Why Assign and Rebind Hotkeys
This feature aims to change some of the custom hotkeys for the custom assigned hotkeys from Blizzard in SC2. The main feature of using this remapping hotkeys is to assign the keys 'Towards the Left side of your Keyboard'. As you all know, having the hotkeys towards the left side improves and smooths your gameplays thus having better unit creation and upgrades. If we take the example of the Immortal before, everytime when we wish to train an Immortal, we have to move our left hand to the 'I' button.
This is not very efficient as we have to move our left hand too far to our comfort. With 'R' hotkey set, we can immediately train the powerful unit. Imagine when you are trying to Hallucinate some Immortals for their awesome defense. You will have to press 'C' 'I' 'C' I' on an on. You may miss the 'I' button a few times. If we use 'C' 'R' 'C' 'R' this can be done easily.
Heroes of Newerth and Dota
The best examples are Heroes of Newerth and Dota from Warcraft 3. Remapping all the abilities to ASDF is one of the most used feature for top players.
Upgrades on Forge
Another hotkey rebinding that I found really useful is the Upgrades from Forge. Up until now since the launch of SC2, I am still not used to the original hotkeys assigned by Blizzard for upgrades on the Forge. Thus, I have change them to Weapon (A), Armor (S) and Shields (D). This is really useful for everyone. The reason behind setting them to A,S,D is humans are visual creatures. We got used to seeing the three upgrades from left to right starting with Weapon, Armor and Shield. Thus assigning ASD to them eases our hotkey capabilities.
Remapping Camera
Create Location 1
This feature enables you to Hotkey a Location to button such as F1, F2, F3. And you will be immediately brought the the location once you press the assigned buttons. Let me tell you, every professional players use this Location Hotkey Feature. However, I am unsure what keys do they assign to. My best bet is that they set them to F1, F2 and F3. F1 is often remap for your Main Base. F2 for your Expansion and F3 for your Third. Main Base and Expansion is the most used. Some professional gamers do not hotkey the third base. Setting hotkeys to your bases improves your macro and micro abilities. For example, you catch a Terran Drop heading to your main base. Thus you Press F1 and micro your units instead of Clicking on the Minimap first. F1 is definitely faster than the Minimap option.
However, do not take my words for the exact hotkeys used by pro gamers here. This is just my guess. Some of them may be using F2 and F3 for main and expansion. F1 is left to its original feature for idle workers. If you have change F1 to your main base, you can set your Idle workers to ~.
Let's take a look at the hotkeys I have Changed. This is just my personal preference.
Protoss
- Immortal - R and I
- Forge - Weapon, Armor, Shields to A S D
- Cyber Core - Air Weapon (A), Air Armor (S), Hallucination upgrade H and C.
- Fleet Beacon - Graviton Catapult G and C
- Robotics Bay- Gravitic Boosters (Observer Speed) B, Gravitic Drive (Warp Prism) G and A
Zergs and Terran
If you are Zerg or Terran you can go ahead to assign your own personal hotkeys like the examples shown above. For example, I always find Metabolic Boost 'M' hotkey upgrade to be very troublesome as the key is located towards the bottom right of keyboard. You can always use 'Z' or even 'S' for Speed. Do try out rebinding and remapping your hotkeys in SC2. You will be surprised how useful this feature is in Starcraft 2.
The other day I did a little experiment.
ReplyDeleteI set every unit´s main abilities to "q" (storm, blink, force field, graviton field, and vortex) and secondaries to "w" (feedback, guardian shield, mass recall)
To warp units also I used: q(zealots),w(stalker), e(sentry), a(ht) s(dt).
Stargate and robo units as well (q,w, e and r, from left to right)
There result? I´m almost done getting used to it and it´s fairly good. And I say it´s good because I have low apm (50-55) so not having to move my left hand at all, helps a lot.
You just need to be careful with what is selected at the time, because it already happened that I tried to warp zealots around a pylon and I was still selecting my main army, so the result was 4 force fields around the pylon. Doh! :)
I´ve never used camera locations, I should give it a try, besides, f1 to f4 are still available and in range.
Choose whatever you are most comfortable with. HON players are used to the qwer / asdf key for ease of micro.
DeleteFor your Info, Masters & GM level players has around 100-120 effect APM. Practice harder.
I am still not used to the camera hotkeys. I am still doing it manually by double clicking my Nexus hotkey / minimap.
Note: If you hotkey 2 Nexus at '5', if you double press 5 it will bring to the closes Nexus from your current location.
Cheers
Thank you so much. Loved your this guide.
ReplyDelete