**** Original Starcraft 2 Thread ****

[Kamwah]

Given you're in master surely your marine split is fairly decent? I don't find banelings to be much of a problem tbh. I pre-split my marines and spread my tanks out at maybe half a screen's distance from the edge of the creep. Scan and stim forward about 4 marines to kill off tumours. Wait for creep to recede, move tanks forward a bit then rinse and repeat. Doing this means that when the ling bling ball inevitably rolls in, I don't have to spend all my APM on my marines, I can focus mostly on the tanks, targeting groups of banelings, and my marines require only limited micro.

My marine splitting isn't too bad but it doesn't help much on that ****** Korhal Compound and Cloud Kingdom where there's not many places to run XD

I hope one of them gets removed instead of Meta,Shakuras or Tal'Darim

 

[SheepBeast]

My marine splitting isn't too bad but it doesn't help much on that ****** Korhal Compound and Cloud Kingdom where there's not many places to run XD

I hope one of them gets removed instead of Meta,Shakuras or Tal'Darim

They're both open enough tbh. Also there are some nice cliffs to put siege tanks on . The main thing I hate about CK is the area above the natural where brood lords can sit safely away from my marines. If I haven't got a large number of vikings, then my natural is doomed. KC is also annoying in that you can't defend the natural and 3rd with one choke full of tanks. You're pretty much forced to PF the 3rd which means less income.

I voted for Tal'Darim. Too easy for zerg to control the whole map with mutas and overlords and get infinite bases.

 

[SheepBeast]

Also, I'm wondering how many people on here use the grid hotkey layout? I do, and I find it quite a bit easier than standard, but there have been a few niggles. I decided yesterday to sit down and try and figure out a way of optimising it, so here is what I came up with:

Q-T, A-G and Z-B as the main grid
spacebar = base camera (same as backspace, for injects)
` = idle worker (instead of F1)
F1 -> F8 stored camera locations. Easier than the default setup of using shift for some of them
TAB = jump to last event (what space bar used to be)
CAPS = cycle through selection (what TAB used to be)
NUMPAD 0 = w

My control groups are:
1 = builder SCV/s
2 = barracks, factories and starports
3 = CCs, OCs, PFs, engineering bays and armouries. Once I have ~65 SCVs I remove PFs from this, so I don't have to tab past them to get my upgrades
4 = initial scouting SCV, then later main army (anything stimmable, plus thors)
5 = casters (or siege tanks if i'm going marine tank)
6->0 extra army slots, drops etc etc.

Basically, my hand switches between 3 positions depending on what I'm doing. For macroing, I have my pinky resting on Left Shift, my thumb on spacebar and my 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers resting on Q, W and E. The numbers 2 and 3 are easily reachable to check production, and to tab through I just move my pinky up one key to CAPS. For controlling my army, I move my pinky to Z, my middle finger to 4 and my 1st finger to T. This lets me stim and attack move easily, as well as select my casters on 5 with my middle finger too. If I need to press X (for EMP for example) my pinky does that. The 3rd had position is pretty rarely used and completely optional, but it involves the arrow keys for when I'm microing hard (marine splitting or banshee micro). This is why NUMPAD 0 is mapped to W, so that I can right click to move the banshee and press NUMPAD 0 to stop, so it'll turn round and shoot whatever I'm kiting.

Just thought I'd share my layout because I put quite a lot of thought into it and it seems to be the best possible layout, with very minimal hand movement and everything within easy reach in each of the 3 positions. It also translates between races very well. My control groups for zerg are:

1 = scout broverlord, later on reassign to creeping queen
2 = all hatchs
3 = all queens which are on inject duties
4->0 army

To inject I just press 3 with my middle finger, then space, x, click, space, x, click etc, then w in case a queen died and another has started moving to a distant hatchery. For protoss;

1 = scouting observers/spare/unused slot.
2 = warp gates, robos and stargates
3 = nexuses
4->0 army


The F1 - F8 stored camera locations are ridiculously useful and underused. They let you cycle through all your bases very rapidly, so you can quickly check your saturation. Also, to maynard SCVs from my main to my natural I just have to press F1, box a few, F2, right click mineral line. They also come in handy for responding to drops, as well as returning your camera to your main to quickly throw down some more production facilities.

 

[Gzero]

To inject I just press 3 with my middle finger, then space, x, click, space, x, click etc, then w in case a queen died and another has started moving to a distant hatchery.

I've got mouse4 on my mx518 bound to view bases, so just a simple shift+v and keep clicking that till all in the queens are busy or bases have been injected. You need a better mouse. Can I interest you in the Razer mouse?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=KB-059-RA&groupid=702&catid=23&subcat=1257

You've got opposable thumbs for a reason (assuming you haven't lost any or weren't born without), use them

 

[Kamwah]

I just use the regular setup. I think it's the best IMO compared to all the layouts floating around TL.

 

[ninja2000]

I use a razer naga and love it. I also prefer using 1-6 for control groups than fumbling for the keyboard keys.

I am struggling so bad as terran at the moment. I am mid silver and although fine against other terran I seem to insta loose to Toss and struggle really bad against zerg. I keep watching guides and trying new things but can't seem to up my game.

Zerg seems to always over power me with zerg/banelings then if I survie that I get hit with mutas.

Toss I cant seem to beat the deathball of stalker/sentry/colossi/HT.

I feel like jacking it in

 

[Alex74]

I just use the regular setup. I think it's the best IMO compared to all the layouts floating around TL.

Same tbh.

I use a razer naga and love it. I also prefer using 1-6 for control groups than fumbling for the keyboard keys.

I am struggling so bad as terran at the moment. I am mid silver and although fine against other terran I seem to insta loose to Toss and struggle really bad against zerg. I keep watching guides and trying new things but can't seem to up my game.

Zerg seems to always over power me with zerg/banelings then if I survie that I get hit with mutas.

Toss I cant seem to beat the deathball of stalker/sentry/colossi/HT.

I feel like jacking it in

Post replayz!!!! One TvZ one TvP?

 

[ninja2000]

Cheers, will do. I will play a couple of games later and post them up. No laughing though

 

[Alex74]

Cheers, will do. I will play a couple of games later and post them up. No laughing though

ehh you should see me play these days, now that's laughable!

 

[Kamwah]

ehh you should see me play these days, now that's laughable!

I think we all feel this way. XD

 

[SheepBeast]

Toss I cant seem to beat the deathball of stalker/sentry/colossi/HT.

I feel like jacking it in

Don't worry I can't beat the deathball either. No-one can. You need to kill them before they get to it. If the protoss plays well, and shuts down drops etc and just masses colossi, stalkers, zealots and a few sentries to 200/200 then there's not much you can do about it. You have to rely on them screwing up and not noticing a drop, or something like that, in order to stay ahead. If you are even on macro then you lose . I played a toss earlier on antiga shipyard and was around 20 supply ahead after 10mins just by macroing more effieciently. I had a 3rd up before him, I was on 2/2 (nearly 3/3) while he was on 1/0, and had a bigger army value in the main engagement. Despite all of these things, I got completely shafted and lost my whole army as well as my 3rd. I clung on for another few mins but it was basically GG after that battle. He was a crap player too. Didn't micro at all, just a-moved (being toss he doesn't need to do anything else :/). He also lost his initial zealot and stalker to my stationary bunker while not killing anything, which is the most retarded thing I've seen since I was in silver/gold. Was pretty miffed after that but meh, you just have to take it on the chin and treat the game for what it is - a game. Doesn't really matter if you win or lose unless you're a pro, for us nubs the main thing is to have fun which isn't contingent on winning.

Post replayz!!!! One TvZ one TvP?

This would be good, I'll offer feedback too.

I've got mouse4 on my mx518 bound to view bases, so just a simple shift+v and keep clicking that till all in the queens are busy or bases have been injected. You need a better mouse. Can I interest you in the Razer mouse?

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=KB-059-RA&groupid=702&catid=23&subcat=1257

You've got opposable thumbs for a reason (assuming you haven't lost any or weren't born without), use them

I don't see how you can interpret from my post that I have a bad mouse. A glance at my sig would tell you I have a G9x which is a very good mouse (as well as the one I like the most). It does have two side buttons, but I find that if I map them to anything in SC2, my mouse accuracy is reduced when I'm gripping/ungripping the mouse all the time to press them. I don't have any trouble with injecting the way I'm currently doing it, I can inject 4 hatches in about a second. Besides, I don't play as Zerg except occasionally in team games so I'm not too worried about optimising things for injecting. Terran is the race which I will optimise for, and I can't think of anything that can usefully be mapped to the thumb buttons that I can't do just as easily with the keyboard. I'd rather just not use the back/forward buttons at all for starcraft so I don't have to switch mouse profile every time I go in and out of the game.

On another topic, I had some epic lolz today. I was playing a 2v2 with my friend and the enemy were protoss and zerg. P four gated and Z went mass roach. When they were steamrolliing over our base, they started calling us noobs "Ez" learn to play etc etc. I responded by saying "4 gate mass roach is hardly a demonstration of skill" and so he challenged me to a 1v1. Given my mate and I were in 2v2 platinum (both playing randon and we suck when off-racing) and I'm high diamond 1v1, I figured my opponent would probably be pretty crap. So I invited him to a party and it turns out he's rank 4 master with like 1300 points. :0. (for those unaware, there is a MASSIVE difference between low master, and top 8 master, and I am not even the former). The top 8 master guys are the ones who GMs play against most of the time. Before the game he said "lol you're diamond, I could probably beat you regardless of what i do", "this will be EZ you are a noob". Anyway to cut a long story short I 111 all-in'ed him with my SCVs and beat him while about 5 of his clan mates were observing. LOL.

 

[Gzero]

Yeah, all games have their nasty sides to the community playing them. Daft folk with their elitist ego's.

I've found all logitech mice that I have tried to be thumbie mice, ie the buttons are always easy to press. Pressing down on mouse3 is impossible for me.

 

[nex20]

Woah, just finished a 4/5 hour ladder sesh lol. My last 4/5 games all v Terran. All I got were proxy 2 rax's and scv all-ins. Do diamond level terrans hate zerg or something?!

 

[Kamwah]

Ok it's time.

Switching to Toss so I can 1A =)

 

[SheepBeast]

I've found all logitech mice that I have tried to be thumbie mice, ie the buttons are always easy to press. Pressing down on mouse3 is impossible for me.

Yeah, they're quite easy to press if it was for something like buying an upgrade - something non-urgent. But during a fight I need to be clicking like crazy, stutter-stepping, marine splitting etc, and so I can't map anything like stim or attack move to a mouse button because it screws up my accuracy. I used to have "back" mapped to Z and "forward" mapped to X, which worked nicely for building things but was total crap during a battle.

I considered using 6 of my macro keys on my keyboard for injecting (I figure I'll never have more than 6 hatcheries). I would have each hatchery + queen pair in it's own control group. Then each macro button would execture the sequence: XX x. (Where XX represents a double tap of a control group number). All I would have to do is press each macro button one after the other, while clicking in the middle of the screen in between. I think blizzard disallows macros which do more than one action though, plus also as I said I don't play zerg much, so I figured it's not worth bothering with.

 

[Gzero]

You can have all your queens in one group, the game sorts out the closest queen with enough energy to inject with. So I don't bother hotkeying individual hatches as I just remember which had a queen put out from them and click back to base over and over.

 

[SheepBeast]

You can have all your queens in one group, the game sorts out the closest queen with enough energy to inject with. So I don't bother hotkeying individual hatches as I just remember which had a queen put out from them and click back to base over and over.

Yeah but if one gets killed or if I forget to add one to the right hotkey it screws everything up. I had that happen a few times and decided never again to use that method. Also, it's not like I need more than 3 hotkeys for army and 1 for production, so I've got 6 left over. May as well use them for injecting.

 

[JIM_BOB7813]

You can have all your queens in one group, the game sorts out the closest queen with enough energy to inject with. So I don't bother hotkeying individual hatches as I just remember which had a queen put out from them and click back to base over and over.

This method works great with the shift + ` to cycle through bases but it can get messy when you have more hatches than queens since they start walking to the empty bases.

Sometimes you don't want to get a queen for each hatch (3-4 is normally enough) and tie up too much supply.

 

[Naff8000]

I use the backspace method using space bar to cycle bases so it's just select queens and spam space then V. If one base doesn't have a queen hit the s key to stop your queens going walkabouts.

 

[Alex74]

is it terrible that i still click on the map to shift camera views for my larva injects?

Generally works fine for me until i'm on about 5 bases and microing the hell out of harassment units (read: mutas)..then i just dont have time to larva inject perfectly any more