Yes this is a real question. I rely on F2. I know it’s a bad habit, and it occasionally burns me as a yank away units I just positioned somewhere, but the alternative is I leave units dotted around the map, lost to space and time.
How do anti-F2 purists avoid this?
Remove the key from your keyboard?
Now, a bit more serious, I sometimes press the all army button but to group some units by type. 1 melee, 2 ranged, 3 casters is my go.
Create groups and spam 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 instead.
So the second a unit is made, it gets added to a group? I recently dipped my toe in versus mode and was surprised to see I average around 90 APM. There’s no freaking way I keep up with that. I’m thinking of Mengsk’s intercessors in particular, which have a habit of staring at bushes instead of moving.
Control Groups are an excellent start. Effective band selecting is also a good skill to learn to improve non-F2 play.
I mean in one sense I get that the answer is “practice,” but I also feel like that doesn’t entirely answer my question.
The set up I like right now is control group (1) CC/Hatcheries/Nexus, (2) army-producing buildings, and (3) research buildings, and (4) will be for commander-specific things like ESO’s.
I suppose I could try to rally all my units to one spot and then add then to group 5 as I go. But that would just make 5 the same as F2. I might as well stick with F2.
You might want to start with a simple “this hotkey for a+click army” and “this hotkey for casters/detectors”
Exactly that, use make groups, select group then shift + group# to add to one, etc.
Remember to replace what’s not needed.
I use 1-2-3 for army because army is used the most and those buttons are closer to left hand. CC is on 5, used less often than army but still easy to reach.
First and foremost, go to the key setup and unbind the “Select Army” hotkey completely. Yes, you already know about the control groups, but old habits die hard and you’ll still be using F2 by accident here and there, unless you unbind it.
Well, you should better use the first numbers for armies and the other ones for macro, not the other way around. arms has a point about the “1”, “2”, and “3” buttons being closer to your hand most of the time — and, believe me, when you’ll need to fight here and now, you’d rather control your army rather than your base 
I play as protoss and here’s how I use them:
“1” — the whole army
“2” — specific casters with this army (High Templar or Disruptors)
“3” — a scouting probe (early game) / warp prisms (mid and late game)
“4” — Nexi (for chrono boosting and constant probe production)
“5” — some unit production buildings (Robo or Stargates, depends on the build)
“6” — Forges or CyberCores for upgrades
Well yes, but actually no.
You may leave some army units in behind for defense (in particular, to fight off the liberators or oracles). You also may use some units for scouting or holding Xel’naga towers. Not to mention that you may attack on multiple fronts. All this will be possible if you use the control group instead of F2, since F2 will just move away all those stategically positioned units.
Yes, the control group has a downside of your freshly made units not coming along with the rest of your army right away, unless you add them manually. But hey, here’s an upside: when your army is far away behind the enemy lines, or you’re just losing and have to retreat, you can rest assured that at least your new units will be safe at home. And besides, you can always use them rally points to order them to move out approximately where you need them.
You’re making this too hard / overthinking it. You can F2 most of the time with most commanders. I play brutal plus and never lose / easily keep up with or exceed ally. There are a few exceptions:
Abathur: I can go in depth if you play this hero. You really need to make sure levi goes in a fight before anything else, so at minimum just bind them to a control group, go in and then F2 your army. Vipers are always priority when all units are selected, so no need to micro them besides casting honestly.
Detectors: overseers go on 3 for me, F2 the army and press 1, 2 or 3 (whatever you made the detector in a control group) micro the overseer back a little. This is minimal work.
Objectives like Lock and Load: put observer in overseer mode so they don’t move. Alternatively, take one unit out of control group and control + 1 your army. Hitting 1 is your new F2 until the point is captured. You can also send a drone/probe/scv to the objective and then when you select all army units, no problem.
Swann: F2 for everything but your drop fella with tanks. Hotkey the dropper to something.
Basically if you rely on F2, hotkey the one important thing, F2 your army and use your hotkey to move the important thing out of the fight (or into the fight and then F2 the rest of your army in the case of Levi from abathur). So, F2, A click, hit 1 or 2 or 3, move that unit back. Easy (:
I don’t use F2, because F keys are ideal for camera locations. I use ~ instead. But I use this in ladder a ton too. Basically, ONLY super important things (vipers lurkers a flank attack that isn’t your main army or banelings for example in ladder) need to go into control groups unless you’re playing masters and beyond, or maybe a brutal 6… don’t overthink it. If you need to leave a unit behind, control group your entire army to 1 and you’re basically set man.
I don’t think you need to abolish F2 from your life, I always use F2 to find units of a certain type and add them to my army.
For example, I’m playing Karax and building Immortals, to get them as them come from the Robotics Facility I press F2, ctrl click one immortal, which gives me all immortals, then shift + 2 to add to my army control group.
Playing without F2 will just make you have to go to a certain point in the map in which you’re rallying all the units, and stop looking at the action. Most people do that, but you don’t need to do that as well.
You can indeed. Furthermore, I can’t even imagine some of the commanders without F2 (Han & Horner, for example, having their production always in a different place).
But Co-op is a completely different story, you rarely need to scout, defend your mineral line or attack on multiple fronts at the same time. And I guess the topic starter is interested for playing without F2 on ladder…
(looks at where the topic is)
…or not?
The first lesson of anti-F2 should be “rely on mouse select more than usual”.
Then you can go for control groups 101.
Typically I bind nez/CC to 7, macro production to 5-6, and 1-4 are open for army and whatnot. Nova for exanple since I’ve been prestoging her lately- 1 is nova, 2 is army, 3 is ravens/SCVs(early levels). 4 is flyers when I need libs, or truck on that one map.
Karax, which I haven’t played since before prestige- 1 would be ground army, 2 would be emerfizers, 3 would be mirages or libs. Or, on trains/shuttles, 1-3 would be different groups of monoliths and 4 for army, which only comes later ln those maps. 5-6 for macro and 7 for nexus
Zerg or mengsk, I bind CC/hatch to 5 ANd 7 just to keep my head straight lol
Diamondquant pretty much said everything, you do can get away with F2, but if you want to play even better and have great control on ladder as well, control groups is a huge deal.
The only time I actually use F2, is to add some units that I’ve left at home, or to add Alarak’s wrathwalkers that are still heading towards my army.
And yes, have 1-3 numbers just for army units so you can use spellcasters as well, otherwise you will have to press tab to switch between spellcasters in the same group, which is not ideal for a fight.
What you get from doing control groups is contantly making units and upgrades without having to take your eyes off from your army, only things like making more buildings or using calldowns should.
Yeah, I wouldn’t unbind F2 entirely. Even with it you can always remember to tab over to the selected unit type within the group. This is important to know and practice. As this also affects how you can/use a group as well.
The one thing I forgot about is that you can also bind camera locations.
But that kind of Jedi tricks is what I don’t possess yet myself 
Even if you do unbind it, the button still remains above the minimap, you’ll just need to click it.
Although, several years ago I remember that I didn’t unbind it, but instead rebound to Shift+End. On my laptop keyboard the End button was in the very top-right corner, so to select all army I needed to press two keys on the opposite sides. It worked as a cure of “accident F2ing” just as well.
I wish there would be a way to auto-add units to certain control groups upon creation. That is, the unit spawns and it’s already on its proper group.
There are certain control group setups I always do, but it’s a boring chore to start adding everything every game, so I’d like to have some kind of place in the game options where I can manage groups outside of a game and then they’re already there when I play.
*Clicks on Research Advanced Interface*