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I'm in the platinum league. My APM is in the high 100s and it's going up every day. I just got a new hotkey setup that I've designed to allow me to play like a pro. I don't miss warp cycles or get supply blocked. But after so long of playing, I still can't train myself to look at the minimap.
I hate the fact that I don't notice drops until my nexus is already half-dead. I hate the fact that while I'm macroing at home, half my army auto-attacks and suicides into the opponents' even though I have observer seeing his army coming from a mile away.
These problems can be solved by looking at the minimap constantly to stay aware of enemy movements. I know that if I use harass-heavy builds (like Phoenix openers) I force myself to learn hotkeys, but I don't know any ways to force myself to improve my minimap awareness. I'm frustrated since lack of minimap awarenss is really hurting my play and preventing me from improving overall. Wat do?
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This is what I did, and while I'm still progressing, it kind of works. I started at first by just looking at my income bar on the top right. Every 3 seconds, I would take a quick glance at my minerals just trying to keep them low. Eventually after I trained myself to constantly look to the top right, it was an easy transition to look at the bottom left. I now look at the actual game less and less!
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When you say minimap awareness do you mean you don't even notice when the pulsing red alert thing that happens when your units are being attacked?
either way, there's a multitasking trainer in the arcade that, among other things, makes you spot drop ships and then select them and its does a pretty good job of getting you in the habit of mixing minimap glancing into everywhere else your eyes look while macroing.
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One way to improve this is to make minimap awareness a game in and of itself. You could play with a friend who for example makes banshees or drops and have him try to like ping pong between your bases. your gold would be to remain under a certain about of minerals while defending the drops/banshees or he could run some units to the watch tower and you have to run out before your unit on the tower dies.
Hopefully you have a friend that would help you with this
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play without in game sound. Helps a ton.
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Why don't you use Cap/Tap/Map. It's what I used to train my eyes where to look when I'm going through a macro cycle.
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I suffer from this problem. Granted, I'm a Silver player. I'm sure it's part of the reason I suck.
The funny thing is I have extremely good map awareness in LoL and Dota 2.
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On March 19 2013 15:20 JonnyBigBoss wrote:
I suffer from this problem. Granted, I'm a Silver player. I'm sure it's part of the reason I suck.
The funny thing is I have extremely good map awareness in LoL and Dota 2.
Same on every point. I guess it's because Dota 2 and LoL require less multi-tasking overall. I just returned to SC2 from Dota because of HotS, was placed in silver (was gold at my peak, 2 years ago) and I feel extremely sluggish. I get supply blocked from time to time, miss things on the minimap and get huge resource float. 
Really will try to look for that multi-tasking map in the arcade though! :D
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For a start just think "minimap" all the time you play. Each time you will look at it and at some point you do it without realizing it. If you cant remember that while playing, write "minimap" on a piece of paper and place it somewhere in front of you.
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On March 19 2013 15:27 Ejohrik wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2013 15:20 JonnyBigBoss wrote:
I suffer from this problem. Granted, I'm a Silver player. I'm sure it's part of the reason I suck.
The funny thing is I have extremely good map awareness in LoL and Dota 2. Same on every point. I guess it's because Dota 2 and LoL require less multi-tasking overall. I just returned to SC2 from Dota because of HotS, was placed in silver (was gold at my peak, 2 years ago) and I feel extremely sluggish. I get supply blocked from time to time, miss things on the minimap and get huge resource float. Really will try to look for that multi-tasking map in the arcade though! :D
I actually want to comment on this a little bit, I actually have really good minimap awareness in SC2, and it translated to other games (Dota, CS:GO, etc.). There were actually some funny situations in DotA where I noticed things in my friend's lane before he even did. Haha.
It's really something you just have to force yourself to do, and after a while it just feels natural. It's actually to the point where if i'm playing something like say an FPS game, and there isn't an easily available minimap it really bothers me a lot.
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In order to develop map awareness you have to treat it as a separate subset skill such as maintaining low income or not getting supply blocked. Earlier posts mentioned forcing yourself to look at the mini-map, but only is this time consuming but sometimes you simply forget. That's why you should add map awareness into your game plan just like your build/general strategy. For instance, if you know you're going to attack the enemy, not only do you need to make sure you continue chronoboosting and warping in units, but you should also integrate into your brain that you need to look at the map. This is especially crucial if you know your opponent has no choice but to go for drop plays. You can think of mini-map awareness as a reaction to your opponent's strategy. This way it won't become something you have to "look at" per se but rather something of which you are trained to think.
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The best way is to keep playing and take a break. I took a , i think it was, 1 month break or so, and when I returned I found myself looking at the minimap constantly haha
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apm is really nothing importent, if you have 100 its fine, i have 400 and be worse then alot players with 100
just FORCE yourself look minimap every 2 seconds, you will be bad at the start but it will be worth it, later you can have 1 eye on the minimap
make you green enemy red with the button and then get a rage on red dots, like when your eyes see ANYTHING red go crazy ^^ then you can watch minimap well  (remove all red things next to your pc ^^)
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Turn your mouse scroll right down and click the mini map to move around.That forces you to look at it.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Try doing this:
Every time you build a unit, check minimap.
Every time you build a building, check minimap.
Every time you move a unit, check minimap.
Force yourself to check the minimap every time you do anything, you'll begin to start looking at it naturally and you'll never miss drops again. (Unless they're boosted medivacs, where they travel so fast you can't see them ^^)
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What I did to solve this was, I'd force myself to look at the minimap every time I started an SCV. That's only every 17 in-game seconds, and it felt super uncomfortable at first, but eventually not only did it become second nature but I would start looking at the minimap a lot more often than that. I'll add that before I made this effort to improve, my minimap awareness was atrocious.
Btw I find it helps to acquire this muscle memory type habit by cranking out build orders in a BO tester. That way you can focus wholeheartedly on building your new habit.
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Romania76 Posts
I just notice the red stuff in that corner without any particular training.
What helps most is having enemy units show as RED regardless of their color (ALT+F I think?). Having vision around your base is also very useful (spotter pylons / observers / whatever else you like).
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A couple things... I'm still not great at this either, though.
1. You will naturally refer to the minimap more as you play more, because you will become familiar with the things that can kill you and the times in which they can hit. So if you're moving across the map, you'll be thinking "crap what if he dropped me right now?" and look at the minimap.
2. If you're not checking the minimap, you're probably not thinking enough about army positioning. You need to be aware of the space your buildings and units occupy, and the optimal position of your army to defend that based on your opponents army positioning. If you force yourself to go into "shark mode" by moving your army around the map in response to your opponents army movements. It's going to take a lot of scouting/sacking a few workers/scans/etc., but it will force you to look at the minimap.
TL;DR You should always look at the minimap while your army is moving, and your army should almost always be moving.
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On March 19 2013 15:42 JonnyBigBoss wrote:
What is cap/top/map?
It's cap/tap/map
CAP- Check your supply/money. If it's getting high, you need to build stuff
TAP- Tap your hotkeys to check if your building are producing stuff.
MAP- Check the minimap to see what's going on around the map. If your minimap is dark, then it's time to start sending out units for vision.
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I suffered from similar problems. Here are a few things that are really helping.
1. Everytime I build an SCV (or worker) or perform a macro cycle/check (raxes, facts n SPorts), I look at my minimap. It's just a small glance, but it's really useful for keeping me checking down there regularly. Out of interest, I also add to this with a glance at my resources and supply, just to keep aware.
2. I don't scroll. I make a big effort to almost always click where I need to be on the minimap. This is because it means that I have to look at the minimap! Combined with camera hotkeys this is all I need to be where I need to be, on time (note though, in a fight, I will camera drag some to track the battle).
3. When moving out with my army or harasses, I make sure to blip my attention to it on the minimap. Not sure how to describe this actually... I just ping my eyes to and from it so that the active edge of vision of the moving units is in my mind as much as possible.
I got these tips from a few places; kudos esp to FilterSC and Day9.
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The first step is to create a small list of things to focus a lot of attention on in your games. You don't want a laundry list of things to work on when you're playing, but if you pick a few things to really focus on for a week you can make huge improvements quickly. Back in later 2010 I was playing Zerg and I wanted to work on my creep spread, overlord spread and not getting supply blocked, so for like a week that's where I put a ton of my focus, and by the end of the week I was feeling really good about those things.
The second thing that helps with minimap awareness is to physically turn your head to look at it because a lot of times you get some adrenaline going on, and turning your head helps a lot to combat it.
edit: You have to be willing to lose games as a result of working on different things in your play. For example, when I switched to Protoss I wanted to work on my warprism harass, and so I just did it no matter in every game in every matchup just for the sake of getting better at it. It cost me lots of games, but now my warprism BS is really good.
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It's because you're thinking about it the wrong way.
Don't "be aware of the minimap."
Play with the minimap.
When I play, my eyes are glued to the minimap. I occasionally dash up to check my resources or for really intense micro situations, but for the most part, I do that stuff out of peripheral vision, and my eyes are on my minimap the entire time.
Give yourself as much excuse to click on the minimap/keep your eyes near it as you can.
When you build stuff, instead of looking at the white blips in the bottom center console, look at the minimap. Just count the amount of buttons you press, that works anyway.
You'd be surprised how much your decision making improves just by better minimap awareness. Your macro might suffer from not looking at the resources, but you shouldn't have to constantly look at your money to manage it.
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try playing counter strike global offensive for a month....you will look at your minimap 10x more often the second you switch back to starcraft
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On March 20 2013 07:06 stratmatt wrote:
try playing counter strike global offensive for a month....you will look at your minimap 10x more often the second you switch back to starcraft
Be sure to play GO and not either of the other two.
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EPT
