[nirvAnA]

Mastering Zerg Mechanics by PiG

Our TGM Zerg section contains 10 chapters covering each matchup - written by mOOnGLaDe and TtPiG, who are regarded by many as the two best Zergs on SEA at the moment. This sneak peak into TGM sets the foundation for mechanical play before the actual chapters begin. It shows you exactly how to improve your mechanics and macro, by making use of the optimal hotkey / control setup which GLaDe and PiG themselves use.

This section was written by TtPiG, who is far and away the most popular coach on SEA. To find out more about him and his coaching rates go here. To learn more about TGM and to see the other more advanced sections go here.

Macroing with zerg:

Zerg is a race very heavily based on strong mechanics and perfect macro and timing, it is the true art of war craft to master the zerg race. Unlike Protoss, there is a heavy emphasis on your mechanics and a high skill celling for it as well. You can always do things faster, spreading creep, injecting larva, keeping low queen energy, overlord spread etc and doing all these small things better will snowball into a big increase in your overall skill. Alot of the time it will be your mechanics that will be the turning factor to win you games.

The Queen is the most essential unit to the macro of a zerg (larva inject) and the spreading of creep

• Larva injecting every 25 energy (perfect timing) is important for macro, this mechanic is hard to learn but not impossible, when you get used to it your macro will improve 10 fold. To improve this mechanic in the next 10 games you play, focus more on your queens and try to keep their energy low. For a start, you can try to make sure their energy is constantly below 50 for the first 6 mins of the game. Once you've done that aim to never exceed 40 energy and for the first 8 mins of the game, and so on. Ideally top players never let their queens have more then 35 energy even at the 10min mark of the game!
• Creep spreading is essential - so in general making a 3rd queen early is a good idea, shortly after your first 2 queens have been made for your hatcheries.
• Finding a way to hotkey your queens to suit your style is very important and every hatchery should always have a queen paired to it for larva inject. There are a number of ways to hotkey queens, my current way is to hotkey each queen to a separate hatchery, then double tap the hotkey to focus on the hatchery and inject easily.
• Another popular way is to take advantage of the smart auto-cast system. Hotkey all your queens in a group and select the group and click spawn larva on a hatchery, it will automatically select the closest queen from your hotkey group to inject the larva.
• Lastly, you should also assign a hotkey that selects ALL your hatcheries. This allows for the instant replenishment of armies in times of need. And times of need are aplenty for us my friend.

Hotkeys and Injection:

My hotkey setup is as follows and I highly suggest following this if you do not have an efficient system in place yet. I have found this to be the most optimal way to play.

• 1,2,3 = Units
• 4,5,6 = Hatcheries + Queens. 4=Main hatch/queen, 5= Natural, 6=Third
• 0 = All Hatcheries (Custom hotkey W)

It takes less than a minute to set up the custom hotkey. All you need to do is go under hotkeys and do the following. After which your life as a zerg player infinitely easier as you can now select all your hatcheries and product units instantly from one convenient key!

1. Assign "Create control group 0" to Crtl + W.
2. Assign "Add to control group 0" to Shift + W.
3. Assign "Select control group 0" to W.

Larva Injection made easy

Using the above hotkey setup you can inject by simply following this order of commands:

1. Double tap '4', tap 'V', click on centre of screen
2. Double tap '5', tap 'V', click on centre of screen
3. Double tap '6', tap 'V', click on centre of screen

The advantage of this method is you always know which hatchery you are injecting. It is accurate, extremely fast and doubles as camera location saves for your main, natural and third bases. This method avoids all the problems with the popular “backspace method" such as queens dying or being low on energy whilst under pressure causing your injects to go awry and queens to start running all across the map.

The Macro Cycle:

Always macro in this order:

1. Larva injection as listed above
2. Produce Units / Drones
3. Overlords – even if you don't get supply blocked on step 2 or spend all your larvae you need to glance at the top right EVERY game to check how many overlords you will need and how soon to build them
4. Creep-spread

The reason behind always macroing in a set order is that Zerg have a huge number of actions needed in order to sustain constant macro. If you are doing everything in a random order you are guaranteed to have to constantly waste brain power thinking “what do I need to do now?”. So by memorising this order and carrying out your macro like this EVERY game you begin to do it by instinct without needing to think and therefore always covering all your bases. Not only that but the speed you macro at will increase noticeably.

So the goal here is that with every 40s macro cycle (the time it takes for injects to pop) you can go through this order automatically and speedily finish it in 10-15s. This leaves 25-30s for scouting, micro, building tech, and thinking about strategy.

Misc Mechanical Tricks:

1. Rally overlords to locations: The moment you build units you are in control of the eggs and can tell the overlords to head to a safe spot at the rear of your base so you don't feed overlords to enemy pushes or to someone around the map as a spotter!
2. Adding units to squad the moment you build them: After building a round of units your bottom display bar will show a mix of leftover larvae and the eggs you have built. You can actually ctrl + click these eggs in the DISPLAY BAR (not on-screen!) to select all the eggs! You can then use shift+hotkey to add them all to the squad! This avoids problems with trying to add units that are streaming all across the map in the lategame to your army! Makes you much more efficient once use to it.

Do not underestimate how much adopting these simple changes will help your game. And with your mechanics mastered (MAKE SURE YOU PRACTISE THE ABOVE!) you can now to go into detail in the individual matchups. Lets start with Zerg vs Protoss!

< Previous Chapter | Zerg: Mastering Mechanics | Next >

This section was written by PiG and to find out more about his coaching go here. To learn more about TGM and other more advanced sections go here.

Quick Comments

Highlander:

By Repping this I not only rep PiGs stuff, but spread it too!

[NvJazBas]

I didn't know you can control group to "w" ! I shall try using "w" as one of my hotkey gorups for sure!

Quick Comments

Xenomorph:

I think I shall use mine for mutas

[FaDeBadger]

Originally Posted by xGKingJazBas

I didn't know you can control group to "w" ! I shall try using "w" as one of my hotkey gorups for sure!

You can control group to any key. Keep in mind it will overwrite any other action or unit that that key was previously bound to though.

[TAEdgE]

I actaully use W now as a hotkey for all hatcheries, as a broodwar player i could not get used to having alll on a hotkey + having them individually. Finally i forced myself too after PiG said he used it (W as all hatches) and it's been great. Since i am now used to it after 2 months, i started hotkeying my queens with my hatch (e.g. 5 = hatch + queen together) and the results are amazing.

Fully endorse this.

Quick Comments

	nirvAnA:
	FaDeBadger:
	PiG:	<3

[Cute]

Great article! Particularly enjoyed

Unlike Protoss, there is a heavy emphasis on your mechanics and a high skill celling for it as well

this line

[Bugalugs McScruffin]

I really like the idea of those hotkeys as well, though I'll have to use something other than W. Don't want to overwrite warpgate. >.<

Quick Comments

FaDeBadger:

The exact problem I had, I use spacebar for control group 8

[EveTechtron]

This hotkey information, has changed the game...... W, its genius !

[sRFullstop]

Thanks PiG, the hotkey info really helped!

[crAzerk]

But what if you play Protoss as well (i.e. i play random), and you can't use W?

[xpaperclip]

You could always manually add your warpgates to your control group "W" and have the same "make units" control group for all three races.

[PiG]

Haha yeah what paperclip said u lazybum!

[neon]

Something about pressing w then s doesn't work for me, I like how 4s is two different fingers.

This is my only problem with w, admittedly I haven't really tried it for any extended period after first seeing it on pig's stream once!

What I curently do is rebound the hatchery cycle key to ` and all my queens on 3, then just press 3, shift(hold this), v, `, click, `click, `, click.

It is kinda weird so perhaps I should try something else. Handy info as usual though PiG, I don't really follow a cycle that I'm aware of so I'll try work on that.

[SLCN.NXZ]

I don't even know how you press w. Is it like 1 finger to press w s z or something. 4 feels so much more natural to me (may or may not be due to a 1000 games playing with that...). Some great advice here though especially the order to macro. tyty

[TAhackdZ]

Some very cool tips in here. Thank you TGM and thank you PiG!!!

[PiG]

Originally Posted by NXZ

I don't even know how you press w. Is it like 1 finger to press w s z or something. 4 feels so much more natural to me (may or may not be due to a 1000 games playing with that...). Some great advice here though especially the order to macro. tyty

Yeah it's muscle memory. Any new setup will always take a lot of games to learn. It took me a long time to learn. I've used all the popular setups and can say this is the smoothest.

Middle-finger: W and S
Ring finger: Z
Index finger: D

[ToRsupapower]

W helping Esports!

[SLCN.NXZ]

Ahhh that makes sense, I use all 5 of my fingers to make units, so I guess its more of a stretch for me to use ctrl and shift. Otherwise I love the index on 4, middle on d, ring on s, thumb on v and pinkie on z, making lings can sometimes be annoying though, holding down z with that finger is annoying :P.

WOW just took a sec to use w and injects must be like the most freaking ez thing in the world to macro with that as a hotkey. 1 extra key is actually really cool. Makes control clicking and making new control groups super sexy too, pig why are you so smart.

[PiG]

Oh I just remembered I got the idea of W for hatches off Han who was nice enough to share his hotkey info with me back I was drilling everyone for their setup tryibg to find the optimal one! aLtHan fighting!