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Well, now that one of my favorite units is back (the infested terran, for those of you who are slow), I figured I would write a mini tutorial on its proper usage. I've honed their usage in countless combat situations, as well as the unit tester. This tutorial represents my own personal knowledge, and I would appreciate if the TL community would add to my knowledge by suggesting improvements.
1) Micro - Before using infester abilities, always hit the "S" key. This is the stop command. Since you almost always have to hold shift while using infester abilities (if you are using more than 1, which is pretty much every time), you don't want to have your infester go to their current rally point before casting spells.
2) Keep infesters in their own control group. This is for easy access, and so you don't order your entire army to stop. I keep infesters in control group 3.
3) If you have the energy, fungal growth first. FG does 36 damage to each target, so if it hits 10 targets, thats 360 damage...easily worth 3 infested terrans.
4) But you already knew all that...this step is the key. In battle and while holding shift, spawn infested terran as fast as humanly possible in the center of the opponents army. Speed is critical here. If you successfully que it up, the infester will spawn as many as 8 eggs simultaneously when he gets within range. The eggs will fall to the nearest open spot from where you clicked. If you do it right, they will form a semi circle around the opponents army. Reapply fungal growth.
Example:
3 (or whatever control group infesters are in)
s (stop command)
f (fungal growth)
(holding shift) click click (two applications of FG)
s (stop)
t (infested terran)
(holding shift) clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
s (stop)
f (fungal growth)
click
Its sort of a flank on demand. If you click slightly behind the center of your opponents army, the semi circle will form behind them, cutting off retreat (if you didn't save energy for a second application of FG). You must play around with it a bit in the unit tester, as full scale infested terran battles rarely occur more than once per game.
Infesters work well with roaches, becasue infested terrans share upgrades with roaches, infesters/roaches can both move while burrowed, and their costs stack well in terms of minerals and gas. Infesters are terrible with hydras, because they get bunched up while casting spells. They are so-so with lings, but that combo allows you to hypertech to hive.
Updated Infested Terran usage: Burrowed use
A few things changed during the last patch. Namely, the infested terran can now be used burrowed. The OP is still 100% valid, but there is now a new way to use the IT. Shift point rallying.
While burrowed, move the infester to a point near the battle. Make sure that point is within infested terran's casting range. Also make sure it will take at least 2 seconds for the infester to travel there. Then, holding shift, click IT a bunch of times in the area behind to opponents main force.
s (stop)
left click near deployment point
(holding shift) t (infested terran). Do this while infesters are traveling to the point.
(holding shift) clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
As soon as the burrowed infester reached the rally point, they will blow their entire load load of eggs. Because the infesters will reach the point at almost the same time, they will all shoot their egg loads at almost the same time. The "shift rallying" is really just a method of speeding up egg creation.
Alternative use: I had about 600 energy on some infesters I wasn't using, and I was able to take advantage of this against a protoss when I noticed his expo didn't have any detection. From halfway across the map, I told the infesters to go to the center of his mineral line. I then told them to shift spew eggs on arrival in a semicircular pattern around the nexus, then to return home. Since this was all done with shift queuing, I also doom dropped his main while his army was away. The ITs took out the nexus and all the probes, 2 extractors and 2 pylons.
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If you've ever watched a pro replay where the protoss throws away all their high templar, you know why the use of the stop command is so critical.
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infested terrans were never gone...
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lol, good luck getting 32 infested terrans in a semi circle around the opponents army out of overseers at 125 energy a pop
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never knew you needed to use "S" command, and then shift-queu...I knew I was doing something wrong.
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On July 08 2010 08:42 RMmanlots wrote:
lol, good luck getting 32 infested terrans in a semi circle around the opponents army out of overseers at 125 energy a pop
Have you looked at the patch notes?
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would there be any application of them as a worker harassment unit? or is fungal growth better at that?
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On July 08 2010 08:48 1284 wrote:
would there be any application of them as a worker harassment unit? or is fungal growth better at that?
Throw a fungal, then a second one after 2-3 seconds and you will kill about 60-70% of their mineral line, so...
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Can someone explain to me the exact mechanics of shift-queueing? I usually find that my FGs and ITs come out as fast as I can click and all I do his spam T + click. Does it just allow you to queue them up from out of range so that when they get close enough they will unload everything instantly (because IT has zero casting delay?)?
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What do you mean it's back? It has been there the whole time just on a different unit...
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Thanks, some of that was actually very helpful.. and I was actually one of the bigger IT users, especially in my search for ways to beat tanks.
What do you mean it's back? It has been there the whole time just on a different unit...
Nice contribution.
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what he means is the semi circling strategy didnt work with overseers now that they are back on infestors they can be used now using htat strat PERSONALLY i preferred it on the overseer but thats just me
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Shift queuing does two things. First, it queues up actions. If you want your scouting SCV to go to the watch tower, then to the natural to scout an expo, then to the main, you can shift click on all these destinations and he will go to all of them in order.
Second, shift queuing preserves your current action. Lets say you want to cast 4 fungal growths. you can "f click f click f click f click", or "(holding shift) f click click click click." Holding shift preserves the fungal growth action.
These two things do not work well together. If the infesters are part of your main army (what day[9] calls the "one control group syndrome"), they will obey those orders before shift queuing to the fungals. If you "a move" them with the rest of the army, they will obey that order first before FGing. Because infesters don't have an attack, they simply move to the spot then cast FG. High templar have the exact same problem, which is why you see them thrown away in a pro replay ALL the time.
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Also, to those of you who think the infested terran is useless, I'm guessing you haven't tried it since the damage buff. It does 8 damage every 0.86 seconds, or about 9.3 dps. An infester with full energy can cast 8 at a time, for a total dps of about 74 damage per second. They also have 400 hp.
The real value though, is that all the ranged units in the opponents ball will pick a unique target from the semi circle. They will fire at the ITs rather than your more valuable units.
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I just want to mention that we don't know whether the infested terran ability is identical to the way it was before. Maybe it operates by targeting enemy units instead.
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On July 08 2010 08:30 RMmanlots wrote:
1) Micro - Before using infester abilities, always hit the "S" key. This is the stop command. Since you almost always have to hold shift while using infester abilities (if you are using more than 1, which is pretty much every time), you don't want to have your infester go to their current rally point before casting spells.
2) Keep infesters in their own control group. This is for easy access, and so you don't order your entire army to stop. I keep infesters in control group 3.
4) But you already knew all that...this step is the key. In battle and while holding shift, spawn infested terran as fast as humanly possible in the center of the opponents army. Speed is critical here. If you successfully que it up, the infester will spawn as many as 8 eggs simultaneously when he gets within range. The eggs will fall to the nearest open spot from where you clicked. If you do it right, they will form a semi circle around the opponents army. Reapply fungal growth.
1) If you're the kind of person that hits the hotkey BEFORE holding down shift, you do not need to tell them to stop. It's the only logical way of giving units orders.
2) Not necessarily necessary due to (1), but probably useful. Generally I might group infestors with hydralisks or other slow units, since they are the same speed and ranged.
4) IMO casting infested terrans is just pretty useless. Because of the time it takes for them to hatch you can either run away or kill infestors before they can do anything. Speedlings are automatically zerg's anti-retreat and/or flanker unit because they move so fast. Sure infested terrans can wall, but they are stupidly slow, have less combined health than 2 lings, and have a really short timed life. Maybe you have fun with them - or even consider them worth it and useful - but I am certain they are a completely inefficient unit as they are right now.
To explain about your last point, yes a full energy infestor worth of ITs is useful, but it takes a long time to generate energy, from 0 energy it takes about 377 game seconds to get to. In that time frame, one can build much more firepower to take you out before you can accumulate enough energy. Also, Let's say you cast a bunch of ITs... all the opponent needs to do is run away from them. The ITs won't be able to do anything unless they were spawned right beside an immobile target. Against a planetary fortress or any production facility they are screwed because of attack(with splash)/repair or because they can lift off. You're left with throwing out all your infestor's energy just to kill a few depots vs terran. Vs zerg you'd be dead before you could do it, and while it's nice vs protoss, 1 colossus can own an infinite number of infested terrans (negating positional data such as surrounds), and units like blink stalkers are really good at killing infestors.
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I used it some on the overseer, I'm dubious about using it on the infester though since the other abilities seem more useful.
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The thing I love about the infester midgame is their low larva/mineral cost. You can make 3-4 infesters along with a handful of lings/roaches/spine crawlers, and then power drone your third. This is simply not as effective without the IT.
When the opponent moves out, queue up a round of lings/roaches, and try to delay the push with FG and ling backstabs. If he is able to engage you, the IT provides an instant, on the spot, and effective army out of thin air.
Don't knock it till you've tried it. It works.
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Blizzard needs to buff infested terrans. Then I won't have a problem with you saying this stuff, because that is how things SHOULD be.
Even then, I think infested terran is a stupid ability concept.
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Don't forget they move while burrowed so you can get extra fancy queuing up fungal growths and burrowing away after getting them in good position.
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EPT
