on a-move as opposed to focus-firing, and generally standing back from the rest of the army.
And here's a few other group compositions and why I stopped using them:
Ranged: Stalkers, Sentries and Immortals. First, I realized Immortals work better when you explicitly send them to the front lines, and then I realized sentries are more useful if I keep moving them with zealots.
Robo: I rarely used both Immortals and Colossi at the same time, so whichever I used was going under one control group. Defunct since now I tend to use both units.
If my opponent is going for cloaked units, I usually put a few observers among the army mix, in keeping with the principle outlined above. There's a few units I didn't mention, and they usually go into their dedicated control groups.
I'd like some feedback on my reasonings. One thing I'm unsure about is whether my Archons wouldn't work better in the ranged group or as a dedicated group.
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I think you should focus an doing positioning etc with the mouse, I feel that its faster and more accurat, since you always want a spread for a good concave.
I think deathball in a ball is far worse than a nice spread so that all colossi can attack at once and don't block each other etc.
I personally almost never use said "deathball" composition but when I do/did, I felt like it was better that way since you can always restrict moving with forcefields.
My groupings are:
1 - Zealots/Sentries/Archons/Immortals
2 - Stalkers
3 - Templar/Colossi
Reasons:
I want to be able to use the spells as fast as possible.
I hit one to cast forcefields
2 to Blink
and 3 to storm
These hotkeys are lategame, early on I have like my main army on one and harrassment on 2.
So pretty much the same for other reasons 
In a fight I rarely use the hotkeys to move, if I chase for example I only want to move the Zealots back that used charge and then run in again to negate kiting. Also it is all about the concave and you will only achieve that using the mouse.
If a portion of your army is blocked, let's say like 5 of your 20 Stalkers block 3-4 Archons and a few Zealots, you don't want to move/blink all Stalkers only these five -> mouse.
On November 07 2011 04:45 Hertzy wrote:One thing I'm unsure about is whether my Archons wouldn't work better in the ranged group or as a dedicated group.
Since they have so low range it is important to have them very close to the front so group 1 is the way to go I think. A fourth hotkey would distract me too much in fights to micro efficiently, don't know about you but I think I would be in trouble, also the effect is almost non-existent.
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I tend to keep main army on 1 This is basically everything except templars. With well spreading before and a fast mouse hand its all I need.
high templars on 2
gateways on 3 ( mostly pointless but they there for early game and I just keep the hot key as im to use to pushing it instead of w to check on wg cool downs )
4 is robo/stargate (they get swapped out during the game as im usually producing from one or the other. never both.)
5 nexus's
6-8 warp prisms.
9 forges ( gotta keep them upgrades coming)
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This is my hotkey set-up. I'll let you know that I'm only in Platinum, but this is what I like to go with. It seems weird but I'm used to it.
1-Main army
2-Harass (Warp Prism)/Alternate Forces
4-Nexus (4 is right next to E)
6-Robo/Stargate (one or the other)
7-Stargate (If I have Robo as well)
8&9-Second and Third Observers
0-Scouting Probe and First Observer
I think I am going to overhaul this very soon.
My optimal hotkey set-up would be:
1-Zealots/Immortals/Archons/Stalkers
2-Sentries/HT
3-Collosi
4-Nexus
5-Robo
6-9-Scouts
0-Warp-in Pylon
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On November 28 2011 10:18 cDgCorazon wrote:
This is my hotkey set-up. I'll let you know that I'm only in Platinum, but this is what I like to go with. It seems weird but I'm used to it.
1-Main army
2-Harass (Warp Prism)/Alternate Forces
4-Nexus (4 is right next to E)
6-Robo/Stargate (one or the other)
7-Stargate (If I have Robo as well)
8&9-Second and Third Observers
0-Scouting Probe and First Observer
I think I am going to overhaul this very soon.
My optimal hotkey set-up would be:
1-Zealots/Immortals/Archons/Stalkers
2-Sentries/HT
3-Collosi
4-Nexus
5-Robo
6-9-Scouts
0-Warp-in Pylon
I highly suggest that you give stalkers their own control group as they're scouts, they're mobile (can easily use them to blink back into your base to defend), and they're weak. The fact that they're both fast and weak often results in having them in front of your army when you 1-a (and you never want that). Personally I don't think you need three hotkeys for scouts. A max of 2 is enough.
This is my set up (feel free to critique, I feel like there is something missing in my setup):
1-2 Nexus
3-obs, phoenix, scouting probe, warp prism
4-stalkers
5-zealots, sentries, immortals, archons
6-HT, colossi, vr
7-obs
8-in-base force to protect myself against mutas or drops
9-stargate
0-robo
None of my army hotkeys are overlapping (i.e. if I send everything to attack, I 4-a 5-a 6-a) and I also use camera hotkeys.
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On November 28 2011 10:37 najo wrote:
All on 1 and 1a.
This man said it all.
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I have redefined my keyboard but I used this combination:
4 For some reasons, I prefer to have main army here; it works perfectly with A command pressed by pinky
1 High Templars--1 works with T and F
2 Stalkers/Collosi--2 also works well with B for me
3 Sentries (it's a special caster ;p)--3 and F are close and use very often
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I use the grid hotkey setup and wrap my control groups around my hotkeys.
1 for Zealot/Sentry/Immortal/Colossus/Archons
2 for Stalker
3 for High Templar/Dark Templar/Phoenix/Void Ray
4 for Warp Prism/Observer/Phoenix/Void Ray
5 for Warp Prism/Observer
6 for Nexuses
Y for Gateways
H for Robos
N for Stargates
Spacebar is for my forges and cybernetics cores.
I changed my tilde (~) to my warp gate hotkey and use F1, F2, F3, F4, F5 etc. for my base camera hotkeys.
It's pretty sweet and means I don't need to move my hand around much to reach every hotkey (unlike having control groups on 0 and shit lol)
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I don't think Protoss needs as many different hotkeys as Terran lategame, but I suppose it depends. Also, Zergs complain about one A, but I have yet to see a Zerg us more than 1 hotkey for their army besides muta ling.
Rebound ~ for warp prisms and templar
1- Main army - stalkers and templar
2 - observer or blink stalkers
That's it.
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It has always been easy for me to use mouse control (maybe because i played a TON of brood war)
but I rarely hotkey more then 2 unit groups:
1- Army in general -> zealot, stalker, sentry, collololo, immortal, archon
2- High Templar
My play is extremely high templar focused so obviously i have those on a separate hotkey so i can just forcefield and then storm right away, but i use the Ctrl key a lot, and if u hold ctrl and click a unit, all of the same unit will be clicked, and so my usage of shift and ctrl are very heavy.
For example, right before a fight, I will ctrl+click a zealot and then move them all in front of the army.
I always found it a pain to have more then 2 hotkeys, since you're constantly making units and have to continually rebind each time u make a round of stalkers, or something like that.
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I'm trying to get used to
1 - zealots sentries
2 - stalkers
3 - hts
but its really tough -_-
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i use grid.
nexi on "4"
warp-in on "alt"
alternative key for "x" is "space-bar".
this way e.g. guardian shield and storm is on spacebar. guadian shiled goes up extremly fast.
base camera on "circumflex" so i can cycle throw all nexi fast
i cycle throw the gateway units with tab. this is fast enough imo.
DTs, HTs, phoenix, voidrays in a seperated controll group.
thats it.
robo etc on a hotkey ofc.
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for me i put zealots sentries imorts archons and colosi on 1 stalkers on 2 HT's on 3 ezpz
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Mine is : 1 ealots,Stalkers, Sentries. 2: Templar (Any other spellcasters) 3: Upgrades or Robo 4: All my Nexi 5: Obs 6-8: is usually anything else i need, since protoss only needs about 1 button to make there army (W and spam what you want to make) i dont need that many control groups for buildings.
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so most of the time toss uses 1 hotkey for there army?
so it would be hard for them to deal with multi pronged attacks? hmmm 
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On November 28 2011 12:53 Zergrusher wrote:so most of the time toss uses 1 hotkey for there army? so it would be hard for them to deal with multi pronged attacks? hmmm
Nope, Protoss players generally have a better multitasking and are faster, don't worry 
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you say you want to keep your colossus on a-move instead of focus fire... are you sure about that?
focus firing colossus is almost always more effective. select colossus, a-click on bunched up units, way more effective.
is there something i don't know? i thought everyone focus fired w/ colossus and that it was one of the most important parts of colossus micro
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Try putting everything other than ht's into 1, stalkers on 2, and hts/robo play unit on 3.
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EPT
