[D] Hotkeys and (optionally) Ergonomic Keyboards

There's a mental price to bindings too many types of things to one key. Let's say you bound the most used spell from every unit to "r" for that unit. Now when you're in a battle (let's say your unit hotkeys are 1-4 for ease of argument), do you hit 1-r, 2-r, 3-r? It would be very easy to accidentally cast the wrong spell from the wrong type of unit. Or perhaps you have multiple unit types selected with casting abilities. It would be very easy to accidentally cast from the wrong type of unit. This is a very worst-case-scenario way to look at it, but the point is that inevitably, you're going to bind many different types of things to the same key, but the goal should be to keep the context of overlapping key presses as separate as possible. What I mean to say is, if "b" is being used when you have a worker selected to bring up the build menu, but "b" is also used when you have stalkers selected to blink them, your brain will not screw up this confusion because:
1.) Those actions, to your brain, happen in a very distinctly different mindset/time of the game.
2.) Your hotkeys are setup such that attempting to do one of these actions won't accidentally do the other. Even if you have worker in your army hotkey group, the stalkers, and therefore blink, will always take precedence, and you never *mean* to open the build menu in this case, with everything selected.

Basically, when you move a hotkey, consider the side effects it has on other spells. Perhaps there is value in keeping this hotkey in a different, far location from some other similar action.

Don't just assign keys to far-reaching areas because you don't have room for them closer. You might be able to assign the key somewhere closer, even if it conflicts with other uses of that key, so long as the conflicts are easy to separate for your brain, and easy to not screw up (accidentally do the wrong one). There's an obvious physical limit of time-spent to having keys too far away. When you have to reach beyond the "Starcraft II" homerow of keys (in other words, move your hand from it's default resting position while playing starcraft) there's a mental toll that is taken. Even if it doesn't limit your Actions Per Minute, it may limit your Unique Thoughts Per Minute.

This one is often cited as an obvious "must do" for people. Keep in mind that this unbinds some default SC2 actions like select idle worker and select all army units, and you'll have to consider that moving those keys has a cost to your setup. Find somewhere else to put them, or if you don't want to/can't, only use some of the F keys for camera actions. The typical use for this is usually Shift-F<any_number_here> sets the camera position, and F<any_number_here> recalls your camera to that position later on.

Some other options for this key include just binding it to a general action (idle worker, select all army, scouting unit, mothership core, etc). Basically you should try to use this key. It's one of the easiest keys to reach, and it defaults to doing nothing. Binding it to another control group (use 0 since that's the furthest away) makes sense as it's already on the same row as the other control groups. This essentially puts one more control group in your "comfort zone" as far as how far you can reach. Players looking to get more specific use from it bind it to things like idle worker or the other stuff mentioned above.

As pointed out in RemarK's Protoss Guide, "q" gets very little use from protoss, and is very easy to reach, so use it for something. *note* I do not know if this is the case for Zerg/Terran. An extra control group is nice, but there might be a mental cost to using it as such, as it's not in the nice sequential row setup that the others are (~ or 1 -> 0). This might be an easy thing for you to get over quickly, but try to be cognisant of whether or not this is slowing you down at all. Otherwise you can use it for idle worker, or select all army, or something else general.

"n" is just out of the "comfort zone" for your hand, and while it's not too much of an effort (hand-size notwithstanding) even on a non-ergonomic keyboard to reach "n", a closer key would save some time, especially in the later game where you've got a lot going on and you really just need to place that bad boy quickly. I list "t" as a possibility, but I'll not that it's more risky because via the "v"-build menu, "t" is for the Templar Archives, and being in the wrong build menu is a common mis-click. It's not *terribly* risky since the size of a nexus-in-progress is significantly larger than a Templar Archives-in-progress, but hey. In this way, "q" would be safer, but the caveat there is that people sometimes rebind "q" to a control group since it gets so little use from protoss normally.

Or basically anything but "b". I think having any building bound to "b" or "v" is a pretty terrible idea. You've just hit "b" or "v" to bring up the building menu, and especially when you don't quite have the minerals for the building, you'll find yourself hitting the building key that you want to build a lot (let's say roach warren, as that's the other building you might want at this point in the game). Or maybe you decide to de-select the worker to wait for the resources and then come back and build it, but you didn't actually de-select the worker. Now Instead of hitting b->r to build the roach warren, your first hit of "b" builds the baneling nest. Surprise you don't notice until his marauders reach your base and the building finishes. Game over. Yes spamming is bad and it's better to hit each key with purpose, but the default setup of the baneling nest key is just asking for screw-ups.

"h" is just out of the "comfort zone" for your hand, and while it's not too much of an effort (hand-size notwithstanding) even on a non-ergonomic keyboard to reach "h", a closer key would save some time, especially in the later game where you've got a lot going on and you really just need to place that bad boy quickly. I list "t" as a possibility, simply because it's not any building from the "b" or "v" build menus.