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Im not sure if anyone else feels this way but with the amount of casters that exist in HOTS it becomes frustrating for me to use the tab key to select them out of say stalkers who also have a casted spell. my suggestion is simply to have multiple casters on the same keybind all be able to cast the spells from that one keybind "squad"
for example....
sentry templar and pheonix on keybind 1 (no one would ever do this but its a good example)
it now shows all these units spells in a large box of up to 9 spells. if i hit T storm happens, if i hit F forcefield happens and so on so forth
im aware this almost makes life easier in a game thats tbh already too easy but the problem i see plagues sc2 often is ease of access. currently its easier to control a protoss deathball then say a terran one or a zerg one. its harder to attack into terran for zerg then protoss control wise assuming were talking late game vs late game broods vs vikings etc etc. i simply think if one race is required to use many dif types of casters to stay on par with another races more simple style army comp, it will naturally create an uneven playing field where one player can focus on other aspects more specifically while the other player needs to focus more so on his army and let other parts slip away.
side note, to those who say good make casters harder to use like in say broodwar? broodwar had slower fights or at least more time to setup and thus the fast pace deathball style doesnt work with box casting 4 dif casters in an army
side side note, i think there are FARRRRRR too many casters but this is the "solution" i suggest to a problem assuming they dont "remove" all these casters
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You can set hotkeys using ctrl plus the 1-9 keys. This problem doesn't exist if you use more than 1 hotkey.
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i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
i use protoss as an example even tho its the least (currently) complex race to control and its unfair i feel at the amount of casters with dif roles you have to use
pheonix sentrys stalkers high templar oracle mothership core. i can see myself wanting to use 5/6 of those often and all 6 if mutas are "popular"
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I agree that there are too many casters/abilities in this game.. It would be more interesting if we had more straight up units that we could optimize with control/positioning/micro instead of pressing t and clicking somewhere.
The hotkey situation is a little annoying, and definitely a barrier for some but I don't think it's the main problem here ^^ Although I feel like it's one blizzard would be more likely to realize/answer
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On January 18 2013 13:34 sunglasseson wrote:
i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
Scarlet uses "0" for creep-Queen(s)
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Feel bad for you if you ever played BW with 12 units max.
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I'm probably in the minority here, but I find Toss micro a lot harder than in BW and Toss macro to be some what harder, too (for 1, it's about 200 times easier to be supply blocked in SC 2). At times, if you care about optimization (none of that let me just have all of my nexi on 1 hotkey), it really feels like you need the ability to have more hotkeys. If I have keys that aren't assigned to something, it sure would be nice if I could turn them into hotkeys. I hear you OP and feel with you.
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On January 18 2013 13:58 zhurai wrote:
Use more hotkeys.
sc2 isnt bw i wish it was it isnt. that being said if i use 1-4 for army 5 for bases 6 for upgrades 7-9 for structures (mouse buttons) now what?
im using the full keybinds available and even using 0 which i cant use or 7 which i can barely use isnt gonna solve the problem. army binds make my fights less sloppy.
im pointing out that sometimes in the race v race balance decisions blizzard makes, often times a unit is balanced if used properly but unable to be used to its full potential. blizzard may then nerf/buff something to compensate when really all that was needed was to make the unit more easily used or productive. im worried that there are too many casters (there are too many casters in general but thats a dif topic...) that will not be properly used by lower players in say low masters and below and then naturally blizzard will ruin it for the better players who CAN use them properly by making other units stronger and then ADDING power to a race that was fine
also to the post about scarlet using 0 for queens, you cant fluently use 0 in a battle. she has 0 as queens because its not a unit you need absolute responsiveness from. the best keybinds are 1-5 and thus naturally tend to go towards army
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The problem with your idea is that spells can share the same hotkey. In particular, hotkeys are totally customizable, so in a hotkey layout like TheCore, all spell casters have their spells on the same 3 keys, so something like this wouldn't be possible.
If you're using 4 army hotkeys, you shouldn't have more than 2 casters on the same control group, and you can tab between them. Or you can ctrl+click the caster you want.
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i get that tab does this but leme ask u this, how can i blink and storm at same time? cant requires an extra key press which hurts my gameplay.
now how can i put an air caster a ground caster a t3 caster and say mothership core on sep keybinds that dont interfere with the role? if i A move with stalkers and sentrys i dont want my oracles with those since it will fly into the fight. i dont want my storms with pheonix or stalkers in case they get caught up unable to storm or my pheonix need to fly deeper into the enemy army. im already turning off charge with tab so i dont get all my chargelots baited (not required but its nice to have) so id PREF to not lose this just to put storms on that keybind just to allow my other casters a better bind. its a mess no matter how we slice it.
how does a zerg keybind ultralisk burrow attack with lings infestors and vipers. i like to have 2 groups of lings/ultras/infestors and its clunky to tab that much with 2 control groups
its simply clunky no matter what
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If you're using 4 army hotkeys, you shouldn't have more than 2 casters on the same control group, and you can tab between them. Or you can ctrl+click the caster you want.
Basically this, I only use 3 control groups for my army and I never have the problem that you are experiencing.
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United States4883 Posts
Quite honestly, the best solution is to get used to doing very accurate clicks and casting individually. This was primarily the way players microed in BW...in fact, this was the way they macroed too (press screen hotkey and individually clicked each gateway to produce units). The point is, players like Mvp can get away with only 1-2 hotkeys because they are very good at moving their army around in engagements just by clicking quickly and accurately. It's good to use unbound units and your minimap more as well.
To give you an example: say you have a big protoss deathball + Mothership. This includes zealots, stalkers, a sentry, colossus, immortals, archons, and a few templar. You can set templar to a separate hotkey, especially if you have them in a speed prism, the rest can pretty much go on 1 hotkey. When you engage, manually ctrl+click your stalkers to blink, click on your colossus to kite, move your mothership manually. All of these are fairly large targets to click on. Sometimes you can even rely on spreading out templar and leaving them off hotkeys (in fact, this might be preferable, it's what PartinG does quite a bit).
Also, quick tip: you can avoid zealot charge baiting by just actually moving your army into a closer proximity of your opponent's army before attacking; this allows all of your zealots to charge while still in range of your colossus and/or templar.
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There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone.
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On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone.
unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm
its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky
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United States4883 Posts
On January 18 2013 16:01 sunglasseson wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone. unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky
Your argument is officially invalid. It might seem clunky to you because you aren't used to the mechanics needed to play Starcraft, but there's absolutely no reason why manually clicking units and casters can't be utilized with a fair amount of ease. From what you're saying, the problem is not the game being clunky, it's you. I'm not flaming you, I just really think you should take the suggestions in this thread:
Everyone in this thread has made great suggestions including using minimap more, putting only important casters on hotkeys, individually clicking casters and units, putting units like MsC, observers, or warp prisms on follow commands, etc, all of which are fairly simple and elegant solutions, though they may not necessarily be easy to learn or implement into your gameplay.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 18 2013 13:58 Nimitz.no wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 13:34 sunglasseson wrote:
i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
Scarlet uses "0" for creep-Queen(s)
Most zergs play with "0" for queens, as they can do the base camera shift-click injects really fast. The keying for that is something like 0, shift+V, spam backspace + left click. You use the right shift-key with your thumb. I'm not entirely sure if Scarlett's queens on "0" are her creep queens, but it's possible.
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On January 18 2013 13:34 sunglasseson wrote:
i use 4 army hotkeys
which is the most ive seen ppl use. many pros use 2-3 and some use ZERO forget who the zerg is that does that
i use protoss as an example even tho its the least (currently) complex race to control and its unfair i feel at the amount of casters with dif roles you have to use
pheonix sentrys stalkers high templar oracle mothership core. i can see myself wanting to use 5/6 of those often and all 6 if mutas are "popular"
I cant see how, using 4 army hotkeys, you can experience such a problem...
Let summarize toss casters/abilities
templar (storm/feedback)
stalker (blink)
sentries (FF+shield)
phoenix
warp prism (eventually)
That's about it (correct me if i'm wrong)
ok
In PvT wo you often make phoenix and if you do, do you really want to use the lift ? Sounds rare and odd
so you're left with (what we see most of the time)
zealot stalkers sentries colo/immo archon templar
zealot colo/immo archon are A move units, that can be on 1 hotkey
often time you add to that group the sentries (for the shield) and stalker
sentries have priority over stalker so you can cast shield and FF instantly
Then clicking on the stalker to blink them doesnt sounds THAT hard to do, and doesnt rlly require tabbing...
Templar should always be on their own control group, so i dont even take that in consideration
PvZ
most of the time (not always)
stalker/colo/mothership/templar
stalker colo group 1 A move, and click blink... not so hard
templar group 2, no issue
mothership group 3, no issue
In which situation do you need to tab more than once if you control groups are decently made... and i only show 3 control groups...
Could you illustrate your problem with your current army control group? Cause i rlly rlly cannot see how the hell you're gettin that problem...
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i'm all for the interface allowing modification as long as it doesnt give obvious advantages, but making this default wouldn't work for me since i have every main spell on every unit on the same key.
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On January 18 2013 16:17 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2013 16:01 sunglasseson wrote:On January 18 2013 15:26 Novacute wrote:
There are a few solutions, control groups exclusively to powerful casters eg. 1 for HT 2 for Sentry. OR you could play like some other pros who MANUALLY select the caster and cast them whilst quickly selecting the army group right after to continue micro. A lot of players do the latter, especially Protoss players because they have alot of scattered Hts. The good thing about hots is that it further increases the skill cap that's been reached in WoL by forcing more individual unit control and widening the caster base. This is a good thing for esports. Leave it alone. unless one race needs to use 4+ casters very effectively and the other doesnt use more then 1. also wouldnt the game be better if every unit could be used well and more importantly fast? its slower to click 1 tab storm then 4 storm its even slower to hit 2 tab use mothership core in some way then click 1 tab and storm. its just clunky Your argument is officially invalid. It might seem clunky to you because you aren't used to the mechanics needed to play Starcraft, but there's absolutely no reason why manually clicking units and casters can't be utilized with a fair amount of ease. From what you're saying, the problem is not the game being clunky, it's you. I'm not flaming you, I just really think you should take the suggestions in this thread: Everyone in this thread has made great suggestions including using minimap more, putting only important casters on hotkeys, individually clicking casters and units, putting units like MsC, observers, or warp prisms on follow commands, etc, all of which are fairly simple and elegant solutions, though they may not necessarily be easy to learn or implement into your gameplay.
yes add your pov with a condescending stab. again, theres a high likelyhood im a better player then you being that ive been top masters as all the races. the problem i have with tab is quality of life. 5 casters with 3 of them playing the same keybind role are stupid. you can go watch pro games where the casters such as templar and infestors VERY commonly die when they did not at all have to die but thats the nature of the pros keybind/caster/other unit relationship when using tab
its insanely clunky and lacks fluidity. as someone who likes to use the hotkeys over boxing it means i have to box more but it doesnt mean its good for the game
to each his own i suppose but it does cause problems that can be avoided. the only arguement i can see is "ur making it easier" have u played sc2 tho? sc2 is SOOOOO easy. you can put an entire army on 1 keybind and have success.... people can get GM with 1 army bind
also i didnt mean pros used the 0 number bind i meant they used no keybinds... its a zerg i forget who it was tho
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EPT
