I’ve owned Starcraft for a long time but only ever really played against AI/computer. I want to dip my toes into the multiplayer scene, what’s the best way to learn basic micro skills / multiplayer skills. Is just playing matches enough, or is there some resource I should check out to learn basic shortcut keys, how to use separate units quickly in an army (as you can tell, I never used any micro much in my vs AI battles)
There is no real need to learn anything extra. Just jump into it. You will probably lose few games at start, but then you start winning as you get matched with enemies on your level. You will improve a lot trough play alone.
If you want to speed this up, you can watch your own replays to look for mistakes to fix or watch one of many begginers guides on youtube.
I suggest watching pros, see how fast they do stuff? Try to be that fast. It’s good that you have some experience, that’ll help a lot but the AI gives you bad habits and you’ll start to notice stuff vs the AI does not work vs people and will get you slapped down hard.
Also, the best way to look at StarCraft 2 is a game of learning and competing against yourself. It’s not about who you face, it’s about being more efficient and precise than the game before until every game is an optimized masterpiece from you. Losing is part of this process and if you find yourself getting mad, take a break.
Welp, here we see 2 aproaches to the game. You can relax and enjoy or invest time and effort for sake of improving and refining your play. Everyone likes to play differently, but dont fall into trap of “OMG 300 APM, how could I lose to 60 APM Terran? Imba.” Because sometimes, what you need is not trying to be fast but doing wacky things enemy hasnt seen before and in all his speed, cant react to at all.
This is strategy game after all.
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Dont worry about micro, macro any of that nonsense.
Just get really good at cannon rushing = gm in a week. Then you can post on these forums and swing your rank around like the rooster of the walk
Watch ViBE’s bronze to GM series.
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Also watch PiG. That man has given me insight which improved my game significantly.
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Just prepare yourself because you are going to lose a lot and losing can be frustrating.
Depending on your race you will have different hotkey layout. There are some systems like the core and the grid but i use the default keys and they are just fine but you may want to try them all at first because changing hotkeys after getting familiar with them will soft restart your mechanics.
If you are protoss i would recommend having your bases at 4 your gates at 5(after warp gate you can rebind that key to anything you want) your robo/ stargate at 6 forges on 7 and always bind an observer at 0.
1-2-3 are reserved for units. Also unbind the f2 key and make f1 f2 f3 f4 camera location shortcuts(cntrl + f1 will save the location to f1 etc).
thank you, I found a video on youtube describing exactly what you recommended re: key bindings
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Also look up how to set up rapid fire hotkeys. It is a life changer!
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Another thing you can do is start with playing random and figure out what race feels the best to you. In addition try to find something you think is fun as if you don’t like the way a race or build plays out it will be harder to improve as you can just get frustrated and throw you off your game.
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Best guide I manage to find.
Learn a basic build order and practice it…the rest (mechanical skill, decision making, macro, micro) can only be learned by playing the game, no guide can teach you that
Also, watch a few pro matches once in a while, just so that you have an idea of how a game of starcraft looks, you won’t be able to play at that level, it just for you to understand some fundamentals
Ditto. Pig is very good at breaking down the game into simple terms at all levels
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