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On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job.
This.
I used to rely a lot on hotkeys and fancy control groups setups. It's fine as long as the game unfolds in an orthodox way, but in crisis state, when all becomes messed up, you have units everywhere and the opponent as well, you can only rely on your mouse speed and precision.
Use the minimap, it seems less optimal, but that's how the pros do it, because it's reliable, and you have to be fast with your mouse to be good anyway.
Off topic, but just a piece of advice: train youself to be able to use different hotkey setups dynamically in the same game. For example my main setup is HuK's style (1: zealot/sentries 2: stalkers 3: colossus). But I can also switch to some kind of air harass play (1: gateway units, 2: void rays, 3: pheonix) or a late game deathball (1: gateway 2: colossus 3: templars), or even a complete harass gameplay (1: warprism 2: blink stalkers 3: pheonix) and not even hotkey your main army.
When I play terran this skill is an obvious requirement to me, you have so many different units sometimes that you could hotkey everything separately, but you don't have enough control groups, so in the end, you just have to allocate dynamically some hotkey for what seems most important at a given time, and handle the rest with your mouse. Bottom line is it's better to play with the most adaptative mechanics and not corner youself in some narrow minded tricks from the SC2 engine. That's my cool story bro-ish take on this, so don't mind me much, it's a good find nonetheless.
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Thanks for this. Look great, might try it out later 
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Interesting but sorry, not to my liking.
1. This is the main problem: I've used up all my hotkeys. Aside from 3-4 control groups for units, I also hotkey forges and observers so yea... not enough.
2. I still find mouse scrolling/minimap clicking more reliable.
3. Spacebar to jump between bases to deal with mineral line drops.
4. F keys to fix camera on different forward pylons.
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Taiwan619 Posts
I've been using F-keys. F1 main, F2 nat/wall, F3 proxy
warp prism is usually on separate hotkey, usually the one next to my army to facilitate movement control
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I think the camera keys were created in order to accomodate such a task. Generally players use control groups pretty well, but F1-F8(custom bound) are generally ignored.
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On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job.
Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups.
Minimap clicking is a minimum requirement to being able to use this technique properly in the first place; However, on maps with way larger bases (eg ICCUP Testbug) you need to end up mouse scrolling (pushing mouse against sides of screen) and this ends up meaning that your method is not 'efficient'. To a certain degree many players compensate for their flaws in interface control with pure hand speed. You see this the case with even the best macro players (e.g. Ret)
To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon.
But to reiterate, this guide was written from the assumption that players want to utilise the most user interface efficient form of control.
One extreme example of a player relying purely on speed is Masq (Est 400 apm?). He constantly uses mouse scroll to get to all the location he needs to go. I don't think this is in any regards a 'better' or more 'efficient' form of play, despite him being able to solve all the problems and winning by mouse speed and spam.
On November 15 2011 12:07 Whiplash wrote:
Could you make a video or something to show how this is used in game?
Unfortunately not. Computer can't support FRAPS + SC2 at same time.
Though, even if I could I'm not sure I'd be an appropriate Protoss user to demonstrate it - My Protoss mechanics are a league below my Zerg and Terran.
The best I have is the replay I used to take screenshots of the technique. Note how minimally I used the mouse scrolling ingame, rather I relied predominantly on control groups and minimap to move across the screen in various places without trying to 'tune' my camera around.
REPLAY - Against AI
On November 15 2011 12:14 ZenithM wrote:I used to rely a lot on hotkeys and fancy control groups setups. It's fine as long as the game unfolds in an orthodox way, but in crisis state, when all becomes messed up, you have units everywhere and the opponent as well, you can only rely on your mouse speed and precision.
Use the minimap, it seems less optimal, but that's how the pros do it, because it's reliable, and you have to be fast with your mouse to be good anyway.
Off topic, but just a piece of advice: train youself to be able to use different hotkey setups dynamically in the same game. For example my main setup is HuK's style (1: zealot/sentries 2: stalkers 3: colossus). But I can also switch to some kind of air harass play (1: gateway units, 2: void rays, 3: pheonix) or a late game deathball (1: gateway 2: colossus 3: templars), or even a complete harass gameplay (1: warprism 2: blink stalkers 3: pheonix) and not even hotkey your main army.
I believe you don't agree with my basic assumptions about the technique. That being said yes I do also rely on mouse speed and mini-map precision to compensate for my incomplete interface control of the game. However this doesn't mean it's the best way to do things.
Minimap awareness and usage should be very important too. I probably can't stress this enough Good Protosses right now already have base pylons spread in a way that the whole area is carpeted with energy to warp in anywhere, anytime. However streamlining this, and ALSO with Warp Prisms in a shared dedicated hotkey, is the objective of considering this technique useful at all.
Not hotkeying army is possible, but I don't see why it should be considered 'optimal' play. From what I see of your control groups, you constantly remap warp prisms only when you use them. What if you had them ready for your unit composition from the start. Even if you don't get a single warp prism, the control group is still being dedicated to something useful from the start.
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Hmmm this is pretty interesting to say the least. I don't know if it's worth the effort in regards to dealing with harass (since you need to click on the minimap regardless) or pylons grouped with your units (since that would take away your ability to double tap to center on that group of units so you would have to click the portrait instead).
I do wish they added some sort of functionality to center your screen on different units in your control group though. When I am doing a multi-prism harass it would be nice if I could say double tap a control group with 2 warp prisms and center on the first prism, then double tap again to center on the 2nd.
Oh and here is an interesting somewhat-related topic to this regarding location capture keys. For places you know will stay the same throughout the game (i.e bases, ramps, etc.) you can use the tradition ctrl or shift+f-key, but have one location capture for places you know will be changing (proxy pylons, harass locations) and set it as a normal f-key w/ no modifiers, then set an easily accessible key to jump to that point (I use spacebar). So for instance when I'm harassing with my warp prism, I can harass, hit F4 to save that location, then F1 to go back to my base to macro, then spacebar to go back to harassing. It is makes jumping screens via capture keys a lot smoother and easier on the hands.
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On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon.
It's really easy to mess up hotkeying multiple pylons when you are relying on jumping to the correct one at any given time. In order for it to be better to map multiple buildings to a single hotkey it would have to be reliably faster than just using fkeys or minimap clicking. However since you can't really reliably guage which pylon you'll jump to, since you can't accurately always guess which pylon is closest, it's faster to have higher reliability of absolute positions.
It's also not really realistic to quickly "fix a mistake" if you jump to the wrong pylon, since if it were you wouldn't jump to the wrong pylon in the first place; in order to "fix the mistake" you need to be able to accurately guage the closest pylon.
Any good player would rather fkey fixed hotspots and jump them on demand, than to mess with a highly dynamic system requiring a lot of guessing in order to work well.
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On November 15 2011 12:04 moocow2009 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. If I understand correctly, the idea is that you hotkey all your pylons that you expect you might ever warp-in from, and then when you hit the hotkey, it takes your screen to the closest one. I don't really see how it could take you to the wrong pylon -- when is the closest pylon that you thought you might want to warp in from ever going to be the "wrong" pylon? I guess if it's still building that would be a problem, but as long as you're careful about that, I can't ever see it being a problem.
If you are getting harassed or dropped in a location away from your army
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On November 15 2011 12:55 NerZhuL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:04 moocow2009 wrote:On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. If I understand correctly, the idea is that you hotkey all your pylons that you expect you might ever warp-in from, and then when you hit the hotkey, it takes your screen to the closest one. I don't really see how it could take you to the wrong pylon -- when is the closest pylon that you thought you might want to warp in from ever going to be the "wrong" pylon? I guess if it's still building that would be a problem, but as long as you're careful about that, I can't ever see it being a problem. If you are getting harassed or dropped in a location away from your army
Then that's when you use the minimap. Just because you're using a given technique doesn't mean you can't also use a different one if you have to.
I guess I'll have to try it out a little and see if it really helps.
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On November 15 2011 12:52 CecilSunkure wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon. It's really easy to mess up hotkeying multiple pylons when you are relying on jumping to the correct one at any given time. In order for it to be better to map multiple buildings to a single hotkey it would have to be reliably faster than just using fkeys or minimap clicking. However since you can't really reliably guage which pylon you'll jump to, since you can't accurately always guess which pylon is closest, it's faster to have higher reliability of absolute positions. It's also not really realistic to quickly "fix a mistake" if you jump to the wrong pylon, since if it were you wouldn't jump to the wrong pylon in the first place; in order to "fix the mistake" you need to be able to accurately guage the closest pylon. Any good player would rather fkey fixed hotspots and jump them on demand, than to mess with a highly dynamic system requiring a lot of guessing in order to work well.
I quite agree with F-keys as a better on demand method harrass management. However I usually set those at bases so I can macro inbase; I don't usually have them captured to main choke points either.
There isn't really guesswork if you have picked out a correct number of pylons. I considered hotkeying every single pylon - that's where the constant errors you suggest actually happened in practise. However if u map say 2 pylons per base (3 over 2 bases depending?) and all proxies and warp prism, then this shouldn't really happen.
Following along the argument it is never a correct decision to rely on control grouping to center on your bases, are you suggesting this technique is suboptimal for say 3 proxy pylons and a Warp Prism in an aggressive stance? You want to always be able to tab to the closest proxy to your army no matter where it is. If they snipe the closest proxy, you would want to find the next closest proxy. I feel it's more time consuming to remap a new screen capture if your closer proxy is destroyed and you still need to focus on the combat.
The warp prism in the midgame should always able to be positioned correctly through this as well - you don't 'rally' pylons so there should be no forced positioning error by having it on the same hotkey.
I would love to hear your opinion on those aspects of this Technique.
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One more thing as to why I don't think this is really suitable. If we shift queue the probe to build a forward pylon somewhere or any pylons at the edge of the base, I certainly would not want to wait for it to be thrown down before hotkey-ing it. And I certainly do not wish to have to go back to it to hotkey it a few seconds later either. I rather just fix the camera at the same time I order my probe to build a pylon at X location.
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On November 15 2011 13:07 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 12:52 CecilSunkure wrote:On November 15 2011 12:44 elliminist wrote:On November 15 2011 11:59 CecilSunkure wrote:
Cool idea, but not ideal. You'd have to play assuming you have correct hotkey setups. In a close game a mistake like the screen jumping to the wrong pylon unexpectedly will result in a loss. I'd much rather use my reliable minimap clicking skills, or fkeys to do the job. Not to be offensive but don't Protoss already play on a thin line in the first place with Forcefields and unit micro? I believe it's a reasonable assumption when moving into pro level that it's inexcusable to mess up hotkey set-ups. To counter your argument, then it's also totally possible to rely on pure mouse speed and minimap precision to rectify mistakes like jumping to the wrong pylon. It's really easy to mess up hotkeying multiple pylons when you are relying on jumping to the correct one at any given time. In order for it to be better to map multiple buildings to a single hotkey it would have to be reliably faster than just using fkeys or minimap clicking. However since you can't really reliably guage which pylon you'll jump to, since you can't accurately always guess which pylon is closest, it's faster to have higher reliability of absolute positions. It's also not really realistic to quickly "fix a mistake" if you jump to the wrong pylon, since if it were you wouldn't jump to the wrong pylon in the first place; in order to "fix the mistake" you need to be able to accurately guage the closest pylon. Any good player would rather fkey fixed hotspots and jump them on demand, than to mess with a highly dynamic system requiring a lot of guessing in order to work well. I quite agree with F-keys as a better on demand method harrass management. However I usually set those at bases so I can macro inbase; I don't usually have them captured to main choke points either. There isn't really guesswork if you have picked out a correct number of pylons. I considered hotkeying every single pylon - that's where the constant errors you suggest actually happened in practise. However if u map say 2 pylons per base (3 over 2 bases depending?) and all proxies and warp prism, then this shouldn't really happen. Following along the argument it is never a correct decision to rely on control grouping to center on your bases, are you suggesting this technique is suboptimal for say 3 proxy pylons and a Warp Prism in an aggressive stance? You want to always be able to tab to the closest proxy to your army no matter where it is. If they snipe the closest proxy, you would want to find the next closest proxy. I feel it's more time consuming to remap a new screen capture if your closer proxy is destroyed and you still need to focus on the combat. The warp prism in the midgame should always able to be positioned correctly through this as well - you don't 'rally' pylons so there should be no forced positioning error by having it on the same hotkey. I would love to hear your opinion on those aspects of this Technique.
If your goal is to simply warp in at the closest point to your current screen location, then mapping pylons would be excellent assuming you think ahead in terms of where your units will actually have to path to get from warpin to your screen location.
However if you need to jump to the closest position to a point other than your current screen position, it's always better due to reliability to have fixed points to jump to. Even if you pick a small number of pylons smartly, it's still going to be more reliable to just map to individual bases or hotspots.
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On November 15 2011 13:31 Xenorawks wrote:
One more thing as to why I don't think this is really suitable. If we shift queue the probe to build a forward pylon somewhere or any pylons at the edge of the base, I certainly would not want to wait for it to be thrown down before hotkey-ing it. And I certainly do not wish to have to go back to it to hotkey it a few seconds later either. I rather just fix the camera at the same time I order my probe to build a pylon at X location.
I personally wouldn't pick those pylons to be control-grouped. I would pick ones more deeper inside since you need to have units complete, not warping in and vulnerable. Positionally inside base to outside base is better than from the outskirts of a base trying to chase inwards.
That being said I have the benefit of playing Zerg so I face this hotkeying issue with drones becoming hatcheries every game. I've just gotten used to it. Not sure why this is too difficult.
That being said you believe mouse scrolling is a better method. My assumptions consider mouse scrolling as a suboptimal method of control.
Trust me, after you get from bronze to diamond on a terrible laptop which runs sc2 at 14 fps on a good day, you aren't going to be relying on mouse scrolling anytime into the future. That's just my personal hardware background and the main reason I am an anti-fan of mouse scrolling.
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I've rehotkeyed one of the F keys to ` and use that for my rally points. when i offrace protoss i use that for main warp in pylon
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On November 15 2011 13:47 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 13:31 Xenorawks wrote:
One more thing as to why I don't think this is really suitable. If we shift queue the probe to build a forward pylon somewhere or any pylons at the edge of the base, I certainly would not want to wait for it to be thrown down before hotkey-ing it. And I certainly do not wish to have to go back to it to hotkey it a few seconds later either. I rather just fix the camera at the same time I order my probe to build a pylon at X location. I personally wouldn't pick those pylons to be control-grouped. I would pick ones more deeper inside since you need to have units complete, not warping in and vulnerable. Positionally inside base to outside base is better than from the outskirts of a base trying to chase inwards. That being said I have the benefit of playing Zerg so I face this hotkeying issue with drones becoming hatcheries every game. I've just gotten used to it. Not sure why this is too difficult. That being said you believe mouse scrolling is a better method. My assumptions consider mouse scrolling as a suboptimal method of control. Trust me, after you get from bronze to diamond on a terrible laptop which runs sc2 at 14 fps on a good day, you aren't going to be relying on mouse scrolling anytime into the future. That's just my personal hardware background and the main reason I am an anti-fan of mouse scrolling.
You're talking from a defender's point of view. How about reinforcing your troops? You did mention about jumping to the closest pylon to warp in units for reinforcements in your main post didn't you?
I'll give you a very simple and plain example.
A PvP 4gate vs 4gate on TDA.
I intercepted and defended a 4gate, now I have more units, I want to go deal the killing blow.
I order my units to move close to my opponent's base. In the meantime I select a probe to build a proxy pylon somewhere closer to my opponent's base. Without waiting for the probe to move there and complete the pylon, I would already be sending my units to my opponent's base and micro battle would have started already.
The 2 cases:
1. If I were to use your method, I would probably have to mouse scroll to that forward pylon and hotkey it in the heat of the battle because I couldn't hotkey it earlier if it wasn't being built yet, and then start warping in units as reinforcements. A slightly faster way without mouse scroll would be to control group the building probe beforehand and double tap to it after the pylon is built, and then hotkey it, and then reinforce.
2. If I were to use the camera method, my units will be moving out while I select the probe to build a pylon at a specific location. At the same time I order it to be built, I set camera on that same location. So during the micro battle halfway I would be able to use the F keys and reinforcement immediately.
This is the scenario where you have to attack before the pylon has even started building(your probe still travelling) and warp in immediately as the pylon is finished
Hope you get my point here, the advantage of the camera is you can set it before the pylons are built, instead of having to wait for it to be thrown down because you simply can't wait for it while you are counterattacking or doing 2-3 prompt attacks etc.
I'm no fan of mouse scrolling either, but if you do set your mouse scroll speed to a very high %, you can actually scroll pretty damn quickly(even faster than minimap clicking).
You say it's better to warp stuff from the inside of your base and move to the edges and defend a drop because warping it at the edge in sight of your enemy is very vulnerable. Then what's the difference if I use spacebar to go to my nexus and warp stuff around it OR tap my camera to a fixed location OR double tap forges/robo if placed near the drop location OR simply mouse scroll/minimap click to any pylon location close to it and do that? It doesn't make sense to bother to go to the closest pylon in that case since all you want is to warp the units somewhere in your base as long as it is close to the drop but not close enough for your opponent to snipe them.
I don't find your method difficult, I just find it a little unnecessary to use an extra hotkey just to defend drops slightly better. Mouse scrolling is a suboptimal method of control yes, but being unable to hotkey a forward pylon before it's built now that is unreliable when you're going to be attacking at a very fast pace. Mouse scrolling doesn't beat double tapping control groups that is for sure, but a mixture of double tapping and fixing camera location beats them all.
Your main's not protoss, maybe you don't play it at such a high pace. You are suggesting this method assuming that a protoss always has all his pylons in place before attacking but you have not taken into consideration:
1. You don't have pylons if you're just moving out early. Simply throwing proxy pylons everywhere early game is one thing, getting them destroyed is another.
2. Counterattacks, you don't always expect to have a happy pylon for warpins. You have to bring a probe along all the time. And more often than not, you have to attack before your pylon is in place.
3. 2-3 prompt attacks. I select 2 probes one to build at X location one to build at Y location and select my warpprism to land at Z location and then I move out my army to engage/my opponent army intercepts me. So in this case, how am I going to hotkey my X and Y pylon? I would already have my warpprism on a control group so it is unnecessary to even bring up Z location. Not to mention, I have to be controlling my army at the same time, I ain't gonna move my screen magically to X and Y location to warp stuff in there, but I certainly would use F keys for that.
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On November 15 2011 13:43 CecilSunkure wrote:
If your goal is to simply warp in at the closest point to your current screen location, then mapping pylons would be excellent assuming you think ahead in terms of where your units will actually have to path to get from warpin to your screen location.
However if you need to jump to the closest position to a point other than your current screen position, it's always better due to reliability to have fixed points to jump to. Even if you pick a small number of pylons smartly, it's still going to be more reliable to just map to individual bases or hotspots.
I would think this reliability is a pretty important factor, since it's kind of the whole point of having a consistent hotkey setup every game. I really like this idea and will probably use it because it's clever, but I'm not sure it's actually any better than just keeping one (or two) pylon(s) on a spare hotkey (or two). Sure, this way you'll always be warping in units at the closest location to your current screen, but (1) that assumes your current screen is always where you want to send your units, and (2) you still have to rally the units anyway -- with a whole group of warp-in pylons, you're going to have to spend half a second reorienting yourself on the minimap and rallying your newly made units in the right direction, but with a dedicated warp-in pylon you don't have to think about it; you know where you just jumped to and where you came from.
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On November 15 2011 11:07 elliminist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2011 11:00 mizU wrote:
Doesn't the camera go to where you have the most of something?
And why can't you use Fkeys? From my understanding of this in the case of buildings it centers around the closest building. In my screenshots for example three of my pylons in the control group were quite close together. F keys are actually supposed to be the absolute best method of base management. However, in practice you don't even see NA or most Korean pros at the highest levels use F keys (This is my conclusion after watching FPViews of Idra, Losira, Boxer, Nada etc including their BW Keyboard views). I believe it has to do with the fact you need to move your hand off the neutral position used for normal 4567 BW macro. I would like to note though that MC does use F keys for base management.
Zerg and Terran hardly need to use location hotkeys. If you have your hatches hotkeyed or you use a backspace inject method you don't even really need to look at your base much. While terran really only looks at his base to build supply depots and buildings.
Protoss however has the most flexibility on locations because of the warp mechanic. So I can't imagine this being bad for you if you just view-hotkeyed a couple of important spots like your main and natural to start off with and expand from there as you get used to it. That's how I do it anyway.
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On November 15 2011 14:50 Xenorawks wrote:
You're talking from a defender's point of view. How about reinforcing your troops? You did mention about jumping to the closest pylon to warp in units for reinforcements in your main post didn't you?
I'll give you a very simple and plain example.
A PvP 4gate vs 4gate on TDA.
Probe hotkeyed to 3. Army to 1,2. Shift add pylon once you've confirmed it to be built. You once again disregarded that my experiences have lead me to be forced to often have to re-hotkey units/buildings after they've been built simply because Zerg macro isn't afforded that leniency of 'its too inconvenient to check again a second later', especially with injects.
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+ Show Spoiler +I'm no fan of mouse scrolling either, but if you do set your mouse scroll speed to a very high %, you can actually scroll pretty damn quickly(even faster than minimap clicking).
You are still disregarding my assumptions. There's absolutely no value in this technique for a player like you since you'd rather play sub-optimally and rely on your speed to make up for it.
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+ Show Spoiler +You say it's better to warp stuff from the inside of your base and move to the edges and defend a drop because warping it at the edge in sight of your enemy is very vulnerable. Then what's the difference if I use spacebar to go to my nexus and warp stuff around it OR tap my camera to a fixed location OR double tap forges/robo if placed near the drop location OR simply mouse scroll/minimap click to any pylon location close to it and do that? It doesn't make sense to bother to go to the closest pylon in that case since all you want is to warp the units somewhere in your base as long as it is close to the drop but not close enough for your opponent to snipe them.
How do you defend the top AND bottom of your base in maps with larger main bases such as Taldarim Altar or Testbug? These maps have main base areas about twice the size of the camera view. I feel like this centering only seems okay when players don't have enough minimap awareness and the drop is right in their face already. The pylon method is better on the premise that you actually have the map awareness to notice movement.
As for your suggestions regarding forges/robos etc, you're conceding to the idea this method is a legitimate and fast way to double tap back to your base appropriately. The fact is that robos and forges are not consistently built in the same place every game even by Protosses with defined builds. To rely on this inconsistency is a poor decision to make.
If you have good map control you should be at least able to visually confirm what composition is coming in. I'll use PvT as a prime example. (average pattern: 1 medi 1 spot, 2 medi 2 spots, 2 medi 1 spot). I feel it's very important when you have actual map awareness of checking how large a harass threat is before just blinding making stuff or making it too late. You need to reposition with minimap controls in the first place and this facilitates the effectiveness of the technique. I would understand how useless this is if Protosses could defend every drop by blindly making 6 zealots, but this isn't the case.
The Pylon method will cover a larger area than just tabbing back to your main nexus. This much is clear by how you mentioned the use of forges/robos to center the camera.
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+ Show Spoiler +Your main's not protoss, maybe you don't play it at such a high pace. You are suggesting this method assuming that a protoss always has all his pylons in place before attacking but you have not taken into consideration:
1. You don't have pylons if you're just moving out early. Simply throwing proxy pylons everywhere early game is one thing, getting them destroyed is another.
2. Counterattacks, you don't always expect to have a happy pylon for warpins. You have to bring a probe along all the time. And more often than not, you have to attack before your pylon is in place.
3. 2-3 prompt attacks. I select 2 probes one to build at X location one to build at Y location and select my warpprism to land at Z location and then I move out my army to engage/my opponent army intercepts me. So in this case, how am I going to hotkey my X and Y pylon? I would already have my warpprism on a control group so it is unnecessary to even bring up Z location. Not to mention, I have to be controlling my army at the same time, I ain't gonna move my screen magically to X and Y location to warp stuff in there, but I certainly would use F keys for that.
I feel that was an offensive jab at my credentials. Why should it matter? For the record I'm mid-masters Zerg and skill-wise roughly High Diamond Protoss. I suggested this method assuming that you can ADD on more pylons as you continue your advance. How is it hard to shift click 1 pylon onto 3 others as you push forward? It's not like they have to all be in place.
If you lose all your proxies, and you're still going for the kill, heck you might go as far as to reinforce from your natural. You wouldn't have anything clearly mapped for that (to your natural nexus? that might be a walk away from your actual ramp - see Antiga Shipyard) Sometimes the closer pylon is even at the side of the main in that map. Your method doesn't compound for lost pylons, mine does.
Tactically, I would like to ask why you would be in a position to attack into a base without the reinforcing Warp-Ins?
PvP - Won't be decided without warp-in support. Without a warp in the defender's advantage is not nullified.
PvT - If you've got a big enough army to even poke w/o warp-ins you probably have enough pure army advantage to just look away from the battle and set up hotkeys/warp ins in the midst of things. I mean, if Terrans can kite chargelots while macroing at bases, I'm sure Protoss can go offscreen to macro too.
PvZ - Won't break a zerg without additional warp-ins. Defenders advantage exists for Zerg, and reinforcements are needed. If you can push in from the start then you have no pressure to focus on the actual combat.
If you've gotten that far ahead enough that you can push into your enemy's base before an extra warp-in, you should easily have the opportunity to look away from the army for a few seconds. Otherwise it's just a push based on gimmicky control to win and you're sacrificing the concept of solid play consistent play. I'm not saying that this is an invalid way to play, heck I like being a hero in some random games
1. Yes you don't but you won't need to go back to the Pylon in the first place until you need to warp in, which is usually walk time + 25 seconds. You have ample time to check back on the building probe to add the pylon. TBH I would consider it a control blunder if a probe was hotkeyed with a main army and set to 1a. That's just asking to risk throwing away the attackers advantage into a stronger defender's advantage.
It's just as fast to add a building to a control group as it is to set a camera position.
2. If you can even push up their ramp before a pylon goes down, then you can afford to look back to the probe (once again I strongly believe it's a blunder to group the probe with the 1a army) and control group the pylon as it comes up.
3. You're forced to rely on Mini-map to handle that. I already stated a flaw in the control set-up is that you can't position well with more than 1 warp prism 1 pylon without relying on Mini-map relocation. However you should still be able to manage 2 spots + use minimap for the third.
You said it seems counter intuitive to use an extra hotkey to utilise this technique. You just showed me an example of where you use a minimum of 1 more hotkey to achieve the same results. (you need to indivdually map each pylon placement + Warp prism on control group. On one control group I map my Warp Prism, one of the two pylons, and rely on my minimap for the third); I also do it faster.
just for the record, remapping aggressive positions on the map with the F keys, and recalling which one adhere to which takes more memory and slows down the actual speed of the tactical play.
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Interesting, cute, worth a try... not revolutionary, not even close.
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EPT
