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So recently I met a person at a LAN that lives near me and has become my SC2 buddy. We talk lots of strat, and everything SCII. The other day he posed a question that stumped me. To explain it, I will put in some pretty pictures!
So here you are as a fellow Brotoss getting ready to make a quick expansion off of a 3 gate expand.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OrqbF.png)
You see an attack incoming and realize you are woefully unprepared for this attack. You only have 2 stalkers!
So you warp in 2 Zealots and a Sentry, which is still not probably enough.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Yjmlv.png)
You rally your warping in units to the natural to help in the defense but knowing you are still outgunned you need MORE! You glance at your chrono boost and notice you have 50 energy, and 2 of your 3 warpgates will be ready quicker then the 3rd (because they made Zealots). So you want to use the 50 energy on the two that warped the zealots.
Now comes the question:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ccgYn.png)
Now normally before I did some experimentation I would have just said "idk and I'm not clicking each one individually so I'll just chrono a random 2 and hope it works!"
Now I can tell you however:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rJaCh.png)
What? How do I know? Because of where I spawned the units. Yes that is the key. The closest Warpgate to the place being warped in is the one being used. If you look back to step 2 I spawned the left Zealot first, right Zealot second, and the Sentry third. Based of the location where I spawned them you get this:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gK9vm.png)
Don't believe me, here's the proof:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ihwSN.png)
For the record, I tested also this theroy with hotkeying the gates in a sub optimal way, and even with tons of X-Y plane testing. It's how it works.
Since I found this out a whole 3 days ago I never have to look at gates anymore to chrono the right one, and I've begun experimenting with different end game warpgate layouts to optimize the searching process.
So I know this isn't like change everything huge, but it should help some people out, as I know it's helped me out!
Much <3 TL
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This is great to know, but you gotta wonder why blizzard couldn't just give us a cooldown bar over the warpgates just like every other race gets progress bars for their units building...
Thanks for figuring it out pat <3
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Nice find, every little fact helps :>
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Interesting, thanks for the heads up :D
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useful little piece of information! thanks! :D
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Interesting find. I can see this being helpful. In the heat of the moment, I don't have to time to click and compare. I often end up randomly clicking. Nice work.
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Hey, this is really useful to know! especially in hectic early-game pressure, thanks for the enlightenment 
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Awesome thank you I've actually been wondering about this for quite a while. Wish they could make it clearer though
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Now normally before I did some experimentation I would have just said "idk and I'm not clicking each one individually so I'll just chrono a random 2 and hope it works!"
Your new method is interesting, but I've always just clicked the hotkey for warpgates, then clicked the individual gate that had the longest cooldown period remaining (you can glance at every warpgate's cooldown at once if they're selected). You can then click the "unit portrait" area to center your screen on the warpgate you've selected, i.e. the one with the most cooldown remaining, and chronoboost from there. This may be less efficient if you have multiple chronoboosts to be used however, since you'd have to click warpgate hotkey > warpgate with most cooldown > unit portrait > nexus hotkey > c > click > back to warpgate hotkey > next warpgate with most cooldown > unit portait > nexus hotkey> c > click, etc.
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only problem is this works out nicely for the first warp in. but afterwards, the cooldowns on everything will be staggered.
thus, the wg used is not the closest, but the closest that is NOT ON COOLDOWN, which could be any where
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On July 27 2011 07:06 o29 wrote:Show nested quote +Now normally before I did some experimentation I would have just said "idk and I'm not clicking each one individually so I'll just chrono a random 2 and hope it works!" Your new method is interesting, but I've always just clicked the hotkey for warpgates, then clicked the individual gate that had the longest cooldown period remaining (you can glance at every warpgate's cooldown at once if they're selected). You can then click the "unit portrait" area to center your screen on the warpgate you've selected, i.e. the one with the most cooldown remaining, and chronoboost from there. This may be less efficient if you have multiple chronoboosts to be used however, since you'd have to click warpgate hotkey > warpgate with most cooldown > unit portrait > c > click > back to warpgate hotkey > next warpgate with most cooldown > unit portait > c > click, etc.
Yes but that's still more time wasted. Plus in the late game with tons of gates it becomes less and less effective to of that method. This method holds true all game and only becomes a pain if you have gates all over the map.
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is the old method hotkeying all your gates pressing w then u see which one is behind in cooldown click on that gate and it will highligh it and then chrono it .
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Surprisingly effective way actually to keep tabs on cooldowns, nice find there. I can see this being a real helper in PvP especially.
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On July 27 2011 07:07 iCCup.Diamond wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2011 07:06 o29 wrote:Now normally before I did some experimentation I would have just said "idk and I'm not clicking each one individually so I'll just chrono a random 2 and hope it works!" Your new method is interesting, but I've always just clicked the hotkey for warpgates, then clicked the individual gate that had the longest cooldown period remaining (you can glance at every warpgate's cooldown at once if they're selected). You can then click the "unit portrait" area to center your screen on the warpgate you've selected, i.e. the one with the most cooldown remaining, and chronoboost from there. This may be less efficient if you have multiple chronoboosts to be used however, since you'd have to click warpgate hotkey > warpgate with most cooldown > unit portrait > c > click > back to warpgate hotkey > next warpgate with most cooldown > unit portait > c > click, etc. Yes but that's still more time wasted. Plus in the late game with tons of gates it becomes less and less effective to of that method. This method holds true all game and only becomes a pain if you have gates all over the map.
Agreed, I was just pointing out a potentially better method than your previous method. I do agree that this new method is probably the most efficient once you get used to it.
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On July 27 2011 07:00 -orb- wrote:
This is great to know, but you gotta wonder why blizzard couldn't just give us a cooldown bar over the warpgates just like every other race gets progress bars for their units building...
Thanks for figuring it out pat <3
Seriously would be helpful I'd say. Good thing to know though, even if I'm not toss.
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I found this thread to be extremely informative, thanks for taking the time!
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very interesting! this something i've always wondered about myself. thanks for putting in the work op
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That is pretty cool, thanks for figuring this out and making a post about it.
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On July 27 2011 07:06 o29 wrote:Show nested quote +Now normally before I did some experimentation I would have just said "idk and I'm not clicking each one individually so I'll just chrono a random 2 and hope it works!" Your new method is interesting, but I've always just clicked the hotkey for warpgates, then clicked the individual gate that had the longest cooldown period remaining (you can glance at every warpgate's cooldown at once if they're selected). You can then click the "unit portrait" area to center your screen on the warpgate you've selected, i.e. the one with the most cooldown remaining, and chronoboost from there. This may be less efficient if you have multiple chronoboosts to be used however, since you'd have to click warpgate hotkey > warpgate with most cooldown > unit portrait > c > click > back to warpgate hotkey > next warpgate with most cooldown > unit portait > c > click, etc.
IMO this would take too long. It takes me about 2 seconds to go to my gates, and then nexus shift c click click click click double tap army hotkey. If I ever get around to learning to use camera hotkeys I could probably reduce this to ~1.5ish.
I would like a cooldown bar, possibly like the inject timer on a hatch, would make split second decision making more vital. Rather than blindly chronoing the first 2 gates under my cursor, taking the 200ms to decide which 2 gates would finish first is a small buff to the best players, although I feel chrono isn't a resource which is too important after the first 8 minutes of the game.
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On July 27 2011 07:00 -orb- wrote:
This is great to know, but you gotta wonder why blizzard couldn't just give us a cooldown bar over the warpgates just like every other race gets progress bars for their units building...
Thanks for figuring it out pat <3
Because the other races dont get to be able to spawn units anywhere on the map without having the whole construction building there.
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Thats pretty awesome, i always thought it was random but never actually checked!
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Wow that's interesting. Good to know. I only see it coming in handy in a few early pvp situations but every little bit counts!
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This is interesting I was just thinking about this yesterday and I thought it might work from like left to right top to bottom placement of the WG but good job doing all the testing.
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Also for the record when you have multiple Nexi hotkey'd they follow the same rule for which Nexi uses it's chrono. Although I see no situations where that matters, but still interesting.
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this is how smart casting works FYI, it's the same concept
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this is going to be one of those things which doesn't matter at all in the lower leagues but will be the difference between holding a 3 barracks allin, off of a 1 gate expand,
aka
You will be Huk!
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On July 27 2011 07:20 iCCup.Diamond wrote:
Also for the record when you have multiple Nexi hotkey'd they follow the same rule for which Nexi uses it's chrono. Although I see no situations where that matters, but still interesting.
This is only an issue when you aren't fully utilizing chrono, and one nexus hits 100 while the other closer one has enough energy for chrono. Usually at that point in the game though, chrono's are a if I have time thing.
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Amazing, I am always struggling with this, and clicking on each on takes WAY to long so I just do what you were saying just chrono and hope, thanks for the great tip!
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this is amazing.. makes sense if you think about it though, i mean creep works the same way, same with casting units.. well i think right?
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nice discovery my friend! should be useful :D
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I'm not sure how practical this is, but its a cool find. If you're in a situation where you need to chronoboost your warpgates, all of them should be on cooldown. Why would you chronoboost a warp gate if you have one not on cooldown?
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Seems like Nexus and Gates are similar in that respective. Your main Nexus is always empty because you chronoboost buildings that are close to your first nexus, while other expos stack energy.
Seems like same for gates as well
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On July 27 2011 07:34 EZjijy wrote:
I'm not sure how practical this is, but its a cool find. If you're in a situation where you need to chronoboost your warpgates, all of them should be on cooldown. Why would you chronoboost a warp gate if you have one not on cooldown?
Not with unit staggering. Look at the situation in the OP, it's 100% made up, but is a situation I could easily see coming up in game. In that case you want to make sure you chrono the 2 gates that made Zealots otherwise you will reinforce slower in a bad situation.
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This is so cool! I'm seriously so pumped about this. I thought that you had to group the nexus witht he wgs or click on them to figure it out.
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ow wow that's actually GREAT to know <3
can see it being a little hard to see which WG is closest in some situations though, but still awesome
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Neat fact, thanks for the heads up
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god this is good to know. thanks alot bro!
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I like little finds like that
thanks!
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Awesome man, I'll keep it in mind when I'm panicking under attack.
:D
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its going to be hard to do this cause in a game im not going to go omg w click click click ok which unit was closest... ill probly just be microing my units into postion and other things like this
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nice job figuring this out pat... certainly helpful!
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On July 27 2011 07:43 Drazzyo wrote:
its going to be hard to do this cause in a game im not going to go omg w click click click ok which unit was closest... ill probly just be microing my units into postion and other things like this
You don't need to know specific orders, just how many gates are on cooldown and number of gates total. If you have 10 and only 4 are ready you know what area you should be looking in for the gates on cooldown.
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8444 Posts
Nice catch, useful information!
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On July 27 2011 09:25 Liquid`Tyler wrote:
Nice catch, useful information!
Well ok I officially don't feel silly now. I was going to make this two days ago but figured all the pros would just say "yea dude, we knew that forever, common knowledge." <3 <3
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That's actually a neat little find, thanks the thread ^_^
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This is very useful, thanks a bunch for the information!
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Also the idea I had for late game I'll show here, it might suck, but it made sense to me.
Instead of grouping all your gateways in a "sqaure" laying them down in staggered lines.
Ex: You set up your gateways like this.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/pQ5PZ.png)
Then if anything warps not right above or below your gates, you can basically split the map in two.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/baJBH.png)
I don't know maybe I'm just overthinking this however.......
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this is awesome to know, thank you so much!
I wonder if this will affect base layouts for aware players in the future (making their gates in slightly more of a line toward opponent for example, rather than just placing them somewhere in base).
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This is some useful information, always wondered but ended up just randomly clicking. Thanks for finding out and sharing!
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On July 27 2011 07:00 -orb- wrote:
This is great to know, but you gotta wonder why blizzard couldn't just give us a cooldown bar over the warpgates just like every other race gets progress bars for their units building...
It's funny you should say this because I've always wondered why Zerg can't get an idle larva counter in the bottom right, like protoss gets an idle warpgate counter.
Anyways, this is a great find and I'll be using it when offracing.
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jaw = drop... great find. I knew there are some trick into it from beta but i have never had a chance to test stuff out. Question: what if the distance is equal?
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On July 27 2011 13:37 NB wrote:
jaw = drop... great find. I knew there are some trick into it from beta but i have never had a chance to test stuff out. Question: what if the distance is equal?
I got to imagine the odds of the distance being 100% equal is pretty low and I don't even know if I could replicate that (or don't know how).
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Oh my god, this was something that irritated me so bad in game. Now all I got to do is line up my gateways and I'll probably never worry about this again. Amazing.
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Heh. Thanks for sharing, this is actually kinda useful. I know I'll benefit from it. Cheers!
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I will try to get use to this although I hope a cd bar is put in
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Wow, well done, too bad I switched race but this is great to know.
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Nice deduction! I've found myself wondering this on several occasions, actually. Thank you
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Thanks for the effort of figuring out this little detail
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On July 27 2011 07:00 -orb- wrote:
This is great to know, but you gotta wonder why blizzard couldn't just give us a cooldown bar over the warpgates just like every other race gets progress bars for their units building...
Thanks for figuring it out pat <3
Gotta wonder why other races cannot directly warp units near a depot/overlord. I give you my cooldown bar against your warping anytime.
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Although I knew that is true for ccs, nexuses etc I never figured it out for wgs : )
ty for find
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I love those little details. good find sir.
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On July 27 2011 07:00 -orb- wrote:
This is great to know, but you gotta wonder why blizzard couldn't just give us a cooldown bar over the warpgates just like every other race gets progress bars for their units building...
Thanks for figuring it out pat <3
Yeah, but then I'd also ask for a larva count icon, like the one you guys get for available warpgates.
: P
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funny cos if i warped in units near my 4th base for expample - even though id probably have gateways at my second third and fourth base, id still go back to my main and chrono those ones. This is good to know though
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On July 28 2011 01:43 Paper117 wrote:
Yeah, but then I'd also ask for a larva count icon, like the one you guys get for available warpgates.
: P
There's a icon for that? :x
Never noticed it ^^
Cool guide btw, I'm just going to build 1 Gateway in a corner by now and start chrono boosting this one. 2 seconds of a higher stalker count in PvP is worth it I guess.
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good find, cant believe took that long to find out lol....
so if you have 4 gateways in a row it goes from left to right if u were warping in to the left and right to left if u warp into their right?
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while this is useful for when youre close to your gates, cross map with gates at different places, it can be a bitch trying to figure out which gates are closest. though generally if i need to chono, im warping in constantly, so it doesnt matter.
This info will come in handy though, thanks!
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interesting question, i was thinking it had to do something with a convenient hotkey and just looking at which warpgate cooldown was longest (you can do that actually right? but it takes a couple extra clicks I guess)
Thanks for sharing haha
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Nice little tip. I probably won't use it though, and just chrono random gates when I play as toss xD
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EPT
