What is the point of the Warpgate auto-group?

On September 11 2010 02:49 andeh wrote:
Terran gets idle worker button

On September 11 2010 02:43 kamicom wrote:
Let me make it clear that I'm not crying imba. I just can't see the justification of having such a function exclusively for one race. Personally, I'd prefer if it were removed but I wouldn't mind (hotkeying buildings is just a split second esp. for more experienced players)

Warpgate in itself is an amazing technology which is why it's appealing as the predominant race. Hypothetically speaking, why can't barracks or hatcheries have the same function?

On September 11 2010 02:53 iCCup.Diamond wrote:


You know that feature is not unique to Terran right?

On September 11 2010 02:59 andeh wrote:


it helps terran the most

and of course I know this?

On September 11 2010 02:59 andeh wrote:


it helps terran the most

and of course I know this?

On September 11 2010 03:01 Tjab wrote:


... how does it help terran the most? a probe still needs to rally after building, and you do the same with an scv?

On September 11 2010 03:06 Slow Motion wrote:

In BW lower level Terrans will forget about sending SCV back to mien after building something, because you have to wait for it to build and you are doing other stuff in the mean time. Protoss could just build and send that probe to do something else immediately. Even in high level games you'll see idle building SCV as time goes on or something intense is happening. This Protoss advantage has been largely negated in SC2, and is a big reason why I personally shifted from toss to Terran (that and Thors).

On September 11 2010 02:57 Slow Motion wrote:
Instead of adding more easy mode hotkeys, why don't we take them out and force people to multitask? Take out crap like MBS, auto group, auto repair, smart fires. At higher levels in longer games, this will mean that slight differences in skill will start to shine through and the stronger player will have an advantage.

On September 11 2010 02:57 Slow Motion wrote:
Instead of adding more easy mode hotkeys, why don't we take them out and force people to multitask? Take out crap like MBS, auto group, auto repair, smart fires. At higher levels in longer games, this will mean that slight differences in skill will start to shine through and the stronger player will have an advantage.

On September 11 2010 03:14 Scorcher2k wrote:
I say either drop the warpgate button or give zerg a larva button. Also, allow players to create a Queen spawn larva rally(perhaps not the best word). I think that simply change to allow players to simply hotkey their queens and hit 'v' a couple times would even things out a bit with the other races.

On September 11 2010 03:20 habermas wrote:
Protoss macro is difficult enough as it is. Zerg has the easiest time as they don't even have to take an eye off of whatever they are doing to macro: create workers, make overlords, spawn larva, or produce units. Terran can just spam units from ther rax/factory/starport with hotkeys without looking at them.

Protoss on the other hand need to change location to the nearest pylon to warp in. The same with chronoboost and building pylons for more supply. I believe having 'w' to autoselect all warpgates is necessary to makes things more even in terms of mechanics.

On September 11 2010 03:20 habermas wrote:
Protoss macro is difficult enough as it is. Zerg has the easiest time as they don't even have to take an eye off of whatever they are doing to macro: create workers, make overlords, spawn larva, or produce units. Terran can just spam units from ther rax/factory/starport with hotkeys without looking at them.

Protoss on the other hand need to change location to the nearest pylon to warp in. The same with chronoboost and building pylons for more supply. I believe having 'w' to autoselect all warpgates is necessary to makes things more even in terms of mechanics.

Again: Zerg has the easiest macro mechanics of all the races, what more would you want? Autocast for spawn larva?

On September 11 2010 03:11 Rifty wrote:


Because its 2010, not 1997. People have to stop living in the past, and actually adapt to changes... Blizzard wants the game to focus more on creativity and strategy, rather than mechanical clicking that is only learnt through years of doing the same thing over and over.

On September 11 2010 03:20 Chill wrote:
It doesn't really affect competitive play. Weak players would have complained "I have to go click on my wrap gate and then find where I want to warp in units" so they just added one key that always does it.

On September 11 2010 03:17 iCCup.Diamond wrote:


You do realize you are comparing a macro mechanic to a non-maco mechanic?

Chrono boost does not have a special hotkey. Anyone care to discuss this?

On September 11 2010 03:34 -orb- wrote:
Maybe because warp gates are the hardest macro buildings to use out of the three races?

With Zerg and Terran you can macro from elsewhere while you watch/micro your army. With Protoss you have to move your camera back to pylon power and start placing units there.

On September 11 2010 02:43 kamicom wrote:
Let me make it clear that I'm not crying imba. I just can't see the justification of having such a function exclusively for one race. Personally, I'd prefer if it were removed but I wouldn't mind (hotkeying buildings is just a split second esp. for more experienced players)

Warpgate in itself is an amazing technology which is why it's appealing as the predominant race. Hypothetically speaking, why can't barracks or hatcheries have the same function?

On September 11 2010 02:50 Thunderflesh wrote:
Mainly because with rax and hatcheries, you don't immediately have to place the unit on the map. If you rally rax and hatcheries to your army, then you can just select the building and build the unit.

Warp gates require you to pick a spot on the screen, effectively adding another step. I see the auto-group/cooldown notification as a way to compensate for that.

Edit: also, warp gates can't queue units, the way that normal gateways/rax can, so an on-screen notification of when you can warp in another unit makes up for that.

On September 11 2010 03:35 iCCup.Diamond wrote:


Orb, <3.

Yet again, Orb knows best ! lol

Seriously I would KILL to be able to macro my warpgates in the midst of a battle without switching views.

On September 11 2010 03:20 Chill wrote:
It doesn't really affect competitive play. Weak players would have complained "I have to go click on my wrap gate and then find where I want to warp in units" so they just added one key that always does it.

On September 11 2010 03:43 Tenks wrote:



Couldn't you switch them to standard Gateways before pressing out so you could do blind macro while microing your units?

On September 11 2010 03:20 habermas wrote:
Protoss macro is difficult enough as it is. Zerg has the easiest time as they don't even have to take an eye off of whatever they are doing to macro: create workers, make overlords, spawn larva, or produce units. Terran can just spam units from ther rax/factory/starport with hotkeys without looking at them.

Protoss on the other hand need to change location to the nearest pylon to warp in. The same with chronoboost and building pylons for more supply. I believe having 'w' to autoselect all warpgates is necessary to makes things more even in terms of mechanics.

Again: Zerg has the easiest macro mechanics of all the races, what more would you want? Autocast for spawn larva?

On September 11 2010 03:01 DarkspearTribe wrote:

Shift+b+*insert building you want*+g

On September 11 2010 03:44 sleepingdog wrote:


I don't get this point - in howfar is that different from a weak player complaining "I have to go click on my barracks and then find a place where I want the units to ralley"

On September 11 2010 04:02 Chill wrote:

You can rally Barracks once and then you just have to click on the Barracks and make units. You can't do that with warpgates. They are intended to be used by going to the location you want to warp units. Most people don't use hotkeys. So it's unreasonable to expect newbies to click a warpgate, scroll to a location, and then warp in units. So they made the 'w' hotkey.

On September 11 2010 03:08 acrimoneyius wrote:


This isn't sc1...they built the game to be more intuitive. The game is less about spammy fucking fingers and more about thinking.

On September 11 2010 04:02 Chill wrote:

You can rally Barracks once and then you just have to click on the Barracks and make units. You can't do that with warpgates. They are intended to be used by going to the location you want to warp units. Most people don't use hotkeys. So it's unreasonable to expect newbies to click a warpgate, scroll to a location, and then warp in units. So they made the 'w' hotkey.

On September 11 2010 03:08 acrimoneyius wrote:


This isn't sc1...they built the game to be more intuitive. The game is less about spammy fucking fingers and more about thinking.

On September 11 2010 03:46 LSGamer wrote:
Exactly how people have said, We toss have to look away from a fight or whatever to place it, whereas Z and T can say press 4 and then H or D and even queue them

On September 11 2010 04:02 Chill wrote:

You can rally Barracks once and then you just have to click on the Barracks and make units. You can't do that with warpgates. They are intended to be used by going to the location you want to warp units. Most people don't use hotkeys. So it's unreasonable to expect newbies to click a warpgate, scroll to a location, and then warp in units. So they made the 'w' hotkey.

On September 11 2010 04:16 Alpina wrote:


And every zerg player every 40sec. must go and inject larva, so what?

On September 11 2010 04:19 Chriamon wrote:
Am I the only one who is kinda pissed that they got rid of every hotkey for every race that could use W, and then if you play 2s and your toss partner drops, the W key doesn't even select your partners warpgates... What's the point of removing all W hotkeys and then not enabling the warpgates hotkey in team games?

On September 11 2010 04:24 shawabawa wrote:
The reason is that Blizzard don't want you to have to use the keyboard to play.

Try playing terran an protoss without the keyboard, it's not that hard right? Just a bit slower. Now try playing Protoss with warp gates *without* clicking the warp gate icon. It's impossible. For every unit you warp in you have to move the screen to the warp gate, click, move the screen to where you want to place it and click again. Then all the way back.

At least that's how I see it. I think zerg should get something similar for "queens ready to inject" or something.

On September 11 2010 04:26 StreetHeat wrote:
Actually I would be really happy if all the hatches just had a cooldown timer like the warpgates do. I dont mind manually injecting but just to see when to do it would help Z be a little more accessable

On September 11 2010 04:24 shawabawa wrote:
At least that's how I see it. I think zerg should get something similar for "queens ready to inject" or something.

On September 11 2010 04:30 iCCup.Diamond wrote:


Turn on health bars. When they are on there is a gray bar above the hatchery that shows larva timing.

On September 11 2010 03:34 -orb- wrote:
Maybe because warp gates are the hardest macro buildings to use out of the three races?

With Zerg and Terran you can macro from elsewhere while you watch/micro your army. With Protoss you have to move your camera back to pylon power and start placing units there.

On September 11 2010 04:38 Reason.SC2 wrote:
Off-topic (has anyone other than me accidentally self-destructed a control group of banelings by misclicking? Omg soooo annoying haha)

On September 11 2010 03:08 acrimoneyius wrote:


This isn't sc1...they built the game to be more intuitive. The game is less about spammy fucking fingers and more about thinking.

On September 11 2010 04:41 spinesheath wrote:

How is it intuitive that Warpgates are the only production facility that are autoassigned to their own special hotkey?
Say you played terran a bit, campaign and stuff. That's the race you're familiar with. Now you try protoss. Is it intuitive that warpgates have a special hotkey?

On September 11 2010 04:16 Alpina wrote:


And every zerg player every 40sec. must go and inject larva, so what?

On September 11 2010 04:17 vesicular wrote:
Really, the only issue I see with it isn't even the hotkey, or the little icon on screen. It's the fact that you get an in-game timer that tells you when warpgates are ready for more warp ins. There's a lot of timing stuff in the game (unit building, chrono finish, larva pop), and this is really the only one that lets you know without having to check back to see if it's ready yet or not. You just look at the corner of your screen.

On September 11 2010 04:21 iCCup.Diamond wrote:


In case you NP an opponents probe and tech to warpagtes. Because we all know that happens a lot. By a lot I mean it never actually happens.

On September 11 2010 04:48 King K. Rool wrote:

Wait, they get a notification icon now?

And a timer?

On September 11 2010 04:53 iFoughtTheLaw wrote:


Yes, bottom right corner.

On September 11 2010 04:52 Silent90 wrote:
People who keep saying that blizz wants it to be more about strategy and less about mechanics should start complaining about the unforgiving inject larva mechanic. Its a chore..

ALSO say what you wish, toss has chronoboost and terran has the mule. those are both mechanics but they are forgiving, should you forget you get the full advantage back and you dont have to use them to win, if the zerg doesent inject larva its gg

On September 11 2010 04:58 Vimsey wrote:

Arent they bringing in nested queens soon? Yea I agree once you go over 2 bases.

On September 11 2010 04:19 Chriamon wrote:
Am I the only one who is kinda pissed that they got rid of every hotkey for every race that could use W, and then if you play 2s and your toss partner drops, the W key doesn't even select your partners warpgates... What's the point of removing all W hotkeys and then not enabling the warpgates hotkey in team games?

On September 11 2010 04:58 Vimsey wrote:

Arent they bringing in nested queens soon? Yea I agree once you go over 2 bases.

On September 11 2010 04:10 Kodan wrote:



too many things I have to say about this quote, but you would be too idiotic to understand, so I'll pull a jesus and get banned for your sins


go fuck yourself!

On September 11 2010 04:42 dogabutila wrote:
When I get protoss, I tend to hotkey my warpgates with a pylon and then click the pylon and spam units.


Now that I think about it, I could just hotkey the pylon without warpgates and use W.....

On September 11 2010 05:05 mierin wrote:


Nested Queens...o.O You can't be serious, blizz would never do that.

That would make Zerg too much fun.

On September 11 2010 09:10 Sentient wrote:
Warpgates are location-agnostic. That is, the location you build the unit at has no bearing on where the warpgate is located. You would never not want all your warpgates on the same hotkey. In contrast, every other unit's spawn location depends on its building, so where the construction happens matters a lot more. That's why warpgates get an auto hotkey and the other buildings don't/

On September 11 2010 02:49 andeh wrote:
There should be a larva inject cool down.
Toss get warpgate cooldown
Terran gets idle worker button

Where is the zerg love? o_o

On September 11 2010 04:57 dvide wrote:

Wow that's not fair at all I knew about the icon but I had no idea that it told you how many warpgates are off cooldown. I'm watching it on Nony's stream right now.

On September 11 2010 10:15 TheYango wrote:

How is it not fair? You get an audio cue when units finish producing from a Barracks and you can make new ones. You don't get a notification when the warp gates come off cooldown in any form other than that button.

On September 11 2010 10:42 vesicular wrote:


You don't get an audio cue that your larva popped. The only way to know is to actually look at your base (or select a single hatch, multi-selection won't tell you either).

Zerg just wants a way to know when their larva popped, and wonders why Toss get the same for warpgates for free.

On September 11 2010 10:15 TheYango wrote:

How is it not fair? You get an audio cue when units finish producing from a Barracks and you can make new ones. You don't get a notification when the warp gates come off cooldown in any form other than that button.

On September 11 2010 02:59 andeh wrote:


it helps terran the most

and of course I know this?

On September 11 2010 12:43 sjschmidt93 wrote:


How so?

A, Probes/Drones > SCV's because of mules.
B. Probes will be idle as soon as they build something. SCV's take 40-100 seconds to do so.

On September 11 2010 12:48 AnxietE wrote:


you dont have idle probes (if your any good), you dont have idle drones (used up on buildings/mining), but terrans build stuff while physicyl there. so after it s done you can see on your screen.

On September 11 2010 09:30 Ryuu314 wrote:
It's harder to build units with Protoss in that it takes much more actions. Please don't try to deny this.

With MBS and hotkeys, Terran and Zerg pretty much just have to press the building hotkey and spam the unit hotkeys. They don't even have to look away. Protoss needs to look away into sight of a pylon. There is no avoiding this no matter how well you hotkey and how fast you can switch screens. That is a disadvantage no matter how you try to justify it.

Also, Protoss can't queue units and that is a huge disadvantage, especially since Protoss is essentially forced to look away, while Terran and Zerg (somewhat) can queue up units so their buildings are constantly producing even when they need to micro a battle.

On September 11 2010 14:18 King K. Rool wrote:

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

1. Units can be warped in anywhere you have a pylon/prism
2. Units take a few seconds to warp in.

If you want to fucking queue like the rest of us imba races then don't upgrade your gateways.

Jesus fucking christ. I can't believe you protoss are complaining that your warpgates are underpowered.

Holy mother of fucking hell.


I don't even give a shit about the original OP's point, but the sight of you players whining disgust me.

On September 11 2010 02:49 andeh wrote:
Terran gets idle worker button

It's harder to build units with Protoss in that it takes much more actions. Please don't try to deny this.

On September 11 2010 14:18 King K. Rool wrote:

Ahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

1. Units can be warped in anywhere you have a pylon/prism
2. Units take a few seconds to warp in.

If you want to fucking queue like the rest of us imba races then don't upgrade your gateways.

Jesus fucking christ. I can't believe you protoss are complaining that your warpgates are underpowered.

Holy mother of fucking hell.


I don't even give a shit about the original OP's point, but the sight of you players whining disgust me.

On September 11 2010 02:49 andeh wrote:
There should be a larva inject cool down.
Toss get warpgate cooldown
Terran gets idle worker button

Where is the zerg love? o_o

On September 11 2010 16:28 Half wrote:



Protoss has the easiest macro by far. Wow. Just lol.

T has the hardest macro, while zerg has the hardest macro mechanic. P is just lulzy easy.

A) Look away from your current screen
B) Rally every single time you warp in
C) Are vulnerable to attack/loss of power

We got to look away every 40 seconds or so for Chrono boost. So what?

On September 11 2010 16:29 Techno wrote:

Don't they all get idle worker button?
Isnt any build time a "cooldown"

Yea I dont understand why there is a select all warpgates button

every fucking thread gets derailed into race fanboyism.

I blame zerg.
lol.

On September 11 2010 03:08 acrimoneyius wrote:


This isn't sc1...they built the game to be more intuitive. The game is less about spammy fucking fingers and more about thinking.

On September 11 2010 03:47 vicariouscheese wrote:


holy ballsack

ive been right clicking on minerals every time, definitely will help for buildings away from the mineral line....

On September 11 2010 16:29 blitzkrieger wrote:


The OP is complaining about nothing while we are saying how warp gates are actually harder to use than the other races macro due to the facT (so tired) you have to

A) Look away from your current screen
B) Rally every single time you warp in
C) Are vulnerable to attack/loss of power

Also Gateways build units much slower than Warpgates.

Queing is for bads, just saying.

On September 11 2010 23:24 iCCup.Diamond wrote:
Holy shit this thread is still open???????

Anyways, I can't believe people are comparing this shit to spawn larva or mules.

Chrono Boost/Spawn Larva/Mule's are the macro mechanics. Not warpgates.

On September 11 2010 23:36 Zarahtra wrote:

But what does that exactly matter? It's greater function is to say "hey your production building is idle nab!", just like it could do with inject larvae. I think it would standardize inject a bit more, where it would feel less like a chore, and it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect all players to have 80+% effectiveness of them.

Edit: This is coming from T mind.

On September 11 2010 23:39 iCCup.Diamond wrote:


It's not really like it screams it at you. I know I NEVER EVER check that number. Like everything else in the game you learn to time it out in your head.

On September 11 2010 23:17 King K. Rool wrote:
It's like you think warpgates are the base unit when gateways fucking are. It's an upgrade.

On September 11 2010 16:44 blitzkrieger wrote:


The problem is that every zerg on the planet who sucks ass at this game thinks they are pro like IdrA and make balance complaints as if they had the knowledge/skill that IdrA does. I'm glad players like IdrA are vocal about their concerns with the game but maybe we could get IdrA to control these zerglings (or dimaga/cella) They think b/c they play zerg they are somehow better and almost have an elitist attitude about it. My race is SOOO hard and you are SOOO noob. I mean they do have legit concerns regarding Terran but it overspills into stupid garbage like this. Even if the OP isn't a troll this attitude is very common from what I've seen. Maybe its just general forum idiocy since SC2 is getting more popular there are just more idiots posting. Either way I won't "bump" this thread again if I can help it.

On September 11 2010 02:43 kamicom wrote:

Warpgate in itself is an amazing technology which is why it's appealing as the predominant race. Hypothetically speaking, why can't barracks or hatcheries have the same function?

On September 11 2010 03:08 Rifty wrote:


Ok which half-decent terran in the world doesen't shift queue their SCV's back to mining when making a building?

On September 11 2010 03:08 acrimoneyius wrote:


This isn't sc1...they built the game to be more intuitive. The game is less about spammy fucking fingers and more about thinking.

On September 11 2010 23:17 King K. Rool wrote:

Do you even understand the point I'm making?

Guess not. I'll explain it to you in easy terms.

A and B are true.

C is bullshit, protoss has always been like that so don't even give me that shit. If you're stupid enough to power all your warpgates on one pylon then you deserve to lose.

Do you not understand the fact that you can a) build units anywhere b) forget to macro but your units pop up in 5 seconds anyways instead of 20+ for the rest of us and c) the total time to build a unit is LESS than normal?

It's like you think warpgates are the base unit when gateways fucking are. It's an upgrade.

The entire reason you guys shouldn't be complaining is that your downsides are completely offset by your upsides. You keep arguing like all the upsides don't even exist.

I'm done with this thread. If you can't even understand something this simple then it's not worth my time. Probably not even worth my time in the first place to argue this.

On September 12 2010 02:59 Ryuu314 wrote:
Also, someone earlier said something about Zerg not getting any benefit in terms of knowing when their larva pops during MBS. I'm pretty damn sure that you have a little counter on the larva button telling you how much larva you have. If you can't deduce that your larva has popped when the number goes from say 3 to 14, then you have a big problem and it's not game balance.

On September 12 2010 06:05 DxL wrote:
so your saying a new player who doesnt use hotkeys is gonna have to click the warpgate, click the unit, and then click the screen to warp it in? and then what happens when they get more than one warpgate, do they have to do that 5 times?

On September 12 2010 06:28 universalwill wrote:


they can learn to hotkey. zerg doesn't have a select all hatchery button and terran doesn't have a select all production facility button. they have to learn to hotkey.

but it brings us to this: protoss is designed to be the easy race.

protoss is the most straight forward race with the least punishing macro mechanics and the easiest cheese and rush builds. most players play protoss for a reason, you know. not saying there isn't complexity to protoss. i'm saying that if you're a new player, your best bet is protoss.

Assmaster2000 wrote
WOW WATCH THAT GUY, HE CAN PLAY RTS WITH 400 APM WITH AN INVERTED MOUSE