Goodmorning fellow Brotoss. I have been trying to work on a guide so to speak, of information/tips/helps that should enable
any old casual player like myself to rise through the ladders. Im not super skilled by any means, but with hard work and solid mechanics
I have been able to take games off 1400+ opponents (unconsistently at least lol).
Gonna Break it down into multiple parts here, this is my first time creating a topic, hope it goes well.
1. Hotkeys.
A.
Go into a custom game, play untill you have sufficiently memorised all the hotkeys for the buildings/units that you want to make. You want to be able to play the game smoothly, adding on buildings and creating 'your base' is much easier done when you know your race's hotkeys for buildings/units.
B.
Once you can effectively make buildings and units using hotkeys, you are ready to practice spells. The challenges can help you here as well as just play practice. When you need to storm, making sure your using T, when you need GS, use G, and so on and so forth.
2. Control Groups
A.
Now youve been in custom games, and you can effectively build your base without having too many issues with clicking on every single thing (slows you down, you are now faster!). What to work on now is control group setup. I will give my following, which I use for both Toss and Zerg, and its super effective and easy to manipulate.
1. Nexus.
2. Robo
3. Stargate
4. Army
5. Army
6. Army
7. Obs
8.
9.
0.
(Take Note, I use slightly different hotkeys than the default. If your going to use this setup, then I would advise to also make the changes i have made. Crono is now bound to space, Immortal is now bound to T. I would also recomment making the ` 0. Location Keys are set to F2-F4, although you can easily get to mid/high masters without location keys, and alot of pros dont use them).
B.
Now the reasoning behind this setup, and some tips on how to get fast with it.
1. Having the nexus on Ctrl Group 1 makes for very simple probe production and crono usage. You can practice 1e1e1e1e1e, 1 1 1 1 1 1 very easy to get the handmovements down, and its very fast and simple. I tell this because when your not playing, i find its good to go through the hand movements in Notepad to get your macro handspeed down and build stamina among other things.
2. I can do 2c2c2c2c pretty easily, as well as 2t2t2t2t2t very easily. The only long reach here is the 2b but i use my thumb.
3. Same thing. 3x is a bit of a reach, 3c3c3c and 3v3v3v are quick to type.
4-6. I use these for armies. Why? 1a2a3a is not that easy. 4a5a6a7a takes me maybe a second, and is extremely easy to practice and get quick with. On taldarim, I can have 4 set to 3 stalkers in my main, 5 set to 3 stalkers in my nat, 6 set to zealots/colo/other units outside my base on defense. Very easy to control.
Other keys are kinda explanatory imo. If you put the tilde for 0, it can be used for extra obs (i will have 3 obs in alot of games, esp vs T for instance).
I would recommend opening notepad when your not playing, and get familiar/quick with these hotkeys. Its not hard to simulate things on your own.
I will generally do something like 4a5a6a4a5a6a4a5a6a4a5a6a and see how fast i can do it without messing up. Sometimes going 4a5a6a7a and higher.
I also like to mix it up wheere i do something like 1ee2c4a5a6a and stuff simlar. Get quick and familiar so you dont have to think about it, practice patterns
you tend to make ingame, it will start to become 2nd nature to you.
3. The Matchups: PvP. We all love it. Well, maybe only Naniwa and Inca, but you know, its not all bad, just mostly bad.
A. Scouting
1. Scouting is essential in PvP, as it is in most mirrow MU's. Its even more detrimental in pvp i find. The only problem, is its also the hardest to scout in PvP early game, because if you lose even just 1 unit early game, that can turn into a losing
battle the rest of the game. I will go more in depth into your BO later, but for now, we know that early game is going to consist of 9 pylon and either a 12 gate
or 13 gate. If your doing a 12 gate, scout after 9 pylon. If your doing a 13 gate, scout after the gate drops. It doesn't matter too much, the 9 scout will just help you find out if they are cheesing faster, which is usefull, especially if lower rank.
2. What to check for: The timing of their gate, you should be able to look at their gate and at your gate, and tell when they dropped it based off how close yours is finishing.
This allows you to also check the timing of their Core, and the timings of the first and 2nd gas if your probe lives long enough. All of these are essential. If the gas is finished when your scout arivesclick on it to check how much as been mined, some blink builds do a gas before gate build, and you can recognize it.
3. What units are they making early on. If they make a zealot first, your lucky because you can keep scouting untill a Stalker comes out because of probe speed. If they skip the first zealot, and only have 1 gate when the core finishes, and you notice they start to make a stalker, you can actually put on some pressure. If you open zealot/stalker, your stalker will finish when theirs does, push immediately and the zealot/probe/stalker can do some dmg to their stalker only opening, especially if its close spawns.
4. If they take a early 2nd gas, you can be a little more lenient, take your 2nd gas as well, and unless they are playing mindgames you can generally rule out any kind of 4 gate, they are going either a robo/templar tech play.
B. Unit Control
1. Unit control is usefull in all matchups, but early game PvP losing your first zealot or stalker is pretty much GG if they are putting on pressure. Dont be afraid to move units around. Pull units back that are hurt. If they are pushing at you with 1 stalker/1 zealot and a probe to 4 gate you, and you have 2 stalkers. Go down the ramp. Kite past the zealot and stutter step kill the stalker. Then kill zealot and tada, your safe early game now pretty much.
2. You want to make sure positioning is good as well. Zealots in front, Stalkers in back, if Immortals/Sentrys are in the group (dont make many sentrys in PvP plz) they need to be positioned so they wont get stuck behind the stalkers, etc, etc.
C. Build Orders
1. 4 gate. Yes, it has to be mentioned fist, because it is still very much relevant. You will see this build alot. In many different forms On certain maps 4 gate is almost the only strat you can do, considering equal skill levels. Taldarim and Scrap for example, dont
have ramps that can be FF'd with one FF. Generally they will be pushing up your ramp with 5-6 stalkers and 1 zealot. The next warp in after this will be 4 zealots, a good opponent tries to get those 4 zealots warped in as close to your base or in your base. You either need to defensive 4 gate if you see this happening, or do one of the few specific builds that people have designed to beat 4 gate, although for lower levels those builds are too well timed and hard to produce, so depending on your level 4 gate back. Alot of newbies can probably 4 gate defensively with double gas, then drop robo and be extremly safe. No use trying shenanigans untill you have strong mechanics. Theres no reason to give you a solid 4 gate BO, there are many and they are all slightly different.
1 gate, core, gas. Then you use all crono on WG and saturate the gas/minerals. Leave your second gas empty, drop 3 gates as soon as you hit max mineral saturation.
(Crtl+Click your probes. You will have 2 full rows, and 1 probe on the 3rd row at full saturation with 1 gas i believe). After using 4 cronos on WG, you will crono your gateways, makesure you get pylons at good times, 9, 15-17, 21-23, etc. As long as you dont get supply blocked while constantly using minerals your good. The trick to 4 gating, is that they want to attack you on their first full warp in .
2. 3 Gate Blink. This is the style that is starting to take hold slowly, mainly because it can transition into Chargelot/Archon + Blink which is one of the few things that can beat a standard Colo death ball. Its a good build to do, make sure you scout well incase your
opponent is DT'ing you so you can add the forge. If your scouting probe doesn't see a double gas, make sure first 3 units is zealot/stalker/sentry if you want to play def,
or zealot/stalker/stalker if you want to press out to deny the prxy pylon that may be going up. If your opponent 4 gates you, can can hold it with 2 sentrys,
3 max, if you time it right on most maps. (again, not maps with no ramp). If you do see double gas, you can be greedy and do the BO without any sentrys. If the blink stalker push fails, i generally retreat and save as many stalkers as possible, start Charge asap and mass chargelots and try to get to HT for Archons as soon as I have the bonus 150 minerals for the building. If opponent expos when you retreat then you do to, otherwise dont.
3. 3 gate Robo into a Colo based time push. If your not getting 4 gated or Blinked, then it generally becomes a colo war. The outcome will depend on unit positioning and who has more basically. When I do this BO i make mostly zealots while i get 3 colo with range, as soon as 3rd Colo is started, make only stalkers. Push asap when 3rd colo is finished. You wil have alot of zealots, 10-15 or more, and a good amount of stalkers with 3 colosus. The general startup I do is 9 pylon, 12 gate, then gas, then core, then gas. I drop a Robo after the first gate, then drop 2 more gates. Use little gas as possible so that you can get the 3 Colo and range asap. Scouting again is key, if he doesn't take his 2nd gas and is 4 gating you you will need need to fit 2 sentrys in somewhere after your first zealot/stalker. If he takes both gas, you can save more gas and skip the sentrys.
4. I am currently at work. I would like to provide multiple replays of wins and losses, so you can see general mistakes and how each play out. My handle is ohampatu.189
I would be glad to invite you to a game to show you the BO against fellow clanmates. Or later today when I start laddering, I can upload them here if people wish me to do so.
I dont give any 'hard' BO's with times because I try to play a reactive based game depending on how I scout. Let me know if you want to play/practive and again, i will try and upload replays of both me losing and winning against high diamond/mid master players. I dont mention Expoing, becaue you can only expo in PvP under a few situations. You cheese/allin/timing attack the player and cripple them, so that there is no danger of them countering. Or the game hits a stalemate after an early engagment (both players 4 gate and no winner emerges).
I have rough drafts of the PvT and PvZ Matchups that I am trying to finish that I will add to this. As well as finalize with replays like I mentioned. Hopefully I can get all 3 MU's with good replays all tonight (after 3 pm cst). I consider myself talented at PvT so hopefully can go really in depth into that MU (Even with me being in Diamond, and playing on a tethered Droid with internet issues I can maintain High Diamond, recent KC Lan i visited I took 4th, beating a 1400 masters terran and then losing in the semi's to a 1600 terran 3-2.) The internet Issues will be fixed in a couple of days, in which I actually plan to start streaming and playing semi competivitely if i can, since I feel that once my +1 second delay is solved I can climb to a mid/high masters easy enough, as long as PvZ doesn't keep me down. I know this isn't completely refined, and will work on this if anybody deems any of my information relevant/wanted.