Tips Tricks Micro/Macro, What you really need to k

First of all, I felt it would be a good place to start at one of the most misunderstood things for the new player, actions per minute, aka APM. High apm, can be one of the most important skills you can have, and for some, completely useless. Your apm refers to how many clicks, or keys pressed per minute. So if those actions are what some call spam, which means basically useless actions, (like putting workers on control groups and then repeatedly selecting between them) you will have a higher apm then you would if you did not, but this would however not increase skill level. In fact, when you are first learning, spamming can hinder performance as you may be less focused on what your build order should be. All you should be concerned with is consistency, watch pro games and look for certain timing landmarks, for example, if Zerg, in a normal opening game, at 5 minutes you should have app 22-25 drones, unless some cheese was served. Your apm will naturally get higher as your skill level increases, proper use of control groups, camera position hotkeys, macro, and over all unit control should be your focus. Also, the more knowledge you acquire of unit spells and abilities, will boost your apm greatly, knowing when and how to use certain units is very important, for example, protoss players, knowing about the terran ghost ability emp, do not stack high templar together, as well placed emp's can remove the energy the high templar had for storm. Just that little extra effort to split high templar apart properly, will improve your apm, remember, high apm is only good if it is real, and consistency is the best way. Do the right things often, and often, you will do things right.

Hot keys are probably one of the most important things to learn, so learning them early is essential. Hotkeys are keys that are bound to a certain command/action. They can also in Sc2 be changed to pretty much any configuration you like. Hot keys are what you should use for most functions, aside from moving or selecting certain units or structures. Get out of the habit of using your mouse to train army units or build structures, learn the hotkeys associated with that unit, for example, if you select an scv, and you want to build a barracks, don't click the build structure icon, and then the barracks icon, learn the hotkeys, so you can select the scv, then push "b" for build structure, and "b"again for barracks, this is much, much faster, it cannot be stressed the importance of this, this allows you to spend time doing other things.

Micro is basically your ability to control your units. The better your micro, the more effective every unit you have becomes. Easy micro can be simply walking a unit taking fire out of range quickly to switch the focus onto a different unit. This will prolong the life of your units, allowing damaged or injured units to get a few extra shots off, or even make it to another battle. Micro tips and tricks will be covered throughout and later, but as stated, it refers to unit control.

Macro, in a sense is your ability to progress. This means your ability to train workers, army, continue on tech paths and expanding, and upgrading. Each race may be slightly different, but a good indicator is having low resources while having an appropriate economy. You want to spend your money in SC2, either by training army, expanding, or teching up/upgrading. It is important to get out of the habit of pooling resources, and instead use them to further advance yourself. Start thinking of possible unit compositions your opponent may use, and build the structures which will allow you the counters if the situation was presented. You want to keep your resources lower then 500 minerals, unless obviously when it is the later stages of the game and you are maxed out and full upgrades. But if not keep building, upgrading, and expanding. For zerg, make sure your larva injects are constant, (takes 40 seconds for larva to spawn, 15s creep tumor) and keep training units, do not bank larva, hatcheries only produce 3 larva naturally, and will not produce more unless they are used. Do not die with a bunch of money, and larva banked, use them. Ways to make macro, and micro easier are control groups. You should play around and find out how you prefer to have your control groups set up, but you can have units or buildings on control groups, even together. Extremely useful for upgrade structures like forges or evo chambers, or production facilities such as barracks. It is important to macro while you are in battles so that you can reinforce your army, aswell as keep up with your oponent in terms of upgrades and economy, the camera hotkeys are extremely useful for this also, you can jump to your base quickly with camera hotkeys to keep up on your macro. Macro, is for the most part, more important then micro, and this should have the higher focus of the two.

Control groups are an integral part of sc2, they allow for better army management, as well as make micro and macro much easier. You can create a control group by selecting any unit or structure, and pressing cntrl plus any number, 1-10. You can also add any unit or building to that control group by selecting them and pushing shift plus the number the intended control group is on. Example, my Hatchery is on hotkey 0 (10), and I expand, I want all hatcheries on the same hotkey so I can produce units faster, I can select the new hatchery when its built or building, push shift and 0 at same time, now the new hatchery is bound on the same hotkey as my main. Now I can simply hit 0, s to select larva, and produce from both hatcheries at once. Another thing to keep in mind is adding new units to your main army, select them, press shift plus army control group, and you have added them into your main army. For Zergs, its even easier, you can select larva, make your units, cntrl click the eggs to select only eggs, press shift plus main army control group, and boom when those eggs hatch they will be part of that control group. Just make sure you dont make drones or overlords with army units when you do the egg select trick, or you will have a bunch of drones and ovies following your army and look like a noob :O Other uses for control groups if you push the control group number twice quickly it will jump to that location, or you can push the control group and click the portrait, or press ctrl C, allowing you to jump from positions, for example you can press 1 1 to go to main army, then 3 3 to jump to other harassing units or w.e you have it set as. Being able to select units and jump to locations quickly is very helpful, you may even save your scouting scv if its on a control group becuase you can have quicker control when you find the enemy base, intstead of just letting it die.

This is something that is really a preference that differs from player to player, but something I found very exciting and helpful. If at the very least, it will familiarize you with the different hotkeys, control group functions, and all the other cool features available to you in Sc2. The thing I love is you can completely remap your keyboard to your own liking, giving you the best control of your units and base, allowing for better micro and macro abilities. There are all kinds of different recommendations for keyboard setup, standard, grid, dark grid etc etc etc, then there is the best one of all, CUSTOM, o yeah!! Custom, how you want it, where you want it, and you can change it anytime, without fancy keyboard software, stored right on bnet, and I highly recommend finding your own personal set up that feels comfortable. Remember, the less time you spend on an action, the more actions you can do. So where do we start? First, if you do not have one, I do recommend a gaming mouse with added buttons, the reason for this is to allow greater use of control groups, this is my preference, and only a recommendation. You Do Not need a fancy keyboard, with extra keys, get the mouse first, gaming keyboards are nice, but the small edge they give will likely only be seen at extreme high levels of play, focus on mechanics and consistency for now, anyways, back to the keys we do have.Open up Sc2 and press f10, or open menu at bottom. You should see options in the menu, click it and at the bottom left it should say hotkeys, click that. Your journey to greater control has begun! There are all kinds of hotkeys, the first ones we will talk about are camera hotkeys, and these are ones you may want to play with. In default, the f2 key is your select all army key, the select all army key can be usefull, so I do like to keep it available, but not as f2, f2 I have changed to be camera position 2, f1 is camera position 1, f3 is 3 and so on to f8. You can make a camera location by pressing cntrl and f1 together, (remember you must update this in camera hotkeys as cntrl f1 is not default for that action) and then simply pressing f1 will jump to that location. Do the same for f2 and so on, for locations you would like to jump to quickly, like your natural expo, 3rd, 4th, or even where your production is, or to where your rally for army units is so you can quickly locate reinforcements. Another camera hotkey I have changed is the base camera hotkey, it used to be backspace, I have changed it to the space bar. There were a few reasons for this, the main one was, the space bar jumps to last message, well that's great when the game is slow, but when things really heat up there is just too much going on for that to be a reliable tool. You see your base being attacked and hear the message, push space to jump there, but right before something else happens and you jump to that location instead, not knowing where you are actually going to take camera view to I find is not advantageous. The base camera is however, especially as I play Zerg, it offers the easiest larva inject method, and also the fastest. Aside from camera hotkeys there are global unit commands, these are found by clicking on any of the 3 races in the hotkeys menu, and selecting a unit, you can change the command hotkeys for move, attack, patrol etc. The idea here is to have everything at reach, I have my own layout and it works amazing, this is what works for me. I have changed the patrol hotkey from "p" to "q", p is far to reach, but q is right next to all the common hotkeys, again its just faster then having to reach over to p, I have changed hold position from "h" to "w", move command from "m" to "z" and left stop as "s" and attack as "a", now all commands are right under my fingers, there's no having to take eyes from monitor, or hands from keyboard. Another useful thing is to select the workers, and edit the hotkeys for building structures. I have it set up so that all commands are from left to right, they do not extend past 6,y,h,n keys, other then the f6-f8 camera hotkeys, which I do not use, you can think of it as a modified grid layout, it is very effective, my keyboard hand barely needs to move to issue any command. A few examples would be this, as I said I play Zerg, so to build basic structures, I have changed it from b to d, and hatchery from h to d, so to build another hatchery, instead of pressing b and then h, I hit double D, all jokes aside, that is much faster and I find the hand positioning more comfortable to hit the sequence also, again, preference. I have left advanced structures as V, but for things like hydra den, default y, I switched to D, so instead of hitting v then y, it is simply v,d, much simpler, much faster. Do this to all structures that are not to your liking, remember try to keep all your keys together so you can properly sequence them easily.Production facility, unit hotkeys are also a good way to get more effective, you can change them to more convenient keys so you don't have to stretch, or another very useful trick, use the alternative hotkey option aswell, and heres why. For units like zerglings, or marines, things that we build masses of fast, a nice trick to do is to use the alternative hotkey, so say Im in the middle of a fight, and I need alot of zerglings fast to resupply, I don't want to take my attention from the battle, so my hatchery is hotkeyed, so I push the hotkey, push s to select larvae, then hit zzzzzzzzzzzzz like a madman to try to resupply quickly, well, to do that action in nearly half the time, you can click on the larva in the hotkey menu and where you see the zergling at top right click it, and it will show bind hotkey: morph to zergling z, to the right there is another box you can put alternative hotkey, I have it as x, so to put it all together now, the same action to resupply, hatchery, s for larva, zzzzzzzzzz, can now be done hatchery, s, zxzxzxzxzxz which is much much faster as you can use two fingers simultaneously, faster means you can do other stuff. Take some time and go through all the different hotkeys, there's far too many to cover, but try to set them up in a way where everything is very convieniently placed, you can change spell, or ability hotkeys, or even hotkeys for upgrades, say the hotkeys for ground weapons or armor is different then the air upgrade for zerg, or mech upgrades diff then bio for terran etc, and you find yourself constantly miss clicking when trying to upgrade, switch the hotkeys so they are the same at either structure, eg, engineering bay upgrades for weapons and army e, and a, and change the armory to e and a as well. If you find you dont like something, then change it, this will make control alot easier for you, and you will find you are able to do more because the game is set up custom to you. Also, you can change control group hotkeys to other things, for instance, I told you I use w for hold position instead of h, well here is why, I have y bound to control group 7, and h as control group 8, 9 is on my mouse as well as 0 (these are the extra buttons on gaming mouse) so when you picture this, the control groups go 1-6, then y,h for 7 and 8, then 9 and 0 are on mouse. This is my own set up, but it allows for every control group to be used effectively, H or "8", is used for my evo chambers and spire for upgrades, I put inject queens on 9(mouse), and 0 is hatcheries (mouse also), this lets me have 1-7(y) open for army, scouting overlords, splitting up army, or w/e else I need to manage. Dont forget to change the create control group and add to control group hotkeys accordingly, for example cntrl 0 makes control group 0, and shift 0 adds to it, leave that, but also update the alternative command to control + mouse button, and shift + mouse buttons to allow you to create your control groups on mouse without having to push 9 or 0.

The mini map is probably the most useful tool you have, it is the small map on the bottom left of your in game screen. What it is is an overhead view of the entire map, it shows all mineral patches for future expansions, as well as battle field terrain. This is important when planning future engagements, you can see where there is high ground areas, choke points and ramps, or other areas that may be exploited by either side such as destructible rocks, possible locations for tank drops or cannon rushes that are protected by mineral lines or other formations, etc. More importantly, it shows the movements of your troops, and any enemy units that are within sight range of your units or structures. Much attention should be made to constantly observe the mini map. Often, things like drops, or surprise attacks are defended easily because they were spotted on the mini map, this goes hand in hand of course with proper scouting/spotting, but the mini map allows you to see a much larger area, helping to keep vigil of your entire force and base. Also, many commands can be issued through the mini map, like larva injects, rally points, attack or move commands, etc. This can be especially helpful for scouting or drops, as you can quickly issue a series of commands known as queuing on the mini map, and even click the drop location. Just remember to constantly scan your mini map, and develop a kind of system, look top right, what is your minerals and gas, what is your current supply? Then look to the mini map, is there any enemy movement you can see? Do you have a drop about to go into enemy base you forgot about? A worker rallied to expand you forgot? The mini map is a good place to look, and spotting enemy movements in time can make the difference between winning and losing. Also remember, that if you are in the process of attacking while trying to macro back at home, keep an eye on your army with the mini map, its almost like being in two places at once.

Some time should be given to looking over the maps that will be played on. This can be done either by simply looking up the map online in images, map info, watching replays, or opening the editor. Things that you want to look for are areas of terrain that could be exploited, and think in terms of each race. A Protoss player will look to take engagements in areas where force fields can be used effectively, so choke points like ramps, or areas where there is a narrowing and the Protoss has the concave, less force fields can be used to cut the enemy army into small portions while still having their units able to attack. Zerg players can look for overlord placement, areas on the map where the overlords are safe from ground fire, but can still act as spotters for incoming attacks. Terrans may look for areas where reapers can enter the enemy base to scout and harass, and obviously use those "entry" points to escape as well. If you know where the most likely points of entry are, reapers can be handled with much more ease, and with proper unit placement, prevented from getting into your base to scout. Look for areas that may be tank dropped, areas that may be easily dropped, and areas that are normally out of vision in your base that a bunker rush may be attempted. You should also look at which expansions are more viable. Some expansions offer gold mineral patches which offer a faster rate of income, but these bases may be far away, or on low ground, and subject to attack from high ground. Look at which expansions offer the easiest defense, either through terrain and structure, or simply location. An expansion which is closer to your main, is normally much easier to defend. The objection to this would be a hidden expo, which if not found, can pay off well, but at higher levels of play, scouting is much more dedicated. Look at what areas offer the best locations for engagements for your race, and try to take engagements there, and which in turn offers the worst areas, and try to avoid taking a fight in these areas, sometimes re gathering your forces and taking a better engagement is the best move. When we begin to build an understanding of how to read the battlefield, we then begin to understand better how to make decisions. Is the map large, or small? Does it have accessible cliffs for reapers and blink stalkers? Can you take a 3rd base comfortably, or is it more of a 2 base map? Will any race have a distinct advantage, and in which ways could this be used? Is there any high ground areas that surround any of your base or future bases that the enemy could use to attack your units on the low ground? Is there alot of dead space around the bases that would compliment drop or muta play? Destructible rocks, where are they, and how do they change the battlefield? The time you take in reviewing the maps will surely help in the planning of which strategies are best on each map, and may help you to also think what you could be playing against as well, always look at the map from all 3 races perspective, and be aware of where proxies may be hidden as well.

The Shift key on the keyboard allows you to do some truly amazing things. A series of commands can be issued to units while holding down the shift key, and this opens a variety of micro opportunities. So how to use it if you never have, say you right click a marine to move to a location, you can then hold shift down, and tell it to do a variety of things. The marine will perform the next task once the previous is complete. For instance, I tell my marine to move, then I hold shift, click attack on an enemy, or location, then while still holding shift, I tell him to move to a 3rd location, then enter a bunker. The marine will do all tasks (given he didn't die) in the order they were given. This can be used for so many things, and should be. Got a bad habit of leaving workers idle after building? Never again! Tell them to build, hold shift and right click on your mineral patch. Once they have completed the structure, they will return to mining. You can tell units to attack a certain structure or unit, and then retreat, or attack another unit, like zvp, have your corruptors attack one collosus, then hold shift, right click on the remaining one at a time. The corruptors will focus fire the collosai one at a time. Even better, you can mass corrupt enemy units quickly while selecting corrupt, holding shift and clicking on the enemy units you want to corrupt. You can send blink stalkers right in front of a location with high ground vision (or go high to low,) and while holding shift, tell them to blink up to (or down,) the intended location, then still holding shift move forward. The stalkers will walk to the spot, blink up to the high ground, (or down,) and continue to move. It looks really cool, and is very easy, and can be used to escape, or set up an attack while attention is elsewhere. You can send workers to a location and then have them build something, like an expo, or proxy. You can send units to a location and tell them to patrol, hold, attack etc. For drops it can be used to set up a flight path, and even set up a moving drop by having the unit set to move to a location, while holding shift push the drop button and click on the actual unit and then still holding shift, click another location (close enough to first,) you drop will then move to the location, then start dropping units while moving to the final location. Shift can be used to "leapfrog" tanks, or mines by sending them to a location, hold shift, click to engage/siege, the unit will move then engage once it reaches its destination. Tanks in siege, or activated mines can also be deactivated then while holding shift, repeat the same steps as before. They will disengage, move to new location, and re engage. Think of creative ways to harass and attack, you can send units to go around the outskirts, then attack from an unexpected angle, warp prisms can do a moving drop, then activate warp field and you can warp in more units. Banshees can fly to a location, then engage cloak before attacking. Command queuing is very important, it helps to prevent iws (Idle worker syndrome,) allows for easier unit movement, helps with macro and micro, its just plain good. Make a custom game, and just put cpu at easiest, try as many different commands as you can think of, see what different tricks you can come up with, what ideas work and don't. One thing not to get in the habit tho, is try not to have an scv set to make multiple structures one after the other. Instead, either have other workers build with it, or wait till the scv is almost done building and then queue it up to build the next structure. You don't want to have multiple building queued up on an scv because those resources could/should be used to build more scv's, units or structures. If you need the buildings now, then grab more scv's and build them now.

The shift key, aside from being able to set multiple commands, has some other uses as well. As stated before, selected units or structures can be added to control groups by pressing shift + control group number. (if there are no units in a control group, say control group 5 is empty, pressing shift and the number will create the group because its adding to it) Shift can also be used if units or structures are selected, you can press shift and click on either the unit or structure, or its icon in the group selection, and it will be deselected from your current selection. This can be very useful for scouting, or harassing multiple locations as you can have units selected, tell them to attack a location, hold shift then click on however many units you want to break off, and then take the remaining selection and send it elsewhere. If you want, and they are on a control
group, after you have removed the units you want, you can re set the control group by pressing ctrl and the number, and then leave those units to do what you want. Also if you do happen to accidentally add something to a control group, you can select the group, hold shift and click the unit/structure you want removed, then re set control group (ctrl plus #)

The ctrl key is another very useful key. It is used to create control groups by selecting units/structures, and pressing ctrl plus a number together to bind the selection to that number. (ctrl 1 = control group 1.) To create camera hotkeys, (ctrl plus fkeys) Also, the ctrl key can be used to select all units of the same class within the screen view, or to select all units of same class in a selection. Simply press the ctrl key and either click on a unit on screen that you wish to select all of, or click a units
portrait in the selection. The ctrl key also may be used in conjunction with other keys, eg ctrl shift f will follow the selected unit, ctrl + idle worker hotkey will select all idle workers, instead of one.

Scouting should be done every game, the more information you are able to gather on your opponent, the easier the game is. It is easy to feel the need to do extremely early scouting,say like a 9 scout. This is not advised, check your immediate base if you feel that you may be getting cheesed, but at that time it is unlikely to tell you anything other then that. A 12 scout is more appropriate, and as you progress in skill, different timed scouting depending on which race you are playing against will develop. Scouting for early gas is a very good indicator of early aggression, if a terran opens gas first, good chance of reapers, if there's no gas, then no reaper, and it is going to be a marine opener. There will not be an early factory, therefor no early widow mines, hellions or starport, gas timings can give you a lot of insight. Also, try to keep your scout alive, so you can send them back in after to spot tech paths. Most tech choices are made about 5+ minute mark, an overlord can be sacrificed around 6 min to see what you are playing against if you are zerg, aswell as trying to sneak some lings in. Terrans have the ability to scan, which is almost a guaranteed scout, and toss should hallucinate pheonix for scouting info. Scout around the map as well, check all mineral patches and likely areas for early game proxies, and constantly scout for expansions and army
positioning. If you are scouting often and keeping good map vision, you will have a much easier time in responding to any pushes or counter attacks. Terrans when using reapers, be aware that when facing zerg, ling speed is normally done just before 6 min, so get your reaper out around 5:40 ish, use it to secure xel naga towers, or scout for expansions. Scouting can be done with command queuing also, dont just send your scout in, queue it so it will go around the minerals and out, that way you dont send your scout and forget about it in the enemy base until it gets killed.

Scouting is extremely important to prevent over reacing to what your opponent is doing. If you see a couple stalkers at your ramp, are you being all-ined, or is it just some light pressure to try to get you to over produce units? Scouting will help answer these questions. Over reacting to early game pressure can be as bad as under reacting, and may cause you to fall behind significantly in workers. SC2 is a game of economy, and this is not any more true then in mirror or same race match ups. A classic over reaction would be a zerg thinking he is being cannon rushed because a protoss opponent drops a pylon behind the natural mineral line. Unscouted by you, it was actually a gateway expand opener, not a forge expand (ffe) so there cannot be cannons. You pull your drones to deal with it, losing precious mining time to a cannon rush that never was. Keep an eye on your opponent, and watch over committing.

It is true that you will learn more from losses then victories especially if they are taken with the right mindset. In order to get better, you must play against people of equal or higher skill levels. Often this will result in a loss, but this will allow you to see where you went wrong. Analyze your replays, pay attention to your spending and macro. Are you missing attacks that were in vision on your mini map? Are you scouting effectively and often? Are you building proper counters to your opponents composition? If you are constantly playing lesser talents, and winning easily, how are you able to learn your weaknesses? Better competition will force the best out of you, and will demand more skill from you. Your apm will rise as your competition skill increase, as there will be more demand to micro and macro effectively. Just remember to take losses as insight into areas that you need to put some focus into. Watch your replays, and write down the things you did right, and the things you did wrong. Next, write down ideas of how you could have avoided those mistakes, or exploited the things you did right. Usually the reasons that we lose is simply being un prepared, and the experience alone will help you greatly if you face similar strategies again. You now have insight into what things may or may not work, and you will often even surprise yourself how well you deflect or just crush these strats in the future. And remember, its not about the win loss record, especially at the level of play most of us are at. Even the pros often sit around a 50/50% win loss ratio, so don't get caught up to much in it, just try to get a little better each time, admit your mistakes don't blame balance, or your opponents, just be open minded and adapt. And have fun first, you learn way more when you want too.

Some of this may be redundant, but is good info. Please feel free to add any tips or advice that has not been touched upon.

~at start of game, try to have 2 workers go to the mineral patches that are the closest, the second worker will want to go to another patch, keep clicking until it stays.

~be sure to queue workers back to mineral patches after building.

~Keep map vision as much as possible. Use xel naga towers, scouting, and building locations appropriate. Strategically placed depots or pylons in your base can spot drops.

~Creep spread is exceptionally important. So is larval injects. And have a 40/15 second spawn/cooldown period. This can help remind you to creep spread & inject. Like a system.

~Workers can mineral walk. This means that if they get surrounded, you can click on a mineral patch and the worker will go through any units. They won't go through buildings.

~Medivac/Warp prism micro can be used to pick up units in between their attack sequences. This can be useful for units like immortals, allowing them to shoot, then lifting them into prism until they are ready to fire again. This is very effective in early game pvz, when zerg normally lack anti air, thus the prism is not targeted.

~Blink can be used to dodge projectiles. Timed properly, stalkers can blink to avoid widow mines, marauders, and other projectile attacks. Blink as projectile is in air.

~As protoss, be sure to keep up on chrono boost.

~Make sure to properly add the wanted units into your main army control group. Also, keep some units at expansions to deal with drops and counter attacks.

~Counter attacks can buy you time. If you find yourself behind and about to be attacked, try to counter attack to draw the enemy back. This can buy you a few needed minutes.

~Pro replays are available to download. You can watch from first person view to get a feel of what your game flow should look like at high levels of play.

~Do not over saturate bases, a properly saturated base has 16-18 workers on minerals, and 6 workers on gas. Do not saturate to 24, instead, try to expand.

~Oracles are powerful, but can be somewhat predictable. If you suspect an oracle opener, keep some units in your mineral lines, or get static defense if needed.

~Queens can transfuse, this spell regenerates health of the targeted unit/structures. This can be used to save important units or buildings, or units being target fired on.

~Avoid clumping mutas when facing units that deal splash (thors) instead, magic box by moving past the target with some units and then attacking.

~Mass repair is strong. Use it. If its being used against you, do not throw away your army trying to kill something you cannot. Target the scv's, or retreat/move on.

~Corruption spell is extremely potent. Units will be dealt 20% more damage. Try to use it as often as possible.

~Force fields can be used to lock units in their main, or natural leaving the other exposed. Try not to get caught with all your units dedicated to one location, and have them locked out from the rest of your base.

~Force fields can also stop dt's if detection is not yet available. Force field your ramp when you see the blur, do not let it up your ramp. On the other end, if you are dt rushing, and force fields are ruining your day, morph your dts into an archon, the archon can smash the force field, letting remaining dt's to enter the enemy base.

~Move units taking fire back out of range, then re engage them so they last longer. Injured units still deal full damage, so keeping them alive longer is beneficial.

~Fungal growth can detect cloaked units if no other forms of detection are available, as can emp.

~Pheonix can pick up your units also, this can be used to expend excess energy in pvp to protect them from feedbacks, or to lift units of your own out of ground fire.

~Hallucinations, tho dealing no real damage, can take the focus from your real units, or make your army look much larger then it really is or of different composition confusing your opponent. They may waste spells on hallucinations like abducts on collossai thinking they are real.

~Blinding cloud, a powerful spell from the viper, affects friendly units as well.

~Positioning is key. Take marines vs speedlings, if the marines are against a wall, they will be able to take out a larger amount of lings as they cannot be surrounded, the lings have a much smaller surface area to attack. Alternatively, lings are much more effective if they can get that surround.

~If your workers are pushed off of their resources, you can quickly reset the mining, select the workers, click on one of the gas refineries, and then shift click 3 workers out of the selection, send the rest to the next gas and do the same. Send the rest of your workers to the mineral patch, and you will have quickly set each gas to 3 workers, and the rest of the workers returned to the minerals. This is assuming that gas is of more importance than minerals.

~Worker splits can also be accomplished by selecting your workers, pressing stop, then repeatedly press the select idle worker hotkey, while clicking different locations.

~Marine/Bio vs baneling splitting can be done by selecting small groups or clusters of units, then setting a command queue to move backward a short distance, then patrol forward. You can do this with attack commands, or if you want, you can just send small clusters to different locations. If there is a large bane swell, it may be best to select the majority of your army and move back, while branching off small clusters of bio as before. Try to leave some marauders, or bulky units scattered throughout the front lines to absorb some of the baneling shots, but provide them with support so they are not just killed for free.

~Another very common technique is the stutter step, this works best with terran bio which can cancel the attack animation while dealing damage. Simply tell your units to move
in the intended direction immediately after they fire. Stim may be integrated as well with devastating effect. Stutter step can catch early scouts if attention is not paid.

~Positioning can make the difference in a fight. Try to pre split units if needed, and pre concave if a battle is imminent. Make sure melee ranged units are able to get to the front, and weaker ranged units are properly protected as well. Always make sure to position your units for the most effectiveness, and keep important and weak units properly gaurded.

~Hold command is very helpful in keeping units in their intended position. This can be very helpful to keep units from running into damage, or simply just holding watch towers. It can also be used if you want to do something like surrounding units or structures with workers to prevent melee units from attacking. Your opponent will instead have to attack the units as the ai will not target them.

~Spread storms, they do not deal extra damage if stacked.

~Buildings like spawning pools, barracks, gateway etc, can be placed behind minerals to create a wall to help fight early game reapers.

~High templar feedback is extremely powerful against medivac drops. The feedback can kill or severely injure the medivac. Having a templar and a few defensive stalkers in each base can effectively hinder drop play, and even shut it down completely.

~Force fields can be used to prevent repair. Place them between the intended repair structure or unit, and the scv's.

~If protoss, always create a pylon to reinforce when attacking. Or bring a warp prism.

~Try to have units that counter certain unit types, attack those units. Eg, immortals deal extra damage to armored units, so try to target armored units rather then light or psionic. This will ensure you are maximizing your armies effectiveness.

~Guardian shield is amazing, especially against low damage dealers.

~Target fire high priority targets when able. Even while retreating, you can pick off a couple units with target fire. Also, focus low health units first if they are exposed, and eliminate the extra dps out of your opponents army.

~Overlord spread for zerg players is important and useful. Spread around the outskirts of your base to spot drops, and also use them to spread creep on future expansions, both yours and your enemy's. This will help to slow the enemy progress momentarily.

~Overseers can be used to contaminate structures, postponing production or upgrades., Also, they can spawn changelings which may offer further scouting information.

~Burrowed, or cloaked units can prevent expansions from going down. If you notice your next expo you keep queuing to build wont go up for some reason, get detection and make sure its not a burrowed ling or something in the way.

~The Raven is a very strong spell caster. The auto turret can be used to soak damage, or in tank vs tank, dropped onto enemy tanks to promote friendly fire. On top of that, the point defense drone can prevent projectile damage by negating their attack. The seeker missile can be used also, dealing massive damage if it lands, especially to clumped units.

~Elevator, this refers to positioning your transport unit (medivac,prism,overlord) at the edge of the cliff, so that units can be picked up off the low ground, and dropped onto the high. And visa versa.

~When using abducts, abduct only single units, or small amounts that can be killed immediately. And go for high value targets, like collosus or tempest.

~Storm drops, are powerful, though expensive. If you can pull them off, it may be something worth integrating into your game.

~Carpet bombing, not seen so much anymore, research the transport upgrade for overlords (Ventral sacs) and load several with banelings. It is helpful to obviously have movement speed for the overlords as well. Do a moving drop as described before for maximum effectiveness.

~You can use infested terran eggs to temporarily create walls.

~Rally points can be set to units as well as locations. You can have a unit rallied to an enemy unit and it will attack that unit upon completion. Or have your production rallied to your army to reinforce.

~Build lots of workers, many people don't realize how many workers they really need, but an end goal of 68-72 should be your minimum. This will allow you to train units and progress tech appropriately into the mid to late game phases. Anything over 80 is getting a little too high though.

~Watch that your units are not being kited by faster ranged units, disengage if possible. If you have to, let a unit or two continue to chase to allow the rest of your units to escape.

~Recalls can be cancelled by sniping the mothership core in time.

~warp-ins can be cancelled by sniping the pylon or prism.