Hotkeys

Hotkeys shortcuts are one of the most important aspects of Starcraft 2 or any Real Time Strategy games. With hotkeys, you can constantly build units while in battle without moving your main screen back to your base and individually clicking on your gateways or any production facilities. This greatly saves your time and you can focus on your main battles. This will help to increase your general macro significantly. Blizzard has done a wonderful job in assigning hotkeys for every unit and building. Every hotkey assigned is almost perfect for SC2 players.

I will show you how I assign my hotkeys in my general gameplay with build order.

• When game starts immediately click on your Nexus and press E to build a probe.
• Then select all your 6 Probes and right click them to a mineral patch towards left or right. Immediately select 3 of the probes and right click them to another mineral patch of the opposite direction. This helps to increase your mineral collection by probably 20 minerals out of 300. During this stage, I will hotkey my Nexus to 5.
• Keep building probes till 9/10 food. Then depending on where you wish to build a pylon, if it’s next to your nexus, send the probe over when you have 80 minerals. If it’s further away, send when you have 60 minerals. To build using hotkey, press B followed by E and left click on the location. This is the first step of using hotkey to build. You can then send this probe to scout and hotkey it to 1.
• I will then hotkey another probe at base which is nearest to the Pylon to 2. So basically 1 for scouting Probe, 2 for base building Probe and 5 for Nexus.
• When you have approximately 120 minerals press 2 to select your base Probe and walk him next to the Pylon and press B then G and left click. This immediately builds a Gateway and hotkey it to 3.
• At 14 probes, build an assimilator by pressing B then A.
• At 16 build a Pylon.
• At 17 build a Cybernetics Core by pressing B then Y.
• At this stage onwards my hotkey will basically look like
• 1: Main Army
• 2: Base building probe which is then replaced by Phoenix, Observers, High Templar or Colossus depending on your unit composition. If you plan to do an early 4 Warpgate Push, Ill hotkey the proxy Pylon near my opponent’s base to 2.
• 3: Gateways/Warpgates
• 4: Robotic Facility/Stargate
• 5: Nexus
• I prefer to use hotkeys from 1 to 5 only. Basically the hotkeys above provides you with good base management as well as army control.
• Thus in general, if you plan to build a Zealot from a Gateway, just press 3 followed by Z. If you wish to cast Psi Storm from your High Templar, just press 2 followed by T.
• The SHIFT Key is a very important tool to queue commands. Ill show you some basic use of them. Say you have 5 Stalkers battling your opponents 5 Stalkers. You select your army by pressing 1. Then while holding down SHIFT key, right click his Stalkers one by one. Your army will focus down his Stalker 1 by 1. Thus you can win this battle easily if your opponent chooses not to micro them.
• SHIFT key also works during your base construction. For eg, if you wish to build 2 Pylons in a row, instead of pressing B, E left click and wait for the first pylon to start construct and the B, E again. You can eliminate this by pressing B, E and hold down SHIFT key and left click and left click again. This will build 2 Pylons together.
• Hotkeys may seem to be a bit frustrating at first but once you memorize and got used to them, you are at another level from before.
• And remember to Practice! Practice! Practice!

The checklist table below states the individual hotkeys for every units and production buildings for Protoss.

General Unit Hotkeys

F1: Spare Probes

CTRL + [number]: Assign group units

[number]: Selected group units

SHIFT + [number]: Add/Remove units from group

Holding down SHIFT followed by other commands: Queue commands

W: Select all Warpgates

M:Move

S : Stop

H: Patrol

A: Move and Attack

G: Gather Resources

C: Return with resources to Cargo

B: Build Basic Construction

V: Build Advance Construction

O: Unload Unit

D: Unload all units at a point

L: Load Unit

Y: Rally Point

Protoss Building Hotkeys

Basic Building

N: Nexus

E: Pylon

A: Assimilator

G: Gateway

W: WarpGate

F: Forge

C: Photon Cannon

Y: Cybernetics Core

C: Twilight Council

S: Stargate

R: Robotic Facility

T: Templar Archives

F: Fleet Beacon

B: Robotic Bay

D: Dark Shrine

Protoss Unit Hotkeys

Nexus

E: Probe

M: Mothership

Gateway/Warpgate

Z: Zealots

E: Sentry

S: Stalker

T: High Templar

D: Dark Templar

C: Archon

StarGate

X: Phoenix

V: Void Ray

C: Carrier

Robotics Facility

B: Observer

A: Warp Prism

I: Immortal

C: Collossus

Protoss Technology (Upgrades) Hotkeys

Forge

G: Ground Weapons

A: Ground Armor

S: Shields

Cybernetics Core

E: Air Weapons

A: Air Armor

H: Hallucination

G: WarpGate

Twilight Countil

C: Charge

B: Blink

Templar Archives

T: Psionis Storm

K: Khaydarin Amulet

Robotics Bay

B: Gravitic Booster

G: Gravitic Drive

E: Eternal Thermal Lance

Fleet Beacon

F: Flux Vanes

G: Graviton Catapults

Protoss Spell Hotkeys

Nexus

C: Chrono Boost

Gateway

G: Warpgate

Stalker

B: Blink

Sentry

G:Guardian Shield

F: Force Field

C: Hallucination

Warp Prism

E: Phasing Mode

T: Transport Mode

Phoenix

G: Graviton Beam

High Templar

T: Psionic Storm

F: Feedback

High Templar/Dark Templar

C: Archon

Carrier

I: Build Interceptor

MotherShip

R: Recall

V: Vortex