EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5dpwwJd.png)
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction, Speed and Spam
2. Your Body
3. Equipment
4. Settings
5. Hotkeys
6. In Game Execution
7. How to Practice and Learn
8. Conclusion
9. About Me
10. Other Guides on Mechanics
1. Introduction, Speed and Spam
Who am I? Why am I doing this?
I am a musician and a Starcraft player. I’ve been in love with the game since just after Broodwar’s release and in love with eSports since the 2005 WCG grand finals. It has always been my dream to become a pro player. In my quest to achieve this goal I have experienced losing streaks of 3-500 on PGTour (the old Broodwar ladder before iCCup) and in these losses I learned something about how I played then: I was trash at the game. This realization was hard for my 13 year old self to take but it forced me to investigate the game and come to the conclusions that have allowed me to grow as a player and as a person. I want this to be a guide in mechanics that brings together all the great knowledge I have learned from players such as desRow and commentators like Day9 and Artosis. These people deserve 90% of the credit for this guide. This is a guide I've compiled from amazing resources and learned through hard work and constant searching. This is my mechanical method which has worked wonders for me. I think I have a few new things to say that just may help us all out on our journey for mechanical perfection.
Speed
Many people would say speed is one of the most important things in playing Starcraft at the highest level. That is 100% true. However, in passing conversation the fact that it is accurate speed is completely missed. If you are fast but the actions are inaccurate then your speed has been for nothing. The fact that useless actions are also not an aid in playing better is talked about more but sometimes things which may look useless actually serve a function. To have full control of the game you need to have full control of your tools and the way you use these tools to execute the strategies you want. The most important thing to realize is that I suggest you start playing at a speed where you never misclick, where you never have to cancel or correct a command. This is obviously an ideal to shoot for, still, if you play slowly with 95% accuracy while your opponent plays quickly with 50% accuracy you are both probably going to come out somewhere similar. The difference will be that the faster players hands are developing bad habits and there is less room for his hands to speed up since he is already playing closer to full speed.
This means that APM is indeed important. But it is only important once you can control your mouse, keyboard and eyes well. Speed will come with repetition.
Spam
Everyone has different opinions on spam. Slow players say it’s bad and useless, fast players say it gets them warmed up. When asking the question “should I spam?” you first must answer the question, “am I creating a bad habit?” For me the answer was yes. During my BW days I spammed with the goal of that eventually that speed be utilized for useful actions, however, I simply developed the habit of spamming all game long. This caused me to sometimes missing important actions. My brain was on autopilot with my spam muscle memory I had developed. I don’t know that I believe that spam will eventually convert into useful actions but if this is what you believe try it out. Just be careful that it doesn’t become a habit that impedes your progress as a gamer. Always ask yourself if your spam is becoming a habit that is taking away from useful actions you could be executing.
Also, here it is important to note that some techniques such as tapping, moving an army on multiple hotkeys or spamming boxes on workers are actually useful actions. These techniques are not useless and are important tools in playing a successful game of Starcraft. They will be described later in section 6.
2. Your Body
People don’t typically mention the fact that your body is a part of your mechanics. Day9’s daily on mechanics does a great job of illustrating good stretches and positioning for play to avoid injury. With perfect technique you should be able to play 10-12 hours a day without injury. Perfect technique is not only good positioning of your mouse and keyboard but also complete relaxation while playing. Good technique also includes regular breaks and daily exercise.
I personally have had overuse injuries both from Starcraft and from music. Sadly both my passions require my arm to execute 100+ actions per minute. Because so many actions must be executed our goal will be to use the least amount of force/tension possible. Sit at your computer with a blank word document and press a key as lightly as you can with complete relaxation in your arm and body. You want to play Starcraft in this state of relaxation.
With my own overuse injuries daily exercise was the first thing I was told to do. I was also told that you don’t want to do weight lifting or strength training since this further strains the already damaged tendons/muscles. Since our activity requires the arms I suggest avoiding all physical activity that requires the use of the arms. Go running. Let your arms rest while you raise your heart rate and make your body healthier. This is a good thing to do if you do suffer from injury or simply as prevention. After only a week of daily exercise I noticed that my pain was dramatically reduced even though the amount I was playing the same. This is my personal experience, if you have pain, consult a professional.
I think it is also important to give your mind/body a rest from the game. Take one day off a week even if you hate it. More practice is not always better. More practice in good conditions is better and resting your mind ensures that.
3. Equipment
I originally didn’t want to include this in my guide but Tasteless’s blog encouraged me to. I played for seven years on a basic $19 keyboard. What a mistake. Obviously personal preference is a huge factor here but I believe there are certain things which are a must.
Keyboard
• Get a mechanical keyboard. Switches are a personal preference but it is fairly logical that if you have black keys you will be able to play for less time each day than someone who uses brown. The reason for this is that your body needs to use more resources to activate a black switch than a brown. For this reason I suggest to avoid black keys, you don’t want to get overuse injuries from pressing the keys too hard.
• It is ideal if the keyboard does not have a num pad. It allows your keyboard and mouse to be closer together. Because of this you can sit very comfortably without having to spread your arms too far apart.
• The least amount of “accessories” possible is the best. Extra keys are only something you could accidentally click.
• You want to remove keys you won’t use. The windows key, `, F7 and 9. These keys, when removed give you a good tactile sense of exactly where 1, 8, F6 and Ctrl are which are all very important keys in a game of Starcraft. If you can hit these keys consistently without looking down at the keyboard to do so you will play a better game.
Mouse
• Have a mouse pad that you can take to tournaments with you.
• Get a mouse that has good DPI settings so you can adjust sensitivity this way instead of on the computer. This avoids the skipping that can occur if you turn the sensitivity too high on the computer.
Positioning
The most important thing in positioning your mouse and keyboard is that you are comfortable and can stay relaxed. If you feel like you can't sit with your hand on your mouse and the other hand on the keyboard for a long time, change your position. If you ever start having pain from playing stop and reevaluate your setup, also be conscious of tension as that my be the sole factor in the injury.
When I first released this guide there was much criticism about my stance on mouse position. Wrist at the edge of the desk (recommended by Day9) has completely healed my overuse injuries that I experienced for Wing of Liberty. I used to play with my arm resting on resting on the desk but with that I had injuries. I was speaking from personal experience but now I realize everyones bodies are different. Generally it is bad if your elbow is hanging down too much so that your wrist and arm do not create a straight line. This can cause injury since it puts strain on your muscles and tendons. Avoid this by adjusting table height or chair height if you play with your wrist at the end of the table. Play in a position where you feel comfortable and use pain as a warning sign that your position (whatever it may be) might not be best for you.
This is what originally appeared and is what has worked for me:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kym6JeQ.png)
4. Settings
Settings in game are very important. desRow’s guide for mechanics is really excellent in showing all the basic settings that you want to have. I’ll quickly go through each setting that I have.
Graphics
Everything low. I remember the talk that cloaked units were easier to see on low graphics settings. I don’t know if this is true, and I wouldn’t base my decision on that anyway. If you ever want to play a LAN, use low settings because you have no way to control the computer you will be playing on. It may run medium perfectly but not high like you are used to. It is easy if you are used to low since then the computer will either work well or it will work to the best of its ability.
Sound
Sound is your second minimap/wireframe display. It tells you when you are being attacked, when a unit is completed and which units you are currently controlling. Game music can be a distraction so I choose to turn it off. Ambient sounds should be off. Move sounds enabled and Game Volume During Alerts should be low enough that alerts are VERY clear. You never want to miss “Our workers are under attack” and lose every miner at a base during a big fight.
Control
• Do not enable mouse sensitivity.
• The most important thing in this screen is to Disable Windows Key (which you should have already removed). I use Alt Tab to get out of the game but during tournament matches I disable that as well just in case.
• Scrolling is an issue. You almost never want to be scrolling. I made the mistake of learning the game with very high scroll sensitivity and lower Drag sensitivity so I could scroll around my bases freely and attack a few screens over with ease. I leave your own scroll sensitivity up to you but you should strive to scroll as little as possible (this will be explained in detail later).
This is what I do (it may not be perfect but here is my rationale):
• Mouse Scroll - Fast
Mouse scroll is used to quickly execute attack and proxy finding move commands.
• Drag Scroll - Medium
Used to carefully setup camera locations at the start of the game.
Gameplay
1. Show Game Timer: Tons of your in game timings after your basic build order will be based on this.
2. Display Build Grid: Sim city is important.
3. Enable Worker Rally: Don’t let computer or network lag mess you up when you are at a LAN. Just get used to using this setting.
4. Display Team Colored Life Bars: DISABLE THIS USELESS THING. It is distracting and if you are purple your energy will be the same colour as health etc.
5. Always Show Worker Status: You need this to have a good economy. You can accomplish it through selecting the workers at a base and checking the number but that is much less efficient.
6. Show Current Order Indicator: Enable!
7. Enable Enemy Unit Selection: You need to be able to check their tech if it is still under construction.
8. Show Unit Life Bars: Always. This is for micro.
9. Show Flyer Helper: Always. For storm.
10. Control Groups: Unclickable. You want to be able to see the icon incase you accidentally miss bind something. But you don’t want to ever accidentally misclick on this.
11. Save All Replays: They help you learn and improve. Watch every one. If you ever want coaching from anyone they will most likely want to see replays. I suggest renaming each replay after you play the game so you know exactly what happened in the game. IE “TvP; Loss; Immortal Bust not defended correctly”.
In Game
Always play in your team colour (green). It will always be the same and you always have control over that!
5. Hotkeys
Rebinding
For this guide I will be using the same rebinding for all three races which would allow you to play random or switch races with the most ease possible. Also these hotkeys are all for the standard layout. I came from BW and so this is the setup I am most used to playing with. I’m sure you can still learn at least one thing from these setups even if you use grid or another custom hotkey setup.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3mI67j7.png)
Orange – Camera location
Blue – Army
Red – Production
Black – Removed
(Hopefully your keyboard is missing the num-pad, unlike this one)
F1-F6 as camera locations.
The stuff that is currently on F1-F4 is useless. You won’t need it. There is always F7 and F8 which are physically harder to get to and they could be used as some of these functions if you really want them, but as I like to remove F7 as a tactile hint I don’t rebind the functions originally on F1-F4 to anything. I use these six locations for my bases. I center each camera location over the Nexus at each base, so, F1 = main base, F2 = natural etc. This allows for easy probe transfers and jumping between bases to build structures.
Tab and Space as camera locations.
Tabbing through unit selections is the worst way to do anything. It requires you to either look down at the abilities panel to be 100% sure the right unit is selected or it forces you to enter more than 1 action to bring up the correct ability. Consider this: you have a control group with Templar, MSC, Stalkers and Zealots. You want to blink under a banshee but just as you decide to do this your MSC dies. You then have to only press tab once to access blink. Because of this you will have to check and see if the stalkers are selected before actually executing the blink.
Control clicking units is more efficient than this but that has big drawbacks as well. Your mouse cannot be preparing to execute the spell while you select the units (for storm or emp) and if you accidentally miss click the game may end. You want to minimize the time your mouse spends selecting units and maximize the time it spends moving them issuing spells. For detailed micro like Templar splitting or marine splitting it is important to select move with the mouse since you cannot dedicate 4+ hotkeys to just split Templar.
For these reasons I think having a hotkey dedicated to each ability is important. So to dissuade yourself from tabbing, unbind it. By doing this it gives you a cool location which is VERY useful for Protoss. A counter argument to this is that some pros still play with 3 hotkeys or just 1 hotkey for the entire army. I realize this, but separating abilities will always be more efficient however if you can play at high grandmaster level without it and you are currently playing in tournaments you do not have time to completely retool your hotkey setup. It took me almost an entire month to get familiarized with my setup. Pros do not have the luxury of time.
Patrol from P to Y.
Makes it far easier to setup shift patrols after move or attack commands.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/AwW33VU.jpg)
Makes this a lot easier, and it puts a lot less strain on your hands.
Queens from Q to X
Deals with Queen production so that Q can be a hotkey.
Guardian shield from G to X
You will never accidentally guardian shield instead of forcefield.
Also under Global>Unit Management>Choose Ability or A.I. Target you can setup so you can spam warp in zealots or spam creep tumors. Simply add an alternative hotkey that is the same button as the hotkey you currently use for zealot or creep tumor.
Rules for Control Groups
1: Every frequently used ability should be accessible through one hotkey selection on the keyboard.
2: Macro structures and army each have their own dedicated space on the keyboard. This way your hand switches positions depending on if you are microing or macroing.
3: The same keys should always be used for the same type of units (either in function or specifically). Don’t hotkey Stalkers to two different keys at different times, they should always be on the same key.
Protoss
1 - Army
Zealot, sentry, archon, and colossus. (Stalkers after they are no longer needed for drop defense). This key is used to cast sentry spells.
2 - Stalkers
This allows blink to be accessible. Allows easy target firing of Vikings etc.
3 - Colossus or sentries
These important units need to be the first to react in case of danger. For this key hotkey Colossus here unless there are no Colossus in the army. If that is the case instead hotkey sentries which are gas intensive and should be a priority to save.
4 - Mothership Core
Use the right click follow command if you want it grouped with your army. When you select a unit for it to follow it should be the biggest unit in the army since this unit is least likely to randomly die if you micro/engage well. ie. follow the colossus not a zealot.
Q (rebound 9) - Observers and later Phoenix or Warp Prism
I use this for observers so I can quickly check the Terran/Zerg’s choke to see their army composition. Once my Warp Prism pops out I instantly switch this hotkey to a harassment hotkey. It is also conceivable that if the warp prism dies you can hotkey a proxy pylon to this key for ease of access. Generally I like to have more than 1 proxy pylon and a warp prism at the same time so I just minimap click for the proxy pylon. Hotkey observers here against swarm hosts.
W (rebound 10) - Templar
You shouldn’t group more than 3-4 templar together. Having templar on Q or a WP filled with templar can be key to winning engagements in PvT. Also having HT that are static and not hotkeyed is important. You can always shift add them if you decide to attack.
5 - Nexus
I replace this key with a different coloured key so I know exactly where my production starts if I have to glance at my keyboard. During stressful games you can become disoriented and lose your place on the keyboard.
6 - Gateways
This is better than the warp gate key for 2 reasons:
1: It allows you to see untransformed gateways and add them as soon as they have started to be built. Then you can transform them by Ctrl clicking.
2: It allows you to tap and see the specific cooldown durations.
7 - Robotics Facility
Both this key and the Stargate key can be slightly awkward to use but with index and pinky finger all the key combinations are easy to execute. It just takes a small amount of time an focus to master.
8 - Stargate
F1-F6 Camera locations for bases
Set these locations roughly at the start of the game and once the expo starts construction center the screen and reset these locations. This makes transferring workers easier. Also, I dislike using the Jump Through Bases button which is default Backspace. This key jumps through bases in a cycle which always picks up where the last cycle left off. You can't use this key to simply just to a specific base immediately, instead you must cycle through your bases until your reach the correct one. (This can be very useful if you are Zerg and want to inject larva).
Tab - Warp in location
Space - Upgrades
It is important to have a camera location for upgrades as you can easily see the chrono boost status. Also, if the location is set at the start of the game it forces you to intelligently place your tech so that it is least likely to be sniped.
Zerg
1 - Army
Zerglings, roach, hydra, ultra, and later banelings. Hotkey banelings here for mass engagements after the finer micro battles are over.
2 - Banelings
3 - Swarm hosts
4 - Infestors
Q - Muta/corruptor
Or other harassment groups if muta are out on the field.
W - Vipers
5/6 - Hatcheries
Don’t worry about having hatcheries individually hotkeyed since you can easily base jump by using the F keys.
7/8 - Creep queens
F1-F6 (or F7+F8)
As I am not a Zerg player you can leave Tab and Space as their regular functions. However I find a location above upgrades is helpful for checking in on them. However for zerg it may be more practical to designate 8 for upgrades so you can tap it during battles etc. Zerg and Terran are lucky since macro can be done 90% through the keyboard where as toss relies on camera and mouse control as well for macro. Tab can also be used as a rally point hotkey if you do not like to hotkey eggs (I hotkey eggs).
Terran: (very rough)
1 - Main army
Marines, Marauders, Medivac, Helbat, Thors
To change the Thors attack type you can simply Ctrl click it.
2 – Widow mines
3 – Medivacs (Siege tanks if you like mech)
Allows you to quickly pull them away in an engagement and can be used for early game drops with only 1-2 medivacs are out.
4 – Medivac #2 and later Ghosts
Allows you to have a second medivac hotkeyed.
Q - Vikings or Banshee (for harassment)
Since this hotkey setup doesn’t group Vikings with your main army use a follow command so they trail just behind your medivacs. This also lets them stay out of the way of stalkers or storms which can hit clumped up moving Vikings.
W - Ravens
F1-F6 (or F&+F8)
Tab/Space
See Zerg explanation.
I failed to mention where you can hotkey early hellion harassment in this hotkey setup. For me Q is the best option because I hotkey most of my harassment units there. However since you are producing hellions it makes most logical sense that it would be placed on 2 instead of widow mines.
Splitting Armies
I think that this topic deserves some attention. When you need to split your army to deal with a Terran drop or as Terran to drop and attack at different locations there are several ways of doing this. The easier temporary solution if you don’t foresee the split needing to stay in place for long is just to box and deal with the situation and them simply use 1 to bring your army back together. However, in some circumstances (muta corruptor vs Protoss) you need to have 2 separate groups of army at the same time for an extended period.
In Protoss vs Terran it is mandatory to have Stalkers in your main defending against drops. In this situation stalkers in the main are hotkeyed to 2 while the army (without stalkers) is on 1 defending the natural. From this basis I used 2 for “Army in main/natural” and 1 for “Army at 3rd/nat” for defense against Muta corruptor. Because of design toss rarely splits into two forces when offensively on the map. Still two control groups can be used aggressively on the map as long as your brain knows where each hotkey will be location on the map. For example 1 can be for the army at the top/left and 2 for the army at the bottom/right. This way your brain always remembers that the top or left force is control by 1 and the bottom or right force is always control by 2. This takes practice.
Here I will mention that late game harassment with drops/zealots/lings should all be done without a hotkey. At that point in the game it is more important to have the best control possible of your primary army and production. Just make sure your harassment group isn’t grouped with your army incase your army needs to move while you are harassing.
6. In Game Execution
Everyone should watch Day9’s “Secrets of Hotkeys, APM and Mouse Movement” (Daily #252). Also desRow’s guide #8 is very useful in showing a lot of good in game habits to develop. I am going to summarize some of these ideas.
You have three important things to manage when in a game of Starcraft. Your mouse, keyboard and eyes. Without good control of all of these things together you will not have strong, refined play.
Mouse
The goal with your mouse is to consistently click on exactly what you want. For this reason you will see pros spam boxes or spam rally on all the mineral patches. Originally when I was younger I just did this to feel “cool” like a pro. But this serves a very practical function, it is a way of practicing mouse accuracy. Play games with yourself and try to click on a mineral patch and then a probe then a geyser as fast as possible when your probes are starting to mine. Remember you should do this at the speed in which you can be 100% accurate in order to build good habits. Push yourself to go to the limit of this speed though, don’t mentally relax and become passive. You need to engage and push yourself just to the edge of your ability.
Keyboard
You need to be able to never look at your keyboard. If you look down at your keyboard this is both a problem with your keyboard proficiency and your eye control. Your eyes need to be staring at the minimap AT ALL TIMES. Sadly they can’t be, so every second you spend looking away from the minimap should be spent doing a useful action. It is possible to play without looking at the keyboard. Slow work practicing hotkeys can help to develop this ability. If you want to play fast and you try to without being able to use your keyboard correctly you will develop the habit of always looking at your keyboard to macro or cast certain spells. This is why I spent an entire month working on my hotkey setup. I would actually unplug my keyboard and simply tell myself to physically execute an action for practice.
Eyes
I’m very glad I re-watched the Day9 daily 252 before writing this guide. What you are looking at is very important. Day9 is right when he says that macro is a skill that your eyes are responsible for. This will become clear after I explain tapping.
Specific Uses in Game
Now, let’s examine some combinations of these three tools for actual in game actions. This will become clear. I have started with the broadest concepts and moved to the specific more detailed ones. Some of these things may already be second nature to you and it is more than likely that I have missed some cute things that can give you small mechanical edges. Please let me know about these! My contact info is below so please contact me, I want to grow this guide as much as I can. In this guide I am not covering very specific types of mechanics like exactly how to micro blink stalkers or have them blink one by one into someone’s main.
The Minimap (Combining actions)
The goal is to spend all your free time looking at the minimap. When trying to refine your mechanics or to accomplish more tasks in less time ask yourself if you could combine different actions into one action. Ex. You can combine the action of moving your army with the action of looking at the minimap by always a-clicking on the minimap to move your army. This applies to scout probes, scout stalkers, rally points etc. By always clicking directly on the minimap you increase the amount of time you spend looking at the minimap while accomplishing another action. If you need to click on something specific simply left click the minimap and then select the unit/object you need to.
The Macro Cycle and Tapping
I tried many times to incorporate a mental checklist into my play without any success. It isn’t intuitive for me. Still, I have found that this cycle exists during downtime. If there are no actions that need to immediately be taken care of the best thing to do is tapping. Now tapping is usually confused with spam. You see a pro cycling through CC Rax Fact many times without actually doing anything. The reason he/she is doing this is to check which of those structures needs upkeep. Do you need a marine? Or a tank? At this time it is also good at check the minimap and then your supply count. The great thing about tapping is that it also requires your eyes to focus on the lower half of the screen making it very easy to glance at the minimap.
Inserting actions
This is a very simple concept that I only stumbled upon during an analysis of my own play a month ago. I noticed that I wanted to build my 2 additional gates in PvT and that I simply put gate #1 down at 150 minerals and then waited until 150 more came in to put down the gate #2. Why did I wait? Because I was not thinking. I wasted valuable time just waiting. You should always insert actions between things you cannot speed up. For example, while a medivac is unloading tap and check to see if you need marines, maybe make some more and then stim and micro. Maybe you tap and everything seems fine, glance at the minimap. Again if you send a drone to make a roach warren before you have enough minerals, larva inject while it is walking and then make the roach warren. By doing this you can make your play so much more efficient.
Battles
I made a post on TL about two weeks ago asking what mechanical issue is least talked about and a176 responded saying macro during battles. He said you want to experience the game and so you don’t macro and just watch. This is true, your mind says, “this battle is how I win, focus on it.” Now in BW this was more of an issue since battles could take much longer than in SC2 but as a Zerg or Terran player take advantage of the fact that your mechanics are easier in this situation and tap and macro during the battle. For Protoss users I suggest you queue large units like Colossus or Void ray during the battle and warp in as soon as you’ve cast key spells and lost a portion of your maxed army. The advantage of Terran and Zerg in battle is they can macro without looking away from the battle and so as soon as the winner of the battle becomes clear they can retreat or continue to attack whereas Protoss must move the screen away and in doing so may stay slightly too long in an engagement.
The most important thing during a battle is to remember macro. After you’ve remembered it do what you can. Cue Colossus or marines while watching the battle and if you think you starting to win go home and warp in or drop mules.
Scouting
This is a fairly basic concept, but when cueing a scout marine/probe/stalker/zergling always use the attack command. If you move-command scout you will miss units that may be hidden and sometimes pass by structures and not notice. It is a sad day when you move command worker sees a probe in your base but you just miss looking at it.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/euXJiM5.jpg)
This will not work 100% of the time since sometimes units will be out of the attack radius of the scouting unit. For these reasons try to scout as close to the edge of the map as is possible.
Micro
I don’t want to discuss micro in detail. Every race has many different issues to deal with. Each unit requires a different type of control. Marines are different from Stalkers which are different from Swarm hosts. The most important thing is that micro is not the most important thing. Remember to tap and macro behind the micro. By watching pro vods you can get a sense of what you need to do to micro correctly, what it needs to look like. Micro is a visual thing and for this reason it is easier to pick up. If you’ve developed good mouse accuracy you will be able to execute it.
Boxing
When you box you should always box from top to bottom regardless of which corner of the box you start at. I box left to right but it is possible to box right to left. The reason you should box from top to bottom is because this encourages your hand to pull towards its pivot point. Because of this you can choose very specifically when you want to stop. Boxing in the other direction is less accurate because it is more challenging to accurately stop boxing.
Workers (Adding/Removing units from a selection group)
Managing workers is the last thing I wanted to touch on. By holding shift you can add units to a selection and by holding shift and clicking on the units wireframe you can remove those units from the selection. By doing this you can efficiently manage your economy. Use the shift add to gather 3 workers together to add to gas if you can’t box 3 at once immediately. Use shift remove to select down to the number of workers you want to transfer to a new expansion. Also these skills are useful when deal with drops. Box select all workers and move them away. When sending them back to mine it is hard to select 3 and 3 to mine gas if the workers form into a stacked line. Here you can send the entire selection of 22 workers to 1 geyser, remove 3, send the rest to the 2nd geyser, remove 3 more, and send the rest back to minerals. if you accidentally send a drone to a geyser or mineral patch with a piece of resource in its hands you can quickly tab c to have it return its cargo before it resumes mining from the last selected resource.
Another thing that bothers me is something I see in a lot of Terran players' play (this doesn’t apply to Zerg). Some very high level Terran build structures and don’t F1 shift click on minerals. After construction the SCV spends sometimes upwards of 30 seconds sitting there doing nothing. Day9 says every player should get in the habit of building the structure pressing F1 and the shift clicking back on the mineral patch for every structure you create. It’s good practice to do this for every structure but personally I do don’t it when I can visually already see a mineral patch where the structure is being created. It’s a small thing but it’s very good to incorporate into your play.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0FEx1Az.png)
Always shift click! Use a camera location if you are building a structure somewhere else on the map. (I even do this for proxy pylons. Instead of shift clicking minerals I shift move the probe so it’s hidden at a different proxy location).
7. How to Practice and Learn
Practicing well is the most important part of improving. The most important thing to realize is that gamers have VERY BAD ways of practicing. In music you would never dream of only practicing or working on improving your playing during a concert. You would also never dream of simply playing the same piece over and over for 10 hours a day to improve. This will give you some results but not as many as are possible. You spend hours away from the actual act refining your technique, memorizing, playing with a metronome for tempo and practicing small portions (sometimes only a few seconds long) over and over for consistency. Practicing Starcraft is also possible this way, and it is the best way for you to see quick improvement. First, work on keyboard control by disconnecting it from the computer and learning all your keystrokes. After that you can use a tool called SALT in which you can also choose exactly what aspect of your mechanics or builds you want to refine, memorize or repeat for practice. The most important thing is that you practice in an environment controlled by you, so that you can focus on the issues you are having instead of repeating things you have already learned. Be efficient with your practice time, it is valuable.
Musical Practice and Starcraft Practice
I am currently a music major in university and the way I work on new material is as follows:
1. Preliminary read through material. Just see all the broad points of interest, what might be hard that will require extra attention. (Alone)
2. Practice the hardest material first and most frequently until a level of competency is achieved. (Alone)
3. Present work to your teacher. (One on One Lesson)
4. Learn suggestions made by your teacher during your lesson. (Alone)
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until you are confident to perform. (Alone)
6. Perform the piece for a small group of people. (Maybe 15-30)
7. Repeat steps 2-4 fixing mistakes from the test performance. Do this until you are confident to perform. (Alone)
8. Perform for a jury/recital (3 judges or 50+ people)
Now sometimes I am immersed in this process for more than a year learning a single piece. Generally in Starcraft if you are playing tournaments you do not have this kind of time. But the most important thing to notice here is that the majority of my time is spent alone, in a stress-free, personally-controlled environment where I can isolate my problems and fix them. Once the problems are fixed I move outside of my isolated environment and give it a “test run”.
Starcraft should be practiced this way as well.
The key thing is that when you practice music it is away from the stress or nerves of performing. When you introduce nerves, stress and expectations your mind will function differently and if it has never been trained to play correctly without nerves what are the chances it will function well with nerves. This is a rough equivalence for Starcraft with the model I described above:
• Custom vs AI: No stress (Alone)
• Custom vs Teammate/Practice Partner: Low Stress (One on One)
• Ladder: Medium Stress (Random opponent, random strategy)
• Tournament from Home: High Stress (Test run)
• LAN Tournament: Highest Stress (What you work towards)
I want to touch on practicing on Ladder. Many pros say ladder isn’t the best place to practice but it is good enough. I completely disagree. Ladder is perhaps the worst place to practice. You have no control over which match-up, which strategy or the level of player you are facing. You could end up facing a 2 raxing Terran all day long (which you probably beat easily and learn nothing from). It is an unfocused way to play the game, if you want to just have fun, go crush people on ladder and take their ladder points, but don’t use it as a practice tool. After all that there is one benefit to ladder: if you feel that your gameplay is perfect you need to play ladder until you lose. Ladder will eventually show you large holes in your gameplay which you can then practice and correct.
My personal suggestion to you is to play 100% of your games vs AI until you feel your mechanics have become consistent. Then spend 75%~ of your time vs AI or vs Practice partners. When you feel very confident in both strategy and mechanics go ladder until you lose, and then practice specifically against that.
Stress in Degrees
You can see above that you should practice and spend the majority of your time in a stress-free environment. This should appeal to everyone who has ladder anxiety! You can work on the game in the best way possible without having to play ladder! Start working on improving you mechanics vs AI, then move to practice partners and correct mistakes there, test run your play in free to enter online tournaments like Zotac cup. Then take what you learnt from that experience and grow as a player by repeating everything you’ve already done this time working on the mistake you made during the test run tournament.
Mechanics of Practice vs AI
When practicing vs AI you can change the game speed so you can play slower if you aren’t macroing well at the faster speed yet. If you are having troubles keeping up at Faster it is most likely a result of mouse precision, keyboard fluency or eye control. Don’t be scared to slow the game way down and consciously think about exactly how you use your three tools (mouse, keyboard and eyes). Coordinating 3 things takes a lot of time to build muscle memory, remember it took me 1 month to become fluent with my keyboard, and I still have lots of work to do on my eyes and mouse.
To become fluent with my keyboard I spent a lot of time with the keyboard unplugged just executing basic actions. I’d say to myself, “build colossus”, 7 C 5 C (builds a colossus and chrono boosts it). The first few times I’d stare at my keyboard while doing this to get used to exactly how it felt with the visual aid. Then I’d push myself to look at the wall or something else while I executed it. All of this was done building from slow to fast. Mouse accuracy is obviously best practiced in game. Just always click perfectly and slowly ramp up the speed at which you move to new targets.
If you make a mistake, stop, analyze it, and then you should correct it. If you make the mistake more than once you are starting to form a bad habit. To prevent this slow yourself down and practice only the spot you were making the mistake.
My suggestion is that you use SALT to do this. It is a really nice map you can use to restart the game without having to reload a map. If you are struggling with aspects of the game after the 10 minutes mark I’d say to use this program with a practice partner as you can save the game state at any time and then reload it. So say after 11 minutes your multitasking starts to slip, save the game at 11 minutes and reload from there until you can macro well enough. This is also a great way to learn big battle micro. I was having troubles with roach hydra viper timings and so I just used this map to reload several times just before the battle and practice exactly how I was engaging the composition (of course to do this you need to know that your army is actually big enough and the correct composition to have a chance to win).
If you don’t want to use SALT you can just save and reload the map at the point that you want to start from.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7ORs8Et.jpg)
Slowly when you are comfortable with your mechanics move into practice games or ladder. As your mechanics improve spend less time against AI and more with practice partners. I suggest starting each day (no matter your skill) with several run throughs vs AI to reestablish your mechanical habits before moving into a game. I run through at least 1 build from each match up now before starting my day on ladder. Defending a 6 pool isn’t a very rounded mechanical warm up so don’t take that chance.
Practice Partners
You should find the highest level practice partners possible. If you can find a grandmaster who is willing to practice with you, ALWAYS practice with them. Assuming you have spent countless hours vs AI perfecting your mechanics and you know good builds you will most likely be playing at a Diamond or Masters level. You will always learn the most by playing with the highest possible level of player. Of course if you have not spent enough time focusing mechanically practicing with high level players will not be rewarding since you simply will not be able to keep up. If that is the case and you float 500-1000 minerals consistently, or can’t attack two places at once, go and work on mouse precision and keyboard fluency vs AI again.
Practice Tournaments
Every tournament you will ever enter is a practice tournament. If you are playing in code S GSL it is a practice tournament. The things you will learn from the experience of playing a tournament are invaluable and regardless of the result you should learn from each experience you have. If you feel stress, that is normal, playing more and more tournaments will help you learn to deal with the stress. I have a minor sense of nervousness when I perform music but with Starcraft my hands sometimes shake violently and I feel sick to my stomach. The only reason for this is that I only started to play regular tournaments in Starcraft two months ago. I’ve been playing concerts since I was 10, I’m pretty comfortable with it now. Play as many tournaments as you possibly can.
Resources for Learning
Replays are the best possible way to learn build orders. You can see exactly how they time everything. While it is common for pros to make timing mistakes during games you can at least see that they placed a building 50 gas late etc. VODs are the next best resource. Sometimes important information is skipped over such as chrono boosts or perhaps the production tab isn’t open when a Zerg player creates a round of drones. Usually if you spend 30-45 minutes vs AI trying to figure out exactly how to replicate the timing the pro had you can. I have figured out many chrono boost timings just by trial and error in SALT.
I suggest learning build orders for yourself. The understand you will form by analyzing the game and trying to place chrono boosts is something that can’t be learned from a VOD on a build. It’s funny that I say this since I have created a few build order videos. Still they can be a very valuable resource to a new player who doesn’t yet have the deep understanding required to rip a build perfectly. If you are new find a good educational resource like eSportU and learn a build from there. Liquipedia is filled with outdated builds and the Protoss builds that exist on TL strategy are one-hit-wonders from proleague (The 2 base Templar guide is an exception.)
Recording yourself is an amazing learning resource. Xsplit is not enough (although it will help). You need a camera to sit just behind you at an angle that captures both the screen and the keyboard. Literally stack up books or something so the camera can capture everything. This way you can focus on your physical movements and not only the result of those movements on the screen. Here you will see if your hands look tense. Also watch for tension in other parts of your body that is visible, it is very common for musicians to make strange faces etc while they are playing, this is tension that is hidden and it can lead to all sorts of pain. I personally have very tense feet while I play and sometimes after long practice sessions my legs will ache. It took me years to actually figure out that Starcraft was the cause of this pain.
Record yourself in all different circumstances. How do you deal with stress? Does playing on the ladder dramatically reduce your APM? Or does your macro slip during engagements because you get tunnel vision and forget to tap? In the past I would play on ladder around 100-120 APM while my play with practice partners was at 140-150 and vs AI from 160-200. This wasn’t useless actions either, vs actual players I just went half as fast. It took time and a lot of days spent playing only vs AI until I am finally able to consistently get 150-160 vs players. APM is just an example but lots of things can change from practice to in game situations. Look for these changes! Take note and correct them.
This last section I have decided to revise in the coming days. I feel that I got slightly side tracked and didn't elaborate on the most important thing: recording yourself and analyzing mistakes. Danglars brought this to my attention in the comments and to complete this guide I will be re-organizing this section!
8. Conclusion
I really hope I have given you something new or perhaps slightly expanded on something old. Playing this game is like playing an instrument. Don’t expect to be able to move at 200APM after doing this for a week. Don’t expect it after a month. I’ve been going seriously for 6 months now and I’ve only improved 60 APM. Progress can be slow, but if you work hard and stick with it the results are worth it.
I revised my introduction paragraph after many comments to this article. It is, hopefully, now clearer that this is my method for mechanics. This game is so diverse and there are many "correct" ways of playing it. That is one of the reasons it is such an interesting game. I do things this way because I personally believe it gives me the most advantages. You decide if this works for you.
9. About Me
I’m Deadzerg, a high Masters Protoss from Canada. I’ve just started becoming involved in the community and I really want to give back because my life has been enriched so much by Starcraft and its community. My goal right now is to build my stream and shoot for GM. My stream is www.twitch.tv/DeadzergSC2 and I will be streaming regularly focusing on in-depth analysis, coaching and creating guides.
My Twitter is https://twitter.com/DeadzergSC2. I will be tweeting about the progress of current projects/tournaments I am involved in and it will also serve as notifications for when I go live with a stream.
Check out my youtube page which is where I will be posting all my guides and educational content with detailed build orders and replays. http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6sG1KiDnxt4azX08107v-A
Please let me know if you think I missed anything in this guide. I want to improve my content as much as is possible.
10. Other Guides on Mechanics
Day9 Daily #252: focuses on mouse accuracy, tapping, slicing, eyes, posture and stretches
http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-daily-252-secrets-of-hotkeys-apm-and-mouse-movement-4730506
Artosis’s guide on hotkeys for Protoss
desRow’s guide on Mechanics, focuses on game settings, hotkeys and mouse use
Tasteless’s Blogs on Mechanics (these are for BW but are still very good)
Blog 1: http://web.archive.org/web/20100103040144/http://starfeeder.gameriot.com/blogs/Tasteless/Secrets-of-StarCraft-Pro-Gamers-The-competitive-keyboard
Blog 2: http://sc2pod.com/trackers/community/?id=2133
Blog 3: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=319876
Vaderseven’s Guide on Mechanics focuses on how to learn mechanics
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=319876http://
Khaldor’s video on ability spamming
![[image loading]](http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Spongebob_268deb_482074.jpg)
