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My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

Hotkeys.

So for the longest time I've always wanted to be as efficient as possible, looking at potential hotkey set-up that could improve my game. A long time ago I settled with Idra hotkeys (1, 2, 3 for army, 4 for hatches, 5,6,7, etc for queens) and the 55v, 66v inject method. However, the constant lack of screen hotkeys always made me feel less optimal. Now for a while I've been looking at TheCore as an option for hotkeys, however the move to the right side of the keyboard as well as full loss of muscle memory always stopped me.

Then at the beginning of this month, I talked to my teammate pig about screen hotkeys and primarily that I couldn't get used to them (f1, f2, f3, f4 specifically). He replied that he thought they were essential and that kawaii and him reckon that you need at least 7 (aka 7 bases all on hotkey) to be the most effective with them. Jared even said that perhaps the 4-7th bases that I wasn't able to jump to with my queen hotkeys were actually the more important reason to get hotkeys. I was baffled at how someone could use f7 as a standard hotkey with it being above 9 (albeit slightly to the left) on my keyboard. So Jared got me in a chat with kawaii and we talked for a bit and he said that he used f1-f7 as bases, space as creep/rally and w as queens. He then would inject by going w, f1v, f2v, f3v and so on. He then went on to say that he was comfortable with using f7 because of his prior BW experience, fair enough.

So moving on I decided that if I stuck with my current hotkeys but then used f1-f4 for my 4-7th bases and go with that. PiG said that perhaps it would be confusing going from 7 as my third to f1 as my 4th and I did agree but thought that given enough time with the setup I could get used to it. I played with it for a while and while it did in theory work, it was very unituitive and using queens for movement still wasn't as efficient as I'd like to be. I then looked back into TheCore, I asked fenner about it on twitter, and his response confirmed what I already thought, the jump might not really be worth the time it took to get used to the completely changed hotkeys.

So finally I went back to the drawing board. I asked pig about the location of his f keys, personally my f4 is in between 5 and 6, slightly to the 6. He said that his was directly above 5. At that point I basically said to myself, ok I need a new keyboard, this one is restricting me. So I got a cm keyboard of my choice (still coming at this point) and kept thinking about hotkeys. I wanted 4 army hotkeys over my previous 3, the 7 camera hotkeys (preferably without any modifiers eg shift f1 as a hotkey) and a way to inject using camera hotkeys. Eventually I realised that I didn't need to use 5, 6, 7 as control groups if I was going to inject with camera hotkeys. So this means that with the new keyboard I can go from f4 straight down to 5 as my 5th base. So basically I decided that using 5, 6 and 7 as my camera hotkeys was both intutive, not super to the right of the keyboard (like using f keys would be) and I was used to pressing 7 from my previous hotkeys. I messed with some different keys to hotkey my queens and now have settled with the w that kawaii uses. Oh and yeah space for creep spread. I didn't get the 4 hotkeys that would've been ideal but 3 is definitely enough if I control well enough.

So there you go, my thoughts about hotkeys and what I think might be the best way to go about using camera hotkeys when you are used to a standard layout. If you use w as your hatches like pig does I think you can easily just use 4 as all your queens instead and be the same.

So yeah, thought I'd make a quick blog about this since I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Thanks to my sponsors who you can check out below and Exile5 who support our entire team so well .

Thanks for reading!

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

I can completely agree with everything here actually. I did try the core out and albeit it works, TBH it never gave me any obvious advantage speed and precision wise.

I changed a fair few for mine, using Q W and E for groups, (using terran and protoss) and then A and S for spam units (marines, zerlings and such, vikings for air hellions as well) then other units on D R and T which I find works well. Then just the F buttons for cameras. Would be interesting to hear about everyone elses hotkeys and what modifications they have made

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

Yeah personally I was pretty happy with everything about my setup bar no camera hotkeys, so the challenge was fixing that one issue without ruining anything else. I think what I've got now is pretty good though especially for those of us who don't want to reach all the way to f7 to use a hotkey

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

I moved everything that was on the right side of the keyboard over to the left side. My wrist basically almost never moves when playing which is good since that hand almost never gets lost when playing. I maintain 5-6 control groups generally, 1 and 3 for production, 2 for main army, 4 for tanks/ghosts and 5 for vikings/dropship (sometimes 6 for extra drop too if it comes to that)

And yes, Camera hotkeys are vital. I only use 5 though. Too noob to use the other 2

I also use the Select Army Units hotkey which I think is very useful. It's great for finding casters, for when your rallies are fucked up and in emergency situations.

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

Protoss dont need extra hotkeys.

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

Damn ProAnnn stole my comment...

What are camera hotkeys?

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

1 army 2 oc 3 starport 4 factory 5 rax 6 ebay, more than 1 army hotkey or camera hotkeys are for naps!
in hots i switch 6 for widowmines or ghosts later on
could never ever get used to 7 or f keys cuz im a lazy **** and use grid anyway

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

wtf thats so backwards

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

Why me and Pet are remotely good.

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

Thought it was this.

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

You're telling me that I need to use a keyboard with more than 1 + A on it?
What is this sorcery.

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

can't even forcefield with this I say remove 2-3 and put in f instead then its real protoss keyboard

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

NOPPOO FOR LIFE. I mean... razer

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

What keyboard is this?

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

1 all hatcheries for production, 2 ground army, 3 air army, (or 3 banes 4 air when I ling/bane/muta), 5 for either a scouting drone or broverlord. I rarely use 6, but if I do use it it'd be for queens when I'm facing an early stargate/port and I need to get all my queens to a place quickly.
F1-F5 (I rarely get above 5 bases, and I don't hotkey macro hatches, I just build them in vision of another base's hotkey, so I can F1 and inject my Main and (Main)Macro hatch.
I inject using F1 and selecting the queen, although I'm trying to move over to another method, where you hotkey all queens to a single key, select that key, Click V, hold Shift, and then use basecam click basecam click.
Other keybinds I've changed: I've put idle worker and army select on - and = keys, in order stop using them, although it's easier to use them, I think it's best if I get used to rallying and grouping my units, so that I don't have to rely on that key.
And I've put Basecam on spacebar.

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

I've just ordered one of those keyboards as seen above, because I completely agree that camera hotkeys are absolutely important, they are something I've needed in my gameplay for a long time (I just use hatches on individual keys + queens to jump to a base and inject). I'm excited to switch over my hotkeys completely when I get this!

Re: My thoughts about hotkeys.
 

good choice petrify