**** Original Starcraft 2 Thread ****
- Thread starter mohawk
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where are you control groups then?
My control groups are on QWERA.
R = CCs/Nexii/Hatcheries and Eng bays, armories, forges, evos
E = production structures / creep queen(s)
W = main army
A = casters
Q = harass, scouts, drops, extra casters etc.
All my unit commands and abilities are mapped to SDFZX in a semi-grid layout. I considered usability, ergonomics and ease of use first, grid system second so there are a few exceptions to the grid rule. But generally, primary abilities (such as stim, blink, force field, PDD, EMP, inject, siege mode etc) are all on D and secondary abilities (snipe, guardian shield, unsiege, seeker missile, spawn creep tumour) are all on F. Unit production is mapped to TYSDFGHZXCV. Outlying keys such as T, Y and H are only used for zerg larvae morphing. For everything else I only need the inner keys which are all under my fingers all of the time.
TGVC are attack move, hold position, patrol and stop respectively. The space bar is used to cycle through subgroups (set to tab by default) for easy production, since it's permanently under my thumb anyway. Things that I dont want to press by accident (such as lift buildings during a fight!) I placed on keys which are not under my fingers within their normal reach, meaning I can never accidentally press them. I spent many hours coming up with this setup and learning it but I will attest it's made me play much better. Having camera hotkeys on 1-8 means I can press them without lifting or stretching my hand which is a huge bonus, and they're not layered under a modifier key which makes them far less fiddly to use.
If anyone is interested I can take a video of my hand while I'm playing a game and you can see how little finger movement there is and how efficiently I can macro and micro.
My setup has a lot of advantages over standard, grid and also custom layouts such as The Core and Darkgrid (you may have read about them on team liquid). The only disadvantage I can think of is that I limit myself to only 5 control groups, which is enough for me (I only recently started using more than one for my whole army and I'm high diamond). But for some people, especially zerg who like to individually hotkey hatches/queens, it might not be enough.
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I've won nine 1v1's in a row now XD. All top diamond. The last guy was rank 5 diamond and only lost 1 point for losing against me, implying my MMR is a lot higher than his. This would indicate I'm in line for a promotion soon 
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I really wish blizz would give us another name change. I changed mine to "beiberfan" cos I thought it'd be fun trolling people. It was fun for about 10 games but has worn off now and I'd like to change back 
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Btw I'm aware I spelt bieber wrong
.Btw I'm aware I spelt bieber wrong
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I've played over 1000 games without using them and finding it hard to learn to use them now.
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The ladder system is so bad....
My winrate against diamonds recently is something like 90% so it's starting to place me against masters players. Fair enough. But it doesn't place me against low master... it places me again RANK 2 MASTER for christ's sake. How the F am I expected to beat this person? They face grand master players
and while I have been improving I'm under no illusions as to the vast gap in skill between myself and them.
I'm sure if I was placed against low-mid master players I could beat them - maybe 50/50 which would then likely get me a promotion. But I've been matched with ranks 2, 5, 6, 8 (x2) masters and two more guys who were in the top 25.
My current situation is therefore that I win almost all of my games vs diamonds (mainly top 5 dia's) and lose all of my games vs masters because the ladder system seems too retarded to realise that my skill falls somewhere in the middle of these two groups and match me accordingly. So much rage atm.
Also my observation is that as you climb from low dia up to facing masters, the range of builds/strategies that you face greatly increases. For example nearly everyone in low dia did 1 rax expand into standard bio/mech, 1 gate expand into colossi deathball, hatch first into ling bling muta. Zerg still obviously go hatch first but P and T are much more varied... I've been facing a lot of DT expands and stargate plays, as well as blink stalker all-ins. From T there's been a couple of mass reapers and hellbat drops.
Need to play more and figure out how to scout and prepare for these kind of things.
My winrate against diamonds recently is something like 90% so it's starting to place me against masters players. Fair enough. But it doesn't place me against low master... it places me again RANK 2 MASTER for christ's sake. How the F am I expected to beat this person? They face grand master players
and while I have been improving I'm under no illusions as to the vast gap in skill between myself and them.I'm sure if I was placed against low-mid master players I could beat them - maybe 50/50 which would then likely get me a promotion. But I've been matched with ranks 2, 5, 6, 8 (x2) masters and two more guys who were in the top 25.
My current situation is therefore that I win almost all of my games vs diamonds (mainly top 5 dia's) and lose all of my games vs masters because the ladder system seems too retarded to realise that my skill falls somewhere in the middle of these two groups and match me accordingly. So much rage atm.
Also my observation is that as you climb from low dia up to facing masters, the range of builds/strategies that you face greatly increases. For example nearly everyone in low dia did 1 rax expand into standard bio/mech, 1 gate expand into colossi deathball, hatch first into ling bling muta. Zerg still obviously go hatch first but P and T are much more varied... I've been facing a lot of DT expands and stargate plays, as well as blink stalker all-ins. From T there's been a couple of mass reapers and hellbat drops.
Need to play more and figure out how to scout and prepare for these kind of things.
The ladder system is so bad....
My winrate against diamonds recently is something like 90% so it's starting to place me against masters players. Fair enough. But it doesn't place me against low master... it places me again RANK 2 MASTER for christ's sake. How the F am I expected to beat this person? They face grand master players
I'm sure if I was placed against low-mid master players I could beat them - maybe 50/50 which would then likely get me a promotion. But I've been matched with ranks 2, 5, 6, 8 (x2) masters and two more guys who were in the top 25.
My current situation is therefore that I win almost all of my games vs diamonds (mainly top 5 dia's) and lose all of my games vs masters because the ladder system seems too retarded to realise that my skill falls somewhere in the middle of these two groups and match me accordingly. So much rage atm.
Also my observation is that as you climb from low dia up to facing masters, the range of builds/strategies that you face greatly increases. For example nearly everyone in low dia did 1 rax expand into standard bio/mech, 1 gate expand into colossi deathball, hatch first into ling bling muta. Zerg still obviously go hatch first but P and T are much more varied... I've been facing a lot of DT expands and stargate plays, as well as blink stalker all-ins. From T there's been a couple of mass reapers and hellbat drops.
Need to play more and figure out how to scout and prepare for these kind of things.
They changed it a while back so your placement in your division would reflect how close you are to the next league but TBH it hasn't changed a thing. It's incredibly easy to work up to top 8 of any division especially when it's new one or you play a lot so don't take it as you're playing low GM level players.
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Exactly my experiences in laddering 1v1. I'm mid plat then suddenly I'm facing high dia then mid masters when I ideally want to me playing mid/high plat/low dia and I just get face stomped by people who have played 15000 games, finished masters about 9 times etc. This was about 20 games in a row as well.
I'm getting this now too. Mid platinum and I keep playing masters players and getting smashed.
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Grats. Plat next and an onslaught of masters opponents!
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It's not easy to become top 5 masters.... also I looked at the replays, these guys were damn good. Anyway their actual level of skill is irrelevant - the point I was making is that it's far above my own so the ladder system is retarded for matching me against them.
Finally got placed against a master player who was outside the top 8 today. Completely rolled him (he was rank 30ish). Looks like the ladder system just wanted to compensate for my win streak a few days ago by forcing me to play some hopeless games to make my win % back to 60%. Pretty stupid tbh.
Seriously the placement in your division means very little. First of all when you get promoted you have a huge bonus pool, second of all you can use your bonus pool for losses.
And there's a huge surge of returning players which means more new divisions. The guys could've been close to GM but their placement means nothing par than they play a lot or win the vast majority of games.