I have returned: StarCraft II

[Bweigelt]

Wow that dude beside you looks just like Markman and he's even wearing the mad catz shirt lol.

[Blarg]

Is there a button to remove a unit from a hotkey group? Like, I'll often add some dudes to a control group with 'shift + number' and then realize when I boxed the units I selected a barrack's or some building right next to them as well so now I have a barracks grouped up with my army which causes rally problems when I move my army and build from that barracks. I normally just get my army together and do 'ctrl + number' them back but it would be easier if I could just click on that barracks and tell it to gtfo of my control group with some sort of subtract unit command.

Also, when I have an army selected with various hotkey buttons like ghosts (snipe, emp, nuke) marine/marauder with stim, and tanks with siege. What determines what hotkeys are favoured/shown in that bottom right window. Like, sometimes I'll have my army boxed and want to stim but because I have some other unit selected they have taken priority and that window in the bottom right doesn't have the stim option shown so my m/m don't stim.

[Kaylia]

Shift click the unit portrait or model, then save your group again.

Banelings don't attack buildings unless you:

You're right. They changed that age ago.

[quannum]

if I could just click on that barracks and tell it to gtfo of my control group with some sort of subtract unit command.

afaik, you have to shift-click the rax to remove it from the selection group, then ctrl+ number to re-hotkey what's left in your selection group to the ctrl group

if its multiple rax, shift+ctrl+click

[Julian]

Hit your hotkey, shift click the barracks to remove them from the list, then re ctrl-bind the stuff you have.

If there's an easier way, like, select everything, hit tab to only select one group of units, and just hotkey those, that would be amazing, and I would love to know. (Like, say, I have a group of zerglings. I morph some of them into banelings. Putting the banelings into a new hotkey is easy, but rehotkeying just your zerglings to the previous group, not so much. I usually just double click my zerglings, but it feels like there should be an easier way..)

You can use tab to shuffle between units/buildings you have selected.

(When I play terran, I put everything in one hotkey. Hotkey aaaaaa, tab s, tab dd, to make marines, tanks, and medivacs >.> but I also suck at terran, so..)

[Blarg]

Thanks guys, with this new found knowledge I will go from practice league to GM in probably 2-3 hours I bet

[Blarg]

So... somehow I got placed into gold league after my placement matches and I'm a low bronze at best (what I'd guess). My first placement match my opponent left after like 5 mins for no reason and nothing had happened in the game. I then lost 2 games, won against some ranked guy (what do the symbols mean he had like 2 stripes or something) because I turtled on 2 based as terran and he ran his roach+ling against my wall with like a ton of marine+marauder plus siege tanks blasting him so he lost his whole army with me just sitting there and then I just attacked and won since he had nothing left. My last game I got rolled because I can't macro for shit and the terran had a billion things and I had 3 zealots just a few mins in.

How many games should I expect to get destroyed in before I get placed rightfully into bronze.

[Slapper]

Wow that dude beside you looks just like Markman and he's even wearing the mad catz shirt lol.

...that is Markman, he went to MLG.

[Rehn]

So... somehow I got placed into gold league after my placement matches and I'm a low bronze at best (what I'd guess). My first placement match my opponent left after like 5 mins for no reason and nothing had happened in the game. I then lost 2 games, won against some ranked guy (what do the symbols mean he had like 2 stripes or something) because I turtled on 2 based as terran and he ran his roach+ling against my wall with like a ton of marine+marauder plus siege tanks blasting him so he lost his whole army with me just sitting there and then I just attacked and won since he had nothing left. My last game I got rolled because I can't macro for shit and the terran had a billion things and I had 3 zealots just a few mins in.

How many games should I expect to get destroyed in before I get placed rightfully into bronze.

You typically have to lose quite a bit to get demoted. If you can take some time to review your replays and see what your opponent did to have more than you, you can learn faster. If you're seriously fresh into RTS, then you may have been screwed with that placement D:

Remember, probes and pylons.

[Blarg]

I don't really know build orders but I did my own version of forge FE and he did a 1 base 3 rax Maruader marine rush at like 7-8 mins in the game. I also can't scout and focus at the same time so I didn't see it coming till it had taken down 1 of my 2 cannons and my zealots and sentry died without even getting a FF. He had walled off right when my probe got to his base early so I didn't see what he was doing.. he was gold level though so even if I knew and didn't FE I would have probably died anyways.

[Rehn]

Well it was your first few games, and it'll only get more familiar as you play more. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Protoss_Strategy has some links to some strats you can try online. I recommend you try as many strats as you can, even crazy ones. Your enemies are most likely as in the same boat as you and can't focus on too many things at once, so you shouldn't sweat the losses too badly.

Also, since you're protoss, it's pretty much required that you cannon rush at least once in your SC2 gaming life.

[geno]

Take all of that together and you see another part of the problem. In SC2 Terran has complete air dominance in PvT. Vikings are incredibly effective vs. every single Toss air unit (as well as Collosi) and are compatible with reactors. Banshees are a lot more effective air to ground than Wraiths. Combine that with Carriers being relatively weaker, and the Mothership being far less useful than the Arbiter, we rarely see air played vs. Terran because there simply isn't as much payoff to getting that far in the tech tree.

Also EMP being on Science Vessels made it a lot easier to deal with than on Ghosts imo.

Gotta agree with you there. Terran air was such garbage in BW compared to SC2, lol. In common use, only dropships and Science Vessels were produced in a lot of games, everything else was for very specific strategies or 'special tactics' (white-ra style!). Battle cruisers primarily for TvT, some EXTREMELY rare usage in TvZ. Valkys for helping you go mech or bio timings TvZ. And wraiths for either 2port wraith (crazy TvZ build that required top-tier micro and a LOT of damage to be effective - I've seriously seen Terrans lose after getting 50+ drone kills with this strategy, that's how well you need to do), special tactics surprise cloaked wraith vs Carrier play in TvP, or occasional tank poking in TvT.

That was literally as useful as Terran air got in BW. But in SC2, they absolutely control the sky. Vikings melt all protoss units and banshees are almost never a bad idea to mix in to ANY build. TvZ is a bit closer because of how awesome mutas are, but with some Thors they can still absolutely control the sky very easily. This is so unlike Brood War where terran was easily the most grounded race in the game.

[geno]

Protoss is probably the easiest to start with on a technical level, but when you start playing against people in the Bronze league I actually found it the hardest because until you get enough knowledge of the game to start producing units quickly enough those early MM pushes by Terran or 6pools/7RR from Zerg attacks will ruin your day every time.
I started as Protoss and had such a terrible time that I switched to Zerg. I got my 50 wins achievement and was flicking through pro streams until I got to HuK and decided that Toss does actually look really damn fun, so went back to give them another try and I've have kept with them ever since.

Once you start playing online I'd suggest going Random at least until you want to move out of the practice league. That way to get a good feel for each race and can decide which to go for.
Though once you've chosen one, I would still suggest randomly trying the others from time to time because you never know that once you've gotten better, one of the other races may actually favour your play style better.

100% agree with this, was my own feelings too. Protoss I think feels the most intuitive to play for new users, with lower unit counts, the ease of warp-in on macro, and dedicated worker building. However, after that very initial acclimation period, it quickly started to feel much harder to play WELL. Decent strategies are surprisingly nuanced for the race and often require split second timing to not be completely useless. For instance, take a look at the ubiquitous 3-gate sentry expand against zerg and realize how weak it is when you don't get forcefields off in time against a quick ling runby or surround.

So once, you get over that hump and understand mechanics for all three races, I think Terran becomes quite a bit easier to use in lower leagues because of the wide array of safe and effective strategies, the defensive ability of walls and bunkers, and the power of the easiest unit to produce (the marine).

I'd say in either case, Zerg is probably the hardest in both how intuitive it is to play and how easy it is to control. But once you get the hang of it, it's a very fun race to play imo.

As for balance, yeah, none of that matters sub masters (or probably even grandmasters). Even if the races were horribly balanced, the beauty of the matchmaking system is that you will still win and lose about half of your games regardless. So it's just not worth focusing on when you aren't a professional or tournament player imo.

[Salodin]

Only advice I can give you is don't go for things like fast expand in gold league, that league is almost entirely dominated by people who go early-almost-all-in, and will crush you unless you have a few cannons in your base defending, or respond with an equal amount of almost-all-in-army.

Also, never stop making probes. At your level, when you think you have enough, make some more.

[The Blackrose]

What the hell, Deejay? Your friend bodied me in Marvel at the MCZ booth.

[Julian]

I don't really know build orders but I did my own version of forge FE and he did a 1 base 3 rax Maruader marine rush at like 7-8 mins in the game. I also can't scout and focus at the same time so I didn't see it coming till it had taken down 1 of my 2 cannons and my zealots and sentry died without even getting a FF. He had walled off right when my probe got to his base early so I didn't see what he was doing.. he was gold level though so even if I knew and didn't FE I would have probably died anyways.

Generally, forge fast expand is usually done just against zergs. Cannon defense is a waste of minerals vs terran and protoss, and generally just used for anti-drops or for detection.

In pvt, it's pretty safe to 1gate expand (without the forge, and then go up to 3 gates asap) if you see them also expanding. (If you scout just 1 rax, no gas, it's somewhat likely a 1 rax expand, if you see gas, or a 2nd rax, they wont be expanding TOO soon) Otherwise, 3gates and then expand should be relatively safe. Or in big maps like taldarim, you can sometimes be pretty greedy, because chances are they will be too.

but, I also don't really play protoss competitively in 1v1 much, so what do I know :D

[Deejay]

What the hell, Deejay? Your friend bodied me in Marvel at the MCZ booth.

Hahaha, his Dante is a beast. He places really well in tournaments down here. I would have hung out at the MCZ booth but they took SF off mad quick.

What did you like like/what team were you playing? We were over there talking a lot of shit so I might remember you, lol.

[Gryffes]

Only advice I can give you is don't go for things like fast expand in gold league, that league is almost entirely dominated by people who go early-almost-all-in, and will crush you unless you have a few cannons in your base defending, or respond with an equal amount of almost-all-in-army.

Also, never stop making probes. At your level, when you think you have enough, make some more.

My friend who's still in practice league made 80 probes last game! I hammered this fact into him and he's gonna do really well once he figures out the first 10 mins of the game

[The Blackrose]

Hahaha, his Dante is a beast. He places really well in tournaments down here. I would have hung out at the MCZ booth but they took SF off mad quick.

What did you like like/what team were you playing? We were over there talking a lot of shit so I might remember you, lol.

We were the first ones up and realized none of the characters were unlocked, so I had to play Zero/Wesker/Spencer (instead of Taskmaster and Akuma). I was rusty as fuck too. Luckily when Jebailey got there they threw AE on over Tekken. Didn't touch the MCZ booth Sunday thouh, watched nothingbut SC2

[Deejay]

Shift click the unit portrait or model, then save your group again.

How do you save groups? I was doing one of the early campaign missions where you have to move your SCV's out of the lava before it rises, but I kept some marines close by as protection once I moved camps, but everytime I wanted to send my SCV's back to mining, I'd highlight the whole group and then manually pick out the marines from the jumble so I could station them back at the choke points.

I kept thinking that there HAS to be an easier way to do target units.