Nothing embarrassing about it, you could write a similar wall of text for any game that I play.

Pressing shift+1 will add the currently selected units to hotkey 1, whereas ctrl+1 sets hotkey 1 to the current group. When I played T I would usually just hold ctrl, click a marine (ctrl+click selects all of that unit type on screen), press shift+1 (add all marines on screen to group 1), repeat for marauders, and I'm done. So, you don't have to reselect everything, just the stuff you want to add.

i didnt know about the ctrl click for so long. double click ftw! so inefficient tho

As an example, I just lost a ZvP to, like, two DTs being sent to each of my bases while opponent did a normal gateway attack on the 3rd. I had overseers morphed already (but no static defense) and still lost almost every drone I had. I bad.

Did win the next game, though I lost my 5th shorty after it finished to two DTs and two zealots cause I had no static d and lost my 3rd later on to a big zealot warpin cause I, as usual, had no static d.

DTs are really annoying, so glad they made them ultra cheap in HotS.

Wait what is the difference

Say I have 10 marines in control group 1, and then I click a marine that just popped from my rax and hit shift+1. I now have 11 marines in control group 1.

Say I have 10 marines in control group 1, and then I click a marine that just popped from my rax and hit ctrl+1. I now have 1 marine in control group 1.

ctrl will recreate that control group. so if you have 20 marines on 1, and you have 5 highlighted, ctrl 1 will make group 1 only those 5 marines.

if you have 5 marines on 1, and select 20 more, shift 1 will make 25 marines on 1

works for buildings/everything

Ohhhhhhhhhhh goddamn that changes everything for me!

Holy **** how did I not know that

It's ok. I played sc2 a couple months before I figured out how to add stuff to control groups too. I remember puting each of my hatcheries in a separate control group and building units from 1 hatch at a time.

I wish I saved some of my bronze replays. I'm sure they would be hilarious to watch now.

cuz yea i always just reselect everything and re-hotkey it. pain in the ass. wow i am such a moron

same

one of my first games in bronze was on TDA (lol) and i lose a tvt where this kid makes like 5 rax 4 reactors unupgraded marines only. walks across by maybe 12 mins? with like 30 marines and i lose. i refused to make tanks for so long for some reason

For the entire duration of my Terran career I pretty much went MMM every game, never made tanks (maybe 1 or 2 against Zerg to be safe at my wall), would maybe make vikings against Protoss, never made ghosts. Also never dropped cause lol we didn't have boostivacs. And I used a trackball. How on earth was I in gold league?

Don't sweat it I didn't know you could rally drones from the hatchery for a while...

I didn't know this until about two months ago

If you box some units and you only want to put some of them in your control group, you can select click to remove them from selection first, or if you want all of a certain type of unit not in the control group, you can press ctrl and select and it will remove all of that type of unit from your current selection.

shift not select right?

Yes sorry. I actually called shift select twice in that post.

Yeah, as Z, when I morph lings into banelings and I want to remove the banes from my 1 group, I'll...

- morph a bunch
- hit 1 to select my 1 group
- hold ctrl and shift
- click a morphing bane
- that removes all morphing banes from current selection
- hit ctrl+1 to re-set my group with no banes

That's less useful as Terran, I think, but pretty necessary as Zerg.

Yeah I do the same thing, except I hotkey the banes into their own group first before removing them from 1.

So I'm watching WCS AM and TI3 simultaneously. Noob question, why is there only one map in DOTA? and LoL? I mean it's ok I guess, there's only one chessboard, but I fail to see how they couldn't at least have another one or two every so often to keep things fresh, keep the meta from getting stagnant etc.

Just reading in a bit more detail now that I'm sober and have some time
So basically, I need to use hotkeys better. And work on my army positioning. And get a new mouse!

Also a lot of times before a big engagement I'll just panic and freeze up and I'll know that I should be microing something and doing something but not recognize what until it's too late.

The other maps in LoL are different game modes (3v3, Dominion, ARAM), so a new map would need to be made for standard competitive 5v5 play. I think the lack of different maps and stuff is sort of a systemic thing. 3v3/Dominion hardly sees any play compared to Summoner's Rift. And then Riot might feel the need to balance according to the new 5v5 map, which could throw everything out of whack.

I'd love for riot to try changing/improving the jungle on summoner's rift or move/add jungle creeps/spawns. I think that would change stuff somewhat as well. As for stagnant meta, right now a large amount of combinations of champions/team compositions are still available. Even if the early game plays out similarly, the variety of champions available and viable at the high levels still provides a decent variety.

Actually a build does tell you when and where and how. You should try to copy a build against the computer from a pro. It's really good practice to just drill a build 20 times until you can just do it because so much of the game makes more sense afterwards than when you just wing it. It improves you macro as well because you are forced to spend your money correctly to pull it off. Try a two base build of some kind.

You don't have to hit pro timings obviously. To copy the build focus on the gas timings and the order of tech, getting the exact supply count to build every supply depot etc is not important. So like rax, factory, CC, tech lab on factory, I am just making this up but you have the idea.

So in principle there is no reason in particular why they can't introduce say a second map down the line if they balance test it a lot in the background? I mean if the game is going to be played for a large number of years seem stale to have just one map. Changing things even subtly could make a big difference I am sure given the nature of the game?

I guess someone who plays Terran should comment on what openers are good in HotS since I never see anyone do 1 rax gasless FE anymore - but yeah, it's not really doing a "build" so much, you just want to open a way that gives you more of an economy because 3 raxes before expanding will put you way behind anyone who doesn't go all-in against you.

The most common builds I see as a Zerg are reaper expands (rax -> gas -> scout with reaper -> take expansion, usually get a quick factory with a couple widow mines to stay safe while you go up to 3 command centers) or quick hellions into expand. All 3 races generally try to get that expansion down early though so they can have as good of an economy as possible, and you should too.

I haven't watched this, but this dude taught me how to not suck at Terran in WoL so this will prob help you a lot: