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Introduction
When writing in any type of informative text, it is important to recognize and address your audience. I understand that this guide will be useful to a very low percentage of the community (about 10% of people are left-handed), but as a lefty myself, it was quite frustrating when I started out as a gamer. While this was a number of years ago there are still people who are introduced to Starcraft II every day. They may look up guides on hotkeys and control but most of it is in a right hand context and may be difficult to translate.
I will say overall though the best way to get used to this setup without making your own scheme is practice. Just like anything else involving Starcraft or any other hobby, the best way to get good is to not just rely 100% on a guide, but to practice thoroughly. Keep in mind, this is my personal setup. I do not represent every left hander. Everybody may be comfortable setting up a different way and I will not disagree. I am not saying my setup and usage is better than yours, this is just a setup for those lefties who may feel lost or anybody who may want a few pointers in improving their left handed control. For those of you who are curious about left handed FPS games on the PC, I will include my hotkey scheme at the end of this article as well.
Background
As balancing College, work, girlfriend and my Fraternity, I do not have as much time as I would like to play Starcraft. I am a lower Master League player with around a 3,000 MMR who has a consistent Zerg Starcraft II APM of about 200. I know this game very well and am very fluent on the keyboard. As I have stated before, it involves much practice to not need to look down especially on a setup that was not made for my ways. I am also quite ambidextrous. I play sports with my right hand/foot but write and use the keyboard with my left hand. Where my right is more powerful, my left is more precise. I note this because people ask if my right arm/hand gets tired while writing or playing; it does not at all.
My Setup and Recommendations
A picture of my home desk is as follows
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/lineman9694/2011-02-14_15-45-27_678.jpg
Peripheral wise, I use as you can see, a Steelseries Kinzu mouse with a Razer Black Widow keyboard. As a left hander you need to chose an ambidextrous modeled mouse if you want a decent gaming mouse. Other options include mice like the Razer Diamondback which I had previously used and had no problems. My thumb is on the right side of the mouse which renders buttons on the left side useless. I use a standard setup with my middle finger on the left mouse button with my index on the right. I do not switch the mouse buttons on my driver software. This is where some of us will be different. Some lefties will swap the mouse buttons around the other way which is totally acceptable. The mouse hand is the easiest to learn, whereas most of my focus will be on the keyboard. I do not like left handed keyboards. My preference is in mechanical keyboards and they may be hard to find in a left hand orientation. Even this aside I have been used to all my life a standard keyboard. My friends who may wish to use my keyboard will be extremely confused, using computers at school or anywhere else but my room will be quite frustrating and overall just adds an unnecessary level of complexity. You do not need a left hand keyboard if you are a lefty.
Mouse Hand:
There is not much to say here. Much of your APM should come from your keyboard hand. You will of course with your mouse hand box units, direct them, click upgrades if you have not learned those hotkeys, etc. Depending on which finger you use to do this, it is very easy to train your mind to where you do not have to think about this. Moving on.
Keyboard Hand
(Picture in Standard Position)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/lineman9694/2011-02-14_15-46-09_915.jpg
Now here’s the fun stuff. Why is my index finger on two instead of one? Because, it is simply much easier to control your index instead of your pinky/ring. While eventually you will get skilled with the accuracy of striking keys on all of your fingers hopefully, your index and middle will always be a bit ahead. Before I get into my specific hotkey setup, allow me to go over general purposes of simple mechanics.
Index and thumb: The most important roles these two fingers will be a part of are control groups and grouping. Your army should be on 1 and 2, maybe 3. 1 and 2 will be struck by your index and 3 with your middle finger. I almost feel as if lefties have an advantage here. Your hand will migrate back to the standard position most of the game and whereas right handers usually have these keys binded for their armies in the same place, they need to shift their hand to the left to strike them with their index/middle or use their less-trained fingers. Second, control groups are also more fluent in my opinion. While the thumb is not the best finger to use for training units, creating buildings, etc. It is quite good on control and shift as they are the furthest key and next to your thumb by the way it sits. To create a control group, hold control with your thumb and then strike the number you wish to associate with that group. To assign anything to 6 and above, I use my pinky. To add to a group simply select the units you wish to add, use your index or thumb (I find index to be much easier) and hold shift. Then exactly like making a control group, press the number of the group you wish to add to. Then boom, you are back into standard position. This is quite good for micro. Your standard position is at home on the army control groups and your grouping keys are near.
Macro and unit abilities are quite a bit different. This is where the real practice will need to be put into. This is where the second standard position comes into play. You will shift very often between the two positions, but they both have their important roles. Especially for things like unit production, attack moving and precise micro in battles.
2nd Standard Position
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/lineman9694/2011-02-14_15-46-16_762.jpg
You will find yourself being in this position much more often during a heated game. For me as zerg, I am able to train drones quickly by first selecting my hatchery on 4 with my middle and then quickly spamming S,D. With your index on S, you are able to strike S and follow with many different things without having to look down once used to it. As Zerg it is very easy to produce drones, overlords, roaches, hydras, corruptors, etc. because they are all very close to where your hand will be. It is almost like typing class in fifth grade. All of the letter keys are within one key’s distance away from each other. Personally, I double tap very much. I am not very fond of holding a key down to produce multiple instances of an action so for example when I want to produce 5 drones I strike S and instead of hitting D five times with my middle finger, I will use both my index and middle in rapid succession to quickly finish my desired task and follow by placing my index back to its original placement on S. With a bit of practice you will be able to move back and forth from both positions with ease and shift/control clicking will be no problem. Using tab to cycle in groups is done with the index finger very easily in either positions.
Specific Situations
Attack Moving: In the 2nd standard position it will become a natural motion to move your index one key to the left to A, and pinky one to the right to H. Now you will be able to fluently attack move by moving/attack moving in succession or hold position and get the best out of your mutas, roaches, marines, etc.
Rapid Injecting: This is a bit jumpy and may require you to look down a bit until used to it. With all queens in one control group, strike V with your index, follow by holding shift with your index and then while holding, press backspace and left-click once per hatchery. Follow up by moving back into 2nd standard position to produce or 1st position to double tab a control group to leave your hatch view.
For a more detailed description, see: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=125725
Using unit abilities: In conjunction with control groups, this will come a little easier then you may think. Your micro will develop much quicker than your macro using this setup you just need to get used to it. I will not get into exact abilities but you need to learn the hotkey for these and use/adjust accordingly.
My Hotkey Setup
1,2,3 - Armies. Usually 1 is my whole army without mutas. 2 Will be spellcasters like infestors and 3 will be my mutas. Depending on the unit composition this will vary.
4 - Hatcheries. Something I personally need to improve upon. While this is fine normally with just a natural, extra bases will require different things to be produced. Such as your new expansion may only need drones produced so why produce drones from your main to walk all the way to your new expo when you can just create them there. A lot of times I manually select the hatches but personally I know I could improve by seperating them into different groups. Beyond 5 and changing my Queens to 4.
5 - Queens. Because of my inject methods, It is much easier to put them into one group. Also when defending things like early Terran pushes or Protoss' early Stargate aggression, your Queens are vital in defending from air units and are much easier to control and target fire units in one group.
6+: Depending on the speed of the game, I will bind these keys to my tech structures. In a heavy macro game I will have time and will remember to do this more often. I will not have to pan my camera to the structure to begin my desired upgrade.
[Saved for Feedback/Questions].
My FPS/MMO Setup
I play CoD a little bit here and there now, but I no longer play WoW. When I did, my WoW controls and CoD controls are very similar. Instead of the typical WASD, use IJKL. It is the opposite and your primary fingers are in range to easily strike keys surrounding IJK. In WoW, most of you know already to use the same keys but just add shift before to double your key usage as to not have to use the whole keyboard.
In Conclusion
Thank you all for reading and hopefully it has cleared up any questions you lefties (or witches, as my friends call it) you may have. I once again will state that this is my personal setup and everyone is different. I am in no way saying my setup is the best. I would encourage you all to leave some feedback on the first article I've really created here on the forums. I will not respond to anything negative. If you wish to ask a question, or simply want to voice a change you feel is better please do so in a positive manner.
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Seems pretty good. I am lefthanded myself but i've used my right hand to control the mouse for my entire life: its awesome being a lefty because my hotkey skills are awesome (I used to benefit from it especially with WoW since i had 35 hotkeys) while my mouse skills are average (easy trainable anyways).
If you're not like me, left handed but using your left hand for your mouse, this is pretty good :D. I do recommand left handed players to play standard tho, when you become good with it you will see the results ^^.
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Very nice guide; I had been playing with the standard configuration for quite a long while, but I decided to switch over to the left handed config after I started getting some serious aches in my right hand. Everything has been working out much better for me (hatches on 9 now, army on 6-8, queens, overseers etc. on 0-+) and my APM has gone up considerably.
My only issue was that I kept on pressing K (attack) instead of L (inject) with my queens, resulting in lots of hatcheries with 100 less health than they should have had and not enough larvae at all.
I'll consider switching back now that someone has made an extensive guide explaining how I should move my hand, but leftie is just so much easier on the hand.
Thanks!
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Thanks guys 
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Well-written. I'm sure this will come in handy for some lefties looking for setup info
By the way,
On February 15 2011 06:08 unDef wrote:
I am a lower Master League player with around a 3,000 MMR
I think you mean points? MMR is hidden.
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"Around" entails that the opponents I play are about 3,000 ML ranked. My rating is <2k because while I play a few games a week, it is not enough to keep up with inflation so my actual rank doesn't go anywhere. It's just to project a general sense of my skill level. I do not think it would be appropriate to post replays for an article like this. Unfortunately I am sure some people may heckle me a bit for my rating, but you'll always have this .
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im lefthanded and i feel much more of an advantage having my precise and fast hand on the keyboard rather than on the mouse, also years of training made my right hand precise on the mouse, however it would not be as fast (precision wise) with each finger to click the keyboard, so having only 2 buttons to click without any need for precision is not a problem.
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On February 15 2011 06:49 Toxi78 wrote:
im lefthanded and i feel much more of an advantage having my precise and fast hand on the keyboard rather than on the mouse, also years of training made my right hand precise on the mouse, however it would not be as fast (precision wise) with each finger to click the keyboard, so having only 2 buttons to click without any need for precision is not a problem.
Most of the left handed I know are like this. If anything, it should be easier for a lefty to play the 'conventional way' for a macro-based RTS.
Well, not like true lefties are common anyways, almost everyone can use both hands nearly equally.
Unfortunely for me, I'm a true right-handed, which means I can't use my left side for shit.
Awesome article regardless.
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Thanks dude. As a left handed pc user I've been wondering recently about how should I set up my keyboard and such. However, I was thinking about something else. Wouldn't it be a good to migrate the hotkeys so that you could have your right hand where it supposedly should be? Like, for example, A key, attack key, is used very often. However, if you have to move your hand all the way across the keyboard every few seconds, doesn't that look awful? I have yet to try the hotkey migration idea I just explained but in theory it sounds alright (does it?) btw, can you remap hotkeys like attack, shift and all that? or is it just unit hotkeys?
Anyways that's the idea. I should have tested it before mentioning it but I'm just too lazy, so I just spit out the idea. Your call, after all. Thanks for the tips.
On February 15 2011 06:51 Zephirdd wrote:
Well, not like true lefties are common anyways, almost everyone can use both hands nearly equally.
really?
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i think the only pro gamer with a left hand mouse configuration is NANIWA
also, i've had a computer for 16 years now, played a lot on it and have chronic tendinitis on my right wrist. unfortunately my work is 100 % computer related so i had to switch the mouse at work on my left hand. Works quite well actually for the office tasks but can't play with my left at all
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On February 15 2011 06:51 jlim wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 06:51 Zephirdd wrote:
Well, not like true lefties are common anyways, almost everyone can use both hands nearly equally.
really?
This is just an odd theory of mine, but from what I've seen from lefty friends and all, it seems to be true. Most people are born with equal brain ability, and according to what you learn when you are young, you will be right or left-sided, and it can change over few years when still young. For example, many people write with their left hand when they are learning how to write, and then switch to the right hand once they feel comfortable with it. Thye could as well as keep their left hand if that's what they want - maybe they are rebelling against their mother by writting with the "other" hand? I don't know.
Most of the people are able to use both sides of the both nearly equally, as long as they train themselves for it. For instance, I have two friends who kick with their right foot and write with their left hand, not because they can't use the other side, they are just used to it.
A few people, however, don't have this privilege. They could train their body to achieve a similar ability with both sides, but the "unatural" side won't ever be as good as the "natural" side of the body. I call these "true" lefties/righties.
For an experience, lay down in your bed, close your eyes and start to feel - NOT touch, feel - your body. Feel which side weighs the most, which side has most sense. Chances are that you won't feel a difference. I will feel my whole right side much more than my left side. I can't do ANYTHING with my left side in fact, only very non-precise movements. Even breathing when swimming, I feel that breathing to the right is much more comfortable. Heck, even on my keyboard I keep missing my keys with my left hand even though it is totally used to hitting them.
So far, I never met anyone who is a "true lefty" to confirm this theory, but every single lefty I've met are capable of using their right side as long as they train it.
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On February 15 2011 07:07 Zephirdd wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 06:51 jlim wrote:On February 15 2011 06:51 Zephirdd wrote:
Well, not like true lefties are common anyways, almost everyone can use both hands nearly equally.
really? This is just an odd theory of mine, but from what I've seen from lefty friends and all, it seems to be true. Most people are born with equal brain ability, and according to what you learn when you are young, you will be right or left-sided, and it can change over few years when still young. For example, many people write with their left hand when they are learning how to write, and then switch to the right hand once they feel comfortable with it. Thye could as well as keep their left hand if that's what they want - maybe they are rebelling against their mother by writting with the "other" hand? I don't know. Most of the people are able to use both sides of the both nearly equally, as long as they train themselves for it. For instance, I have two friends who kick with their right foot and write with their left hand, not because they can't use the other side, they are just used to it. A few people, however, don't have this privilege. They could train their body to achieve a similar ability with both sides, but the "unatural" side won't ever be as good as the "natural" side of the body. I call these "true" lefties/righties. For an experience, lay down in your bed, close your eyes and start to feel - NOT touch, feel - your body. Feel which side weighs the most, which side has most sense. Chances are that you won't feel a difference. I will feel my whole right side much more than my left side. I can't do ANYTHING with my left side in fact, only very non-precise movements. Even breathing when swimming, I feel that breathing to the right is much more comfortable. Heck, even on my keyboard I keep missing my keys with my left hand even though it is totally used to hitting them. So far, I never met anyone who is a "true lefty" to confirm this theory, but every single lefty I've met are capable of using their right side as long as they train it.
Ooooh I see. Funny how one word led to such explanation lol
Well that makes sense, with training I guess most people would be able to use both sides almost equally. I've never seen such a thing, tho - I guess everyone I know never had the desire or the need to become proficient with their "bad" hand.
Your case seems pretty singular. I don't know what to say about it lol I've always thought everybody would do things with one hand and be a disaster with the other, unless they had the need to train the bad one, like football players.
In my case I am right handed and I can't do shit with the left hand, but I do scroll the mouse with the left hand. Because of an injury long time ago, I had to learn to use to mouse with the left hand. I got used to it and now that's my main "mouse" hand, although I can scroll with the right hand with no problem. I guess this proves what you said that most people can use greatly their "bad" hand as long as they train and get used to it. As said, I don't see who would need such a thing.
And I guess every lefty is able to use their right side because life gets so hard if you can't use your right side, as almost everything is made focusing on right handed people.
btw sorry for derailing the topic
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On February 15 2011 06:51 jlim wrote:Thanks dude. As a left handed pc user I've been wondering recently about how should I set up my keyboard and such. However, I was thinking about something else. Wouldn't it be a good to migrate the hotkeys so that you could have your right hand where it supposedly should be? Like, for example, A key, attack key, is used very often. However, if you have to move your hand all the way across the keyboard every few seconds, doesn't that look awful? I have yet to try the hotkey migration idea I just explained but in theory it sounds alright (does it?) btw, can you remap hotkeys like attack, shift and all that? or is it just unit hotkeys? Anyways that's the idea. I should have tested it before mentioning it but I'm just too lazy, so I just spit out the idea. Your call, after all. Thanks for the tips. Show nested quote +On February 15 2011 06:51 Zephirdd wrote:
Well, not like true lefties are common anyways, almost everyone can use both hands nearly equally.
really?
Well ideally anybody who masters this game can go anywhere they want with no effort on the board. But you do not learn this all at once, you take small steps to build up to it. Unless you are shift injecting you really are not jumping across the keyboard so much. A few inches to migrate rows is much less difficult then going all over. In your example of using A, if you are in one of the two standard positions I demonstrated, you are only a key or two away. It would not make much sense to try and always focus on having your finger on A as it really only serves one function (attack). You generally will keep them on the number keys more often as your control groups are your most important keys to use.
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@zephirrd to confirm your theory i'm just gonna talk about myself for a bit because im a really strange lefty.
i cant throw things with my left hand, any sport that is about throwing i do it with the right hand. however i played tennis for like 12 years and im lefthanded at it and even if i feel that i dont have any power with this hand, but my strongest point was my serve wtf! i can write better than average with the right hand and can do some other sports with both hands, but when it comes to football hell am i lefty, cant shot the ball with the right foot, however i can do some skilled tricks with this foot (that most non-skilled football players couldnt,i mean) when its not about being powerful.
about gaming i got to a very good war3 level with only using hotkeys / groups really really fast and one day i thought "damn im not skilled enough at mouse" and it took be about 1 year to improve on that and now i feel like im damn precise and fast with it (improved my micro a lot).
so that was it^^
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Thanks for the writeup! I play left handed too and have the same keyboard. I put my individual hatches where you put your queen so I can tap and check how far along injects are, but essentially the exact same hotkeys
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Bless you sir. I'm a lefty that's "too used to playing right handed" to really try to switch. The 1 main obstacle I find, when I have tried, is the direction of the arrow!
Ever notice how it looks like its coming from the right!?!?! The fat part coming from the lower right.... drives me nuts! Is there anything you can do about that?
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Disclaimer: this is mostly my personal anecdotal evidence, so take it for what you will.
One thing to look out for is if your keyboard is too close to your mouse.You want your hand to go straight out from your shoulders, so there is no awkward angle in your wrists. Unfortunately to do this you have to shove your keyboard way to the right, instead of having it centered in front of you. I think Nazgul does this.
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/qGA5f.jpg) Not Nazgul, but you get the idea
If you have the keyboard too "centered" in front of you, your wrist on either your mouse or keyboard will be at an odd angle. If your mouse hand is not straight out ahead from your shoulder you will lose accuracy in certain directions (like going toward bottom left, which is very bad since the mini-map is there!). If your keyboard hand is at an odd angle, you run the risk of really hurting your wrist. I had issues with my wrist back when I used to play WoW a ton, but they went away when I started pushing my keyboard to the right. Nowadays I just shove the keyboard to the right when I game, and pull it back when I'm doing work/school/TL posts/whatever.
If I can ever get my hands on a Filco Tenkeyless i'll be so happy, since right now my numpad is quite literally hanging off of my desk.
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I wanted a tenkeyless before so I can get the white keys and have a different color thing going but couldn't find everything/was out of stock at the time hah. But I love my Blackwidow with the cherry blues very much.
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I'm going to bump this. It will be the only time I do it, not many people are true lefties I suppose
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EPT
