In Warcraft III, is there a fast way to cast spells when multiple unit types are selected

warcraft-3

When I select a bunch of units with different types, I can only cast spells available to the currently "highlighted" unit type. So say I have a paladin, a sorceress, 2 priests and a bunch of footmen selected, and I want to dispel some summoned skeletons.

I have to hit tabtab to highlight the priests, and only then I can d a few times for dispelling. Then I suddenly want to use the paladin's heal, so I need to shift-tabshift-tab before casting the heal. Now I want to dispel again but meanwhile my sorceress might have died, so it's only tab once now, etc…

Now I understand this is much better than individually choosing the units that have to cast, like in previous Blizzard RTSs, but is there a faster way to use these special abilities? And if there isn't, does anyone have any tips for me to speed up things?

Best Answer

It's not much, but you can (and I'm sure some of the WC3 pros do) individually bind each caster group to a separate control group. That way, you can access your sorceress' spells at any time by pressing "3" (assuming any are still alive), your Priests by pressing "2", the rest of your army by pressing "1", etc.

And of course, if I'm remembering correctly, your heroes are automatically mapped to the F1-F4 keys.