I'm only at 40 games right now bought the game a few days ago, and gonna look deeper into that haha Edit : well I didn't wanted to show off, but actually i vaguely knew about backspace being base camera but didn't switched it, since there is too much keys to changes I was a bit 'afraid' of doing it without help xD and glad i just found that video
For everyone who dislikes having the Attack hotkey being changed to 'T' instead of 'A' after you switch to custom grid mode, you can set it as 'A' still by going to grid (1:38) and clicking the 'T' (top right) and setting an alternative 'A'. I don't think this will negatively affect one's game play, and it most definitely resolves some problems that some may have with the command settings. :)
Who is watching this on 2017 after a gap of 3 years not playing? Seems that, as i have not practice anymore with hotkeys, ill go with the grid setup :) Your channel is being very helpful as a returning player.
@@krsna802 but that mess up whole grid system .you have to press T instead of Q for first upgrade and everything else in that place.I got used to T for attack quickly after putting that comment ,default is best choice pretty sure
@@finix7419 Not really, there's a way to bound "Q" just for the attack command, and "T" just for the move command. At the end of the hotkeys file, you must type the following: "[Commands] Attack=Q Move=T" Without quotes, and it won't mess with anything else.
thankyou lowko, This is one of the few guides that cater to truly new players. I understand its a small niche in 2024, but I appreciate that you cater to new players too, hence helping to keep the game alive!!
I know this video is a couple years old, but I just started playing SC2 last week after watching numerous games online. These simple tips were very helpful and made things a lot easier. Since I don't know the controls by heart yet, hopefully these instructions will prevent me doing too many rookie mistakes. Thanks Lowko
10 years of playing SC ll - Happy Birthday StarCraft ll. Just started playing again and wondered why I‘m sucking that much. This video helped improve my skill so much! Thank you Lowko.
Just make sure that if you split a group that you hit alt + 4 and not alt + F4 This was super helpful. I've been playing SC and SC2 using a lot of these commands, but never the placed camera one, didn't know that was a thing. Also I may give the grid layout a try for a bit (I usually just use standard).
Can I honestly say that this could possibly be THE one key tutorial video out there that allows you to take your SC2 micro technique to a whole nother level-- bar none? Thanks Lowko, you beast.
I've been seeing your vids, coaching sessions and tutorials for almost two years now... And this is what I appreciate the most of professionals like you! Heads up for Lowko, sharing is caring and you are a clear example of that, a compromised vlogger with his audience, congrats with all your hard work, you deserve every triumph and recognizing.
I got about six minutes into this video, paused and decided to say thank you LowkoTV, it is very hard to find help when playing RTS games however you do it perfectly and for my personal favourite RTS game SC2. Thank you!
Soo, I just bought sc2 and after finishing wings of liberty, I changed my hot keys to the grid layout, so I didn't have to much of a connection to the standard layout, means that changing all the hot keys at once worked for me pretty well. This video also is extremely useful, and I am glad that I can learn from all your videos, they are great advice for a new starcraft player like me
tbh I'm new player but i didn't like grid hotkeys so much, standart is universal make more sense to be, but i already had a dota/ RTS background before playing it.
To me standard makes more sense, specially as a newer player, because, when I want to build I press B, then what do I want? Barracks - well that's B, engineering bay? Well that's E, supply depot? That's S. It makes everything easier if you ask me.
sc2 hotkeys are super easy almost a joke. If you compare with original sc1 it makes macro basically non existent and very easy to control a big army. This isn't the reason for any loss in popularity to new players.
they did it intentionally so ignorant ppl (who never actually read all the available hotkeys) will be at a disadvantage muwahahaha... just kidding, just kidding, but never miss things like this, because I'm usually the nerd that read the whole manual to pass time while downloading or so xd
they probably didn't think it through, as far as player could set any action to any key, the goal was just to make a game and assign each action to some key, so that it's not blank. I mean, allot of fps games still have arrow keys for movement, even though everyone normally uses wasd
I know this is years old, but it is a common occurrence that ppl rebind capslock to backspace and then the binding makes a lot of sense. Who uses capslock anyway?
you say to learn to properly hotkey your army. Got any videos helping me on that one? I'm one of those people that just F2's + A-attack EVERYTHING. When I get dropped, all my overseers gather to watch the slaughter...
I've been finding myself questioning some of the biggest developers default controller configuration schemes for years now-- thanks to Lowko, it proves that I've been on to something all along.
Been playing SC2 since beta and I had not found the base camera setting and also did not know the Alt + ControlGroup trick to add more units to a group! Thank you so much! It's the little things!
if you don't have locations bound and a base gets attacked, you might end up cycling through all of your bases before you get to the one you need and then if you accidentally hit the space bar too many times you have to click the map or cycle again and at that point you may as well have just clicked the map to begin with. cycling through bases is great for injects as opposed to binding each queen or hatchery individually
Just felt like I needed to show some gratitude, just starting up from a dota/c&c background (although not using hotkeys very effectively at all) this video was super helpful and easy to understand, even at 4 AM :)
Jasan Friedlaender answer: optoins < Gameplay, you can set your alliance color to white/black/whatever is given there, and then ingame you have to click the lowest of the 3 buttons next to your minimap, it looks like a kind of "handshake", this will then activate your alliance colors for you, your team mates and enemies, default is green for you, yellow for team mates, and red for enemies
i actually changed to grid a few months ago when i noticed that you use that lowko and it really was a pain for like a week or so but now i find it easier because everything is in the same little group and you dont have to move your fingers that much, also i implemented the location thingy also when i noticed you did it, and btw thanks for everything lowko you tought me 99% of what i know of starcraft, how to play zerg most of it, my favorite race
I'm a Dota 2 player, started playing recently, and there's so many similarities between the 2 games (mainly because they were born from Warcraft 3). This tutorial was really explainatory, thank you LowkoTV!
Thanks for the amazing video! I just started back into Starcraft and kept having to look at the mini screen on the right to see what each unit was hot-keyed to. Grid sounds so much easier!
alt will create a new group to a new key while subtracting from the original group. control creates a new group, but the new group is also still bound to the old key.
Nice video, but I have one question. How do you organize your control groups when you're playing Protoss or Terran? I mean how do you organize the control groups for the production buildings?
im not sure how lowko does it, but when i play i put them on five and just hit tab to switch between them, since you want them all to be producing anyways. You could also do barracks/gateway to 5, factory/robotics facility to 6, and starport/stargate to 7 if that works better for you. As said in the video, its about preference.
Set gateways or barracks to 3, factories or robos to 4, and starports and stargates to 5. Either that, or set them all to 3, and use tab to jump between them.
I always set mine to 3 too, although setting them to 4 will allow you one more hotkey for army control. When I have different production structures set to different hotkeys, I always forget to produce from one of them..
Ok. Do you also hotkey different nexus/cc? I thought I should to build probes/overcharge, etc... I had my own hotkey composition (of course, I'm no pro) of 1-3 is Gate,Robo,Stargate, 4,5,6 is different nexus and then 7,8 would be army. But i would really like to have army at 1-3 I just don't know how you pro's do it. ;P
It's mostly preference. I personally put my production buildings (ie Barracks Factory Starport) in the same control group on 4, and put my CC's on `. So I have 1 - 3 for army hotkeys. Some people put their Barracks Factories and Starports in separate groups, so they have like 3 different hotkeys for production. I personally don't like it, but it's something you can do. I'm assuming by hotkey different nexus/cc you mean each individual base get's it's own hotkey. I would strongly advise against that, since you can make probes from all of them at the same time and send all of them to one location by just using one group. If you want to send probes from one base to a different location to the rest, it's probably easier to just manually click on the nexus and then the location instead of giving it a separate control group. I would also suggest not using a control group for your gateways. In grid, the game adds all warp gates to Y automatically. There should be a way to customize that to your liking if you don't use grid.
+eightball I didn't know about the y grid warpgate hotkey. i have to look into that as I'm not completely sure how that works. thanks for the tips though. any other helpful videos you can recommend on the matter?
Nathanias has a good one on the Rapid Fire mechanic. As for the Y warpgate thing, it just selects all your warp gates and you can warp in units without de selecting or selecting each individual one. So, if you have 6 warp gates and you're using grid and you want Stalkers or something. You can press Y, then just press W and while staying on the warp gate group and it will use the gates one b one until you no longer have any warp ins. It's hard to explain in text, sorry if you're confused.
I'm a returning player from years ago, so I think I'll give your hotkey system a try seeing as i have no appreciable muscle memory. great vids, I am learning so much!
Just curious, Lowko, do you think APM really matters? I'm high plat low diamond as protoss with ~100-120 APM, spiking to about 180 in an engagement, I don't really see a necessity for it to be much higher unless I'm missing a timing, am I wrong?
The only bind I've changed has been my all army one, to ~. Maybe it's just my comfort not switching the binds, but I also feel like it's somewhat stopping me from getting out of Diamond 1 and into Masters. Then again it might just be that I don't know how to beat terrans or hold against a zerg 2 base all in.
APM in and of itself is not beneficial. But if you're able to micro 2 engagements while keeping also building workers, new buildings, supply, new units, upgrades, and tech... Well, that simply cannot hurt. If you imagine a computer AI that has unlimited ceiling on APM, it could micro every single unit perfectly. There's no way this wouldn't be beneficial.
APM are kinda misleading as you'll see the pros literally spamming base hot keys in the first few minutes but not actually accomplishing anything. I would say 60-70% of apm are wasted keystrokes/clicks.
Thanks Lowko for the video! I was holding off learning Starcraft 2 multiplayer play because I know hotkey are very important to Starcraft gameplay. Thanks for making the video K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) and I will feel more confident in learning Starcraft 2 now!
As someone who has just recently finished campaign (spam them goliaths ftw) I'm somewhat overwhelmed by all the fancy commands and macros. Your video has helped immensely, thank you :)
great video bro. been playing starcraft for years and learned some more tricks from you. didnt realize how many diff combos there were. didnt realize how shift and alt worked with ctrl. thanks for the vid man.
omg!! thank you so much lowko! I have been saving my queens to hotkey to numbers and just double tapping the number to move camera to my different base queens so i can hit my injects. I had no idea there was a base camera key.......... That is soooo much easier. Expansions don't have a queen right off the bat so im never able to go to those bases when first built. thank you so much!
I actually did switch out my hotkeys completely for my own style once. It's close to the grid hotkey type, but modified to my personal preference, and it worked fairly well for me
Really useful video. I have been playing grid for years and didn't know about these tips. Hopefully this will help improve my overall game. Thanks Lowko.
Thnks a lot Lowko... I will pratice this video... to improve my skill... i,m return to play since 2010.... its a different game.... Thnks again 43years old SC2 Player
thanks a lot for this video lowko. I was always confused on most hot keys so I stayed away from using them outside of the f2 for all army and the control groups but I wasn't the best at using them in general and I never understood splitting the army. This video is exactly what I needed cause it cleared up some of my confusion on hotkey and control groups and gave me the courage to go more into hotkeys. I definitely think I will be getting better faster as I implement the things from this video.
I learned so much in this video. Thank you! I am still a low level player, so I am still learning how to use hotkeys for everything. The only reason why I haven't switched to grid setup is that I am so used to using "a" to attack move. But I want to switch to grid because it makes so much more sense.
Thanks for this video. I've switched to the Grid hotkey setup just today. I've been using the Standard setup since I started playing multiplayer SC2 a couple of months ago, but now I felt I was feeling limited and blocked by my hotkey setup. One of the good things about the GRID setup is that if you want to change race (maybe usually you play Terran but for the weekend you want to dress Zerg clothes ;) ) the keys are the same, and you don't have to mentally reset all your hotkeys. Another reason why I decided to try the Grid setup is that I was not using all of the hotkeys offered by the Standard setup, but only some of them (always the few same hotkeys. In same cases I was using the mouse .....
VERY HELPFUL!!! I would love to see more instructional videos like this to teach the less experienced players like myself how to play better. Thank you.
Thanks for the great vid! I just started starcraft 2 last weekend and I was binding everything with control xD. Im such a noob and this video really helped.
Man, I didn't even know Grid existed! I've played for a while and got used to the standard hotkeys already. But, I went against your advice and just switched my hotkeys right away. It was very weird but after about 3 - 4 days on the ladder, I've gotten used to it. It feels so much more comfortable than standard. :)
Hey man, I hadn't subbed for a long time. That's cause I thought you were doing fine, and didn't need any more support. But now I see you only have 177k subs, when you should definitely have at least 1 mill. I'm definitely resubbing, and watching every video. You deserve it, keep up the good work dude!
Excellent video. Keep up the good work. I personally found that when using/learning hotkeys in wow pvp/pve the best way to learn is to just bind all your keys and learn to use them even if you are throwing yourself in the deep end. That is just me... and this could work by practise in unranked games for those players worried about losing mmr.
this info was incredible... I started to win with this information, really, I really love the zerg but I never used them for the difficult of the race... Thanks, I always watch you videos and are very good...
5:48 you can hit CTRL+F to center on current selection. This way you don't have to click on the portrait. It's pretty neat. I use space for that, but that's because my Grid setup is pretty heavily modified.
Im a new player day 3 and this video was awesome thanks. Other then playing starcraft when i was a kid 10-15 years ago. Haha really keen to learn these tips.
This is probably the most important video for new starcraft players to watch
Friedcheese thanks
sc2 is too complex haha.
I’m Diamond and trying to get better. Been playing since beta. Didn’t know about base cameras lol. This is good for everyone!
I agree! Helped me soooo much!
I was having a hard time with hotkeys myself.
I tried to bind camera shortcuts on alt F1 to F4. The first three worked. :)
Yeah I was kind of annoyed to realize alt + F4 wasn't disabled for SC2.
@@yugen can be disabled in the hotkeys optiond
@@krenze1164 Only 2 years late but thank you :)
After watching this video I proceeded to rearrange some hotkeys. Was doing pretty well, until I hit Alt F4.. Haha
XD ....
xD LOLZ
lmaoooo
I bet that made you autowin the game ;)
@@spagettech :)))) lool
Years of playing SCII and I never knew about the base camera key :S
u aint the only one. That would of saved me tons of hassel and headaches throughout the years but was just too confused and scared to learn.
+Aqwia L feels good not to be the only one that ignores that ✌️
Octavio Castro I think there are a lot of us out there like this but we to scared to speak up
you are not alone
I'm only at 40 games right now bought the game a few days ago, and gonna look deeper into that haha
Edit : well I didn't wanted to show off, but actually i vaguely knew about backspace being base camera but didn't switched it, since there is too much keys to changes I was a bit 'afraid' of doing it without help xD and glad i just found that video
A much requested, long overdue update to one of my most viewed videos. Everything you need to know about hotkeys and control groups in StarCraft 2.
thanks lowko, i really need help with hotkeys, thanks so much for helping. Big fan btw, I watch your videos loads. =)
Thanks for the update these technical vids help as much if not more than the gameplay :)
Thank you very much! :)
hey, this has been bothering me for a while...why does you're select army icon, top left of HUD read "GRAVE"???
Question: how do you hotkey producing structures as Protoss or Terran? And do you hotkey upgrade buildings such as the Evolution Chamber?
Returning player here, this is still the best beginner video out there! Thanks lowko!
For everyone who dislikes having the Attack hotkey being changed to 'T' instead of 'A' after you switch to custom grid mode, you can set it as 'A' still by going to grid (1:38) and clicking the 'T' (top right) and setting an alternative 'A'. I don't think this will negatively affect one's game play, and it most definitely resolves some problems that some may have with the command settings. :)
Thank you so much! This has been amazing for my game!
Who is watching this on 2017 after a gap of 3 years not playing? Seems that, as i have not practice anymore with hotkeys, ill go with the grid setup :) Your channel is being very helpful as a returning player.
Unbelievable.....Im in the exact same situation
One more guy right here XD
Nícolas Wildner me
me at the end of 2017 as a returning player
Im watching this in 2018 as a new player. haha
Single most game changing video I've seen since I started playing SC2 around 3 months ago... and I've watched about a half dozen videos on the matter.
If anyone is wondering, you need to use the key "T" to attack move units in the Grid layout. T instead of A.
yeah I love the grid set up , only downside is attack move T instead of A
@@finix7419 I move the hotkey to "Q" for attackin and "T" for moving I think
@@krsna802 but that mess up whole grid system .you have to press T instead of Q for first upgrade and everything else in that place.I got used to T for attack quickly after putting that comment ,default is best choice pretty sure
@@finix7419 Not really, there's a way to bound "Q" just for the attack command, and "T" just for the move command. At the end of the hotkeys file, you must type the following:
"[Commands]
Attack=Q
Move=T"
Without quotes, and it won't mess with anything else.
t posing your army
thankyou lowko, This is one of the few guides that cater to truly new players. I understand its a small niche in 2024, but I appreciate that you cater to new players too, hence helping to keep the game alive!!
I know this video is a couple years old, but I just started playing SC2 last week after watching numerous games online. These simple tips were very helpful and made things a lot easier. Since I don't know the controls by heart yet, hopefully these instructions will prevent me doing too many rookie mistakes. Thanks Lowko
10 years of playing SC ll - Happy Birthday StarCraft ll.
Just started playing again and wondered why I‘m sucking that much. This video helped improve my skill so much! Thank you Lowko.
Just make sure that if you split a group that you hit alt + 4 and not alt + F4
This was super helpful. I've been playing SC and SC2 using a lot of these commands, but never the placed camera one, didn't know that was a thing. Also I may give the grid layout a try for a bit (I usually just use standard).
Can I honestly say that this could possibly be THE one key tutorial video out there that allows you to take your SC2 micro technique to a whole nother level-- bar none? Thanks Lowko, you beast.
Finally! You rock my world Lowko... Keep these tutorials going up and you won't let me down!
Happy to hear that!
question: what mouse do you use? what sensitivity? what dpi? what polling rate?
Lowko you explains it in the clearest way.
I've been seeing your vids, coaching sessions and tutorials for almost two years now... And this is what I appreciate the most of professionals like you! Heads up for Lowko, sharing is caring and you are a clear example of that, a compromised vlogger with his audience, congrats with all your hard work, you deserve every triumph and recognizing.
i didn't know about alt key. this will be very useful
I got about six minutes into this video, paused and decided to say thank you LowkoTV, it is very hard to find help when playing RTS games however you do it perfectly and for my personal favourite RTS game SC2. Thank you!
One of the greatest SC2-Videos (Mechanics) ever made!
Soo, I just bought sc2 and after finishing wings of liberty, I changed my hot keys to the grid layout, so I didn't have to much of a connection to the standard layout, means that changing all the hot keys at once worked for me pretty well. This video also is extremely useful, and I am glad that I can learn from all your videos, they are great advice for a new starcraft player like me
i think sc2 standard hotkeys are one of those things that make sc2 unaccessable for new players
VillaMasterSF depends,are u a sc veteran or a sc newbi,i mean did u play the last sc game or you re just entering the fracaise??
tbh I'm new player but i didn't like grid hotkeys so much, standart is universal make more sense to be, but i already had a dota/ RTS background before playing it.
To me standard makes more sense, specially as a newer player, because, when I want to build I press B, then what do I want? Barracks - well that's B, engineering bay? Well that's E, supply depot? That's S. It makes everything easier if you ask me.
sc2 hotkeys are super easy almost a joke. If you compare with original sc1 it makes macro basically non existent and very easy to control a big army. This isn't the reason for any loss in popularity to new players.
@MrChiato There's a problem though: that only works perfectly if your native language is English :)
Playing SC for the first time in 5+ years, your videos have been great thus far. Much obliged. Very fun game.
I never understood why the base cam was defaulted to backspace. Why Blizz why?
Especially when the designers consider harassment units that can rape your mineral line in seconds to be "exciting".
I don't have a problem with that tbh. But the way they did it is too much
they did it intentionally so ignorant ppl (who never actually read all the available hotkeys) will be at a disadvantage muwahahaha... just kidding, just kidding, but never miss things like this, because I'm usually the nerd that read the whole manual to pass time while downloading or so xd
they probably didn't think it through, as far as player could set any action to any key, the goal was just to make a game and assign each action to some key, so that it's not blank. I mean, allot of fps games still have arrow keys for movement, even though everyone normally uses wasd
I know this is years old, but it is a common occurrence that ppl rebind capslock to backspace and then the binding makes a lot of sense. Who uses capslock anyway?
This is, first and foremost, the most firstest foremost StarCraft video of all time(, for example.)
you say to learn to properly hotkey your army. Got any videos helping me on that one? I'm one of those people that just F2's + A-attack EVERYTHING.
When I get dropped, all my overseers gather to watch the slaughter...
You mean toss player?
lol @ all my overseers gather to watch the slaughter...
This made me laugh out loud.
I've been finding myself questioning some of the biggest developers default controller configuration schemes for years now-- thanks to Lowko, it proves that I've been on to something all along.
excelent tutorial, i needed this very much!
thanks]!
Been playing SC2 since beta and I had not found the base camera setting and also did not know the Alt + ControlGroup trick to add more units to a group! Thank you so much! It's the little things!
Base cam cycles through all of them??? Dam I was creating custom camera locations for all of them xD...
I do both actually. It's more accurate.
if you don't have locations bound and a base gets attacked, you might end up cycling through all of your bases before you get to the one you need and then if you accidentally hit the space bar too many times you have to click the map or cycle again and at that point you may as well have just clicked the map to begin with. cycling through bases is great for injects as opposed to binding each queen or hatchery individually
same
Same... as Zerg... God damn it hurts me now (and My queens)
Anima Manager i
Just felt like I needed to show some gratitude, just starting up from a dota/c&c background (although not using hotkeys very effectively at all) this video was super helpful and easy to understand, even at 4 AM :)
Lowko: If you are one of those who uses the ALL ARMY hotkey, I highly recommend you leave it unbound.
Me: Sweats in Toss A-move👀
thanks, the shift+1 adding unit from a different scream in to a group is really useful. I been playing for many years and never realized that
That was super useful.
+Volnik Awesome. Thanks Volnik.
I've been using Lowko's setup ever since the first video he made, this video is right up my alley. Much thanks Lowko.
Thanks Lowko! Brazilian 🇧🇷 Starcraft player here!
Amigo, tu sabe me dizer porque o zerg dele está nessa cor?
+Gustavo Moura selecionou nas configurações do jogo. Dá uma olhada lá.
options / gameplay / Team Color Intensity = 11
Jasan Friedlaender answer:
optoins < Gameplay, you can set your alliance color to white/black/whatever is given there, and then ingame you have to click the lowest of the 3 buttons next to your minimap, it looks like a kind of "handshake", this will then activate your alliance colors for you, your team mates and enemies, default is green for you, yellow for team mates, and red for enemies
i actually changed to grid a few months ago when i noticed that you use that lowko and it really was a pain for like a week or so but now i find it easier because everything is in the same little group and you dont have to move your fingers that much, also i implemented the location thingy also when i noticed you did it, and btw thanks for everything lowko you tought me 99% of what i know of starcraft, how to play zerg most of it, my favorite race
tip don't bind this camera locations or anything else to alt+F4 (facepalm)
I have been wanting a quality video on hotkeys for a while now. Thanks a lot, Lowko
4:50 Return to the location with a single click. Meanwhile, the Grandmasters click F1 300 times to get to that location.
I'm a Dota 2 player, started playing recently, and there's so many similarities between the 2 games (mainly because they were born from Warcraft 3). This tutorial was really explainatory, thank you LowkoTV!
Lowko, your keyboard has your icon on the space-bar. Want.
I know I’m late but this video has answered every question I had on groups and the bindings for them! Thankyou so much
It's all about the Cherry Red switches. Clack! Clack! Clack!
Thanks for the amazing video! I just started back into Starcraft and kept having to look at the mini screen on the right to see what each unit was hot-keyed to. Grid sounds so much easier!
The alt key + # is crucial for marine spreading when responding to baneling ambushes I presume.
I have been trying to figure out the split forever thank you!
I still don't get why use Alt instead of Control key. It works the same.
Plus, what does alt + control do, it seems like control itself does the same.
alt will create a new group to a new key while subtracting from the original group. control creates a new group, but the new group is also still bound to the old key.
Oh really... I assumed they just grabbed them with the mouse. That's the way I've done it
Lowko explains it in the clearest way I've ever seen.
Awesome! Thanks a lot!
Yesterday i was thinking "i wish Lowko made a video talking about hotkeys" dude! this is awesome
this guys like the redmercy of sc2 lmao
This guy is my reference for SC2. Keep it up. They should invite you to comment on one of the official tournaments
Nice video, but I have one question. How do you organize your control groups when you're playing Protoss or Terran? I mean how do you organize the control groups for the production buildings?
im not sure how lowko does it, but when i play i put them on five and just hit tab to switch between them, since you want them all to be producing anyways. You could also do barracks/gateway to 5, factory/robotics facility to 6, and starport/stargate to 7 if that works better for you. As said in the video, its about preference.
Set gateways or barracks to 3, factories or robos to 4, and starports and stargates to 5. Either that, or set them all to 3, and use tab to jump between them.
Thank you, I think i'll setle with puting them all in one control group and tabbing.
I always set mine to 3 too, although setting them to 4 will allow you one more hotkey for army control. When I have different production structures set to different hotkeys, I always forget to produce from one of them..
Araknida Demirdyian i
This is amazingly helpful i'e always wondered how people kept track of all the different hotkeys and bass and such.
what about hotkeying production buildings???
For Terran and Protoss I use 3, 5 and 6, depending on the composition.
Ok. Do you also hotkey different nexus/cc? I thought I should to build probes/overcharge, etc... I had my own hotkey composition (of course, I'm no pro) of 1-3 is Gate,Robo,Stargate, 4,5,6 is different nexus and then 7,8 would be army. But i would really like to have army at 1-3 I just don't know how you pro's do it. ;P
It's mostly preference. I personally put my production buildings (ie Barracks Factory Starport) in the same control group on 4, and put my CC's on `. So I have 1 - 3 for army hotkeys. Some people put their Barracks Factories and Starports in separate groups, so they have like 3 different hotkeys for production. I personally don't like it, but it's something you can do. I'm assuming by hotkey different nexus/cc you mean each individual base get's it's own hotkey. I would strongly advise against that, since you can make probes from all of them at the same time and send all of them to one location by just using one group. If you want to send probes from one base to a different location to the rest, it's probably easier to just manually click on the nexus and then the location instead of giving it a separate control group. I would also suggest not using a control group for your gateways. In grid, the game adds all warp gates to Y automatically. There should be a way to customize that to your liking if you don't use grid.
+eightball I didn't know about the y grid warpgate hotkey. i have to look into that as I'm not completely sure how that works. thanks for the tips though. any other helpful videos you can recommend on the matter?
Nathanias has a good one on the Rapid Fire mechanic. As for the Y warpgate thing, it just selects all your warp gates and you can warp in units without de selecting or selecting each individual one. So, if you have 6 warp gates and you're using grid and you want Stalkers or something. You can press Y, then just press W and while staying on the warp gate group and it will use the gates one b one until you no longer have any warp ins. It's hard to explain in text, sorry if you're confused.
I'm a returning player from years ago, so I think I'll give your hotkey system a try seeing as i have no appreciable muscle memory. great vids, I am learning so much!
Just curious, Lowko, do you think APM really matters? I'm high plat low diamond as protoss with ~100-120 APM, spiking to about 180 in an engagement, I don't really see a necessity for it to be much higher unless I'm missing a timing, am I wrong?
+Visions You are right. If there's more to do, you'll become faster over time anyway.
As a silver tier 1 almost gold i hope ican become a platinum atleast this season, as silver atm 130apm to 180 apm end game is not right ?
The only bind I've changed has been my all army one, to ~. Maybe it's just my comfort not switching the binds, but I also feel like it's somewhat stopping me from getting out of Diamond 1 and into Masters. Then again it might just be that I don't know how to beat terrans or hold against a zerg 2 base all in.
APM in and of itself is not beneficial. But if you're able to micro 2 engagements while keeping also building workers, new buildings, supply, new units, upgrades, and tech... Well, that simply cannot hurt. If you imagine a computer AI that has unlimited ceiling on APM, it could micro every single unit perfectly. There's no way this wouldn't be beneficial.
APM are kinda misleading as you'll see the pros literally spamming base hot keys in the first few minutes but not actually accomplishing anything. I would say 60-70% of apm are wasted keystrokes/clicks.
I just started playing SC II and this video actually helps me a lot now it's a matter of getting use to it. Thanks a lot ;)
i hear if your early Lowko responds.....
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well im not early yeet
you're*
I'm just learning about the camera hot key and also improved hot keys for control groups. Never knew this till now and been playing since WOL release
Greetings from Argentina excellent video and loosen marijuana hahaha
I Just played 2 years of starcraft with zerg without hotkeys and esp camera (bas camera). Now I have 200 apm instead of 60. Thank you very much :)
Love your old outro, brings back memories
A lot of neat tricks I've never tried. Figured out the shift one on my own, but the ALT one is gonna be a game changer. Thanks so much!
Thanks Lowko for the video! I was holding off learning Starcraft 2 multiplayer play because I know hotkey are very important to Starcraft gameplay. Thanks for making the video K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) and I will feel more confident in learning Starcraft 2 now!
This is EXACTLY the type of tips I was looking for, thank you so much!
Very helpful. Thank you very much. I switch myself from standard to your style. I've played SC2 for only 2 months.
As someone who has just recently finished campaign (spam them goliaths ftw) I'm somewhat overwhelmed by all the fancy commands and macros. Your video has helped immensely, thank you :)
One of the most useful SC2 videos on the net
normally don't comment on youtube videos (in fact this is the first comment ever in 10 years of having this acct) but this was super useful. thanks
great video bro. been playing starcraft for years and learned some more tricks from you. didnt realize how many diff combos there were. didnt realize how shift and alt worked with ctrl. thanks for the vid man.
As a new Starcraft player, this really helped a lot
omg!! thank you so much lowko! I have been saving my queens to hotkey to numbers and just double tapping the number to move camera to my different base queens so i can hit my injects. I had no idea there was a base camera key.......... That is soooo much easier. Expansions don't have a queen right off the bat so im never able to go to those bases when first built. thank you so much!
I actually did switch out my hotkeys completely for my own style once. It's close to the grid hotkey type, but modified to my personal preference, and it worked fairly well for me
Really useful video. I have been playing grid for years and didn't know about these tips. Hopefully this will help improve my overall game. Thanks Lowko.
huh, never knew about the ctrl + shift and never knew what alt did for control groups, thanks very helpful.
Thnks a lot Lowko...
I will pratice this video... to improve my skill... i,m return to play since 2010.... its a different game....
Thnks again 43years old SC2 Player
Just started playing the other day. Thanks for the tutorial. It helps a lot!
thanks a lot for this video lowko. I was always confused on most hot keys so I stayed away from using them outside of the f2 for all army and the control groups but I wasn't the best at using them in general and I never understood splitting the army. This video is exactly what I needed cause it cleared up some of my confusion on hotkey and control groups and gave me the courage to go more into hotkeys. I definitely think I will be getting better faster as I implement the things from this video.
Great that u make this kind of VDO and updated it. I watched the previous one as well.
I learned so much in this video. Thank you! I am still a low level player, so I am still learning how to use hotkeys for everything. The only reason why I haven't switched to grid setup is that I am so used to using "a" to attack move. But I want to switch to grid because it makes so much more sense.
Thx for sharing, haven’t play SC2 for long time, just got back SC2 now, this tips helps!!
As a new player i found this invaluable... thank you!!
Thanks for this video. I've switched to the Grid hotkey setup just today. I've been using the Standard setup since I started playing multiplayer SC2 a couple of months ago, but now I felt I was feeling limited and blocked by my hotkey setup. One of the good things about the GRID setup is that if you want to change race (maybe usually you play Terran but for the weekend you want to dress Zerg clothes ;) ) the keys are the same, and you don't have to mentally reset all your hotkeys. Another reason why I decided to try the Grid setup is that I was not using all of the hotkeys offered by the Standard setup, but only some of them (always the few same hotkeys. In same cases I was using the mouse .....
VERY HELPFUL!!! I would love to see more instructional videos like this to teach the less experienced players like myself how to play better. Thank you.
Thanks for this! Needed a nice refresher. My hotkey game has always been lacking.
Thanks for the great vid! I just started starcraft 2 last weekend and I was binding everything with control xD. Im such a noob and this video really helped.
Man, I didn't even know Grid existed! I've played for a while and got used to the standard hotkeys already. But, I went against your advice and just switched my hotkeys right away. It was very weird but after about 3 - 4 days on the ladder, I've gotten used to it. It feels so much more comfortable than standard. :)
Hey man, I hadn't subbed for a long time. That's cause I thought you were doing fine, and didn't need any more support. But now I see you only have 177k subs, when you should definitely have at least 1 mill. I'm definitely resubbing, and watching every video. You deserve it, keep up the good work dude!
Lol i loved watching you and winter switch around your hotkeys while playing in the 2v2 stream
Excellent video. Keep up the good work. I personally found that when using/learning hotkeys in wow pvp/pve the best way to learn is to just bind all your keys and learn to use them even if you are throwing yourself in the deep end. That is just me... and this could work by practise in unranked games for those players worried about losing mmr.
Oh my god, how did I not know of this video before? It's a godsend from my favorite Starcraft youtuber!
this info was incredible... I started to win with this information, really, I really love the zerg but I never used them for the difficult of the race... Thanks, I always watch you videos and are very good...
Ah the old school binding. It's been a while since i played with Lowko lol. You are crazy with zerg plays btw lol
5:48 you can hit CTRL+F to center on current selection. This way you don't have to click on the portrait. It's pretty neat. I use space for that, but that's because my Grid setup is pretty heavily modified.
Funny how you learn new stuff all the time. Thanks for the Hotkey tips Lowko, I'm tryyiin.
Thx Lowko. The grid setup felt much better on the first game.
Im a new player day 3 and this video was awesome thanks. Other then playing starcraft when i was a kid 10-15 years ago. Haha really keen to learn these tips.
jesus the amount i learned in this video, thanks man I've been really trying to improve and this will CERTAINLY help lol
your explanations are very clear you could be a great teacher in the future