All hail the OP for he is our savior! This is like the total inverse of muta stacking micro. I like it. Hopefully I get to try it soon.

Oh I thought of something useful to help with the problem of miss-clicking when trying to target fire a thor and bunching your mutas. If you queue up the move order followed by a hold position order followed by your target firing orders the mutas will automate themselves into battle and should remain unstacked. You were probably going to target fire the thors down in sequence anyway so this just makes it easier to do so. Plus, I suspect that due to the hold position command, even if one of the targetted thors walks out of range before it dies that your mutas will simply switch to the next targetted thor and attack it instead of chasing the fleeing thor (and bunching up). Would need to test to confirm that though.

sacrificetheory

United States98 Posts

August 20 2010 02:59 GMT

#23

Yes this is news that most good zerg players already know. But a very nice post and good for the masses. Seeker missiles absolutely demolish mutalisks. I had 1 seeker missile kill 11 of my mutals in 1 shot. watch out for this... Smart terrans already know that most zerg players know about mutal micro vs thors... so they willl add tons of rines and 3-4 ravens... Its a tough deal So like OP says : dont go overdo your mutals even tho ur super excited about how much better they do when used this way.

You still need to mass expand start ur T3 and add infestors will help in every ZvT specifically in a mech heavy army NP thors. , in a rine heavy army fungal growth .. But at least theres a fighting chance with this knowledge.

fenster

United States73 Posts

August 20 2010 03:14 GMT

#24

This makes so much sense....why have I not been doing this the whole time. I suppose I subconsciously understood what makes mutas bunch up and what doesn't, but I've never applied to to attacking thors. The numbers you're giving are incredible...3 mutas per thor!

Great write up, much kudos to you sir.

l90 Proof

64 Posts

August 20 2010 03:16 GMT

#25

This post is proof that you don't have to be a high level diamond player to have good insights.

Some replays of the damage that bunched/unbunched mutas take would be really useful. Especially if someone edited it into a single youtube video. Such would be a great help to the noobish masses.

koppik

United States676 Posts

August 20 2010 03:27 GMT

#26

It's a different story if the thors have scvs repairing or if there are also stim marines around, but zerg players should force-move+stop in every case where a thor might be around regardless.

I think someone did a test, noting it takes over twice the amount of mutas to kill a group of thors (and maybe more) if you let them bunch up.

roliax

135 Posts

August 20 2010 04:29 GMT

#27

might i add you can use the patrol micro to spread your mutas when engaging. there's a thread on it somewhere in the strategy forum but i'll look for it in a bit.

EDIT: the thread disappeared. i wud explain but it's quite complex...

hijodemilputa

Ireland16 Posts

August 20 2010 04:59 GMT

#28

thanks very much

can someone explain a little more what exactly I should do?

Click behind the thor, then click S or H? when I select them all and pick a thor to fire at, do they not bunch up then?

shawster

Canada2485 Posts

August 20 2010 05:21 GMT

#29

just had a game today and for the first like 17 minutes i did nothing but mass mutas and beat his mech army with it. 20 mutas > 5 thors or something like that, especially upgraded ones. then i had ultraling with like 28 mutas and just gg'd him pretty hard

i just did move -> h but i didn't test move -> h -> attack to see if it would work

Wr3k

Canada2533 Posts

August 20 2010 05:26 GMT

#30

If you can accompany your mutas with ling/roach or ling/bling it makes taking down thor/rine/rauder/hellion a joke. ling/muta has insane dps, you just need to follow the OP's advice and accompany your mutas with a ground force.

EnderCN

United States499 Posts

August 20 2010 05:28 GMT

#31

The concept that Thors counter mutalisks is pretty silly. Terran has no counter to mutas except pushing on the Zerg base.

dlordtemplar

United States7 Posts

August 20 2010 05:28 GMT

#32

I always feel like I don't want to lose mutas. Thanks for showing me it's worth it. ^^ I've been having a LOT of trouble with terran mech...maybe mutas are the answer...i'll have to hope they skimp on the thors/rines! ^^

Headshot

United States1656 Posts

August 20 2010 05:31 GMT

#33

Sorry, noob here. What exactly do you mean by "force move" past the Thors?

ChaosShadow

United States79 Posts

August 20 2010 05:35 GMT

#34

On August 20 2010 14:31 Headshot wrote:
Sorry, noob here. What exactly do you mean by "force move" past the Thors?

Issue a move command (right click the ground) beyond the thors so that your mutas maintain formation instead of grouping up.

me_viet

Australia1350 Posts

August 20 2010 05:50 GMT

#35

wow can we get this stickied please? perhaps this will be the next step in the evolution of the zerg swarm =D

Lol it's funny cause this is kinda like reverse muta micro haha

Lighioana

Norway466 Posts

August 20 2010 05:55 GMT

#36

Wow! Great research!

Armsved

Denmark642 Posts

August 20 2010 06:03 GMT

#37

Finally people will understand that thors do not counter muta. You need marines aswell. However people have been doing this at high diamond for a while.

However if the terran has 4 thors and you mess it up once you can just GG.

FunkyLich

United States107 Posts

August 20 2010 06:08 GMT

#38

About the seeker missile. I tried it on some mutas and (a) it didn't exactly one shot them. Though they are extremely effective when they land. (b) They are SUPER easy to outrun when you spot them. Granted that's really an advantage on its own for terran to get mutas to run for their lives for a time. But (c) it's also kind of easy to tell which muta is being targeted because it has that obnoxious laser. So if you split that little guy off, it's basically wasted. Either way, rines should definately support the thors.

But hopefully this helps zerg players see that the mech ball is really an organic system with specialized parts: vitals if you will. If you manage to baneling bomb or fungal growth the rines and nuetralize them, the ball is open to mutas. If the mutas kill the thors, the remainder is defenseless against mutas. If the mutas kill the tanks, the remainder is vulnerable to your ground army.

On August 20 2010 13:59 hijodemilputa wrote:
thanks very much

can someone explain a little more what exactly I should do?

Click behind the thor, then click S or H? when I select them all and pick a thor to fire at, do they not bunch up then?

Click behind the thor in such a way that that your mutas will pass over it. Once your mutas are passing over the thor attack it. Don't use hold position or they will likely not focus fire. You want to make sure they are clouding overhead and all the mutas are basically in attack range of the target thor before you right click the thor. If you attack while some of your mutas aren't quite in range, they will bunch up.

EDIT: I sort of figured people must be doing this by now: the technique's been available since the beta. It just struck me as odd that it wasn't common knowledge.

NeoLearner

Belgium1847 Posts

August 20 2010 06:34 GMT

#39

On August 20 2010 14:28 EnderCN wrote:
The concept that Thors counter mutalisks is pretty silly. Terran has no counter to mutas except pushing on the Zerg base.

Yeah, maybe not 1 unit all-purpose hard counter. Then again, we're not playing WC3

Thor + marine could still work I think. The reason mutas vs thor works is because the spread negates the splash damage. The reason mutas vs marines works is because stacking makes them hard to focus down. So having a thor (or 2) to force the Zerg to "unstack" his mutas and then use your stimmed marines to pick off the weak ones seems like a valid tactics. Micro intensive, and I'm not a terran player though... If you are going 1/1/1, I think medivacs are probably a better idea than vikings.

Without siege tank support, thor marine dies to ling baneling muta (infestor). This was seen in Maka Vs Prime. Once the siege tank count was down (and/or out of position), the blings absolutly raped the marines. A totally stupid idea maybe (probably

), but has anybody ever tried to slow push with turrets or bunkers like in BW vs DT's? Just a question, it's probably waaay to immobile and still weak against blings though.

Ouga

Finland645 Posts

August 20 2010 06:41 GMT

#40

Will have to look into this. I don't see how mutas would avoid all the aoe while moving towards thors though, which is usually the deadly part. Situation likely won't be 12 v 4, if you focus on mutas and if it works to bug out aoe, you'll probably have a lot more. It sounds unlikely that you could totally dodge the aoe if you were attacking with 24mutas from one direction.

I highly doubt this is the reason they haven't nerfed terran

If unit has small aoe, it's supposed to do aoe against 24 relatively packed units. I'd like them to make the aoe part of it more clear. Not something you can abuse with tricks, just nerf it altogether.