Blog: So last night, I got really frustrated at my stupidly low APM whenever I play. (I’m a Silver League player, but I always felt I should be at least Plat because I know the flow of the game, etc… But I just can’t execute it well enough. Poor micro causes bad macro most of the time. I would have a way bigger army and then… just lose it.)
So in the first attempt to solve this problem, I decided to rebind all my hotkeys. I’m a Protoss player, and here are the essential ideas for my new hotkeys. Not all the nitty-gritty details are here (like, what hotkey is for hallucinating probes. like, seriously guys.)
LOOK AT THE KEYBOARD AS YOU READ. XD This would make negative-sense if you don’t know the layout of keys on the keyboard.
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Goals:
- 1) Move 5 through 0 on the Control Groups. (They’re pretty hard to reach…)
- 2) Make the most important things A, S, D, F.
- 3) Likewise, the keys that you don’t need to precise timing should be Z, X, C, V.
- 4) Make the Spacebar more useful.
- 5) Group the hotkeys in some logical fashion based on the rows of the keys.
- 6) Make unit hotkeys easier to reach (Immortals are I. Who the hell reaches for I?)
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Control Groups: 1, 2, 3, 4, Q, W, E, R, T, S
- Changed 5 through 0. This allows me to quickly use the /other/ half of the hotkeys. So now I can split my unit groups to even finer groups. One of the problems with (all army) in 1 and (spellcasters) in 2 was that there would be instances where I need to quickly pull ONLY my Colossi back or move ONLY my stalkers back to my base, etc. Also, I can assign hotkeys to all my important buildings now.
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Probes and Pylons: D
- Moved from E. Hell, if my hand is always on my home-row, then just make the most important thing (probes and pylons) D instead of E.
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All Spells: F, G, H (based on order of importance if more than one spell exists)
- Moved from whatever it used to be. The ideas is that I can just select any unit group and then perform function F regardless. So yes, now Blink is F, Storm is F, Forcefield (still) F, Graviton Beam is F, ChronoBoost is F, etc.
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Warpgate: Spacebar
- Moved from W. Heck, Protoss in general always uses warpgates. So I might as well make the spacebar do something important. I never use the normal “go to last alert” anyways. (Maybe I should though?)
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Unit Commands (Move, Stop, Hold Position, Patrol, Attack): Z, X, C, V, A.
- Moved from M, S, H, P, A respectively. Attack as A should not change. Everything else could change because it’s not /that/ frequently used compared to Attack. To move a unit, you can just click…
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Unit Hotkeys (minus Probes): Z, X, C, V, B (based on the order presented in the UI)
- Moved from whatever it used to be. For example, Zealot is Z, Sentry is X, Stalker to C, High Templar is V, Dark Templar is B. Essentially, all my unit hotkeys are in one place.
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All Upgrades from Buildings: Z, X, C, V (based on order presented in the UI)
- Moved from whatever it used to be. Same logic as Unit Hotkeys. To be honest, I never knew what the hotkey for +1 attack is. This way, it’s just Z. Don’t have to think.
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Build Command: F, G (Normal Build, Advanced Build)
- Moved from B, V. The idea is that the priority of the building orders should be like the priority of spells. Also, since Pylon is D, it’s stupidly easy to go F-D.
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Buildings hotkeys: A, D, F, Z, X, C, V (depending)
- Moved from whatever it used to be.
- For Normal Build: Nexus (A), Pylon (D, as stated before), Gateway (F), Assimilator (Z), Cybernetics Core (X), Cannon (C), Forge (V). The logic is that the most important buildings are A, D, F. (S is a control group now, remember?) And the least-built building should be X.
- For Advanced Build: Twilight Council (A), Templar Archives (Z), Dark Shrine (X), Stargate (D), Fleet Beacon (C), Robotics Facility (F), Robotics Bay (V). The idea is that each tech-path should be its own group. And three logical groups exist: {A, Z, X}, {D, C}, and {F, V}.
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It was pretty easy to use actually. I got caught-up since I forgot the hotkey for Stalkers and made a bunch of Sentries instead, but that’s alright. I definitely made A, S, D, F and spacebar the most important keys. They are Attack, Control Group, Probes+Pylons, All Primary Spells+Build, and Warpgates respectively.
I’m starting to think of a consistent way to use my new (1, 2, 3, 4, Q, W, E, R, T, S) control groups. My entire army will go into S. All my Nexi will go into Q (pressing Q-D or Q-F isn’t too hard). My Scouting-Opponent Obs will be 5 (since I don’t need to access it /too/ often.) My army subdivisions can happen between W, E, R. And my special buildings (Forges, Robo Bays, Stargates, whatever) can fit within 2, 3, 4. And T could be my forward pylon so I can do T-spacebar-shift-Z to warp in zealots (or whatever)…? Thinking about it.
But yeah! :D Ask-me if you have comments for improvements or blatant flaws you notice or if you think rebinding hotkeys is a waste of time, haha.
