My name is RemarK, and I am an American grandmaster Protoss player. Today, I’ll be talking about how Protoss players can improve and optimize their hotkeys for more efficient gameplay. This guide will cover some basic things that I think every Protoss player who uses Standard hotkeys could benefit from, as well as some more advanced changes like how to implement camera hotkeys and how to get the most in-game efficiency out of your gaming equipment. I think hotkeys are a really under-discussed topic, so without any further ado, let’s jump into the basics!
The first way to make improvements over standard hotkeys is rebinding some of the more inconvenient default hotkeys – while doing this, our philosophy will be to try and localize everything on the left-hand side of the keyboard for easier access. I’ll list all the changes I suggest you make, as well as explaining why I recommend them.
1. Rebind “Build immortal” on the robotics facility from ‘i’ to ‘r’ – no more reaching over half the keyboard to make one of the most standard and important (not to mention awesome) Protoss units.
2. Rebind “Build mothership” on the Nexus from ‘m’ to ‘r’ – same reasoning as the immortal rebind, this will let you easily start your mothership while never looking away from your army or taking your hand away from the left side of the keyboard.
3. Rebind “Build nexus” on a probe from ‘n’ to ‘h’ – this is optional, but ‘h’ is slightly easier to hit than ‘n’ in my opinion, and also avoids the off by one misclicks where you hit v - > b instead of b -> n and accidentally try to build a robo bay instead of nexus.
4. Rebind control group ‘0’ to ‘q’ – in order to do this, you will need to change create control group 0, add to control group 0, and select control group 0 to ‘ctrl + q’, ‘shift + q’, and ‘q’ respectively. This is an essential change in my opinion – q is one of the most accessible key, yet is used for absolutely nothing in standard Protoss gameplay. Having an extra control group can be used to improve your macro (hotkey production structures, like gateways for easy warp gate morph) or map awareness (hotkey a warp prism for harass or observer for vision).
5. Rebind ‘Spacebar’ to something more useful than jump to alert – it’s up to you how to best utilize this easily accessed key, but a few suggestions include another control group, base camera (this cycles through your bases, which can be very useful for manipulating your camera while macroing – more on camera manipulation later), or patrol move (a useful unit feature that is tough to access with its default bind of ‘p’ – use patrol moves to constantly scout for hidden expos, or fully cover wide ramps with vision, etc).
6. Rebind tilde (the button next to ‘1’ on most keyboards, looks like `) to something useful – personally, I have it bound to “Select idle worker” but it could also be used as an extra control group depending on your personal preference. Even if you have enough control groups for all your buildings, production, and units, one way to take advantage of an extra control group is using it to hotkey a proxy pylon – then, when you want to warp in units, instead of having to scroll away from battle, warp in, and scroll back, you can just jump your camera to the pylon instantly by double-tapping the control group.
Alright, so now we’ve re-positioned some of the more awkward default bindings, and have an extra control group or two – what’s the next thing we can improve on? Camera hotkeys!
For those who don’t know what a camera hotkey is, let me explain briefly – a camera hotkey is just like a normal hotkey, except instead of binding a unit or building, you’re binding a location on the screen. Camera hotkeys help a ton by enabling you to manage your camera much more efficiently than clicking / dragging with your mouse. I’ll explain here what hotkeys I use for camera bindings, as well as what each hotkey goes to. At the start of a game, after splitting your workers and starting your probe, take the time to set up all these camera hotkeys and cycle through them. Even if you’re not comfortable using them past the start of the game initially, it’s good practice and spamming your camera hotkeys early game will help you become comfortable using them.
1. Bind “Create location 1” to “shift + F1” – the default bindings for this are “control + F5” which is quite awkward to reach and hard to use. I use this to hotkey the screen of my main base.
2. Bind “Create location 2” to “shift + F2” – use this to hotkey the screen at your natural.
3. Bind “Create location 3” to “shift + F3” – use this to hotkey the screen at your 3rd base.
4. Bind “Create location 4” to “shift + F4” – use this to hotkey the screen at your 4th base.
5. Bind “Create location 5” to “shift + F5” – use this to hotkey the screen at your 5th base.
Nobody will be able to start using camera hotkeys perfectly without practice, so just try to implement these into your gameplay one step at a time – for example, when you take your natural expansion, instead of dragging your camera there, just select a probe and press F2! If you are persistent about using them every game, your mechanics WILL improve noticeably.
Now, moving forward – many people in this community have gaming peripherals, ranging from fancy keyboards to gaming mice. Let’s talk about how we can use some of the nifty features of such peripherals to further improve our mechanics and gameplay.
If you have a gaming keyboard, sometimes there is a row of extra macro keys on the far left side. While it is illegal (as far as tournaments go) to bind sequences of keys to these macros, it is tournament-legal to bind single keys to them. I suspect this section will apply to a relatively small portion of the gaming community (I don’t even have a keyboard with these macro keys), but it is a source for free camera / unit hotkeys if you do have such a keyboard. An easy way to set up these hotkey is simply rebinding random keys from the right side of the keyboard (such as l, k, j, h) to the macro keys.
Picture of gaming keyboard with macro keys:
Lastly, if you have a gaming mouse, those often have extra buttons on the side or top of the mouse. For example, I use a Razer Deathadder which has two extra buttons on the left side of the mouse.
Picture of Razer Deathadder:
I use the first extra mouse button (the forward one) as a camera hotkey – pressing “ctrl + forward mouse button” creates the hotkey, and pressing the button jumps to the saved screen region. I use this to easily jump my camera to my ramp in the early game, and to hotkey proxy pylons in the mid / late game so that I can quickly warp-in and then jump back to the action.
I use the second mouse button (the back one) for the “base camera” hotkey, so that I can easily scroll through all my bases with a few clicks of a mouse button. These might seem like pretty small changes, but my mechanics increased a ton based on just utilizing those two extra buttons on my mouse. Being able to jump to proxy pylons during a fight to warp-in improved both my micro and macro, and cycling through my bases in a macro game helps me manage my saturations a lot more carefully and be more aware of spending my chronoboost.
For those of you who don’t have any fancy gaming peripherals, I created a SC2hotkey file with the basic changes implemented for you! I’ll quickly run over the hotkeys that aren’t standard in this file:
- Control group 0 is bound to ‘q’ – use ctrl + q, shift + q, and q to make, add to, and select the control group, respectively - Tilde (`) selects idle worker - Base camera is bound to spacebar - Patrol move has been moved to ‘n’ - 5 Camera Hotkeys are bound to F1-F5; use shift + the corresponding F key to create the hotkeys. - Build immortal and build mothership are both rebound to ‘r’.
Message me here on teamliquid if both of these links stop working for you and I will upload it again someplace else and update this section.
NOTE: This hotkey file is only to be used for Protoss. It has incomplete bindings for Zerg / Terran - if you want to use other races, what you should do is create a hotkey profile for each race using this one as a template (that's an option when you create a new hotkey profile in Starcarft II). Then just go through the list of Unbound hotkeys and fix everything for a certain race - for example, you can bind Queen to W as Zerg and then you can still use Q as a control group.
To use it, just go to Documents - > Starcraft II - > Accounts – in this folder, you will see a folder named after a random 8-digit number (each folder corresponds to an account used on your computer, if you don’t know which one belongs to the account you want to use, just click the folders, look at the hotkey profiles inside until you find the one with your hotkey files in it). Once you've found your account, open the folder and stick the RemarKToss.SC2Hotkeys file in the “Hotkeys” folder and it will show up in SC2 for you to use.
This last part of the guide will talk about a few unit management tips and tricks that many people aren't aware of.
Tip #1: Hotkey your forges on your nexus hotkey. This lets you easily access them and start your next upgrades by pressing your nexus hotkey, then selecting the forges by hitting tab once. Here’s a picture of what this looks like:
Tip #2: I don’t know about you guys, but there is nothing I hate more than hitting a warp cycle and then accidentally adding my warp gates to the control group. Good news – there is an easy way to remove them from the control group. Some of you already know this, no doubt, but if you press “ctrl+shift+left click” on a unit or building in a control group, it will remove all instances of that unit or building from the selected group. Here’s a series of pictures indicating what that looks like:
Step 1: Mouse over the warpgates in your selection group.
Step 2: Hold down ctrl + shift and left click any of the warpgate icons.
Step 3: Hurrah, they’re all gone! Now just rebind the control group (ctrl + 1, in this example) and everything is good to go.
Tip #3: Sometimes, you will want to do the opposite action from Tip #2 – instead of removing all of a certain type of unit from a control group, you’ll want to select all of a certain type of unit. In order to do that, all you have to do is press “ctrl+left click” on the unit / building you want and it will remove everything else from the control group. Here’s another set of pictures showing what that looks like:
Step 1: Box stuff.
Step 2: Hold down ctrl and left click the unit type you want to select.
Step 3: ?????????
Step 4: Profit.
Tip #4: by SC2John. Rebind guardian shield to 'r' to prevent accidentally casting it instead of FF or hold position. Also, rebind "Build Cybernetics Core" to 'r' for greater convenience.
Tip #5: by Tetoita. Rebind blink to a more convenient key, such as 'e' for example.
Tip #6: by ant-1. Remember to hide the menu hotkeys from the top of screen for greater vision, and you should make the hotkeys unclickable to prevent misclicks while microing your units. Also, disable the pop-up alerts on the left side of the screen for the same reasons.
Tip #7: You can change 'w' to a control group for your gateways instead of warp-in - this will allow you to still warp units in by pressing 'w' while also allowing you to conveniently check the progress of your cooldowns and morph additional gateways as soon as they finish.
Tip #8: You can hotkey your stargate on control group 6 and then rebind the production hotkeys for easier access. What I'm trying out now is: 'e' for build phoenix, 'r' for build void ray, and 't' for build carrier. All those are right underneath 6 and quite natural to reach.
That does it for this guide, folks – thanks for reading, and I hope it helps a few of you out. I know this guide is a little basic compared to my other build order guides, but I felt as if this was a good topic to bring up. Feel free to share your own thoughts on hotkeys, results from trying out some of these changes, or anything else relevant in this thread.
Lastly, I’m happy to announce that this will mark a period of increased guide writing for me – I already have a few ideas about some of my next topics (including the much-delayed Eifer PvP build guide, phoenix play in PvP, and taking fast 3rd bases in PvZ) but feel free to PM me any requests for specific guides and if it piques my interest, I’ll probably write about it!
My name is Matthew "RemarK" Kramer, a Grandmaster Protoss player on the NA server. I come from a competitive Halo background and have been playing Starcraft II since December 2010, starting out in bronze. If you want to learn more about me or support me, you can check out my hub thread here on teamliquid and comment! I am also a streamer (click here for my stream) - you can follow me on Twitter (@remarkiwa) for updates about when I will be going live or to further interact with me.
Thank you so much for reading and I hope this guide was helpful!
I really like these kinds of guides where high-level players talk more about mechanics and how to use your keyboard and mouse instead of talking pure strategy, because I think a lot of the strategy used by pro-gamers can be figured out just by watching games and listening to the right casters. Mechanics on the other hand...No one talks about them. Thanks for this
EDIT: Actually I have a question... How do you bind your army/production?
Excellent guide, we use pretty much exactly the same hotkeys.
One thing I might mention is rebinding Guardian Shield to R...helps with accidentally casting it instead of FF or hold position. I also rebound Cybernetics Core to R, which works pretty well. I think perhaps everything that's on the wrong side of the keyboard should be put to R lol.
On October 22 2012 12:04 Whatson wrote: I really like these kinds of guides where high-level players talk more about mechanics and how to use your keyboard and mouse instead of talking pure strategy, because I think a lot of the strategy used by pro-gamers can be figured out just by watching games and listening to the right casters. Mechanics on the other hand...No one talks about them. Thanks for this
EDIT: Actually I have a question... How do you bind your army/production?
Thanks, that's exactly the reason I wrote this guide (people not talking about how to use your mouse / keyboard) - I might write a counterpart guide (Protoss Mechanics 101) sometime in the future as well.
It changes depending on the match-up and stage of the game, but here's the basic idea:
1: Main army 2: Stalkers + sentries 3: Additionally spellcaster / important unit (think HTs in PvT, Colossi in PvP, and mothership in PvZ) 4: Production: robo, stargate on this hotkey. I'm comfortable tabbing back and forth to access one or the other. Also, an idea that I just thought of (but haven't incorporated into my gameplay yet) is to hotkey untransformed gateways to this hotkey for easy morphing and then using ctrl+shift click to quickly remove them from the hotkey. 5: Nexus + forges Q: utility hotkey, whatever I need hotkey'd at the time - often an observer or warp prism, and sometimes in late game engages I will use them for Colossi or stalkers so that I can easily micro important groups of units with multiple abilities.
On October 22 2012 12:14 mizU wrote: I like using spacebar for blink :D What do you bind your robo to?
Great guide, been using these myself actually. I personally use the ` and q hotkeys for 7/8, but 9 and 0 do the same thing essentially. Also, I use ` for warp prism harass or my "split army" (e.g. stalkers in main base waiting for medivac drops), and Q (8) for my forges.
On October 22 2012 12:04 Whatson wrote: I really like these kinds of guides where high-level players talk more about mechanics and how to use your keyboard and mouse instead of talking pure strategy, because I think a lot of the strategy used by pro-gamers can be figured out just by watching games and listening to the right casters. Mechanics on the other hand...No one talks about them. Thanks for this
EDIT: Actually I have a question... How do you bind your army/production?
I would imagine most people do this: have your HT for storm on one hotkey, colossus on another (to pull them back), and the rest if your army on another. Personally I use 2 for HT once I don't need to hotkey my gateways, everything else on 4, 1 nexus, 3 robo, 5 scouting obs, ` split army, q forges).
Nice little guide. I am happy to find out we use many of the hotkey and control tricks. I haven't been liking anything I tried for hotkeying my forges, never thought to put them with the nexus. I like it already.
Can anyone speculate as to why the mistake of adding all of your warp gates into control group 1 happens so often? I don't understand why it always happens, I'd rather train myself not to do it. D:
On October 22 2012 15:44 Jintoss wrote: Can anyone speculate as to why the mistake of adding all of your warp gates into control group 1 happens so often? I don't understand why it always happens, I'd rather train myself not to do it. D:
I think it happens because of something like this:
Warp in units --> start pressing shift to get ready to add them to control groups --> press it too soon and then while you're boxing the units you just warped in to hotkey them, it also adds the warpgates you just had selected --> when you try to add the units to your control groups, the warp gates get added too
It's easy to reduce the number of times this happens by practicing your accuracy and being more careful with these actions, but it's definitely worth training yourself to use ctrl+ shift + left click to remove units as well
Nice work. Gonna ask a question i have in my mind for quite yome time: whats the reason to use standard hotkeys at all? I feel like grid is so much more intuitive and with some slight adjustments provides everything you need.
I was going to mention, as you said bind space to something useful as alerts kind of aren't. My setup has space as my proxy pylon camera. I gotten the habit of hotkeying builds as soon as they start building so everytime i create a proxy pylon i just shift space save it, and then tap it to for fast warpin to my last saved position. It really rather handy. Granted it could be just a useful for something like attackmove especially.
You really should mention that for new players, grid is the best, because : - everything is on the left side of the keyboard - you use spatial memory instead of keyword memory, and you do not know keywords yet (Guardian shield means nothing to noobs, I know it took me like 2 months to remember the name of the glowing orb) - Having the Attack key at T trains you to stretch your fingers - You can switch race very easily (which can happen when you start, and hell you may even be random)
Of course you still need to remap camera hotkeys and keys like ` or space.
The tips section is very good but I slightly disapprove of the use of peripherals, which is not allowed in tournaments (I know, 99% of us are casuals).
Edit: you should also speak a little of how to disable the clicking on the control group bar and the top menu to avoid accidental clicking on them. Not really hotkeys, but related.
I really think that custom hotkeys are so much more efficient than Blizzard hotkeys that I can't imagine playing with the standard. JaKaTaK's setup just makes so much sense and has hotkeys closer.
i tried it now a bit its hard to structure it new because i had my own style using hotkeys but your ones is much more comfort and much easier to play thanks alot remark
On October 22 2012 22:19 ant-1 wrote: You really should mention that for new players, grid is the best, because : - everything is on the left side of the keyboard - you use spatial memory instead of keyword memory, and you do not know keywords yet (Guardian shield means nothing to noobs, I know it took me like 2 months to remember the name of the glowing orb) - Having the Attack key at T trains you to stretch your fingers - You can switch race very easily (which can happen when you start, and hell you may even be random)
Of course you still need to remap camera hotkeys and keys like ` or space.
The tips section is very good but I slightly disapprove of the use of peripherals, which is not allowed in tournaments (I know, 99% of us are casuals).
Edit: you should also speak a little of how to disable the clicking on the control group bar and the top menu to avoid accidental clicking on them. Not really hotkeys, but related.
Hmmmm, good suggestion about bringing up the Control group icons. I'd also suggest turning off alerts and hiding the menu buttons as well. As for grid, I've never used it myself so it is hard for me to recommend it over modified default hotkeys or Jakatak's core hotkeys. One of the assumptions I made when writing this guide is that the person reading this has probably been playing Starcraft II for at least a month (I don't think many people discover the strategy section of TL until they've been playing for a bit), and thus have developed muscle memory with default hotkeys.
Also, I think you misread the peripherals section, as everything described there is tournament-legal. It would be illegal to use macro keys bound to a sequence of actions, but if a macro key is just bound to a normal key (like "k") then that is perfectly legal. Same thing with using a gaming mouse and taking advantage of the extra buttons, many of the top pros do similar tricks to me and use them in offline tournaments all the time :p
Basically what this means is you can use anything that doesn't require a third party software to create your desired layout. This includes mouse and keyboard drivers. If your Razer black widow driver is not already installed on the LAN's computer, you cannot install it yourself. And since the macro keys are not recognized by Windows without the Razer drivers... You cannot use those keys in tournaments even if you would only set them to "k".
I don't know if MLG has Razer drivers installed but my local LAN does not.
Good news is that the thumb buttons on my Razer death adder are recognized by Windows as mouse 4 and 5 so I can use those at my LAN.
rebinding 0 to q i think is very good same with 9 to ` . QuanticState has same setup. I think if you want to play protoss at high level you have to bind your gateways to hotkey to see the progress of warpgate rather than spamming "wwwwwwwwwwwww" all day.
On October 23 2012 06:15 Corsica wrote: rebinding 0 to q i think is very good same with 9 to ` . QuanticState has same setup. I think if you want to play protoss at high level you have to bind your gateways to hotkey to see the progress of warpgate rather than spamming "wwwwwwwwwwwww" all day.
Hmm, I don't understand exactly what you're saying here - do you mean hotkey the unmorphed gateways as they are building (so that you can see the progress of them building)? If you're talking about the cooldown, when you press w it shows you the cooldown for warp cycles (unless I'm crazy)
Which reminds me of another optional tip - if you want to, you can rebind "w" to a control group for your warp gates - that way you can quickly morph gates into warpgates without losing the normal functionality of w. I'll be making a few changes / additions to the guide later tonight
@Darkblue, major tournaments (like MLG / Dreamhack / IPL) have all the mouse and keyboard drivers already installed, and if yours isn't installed, you can contact a ref / admin and they will help you solve the issue. I used my death adder at MLG Raleigh and the extra buttons on it with no problems. But you're right, it's probably not a good idea to rely on using drivers because some tournaments might be less accommodating than others.
Do you know how to avoid adding warp gates to control groups in the first place? I know how I can remove them after the fact (I do it the same way you sai), but by that stage the damage is already done in that it wastes a few seconds of my time + I might double tap to get to my army and end up looking at my warp gates at an important moment...
I have tried to replicate adding my warpgates to army control group in games vs AI to see what I am doing that adds them, but I can never seem to replicate it in custom games; it only ever happens in real games when I'm trying to play fast under pressure -.-
On October 23 2012 08:45 Ryder. wrote: Do you know how to avoid adding warp gates to control groups in the first place? I know how I can remove them after the fact (I do it the same way you sai), but by that stage the damage is already done in that it wastes a few seconds of my time + I might double tap to get to my army and end up looking at my warp gates at an important moment...
I have tried to replicate adding my warpgates to army control group in games vs AI to see what I am doing that adds them, but I can never seem to replicate it in custom games; it only ever happens in real games when I'm trying to play fast under pressure -.-
You are either holding shift while you warp in and not releasing shift before boxing your new units to be added, or, if you're not holding shift, then you're simply pressing it down pre-maturely before the boxing of new units is complete.
Two options, either be more conscientious about releasing shift or get in the habit of activating your army control group after warping in, then add the new units.
Nice guide remark, as a Diamond player I have been really wanting to incorporate camera hotkeys and mouse hotkeys, I love your tips for removing warppgates when you warp in units and for using the camera keys for proxy pylons. I will try and use them more. I also had no idea you could tab when you have more than one production unit on a single hotkey. Thanks!
Assuming you're playing with life bars on as "always", you're never going to use the Alt key. Change Alt key to idle worker and make the tilde (`/~) key to cycle bases. It's particularly useful for Zerg. You can change the push-to-talk button to backspace if you really want to. The "show all life bars" key will remain unbound but it's never going to need to be used.
Do many Protoss not keep their Gates hotkeyed even after WG research? I see above, Remark, that you don't seem to have a hotkey for your Gates, unless I have missed it. This is something I have seen before in other Protoss' hotkey set ups. I take it most Protoss just use the W key? I keep 6 for my Gates then Warpgates and only press W when actually warping in units.
Personally, I find it easier to keep track of WG cooldown that way as I can tab 456 or 567 and so on.
I removed the "Warpgate Hotkey" (W) and turned it into a normal control group where I place all my production facilities. That way I am able to add new warping gates to the group to avoid looking for them once they are ready to turn into warpgates (Just hit W <Tab> G and you are ready to go). Also I use tab in that group to cycle through Warpgates, Gates, Stargates, Robotics... Same thing with my Nexus group, I add most tech buildings to that group to manage upgrades.
Remark, I have Immortal on E, cyber core on R, base on Space, 0 on `, patrol on q, hold position on W. I always hotkey my warpgates to 2 and have nexus on 3, robo 4 etc. This gives me ` and 1 for army hotkeys, plus I will put obs on 6-9 or any other units or forges that I want hotkeyed.
Remark, does this sound okay? Do you see any major limitations with my setup?
You said you can scroll through all your nexuses using this, but I don't even know what it is. Is it like if you have all 3 of your nexuses hotkeyed to 3 - select them, then hit the button you will cycle through them? Is that option in the hotkey menu? Base Camera - that is.
On October 24 2012 00:49 saladToss wrote: What exactly is "base camera?"
You said you can scroll through all your nexuses using this, but I don't even know what it is. Is it like if you have all 3 of your nexuses hotkeyed to 3 - select them, then hit the button you will cycle through them? Is that option in the hotkey menu? Base Camera - that is.
Exactly - each time you press that button, it jumps your camera to a nexus (and it does it in a consistent order, I think just the order in which they were made).
On October 24 2012 00:16 Revelatus wrote: Remark, I have Immortal on E, cyber core on R, base on Space, 0 on `, patrol on q, hold position on W. I always hotkey my warpgates to 2 and have nexus on 3, robo 4 etc. This gives me ` and 1 for army hotkeys, plus I will put obs on 6-9 or any other units or forges that I want hotkeyed.
Remark, does this sound okay? Do you see any major limitations with my setup?
Looks great to me! As long as you're comfortable reaching your forges on 6-9 then I wouldn't make any changes (besides maybe adding camera location hotkeys to F1-F5 if you haven't done that).
Also, someone suggested binding select idle worker to alt - that is an option, although very inconvenient to anyone who likes to use alt+tab while they play.
1) move guardian shield a bit away from hold position. Fucking that up is not fun.
I hear this all the time. Ive played like 1.5k games as protoss, build sentries literally every game, over-emphasize hotkey usage and have never once actuly messed that up using default g bind. There was one really painful game in MLG i think though, where HuK when gateway expanding against a zerg, accidentally cancelled warpgate at the last second, and then instead of restarting it with g, had a sentry selected and cast guardian shield instead. Two fatal mistakes like a second apart and he died on the spot IIRC
Thank you Remark i already used half of the hotkeys set up that way but adding an extra control group for me and the imortal change. Really great work and you can remember the changes in like 5-10 games
thanks so much man, i've been thinking about changing my hotkeys up for a while and this one seems great. i might even try out hotkeying my forges and nexuses together :D
I have the death adder mouse but I feel weird about using the buttons on it for hotkeys. I feel like it's cheating by giving me an unfair advantage. Am I crazy?
On October 25 2012 14:11 AirbladeOrange wrote: I have the death adder mouse but I feel weird about using the buttons on it for hotkeys. I feel like it's cheating by giving me an unfair advantage. Am I crazy?
How is it an unfair advantage? You're still using the same amount of actions... That's like saying it's unfair to use the core or rebind hotkeys because the key combos are easier to hit
I have been meaning to optimize my hotkeys for a while now. Already done a lot of the most important changes, but this guide will inspire me to do the rest! Thanks a lot, really well written and explained.
On October 27 2012 06:02 JaKaTaK wrote: I really really like having a camera for chrono boost areas, as well as for my proxy pylon and 1 for each base.
If we're talking hotkeys. I would be really interested in what you think about TheCore.
If you have good building placement, your chronoboost area should be your main base...see the screenshot in this thread:
I completely disagree. Sometimes you want to hide tech. If all toss players put all their buildings in view of their nexus, then terran would always know everything with 1-2 scans. This idea is cool, but to do it every game, all the time, makes a player predictable and constrains creative building placement IMO.
On October 27 2012 06:02 JaKaTaK wrote: I really really like having a camera for chrono boost areas, as well as for my proxy pylon and 1 for each base.
If we're talking hotkeys. I would be really interested in what you think about TheCore.
Hmmm, I have trouble recommending any radically different hotkey structures (DarkGrid, TheCore, Chameleon, etc) for people of any league once they've got muscle memory for Default / the Grid hotkeys due to their steep learning curve. Here's a further explanation:
If you're a lower league player, you need to focus on basic mechanics. I haven't seen any evidence for these more complicated hotkey setups producing faster mechanical growth (although I'll definitely accept that they are optimized in the sense that your finger motions are more economical and efficient). For a lower league player to drop the mechanics they have to re-learn a more complicated scheme that will take longer to master is a tough sell to make.
If you're a pro or competitive level player, then chances are you already have good mechanics. It might be possible that you could achieve a higher level of mechanical proficiency by switching over to TheCore, but you'd have a steep learning curve where you are only capable of practicing mechanics and everyone else is both improving their mechanics AND developing new builds, keeping up with the metagame, etc.
I guess the way I see it is, you can already be very, very competent mechanically with default hotkeys using only minor adjustments. And as far as I can tell, there's no proof that once you get over the learning curve you improve faster. As an example from one of the testimonials in your thread:
"Top 8 gold 50% Win rate Standard keys Top 25 Gold 0% win rate The Core 1-5days Top 8 Gold 50% win rate The core 1 week- 2 weeks Top 25 Plat 60%-70% win rate 2 weeks +"
This guy spent 5 days~ of practice to get back to his former skill level, where he remained for 2 weeks~, then got promoted to plat. That looks like an average / standard rate of skill progression to me - I think if he practiced as hard as he did after switching to TheCore, he would have gotten promoted in the same amount of time (2 weeks) minus the learning curve of new hotkeys (5 days).
I'll talk to Sandbox sometime and learn more about how it's affected his level of play, but I have trouble recommending Hotkey setups that are so different from standard hotkeys to anyone who already has muscle memory. I tried the DarkGrid setup for 2-3 weeks and found that even once I was used to it, my mechanics weren't any better than before and I had fallen behind my peers substantially in that time. I don't think the steep learning curve is worth the relatively small (potentially non-existent) reward.
For a new player though, someone with no muscle memory at all, then TheCore or any of those other setups could be a good fit, as the learning curve would be even with the normal hotkeys.
I feel like getting a promotion in 2 weeks is absolutely not a standard skill progression. Most people i know in the BSGP take months to get a promotion.
I have been trying to incorporate camera hotkeys into my play, but for some reason I can never get the bindings correct. Every time i press shift+f2 to bind the camera hotkey to f2 it doesn't work. Am I supposed to change something in the settings or is shift+f2 not the correct key combination to bind camera hotkeys.
On November 01 2012 08:52 Tamagoyaki wrote: I have been trying to incorporate camera hotkeys into my play, but for some reason I can never get the bindings correct. Every time i press shift+f2 to bind the camera hotkey to f2 it doesn't work. Am I supposed to change something in the settings or is shift+f2 not the correct key combination to bind camera hotkeys.
Are you correctly changing all your Hotkey settings? You have to change both the "make camera location X" hotkey and the "jump to location X" hotkey under Global - Camera.
On November 01 2012 08:52 Tamagoyaki wrote: I have been trying to incorporate camera hotkeys into my play, but for some reason I can never get the bindings correct. Every time i press shift+f2 to bind the camera hotkey to f2 it doesn't work. Am I supposed to change something in the settings or is shift+f2 not the correct key combination to bind camera hotkeys.
You have to change the bindings in your settings, the default camera hotkey bindings are really inconvenient and awkward.
On October 27 2012 06:02 JaKaTaK wrote: I really really like having a camera for chrono boost areas, as well as for my proxy pylon and 1 for each base.
If we're talking hotkeys. I would be really interested in what you think about TheCore.
Hmmm, I have trouble recommending any radically different hotkey structures (DarkGrid, TheCore, Chameleon, etc) for people of any league once they've got muscle memory for Default / the Grid hotkeys due to their steep learning curve. Here's a further explanation:
If you're a lower league player, you need to focus on basic mechanics. I haven't seen any evidence for these more complicated hotkey setups producing faster mechanical growth (although I'll definitely accept that they are optimized in the sense that your finger motions are more economical and efficient). For a lower league player to drop the mechanics they have to re-learn a more complicated scheme that will take longer to master is a tough sell to make.
If you're a pro or competitive level player, then chances are you already have good mechanics. It might be possible that you could achieve a higher level of mechanical proficiency by switching over to TheCore, but you'd have a steep learning curve where you are only capable of practicing mechanics and everyone else is both improving their mechanics AND developing new builds, keeping up with the metagame, etc.
I guess the way I see it is, you can already be very, very competent mechanically with default hotkeys using only minor adjustments. And as far as I can tell, there's no proof that once you get over the learning curve you improve faster. As an example from one of the testimonials in your thread:
"Top 8 gold 50% Win rate Standard keys Top 25 Gold 0% win rate The Core 1-5days Top 8 Gold 50% win rate The core 1 week- 2 weeks Top 25 Plat 60%-70% win rate 2 weeks +"
This guy spent 5 days~ of practice to get back to his former skill level, where he remained for 2 weeks~, then got promoted to plat. That looks like an average / standard rate of skill progression to me - I think if he practiced as hard as he did after switching to TheCore, he would have gotten promoted in the same amount of time (2 weeks) minus the learning curve of new hotkeys (5 days).
I'll talk to Sandbox sometime and learn more about how it's affected his level of play, but I have trouble recommending Hotkey setups that are so different from standard hotkeys to anyone who already has muscle memory. I tried the DarkGrid setup for 2-3 weeks and found that even once I was used to it, my mechanics weren't any better than before and I had fallen behind my peers substantially in that time. I don't think the steep learning curve is worth the relatively small (potentially non-existent) reward.
For a new player though, someone with no muscle memory at all, then TheCore or any of those other setups could be a good fit, as the learning curve would be even with the normal hotkeys.
I completely agree with this, having to unlearn stuff that was convenient before is terribly hard and annoying. If you're already somewhat used to the standard keys just adjusting a few is far more efficient than going for The Core or something imo. Some keys in the core are also to close to eachother imo, only using the left side of the keyboard is not optimal per se, not having to reach and not having to press keys too close to eachother quickly are ideal for me because than I can use two fingers. Something like x => c is not fast for me because I have to do both with the same finger while stuff like b=> a while far apart goes really quick.
6. Rebind tilde (the button next to ‘1’ on most keyboards, looks like `) to something useful – personally, I have it bound to “Select idle worker
Thought I was the only one who did this. Not literally, obviously.. but never seen anybody else use it.
My immortal is D (so is Thor, because I change building lift/land to T)
Ah, that works too.
Also, just updated the OP with 5 more tips! Thanks to the people who posted in this for their good feedback - I credited the posters who suggested things I hadn't thought of next to their tip. Here's what I added to the OP:
Tip #4: by SC2John. Rebind guardian shield to 'r' to prevent accidentally casting it instead of FF or hold position. Also, rebind "Build Cybernetics Core" to 'r' for greater convenience.
Tip #5: by Tetoita. Rebind blink to a more convenient key, such as 'e' for example.
Tip #6: by ant-1. Remember to hide the menu hotkeys from the top of screen for greater vision, and you should make the hotkeys unclickable to prevent misclicks while microing your units. Also, disable the pop-up alerts on the left side of the screen for the same reasons.
Tip #7: You can change 'w' to a control group for your gateways instead of warp-in - this will allow you to still warp units in by pressing 'w' while also allowing you to conveniently check the progress of your cooldowns and morph additional gateways as soon as they finish.
Tip #8: You can hotkey your stargate on control group 6 and then rebind the production hotkeys for easier access. What I'm trying out now is: 'e' for build phoenix, 'r' for build void ray, and 't' for build carrier. All those are right underneath 6 and quite natural to reach.
On October 27 2012 06:02 JaKaTaK wrote: I really really like having a camera for chrono boost areas, as well as for my proxy pylon and 1 for each base.
If we're talking hotkeys. I would be really interested in what you think about TheCore.
Hmmm, I have trouble recommending any radically different hotkey structures (DarkGrid, TheCore, Chameleon, etc) for people of any league once they've got muscle memory for Default / the Grid hotkeys due to their steep learning curve. Here's a further explanation:
If you're a lower league player, you need to focus on basic mechanics. I haven't seen any evidence for these more complicated hotkey setups producing faster mechanical growth (although I'll definitely accept that they are optimized in the sense that your finger motions are more economical and efficient). For a lower league player to drop the mechanics they have to re-learn a more complicated scheme that will take longer to master is a tough sell to make.
If you're a pro or competitive level player, then chances are you already have good mechanics. It might be possible that you could achieve a higher level of mechanical proficiency by switching over to TheCore, but you'd have a steep learning curve where you are only capable of practicing mechanics and everyone else is both improving their mechanics AND developing new builds, keeping up with the metagame, etc.
I guess the way I see it is, you can already be very, very competent mechanically with default hotkeys using only minor adjustments. And as far as I can tell, there's no proof that once you get over the learning curve you improve faster. As an example from one of the testimonials in your thread:
"Top 8 gold 50% Win rate Standard keys Top 25 Gold 0% win rate The Core 1-5days Top 8 Gold 50% win rate The core 1 week- 2 weeks Top 25 Plat 60%-70% win rate 2 weeks +"
This guy spent 5 days~ of practice to get back to his former skill level, where he remained for 2 weeks~, then got promoted to plat. That looks like an average / standard rate of skill progression to me - I think if he practiced as hard as he did after switching to TheCore, he would have gotten promoted in the same amount of time (2 weeks) minus the learning curve of new hotkeys (5 days).
I'll talk to Sandbox sometime and learn more about how it's affected his level of play, but I have trouble recommending Hotkey setups that are so different from standard hotkeys to anyone who already has muscle memory. I tried the DarkGrid setup for 2-3 weeks and found that even once I was used to it, my mechanics weren't any better than before and I had fallen behind my peers substantially in that time. I don't think the steep learning curve is worth the relatively small (potentially non-existent) reward.
For a new player though, someone with no muscle memory at all, then TheCore or any of those other setups could be a good fit, as the learning curve would be even with the normal hotkeys.
I completely agree with this, having to unlearn stuff that was convenient before is terribly hard and annoying. If you're already somewhat used to the standard keys just adjusting a few is far more efficient than going for The Core or something imo. Some keys in the core are also to close to eachother imo, only using the left side of the keyboard is not optimal per se, not having to reach and not having to press keys too close to eachother quickly are ideal for me because than I can use two fingers. Something like x => c is not fast for me because I have to do both with the same finger while stuff like b=> a while far apart goes really quick.
TheCore is set up in a way that you almost never press two keys with the same finger in a row during a game unless double tapping to jump to a location. Even then, the ease of all 8 camera locations make this action less frequent.
On October 27 2012 06:02 JaKaTaK wrote: I really really like having a camera for chrono boost areas, as well as for my proxy pylon and 1 for each base.
If we're talking hotkeys. I would be really interested in what you think about TheCore.
Hmmm, I have trouble recommending any radically different hotkey structures (DarkGrid, TheCore, Chameleon, etc) for people of any league once they've got muscle memory for Default / the Grid hotkeys due to their steep learning curve. Here's a further explanation:
If you're a lower league player, you need to focus on basic mechanics. I haven't seen any evidence for these more complicated hotkey setups producing faster mechanical growth (although I'll definitely accept that they are optimized in the sense that your finger motions are more economical and efficient). For a lower league player to drop the mechanics they have to re-learn a more complicated scheme that will take longer to master is a tough sell to make.
If you're a pro or competitive level player, then chances are you already have good mechanics. It might be possible that you could achieve a higher level of mechanical proficiency by switching over to TheCore, but you'd have a steep learning curve where you are only capable of practicing mechanics and everyone else is both improving their mechanics AND developing new builds, keeping up with the metagame, etc.
I guess the way I see it is, you can already be very, very competent mechanically with default hotkeys using only minor adjustments. And as far as I can tell, there's no proof that once you get over the learning curve you improve faster. As an example from one of the testimonials in your thread:
"Top 8 gold 50% Win rate Standard keys Top 25 Gold 0% win rate The Core 1-5days Top 8 Gold 50% win rate The core 1 week- 2 weeks Top 25 Plat 60%-70% win rate 2 weeks +"
This guy spent 5 days~ of practice to get back to his former skill level, where he remained for 2 weeks~, then got promoted to plat. That looks like an average / standard rate of skill progression to me - I think if he practiced as hard as he did after switching to TheCore, he would have gotten promoted in the same amount of time (2 weeks) minus the learning curve of new hotkeys (5 days).
I'll talk to Sandbox sometime and learn more about how it's affected his level of play, but I have trouble recommending Hotkey setups that are so different from standard hotkeys to anyone who already has muscle memory. I tried the DarkGrid setup for 2-3 weeks and found that even once I was used to it, my mechanics weren't any better than before and I had fallen behind my peers substantially in that time. I don't think the steep learning curve is worth the relatively small (potentially non-existent) reward.
For a new player though, someone with no muscle memory at all, then TheCore or any of those other setups could be a good fit, as the learning curve would be even with the normal hotkeys.
I completely agree with this, having to unlearn stuff that was convenient before is terribly hard and annoying. If you're already somewhat used to the standard keys just adjusting a few is far more efficient than going for The Core or something imo. Some keys in the core are also to close to eachother imo, only using the left side of the keyboard is not optimal per se, not having to reach and not having to press keys too close to eachother quickly are ideal for me because than I can use two fingers. Something like x => c is not fast for me because I have to do both with the same finger while stuff like b=> a while far apart goes really quick.
TheCore is set up in a way that you almost never press two keys with the same finger in a row during a game unless double tapping to jump to a location. Even then, the ease of all 8 camera locations make this action less frequent.
I never really liked the Core, spent about 2 months trying to get the hang of it, just felt wrong and awkward. While its obviously worked for some, I definitely prefer standard layouts with just a few modifications.
I'm playing now for almost a week trying to play with no screen scroll (To force myself out of scrolling muscle memory) and I find I have trouble controlling my scouting probe and my army. Should I middle mouse scroll to adjust the screen or is there more efficient solution?
On November 02 2012 03:06 ApocAlypsE007 wrote: I'm playing now for almost a week trying to play with no screen scroll (To force myself out of scrolling muscle memory) and I find I have trouble controlling my scouting probe and my army. Should I middle mouse scroll to adjust the screen or is there more efficient solution?
I think it's good to try to minimize your usage of screen scroll (especially for macro actions and jumping between bases) but there's no need to eliminate it entirely - you should feel free to screen scroll when controlling your scouts / army, especially if you're having trouble controlling as well without it. You can use middle mouse but I think screen scroll is more natural than using the middle mouse anyays
Brief update: I've implemented tips 5, 7, 8 into my gameplay recently and they help a lot. My muscle memory isn't completely readjusted yet but after just 5 or so games I was used to manually hotkeying my gateways on W and being able to morph them that much easier. I'd definitely recommend 7 and 8 to anyone who likes the rest of the changes I suggest
Great thread, I definitely found a couple new useful hotkey tips in it.
A few other minor moves I thought were useful: (from default setup) - Last Alert to 'Alt'. (it already looks like the word alert) I wasn't using Alt nearly enough for how accessible it is. This key is only useful to me for snapping directly to wherever you're being attacked. (I also use Space Bar as Base Camera.) - Patrol to 'Y', Hold Position to 'Z'. I found this was a much easier fix than switching Guardian Shield, Z is a much easier key for quickly holding units in place. - ctrl group 'Q' (0) for all my bases. This makes it really easy to make workers/chrono, and spam Q-W to check bases/gates. - ctrl group '2' for Robo/Stargates. This is easiest position for me to quickly make units. (i use S for obs and R for immo) - ctrl group '3, 4, 5' for Army. These are easiest keys to followup with an 'A'-click, while using F, G, T, and R for blink, etc.. - '~' (tilde) as a camera key for quick warps.. ctrl group '1' as scout or warp prism (or another base), 6 worker, 7 obs, 'U' upgrades. also can use 'J' as a ctrl group for gates or tech.. its an easier reach than 9 and usually has a ridge in the key. - Idle Worker, Ping, Team Colors, and Minimap Terrain to F5-F8. (I find these functions more convenient here.) - Load units to 'G'. This works in tandem with Drop as D and the prism phasing mode buttons as E and T.
It's all about finding what works best for you, but try to make it as comfortable as possible to press your most-used keys frequently. The less you have to move your hand the better you'll play, just make small changes after a game here and there to adjust, try not to introduce a whole bunch of changes at once, it's harder on your muscle memory. Optimizing my hotkeys has really helped me with wrist strain over a long period of time, and like RemarK said, it is one of the most under-discussed topics.
On November 09 2012 19:59 frostalgia wrote: It's all about finding what works best for you, but try to make it as comfortable as possible to press your most-used keys frequently. The less you have to move your hand the better you'll play, just make small changes after a game here and there to adjust, try not to introduce a whole bunch of changes at once, it's harder on your muscle memory. Optimizing my hotkeys has really helped me with wrist strain over a long period of time, and like RemarK said, it is one of the most under-discussed topics.
Great point, and exactly the way I feel as well. I suffered from wrist pain briefly too, and changing around my hotkeys helped a lot more than I had expected it to.
On November 12 2012 18:01 RandomRice wrote: whoaa, tip 7 just blew my mind, that is really helpful!
Yeah, it's definitely the best change I've made myself recently. It's very intuitive and doesn't take long to get used to. The only downside is there will be fumbling where you spam w and your camera jumps to your hotkeyed Gateways while you're getting used to the change.
On December 12 2012 08:54 freizya wrote: whats the difference between hotkeying nexus seperately and and camera hotkeys? wouldnt seperate nexus be the same as camera hotkeys?
Well, other than than the issue of freeing up control groups, using the camera location does not change your unit selection, while using each Nexus as a control group would obviously activate the nexus and replace your existing selection. Think worker transfer, for example.
This gives me confidence in my play that a GM is using almost identical hotkey tweaks that I also came up with!
I think the following tweaks are for the better:
- Changing probe's Build Basic Structure to "R" is better to avoid hitting "V" by mistake. It also compliments this hotkey setup since R is also used for Immortal and Mothership, both of which are often used.
- Changing all spellcaster's main spell/ability (or one of the main spells/abilities) to "E". So: Sentry forcefield (also avoids the pants sh*tting F-G mistake) Templar storm Stalker blink Phoenix beam Mothership vortex (negligible) Carrier Build Interceptor (R is good too)
The reasoning here is for helping out newer players especially (no need to memorize a separate key for each spellcaster) and developing a solid muscle memory, since every time you select a spellcaster, you KNOW "E" is what you're looking for. Plus all the years of FPS "E" has always meant "use" or "do an action" and it feels intuitive.
On November 02 2012 17:23 silph wrote: I never liked standard keys in general. Particularly having control groups extending past the five key causes me ergonomic issues.
Here's my setup.
1-5: Control groups 1-5 QWERT: Control groups 6-0 F1-F4: Base camera keys Space Bar: Camera key usually used for current warp in location.
All spells are bound in grid format to ZXCVB. All other functions are bound somewhere within ASDFG and ZXCVB, specifics depending on taste.
1-5 is production and QWERT is strictly for army hotkeys. It's really great having five super-accessible hotkeys to work with for units.
This works wonderfully for me and as a result I've been able to start focusing more on improving my decision making and timings than my mechanics.
That's almost exactly what I do. Remapping 6-0 to QWERT makes a huge difference. The only problem is the hallucinate spell in HOTS, because there are so many units it can make, I've had to use H and N to map them all. -_-
On December 14 2012 07:30 Empirimancer wrote: That's almost exactly what I do. Remapping 6-0 to QWERT makes a huge difference. The only problem is the hallucinate spell in HOTS, because there are so many units it can make, I've had to use H and N to map them all. -_-
That's very interesting, although I almost feel like that's crossing the line from small changes to a radical reconstruction of your hotkeys. I'm also not sure I would need so many control groups, but I can definitely see how it would be helpful to have them available like that.
Great guide. I'm trying to implement the 'W' key for gateways. It's a little hard to adjust, since i'm so used to hotkeying gates to 4, but the extra control group is worh it. Also trying out the forge+nexus to the same hotkey. If you hit Ctrl +F it always centers on the forges for fast chronoboost. Not sure if its a bug, but if you add a twilight council to the group it still centers on the forges.
On December 18 2012 13:41 TarLaPaN wrote: Great guide. I'm trying to implement the 'W' key for gateways. It's a little hard to adjust, since i'm so used to hotkeying gates to 4, but the extra control group is worh it. Also trying out the forge+nexus to the same hotkey. If you hit Ctrl +F it always centers on the forges for fast chronoboost. Not sure if its a bug, but if you add a twilight council to the group it still centers on the forges.
Interesting - I know that if you have both forges in the same screen region (i.e. you can see both of them on your screen at the same time in-game) and press the nexus + forge hotkey twice, it will jump your camera to the forges. Maybe something similar to that is happening here
The mechanic for where the camera centers in those situations has to do with proximity of your buildings. If you only have one forge, it will go to a Nexus, but since when people make double forge, they are generally in closer proximity than any Nexuses (or any other building in that group) are to each other, and therefore the centering focuses on the Forges.
You will notice the same thing with Gateways If you have a bank of 4 gateways together, and somewhere else in the map, you have a bank of 5 or more, it will go to the bank of 5, every time.
Very nice guide, I'm a mid-masters protoss and I never thought to make those sorts of changes. So I will be doing that today, good job!
One thing I'd like to add, selecting ctrl+x (x being any number key), it's really awkward to create control groups this way. So I switched it so that pressing alt+x creates my control groups. It's much easier to just shift your thumb slightly than it is to move your entire hand.
And if you use a gaming mouse, you can bind the ctrl/alt key to 1 of the buttons on there so that all you have to do is hold down the button on your mouse and select your number key for easier binding.
On December 29 2012 08:02 VoiceSC wrote: Very nice guide, I'm a mid-masters protoss and I never thought to make those sorts of changes. So I will be doing that today, good job!
One thing I'd like to add, selecting ctrl+x (x being any number key), it's really awkward to create control groups this way. So I switched it so that pressing alt+x creates my control groups. It's much easier to just shift your thumb slightly than it is to move your entire hand.
And if you use a gaming mouse, you can bind the ctrl/alt key to 1 of the buttons on there so that all you have to do is hold down the button on your mouse and select your number key for easier binding.
Thanks for the feedback, let us know how your games go and if it helps you out. I think if you get used to using your pinky, then ctrl+x isn't too awkward - but if it's more natural to use your thumb or forefinger + alt, then power to you.
On December 29 2012 08:02 VoiceSC wrote: Very nice guide, I'm a mid-masters protoss and I never thought to make those sorts of changes. So I will be doing that today, good job!
One thing I'd like to add, selecting ctrl+x (x being any number key), it's really awkward to create control groups this way. So I switched it so that pressing alt+x creates my control groups. It's much easier to just shift your thumb slightly than it is to move your entire hand.
And if you use a gaming mouse, you can bind the ctrl/alt key to 1 of the buttons on there so that all you have to do is hold down the button on your mouse and select your number key for easier binding.
Thanks for the feedback, let us know how your games go and if it helps you out. I think if you get used to using your pinky, then ctrl+x isn't too awkward - but if it's more natural to use your thumb or forefinger + alt, then power to you.
My games have been different, just a matter of remembering that I rebound certain keys. Though building Immortals has definitely gotten better.
I've gotten into a habit of using everything but my pinky, so it's my 4 other fingers (yes, my thumb is a finger) that I use the most, like thumb on ctrl+3middle fingers for the number keys.
I find my hand starts straining and shakes when I reach across the keyboard for numbers 6+ keys, so I don't usually bind those to anything. And my tilde key doesn't seem to take a bind.
I've become so accustom to playing twister on my keyboard that I'm afraid there is no going back now 8( Why Blizzard didn't allow us to customize our own hotkeys from the beginning, I'll never understand.
If you want to gradually switch hotkeys, i recommend doing so slowly: change only one at once, and keep the old keybind as well (at least for a while).
I would suggest just changing them all at once, because you may as well get used to them all at once, it will reduce the amount of time it takes. Plus you won't lose as many games due to mistakes or mishotkeying.
I knew most of the info that you provided already but good job on spreading it. I don't hink many people bother using screen hotkeys although I've found that they are time saving monsters.
Like I see many players to pick one unit (That is with his other army in his hotkey) and send it to somewhere and suddenly its out of hotkey (they press their army hotkey and that away sended unit doesnt take commands anymore so it isnt in hotkey anymore). Or do they just re do that hotkey? select units and ctrl + number? It makes me problem coz I have my ht's in different hotkey than other army so I just cant "paint"(lol what word(idk what is right)) all units and ctrl number them to hotkey. So I need to pick zealots, stalkers, sentries, colos archons etc. separately to hotkey and it takes expensive 3-4 seconds.
It is basically just a rehotkeying of the army. Unless someone knows someone I don't, say you have your whole army hotkeyed and you want to send a zealot to check for hidden expands. You right click the minimap, hold shift and either click on a zealot unit or a zealot portrait, then just rehotkey after that 1 zealot is gone.
On January 19 2013 06:39 TheBloodyDwarf wrote: Is there way to remove one unit from hotkey?
Like I see many players to pick one unit (That is with his other army in his hotkey) and send it to somewhere and suddenly its out of hotkey (they press their army hotkey and that away sended unit doesnt take commands anymore so it isnt in hotkey anymore). Or do they just re do that hotkey? select units and ctrl + number? It makes me problem coz I have my ht's in different hotkey than other army so I just cant "paint"(lol what word(idk what is right)) all units and ctrl number them to hotkey. So I need to pick zealots, stalkers, sentries, colos archons etc. separately to hotkey and it takes expensive 3-4 seconds.
Yes, so the easiest way to do this is using shift + left click on the unit portrait that you want to remove.
For example, let's say I want to send a zealot to my watch tower on Ohana:
Step 1: move command entire army (or entire zealot hotkey) to the watch tower.
Step 2: hold down shift, press left click on a zealot portrait in the unit selector (this removes a zealot from the group of currently selected units)
Step 3: press ctrl + 1 (or whatever number hotkey you use) to rebind the control group, now without the zealot who is marching towards the watch tower
This is a great post. I was so focused with getting used at standard at first when I first switched from the c&c RTS's, that I completely forgot to rebinding my keys... Even now I haven't changed them and I'm top M... When I get home i'm immediately going to change them
I really enjoy'd this read, and am in the proccess of trying some of this stuff out. I've been wondering for a while about almost all the stuff haveing to do with the camera's. Immortals as "I" kills me... /facepalm.
On March 05 2013 15:48 Ak-Motomoto wrote: I really enjoy'd this read, and am in the proccess of trying some of this stuff out. I've been wondering for a while about almost all the stuff haveing to do with the camera's. Immortals as "I" kills me... /facepalm.
Glad I found this for sure!
Good guide! Add anything more you deem worthy!~~
Thanks for the feedback! I might expand this into a general Hotkeys guide for every race once HotS comes out if I have time.
Oh by the way, for some reason the hotkey file didn't seem to work. No worries though, I just manually remapped the keys. Thanks again. And yeah, q as a control group is awesome, you could map it to casters and stuff. I have nexus as 5, so that leaves only 4 control groups between.
I use 5 for nexii, 6 robo, 7stargates etcetc - 0 is rebound to W for warpgates and i occasionally use 8 - but i was thinking of rebinding 9 to something to use for Mothership Core/Mothership (because 1234 is not enough to manage army - for example even in an immortal all in i fill all four of those without a core), what do you guys think is best for that? I might even consider using one of the side buttons on deathadder but i never used any mouse buttons before for accuracy/comfort reasons
I usually use Q for patrol and its not all too comfortable to hit it extremely regularly
I can't figure out how to change patrol to 'n' without completely screwing up every other unit (i think it was like, 52 affected units). Is that normal? Do I have to change it for each and every unit?
Also, I use 'q' for base camera.. makes chrono-ing all my nexuses a lot easier.
On March 10 2013 01:45 Kinon wrote: I have some problems hitting the keys from 6-9. How do you guys handle this? Rebind them to letters, or mouse keys?
If you want to use them, you just have to start using them and make a conscious effort to use them, over time you'll get used to them and being comfortable pressing them
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.itechnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Logitech-Gaming-Keyboard-G110-Blue-LED-Backlight.jpg)
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