Should I share unit control in Starcrarft 2 2v2?

Question

Some time ago I played a lot of Warcraft 3 2v2. I was even quite decent.

Back then most players shared their units, as micro was way more important. People hated it when their hero died because they could not retreat with allied units blocking the way.

So it was accepted that everybody shared their units after the obligatory "gl hf".

I am currently low diamond 2v2 and up until now no one shared their units with me or offered it.

Is there a reason for this? Should I start sharing my units?

Answer 1

Shared control really depends on the situation. First, a few things to remember:

• Shared control does not have to be permanent for the game
• Shared control does not have to be mutual

A few scenarios where sharing control in a random team would be beneficial would be;

• Early rushes, such as combined or mixed zealot, zergling or marine rush. There is a huge benefit in making these combined rush armies act as a single army instead of scattered control. This also allows the off player to focus more on economy and tech instead of micromanagement.
• Terran walls, and only during the early game.

However, shared control is much more beneficial when you have a trusted partner that you play with often and have a good line of communication with. Shared control in these scenarios allow you to act as a redundant set of eyes for each others armies. For example, units or armies that stray out of position can be saved by a command instead of mad pinging and yelling.

Shared control with an ally also allows better use of spell casters or micro management of certain blocks of units (e.g. one guy harass with all available air while the other distracts with all available ground at the front door). There are many different scenarios which this can be useful, not restricting strategy to the owner of the unit but instead the type of unit.

If there is no line of communication (usually in random teams), then sharing control is usually a bad idea. You can not predict that your strategy will align sufficiently with theirs to prevent unit control conflicts.

Answer 2

I would only share control with players you trust, i.e. premade teams. Chances are, your ally has horrendous unit control and move commands your army into the opponents siege tanks.

There is no rule for sharing control at the moment. Noone does it, noone asks for it except sometimes for terrans in shared bases that share control so allies can lower supply depots.

Answer 3

As a Terran player I almost always share my units, unless they are another Terran player and help me build the wall. A couple reasons why i share units is either they are rushing and im working on a transition incase the rush (which have a pretty high failure rate) fails. I do this so that my ally can move my units with his/hers and I usually dont screen over until they are nearing the base. The other reason i usually let my allies take control is because of my wall, I find it very annoying to have to stop what im doing to lower my wall (although sometimes i macro it and just hit a couple hotkeys instead), so this allows them to do it instead of me.

I would say the only time I for sure dont is if it is obvious that my ally is a bit rusty/new to the game.

Answer 4

Some people prefer not to have shared control, because it can make it harder to micro. If your armies are fighting together and you try to select some Colossus over here, you might accidentally select your allies' medivacs.

It can also result in inefficient casting - if we're both trying to forefield a choke, we could end up with a super weird, inefficient pattern that wastes energy.