Greetings! I am a long time lurker, first time poster, and I have a contribution to you zerg players that will aid you in your ZvT, specifically in making effective use of mutas against thors. I am a terran player who uses a tank/thor mech push in every game vs Zerg, and I beat almost all the platinums I have faced even though proper muta control could have saved them half the games. It’s somewhat disappointing. Anyways, the point of this guide is to show you how to exploit the fact that unlike siege tanks, the thor’s splash radius is EXTREMELY small, and only really takes effect when mutas start to overlap and stack. The SC2 Magic Box
In BW you could use magic boxes for spell spread, among other things. In sc2 we have smart casting so that isn’t important, the application this time will be to maintain a unit spread. The magic box is basically an invisible box that fits around your selected units. If you right click inside the box, your units will try to bunch up at that location. And if you right click outside the box, they will maintain formation and hence retain unit spread.
(it’s actually more of a square but from that angle I had to make it a rectangle.)
What's better is that the unit spread is automatic. You know when you bunch up a group of mutas and they start to diverge on their own? Once they reach THAT spread, THAT is your anti-splash damage formation. The thor’s splash damage is literally that small. See that picture up there? That is all the spread you need to completely eliminate splash damage. And you don’t need insane micro skills to maintain it. Just bunch them up once, wait until they diverge, and move them out, being sure to always click outside the box.
There is more to magic boxes though. In particular they have a maximum size depending on whether air or ground units are selected. If the selected units exceed the maximum size of the box, they will always lose formation no matter where you click. Fortunately the air box is MUCH bigger than the ground box. Mess around with about 4 zerglings and see how much you can spread them and move them while keeping formation. They don’t spread a whole lot. Air units are very different. I have found that I can keep a formation of 36 mutas without them getting outside the box. If you go above that number you’re risking one of them getting outside the box, and the result will be all of them bunching up during a move. It’s safest to keep your numbers lower than 36. So just keep an eye on that.
Application
WHAT NOT TO DO
DO NOT. I REPEAT DO NOT, attack thors by simply right clicking them from a distance, or this is what you will see. I shake my head in shame whenever I see this. (Although as a terran player it does make me a happy camper).
WHAT TO DO
The idea is to move, park, and fire. Let’s say I want to pick off 2 thors with 10 mutas. First I get them in formation. To do this bunch them up and let them diverge into a nice little circular cloud (you should only have to do this once before moving out). Second, once you see the thor, FORCE MOVE to a point past the target thor. Once your mutas have clouded over the thor, attack the target thor, and ideally you will see your mutas get this nice momentum where they do an attack before they come to a complete stop, it’s very important that your mutas are all in range before you attack. Otherwise they could bunch up slightly. As you focus one thor down, watch to see if another thor is accumulating glaive damage. Kill that one next. If he is very close to the other thor you may not even need to force move your mutas. Additionally, you may find it difficult to click on the thor when your mutas are surrounding it. This is actually a very important issue, because if you click on one of your mutas or the ground right next to him on accident, the results will be disastrous. The solution I have found is to just hit “end” on the keyboard or use your mouse scroll to get a better angle. I know it’s awkward and not very pro but it’s much safer. You will find that it gets harder to do this with no bunching as your numbers get bigger. A bit of practice on a unit tester couldn’t hurt you there.
Data
These are by no means proven, but I have found that at about 18 mutas, you’ve reached a critical mass where mutas are even with thors at a 3:1 ratio. So 18 mutas is about even with 6 thors. Do the math: 300/300/6 is even with 300/200/6, even when the latter is supposed to be a counter and the sole AA in a mech army I might add. As you get lower in mutas, the ratio gets bigger. As you get higher, the ratio gets a little smaller. Using this tactic, 4 mutas is basically even with one thor. This does not take into account upgrades but I will discuss them further down. Again I want to stress these are by no means proven. Results have varied tremendously before. Perhaps the mutas bunched sometimes and I missed it. Perhaps the thors were doing an absurd amount of overkill, causing their DPS to plummet. No less, the technique makes a gigantic difference in the LIFESPAN of your mutas while they’re around thors. This enables them to harass more effectively when the terran is using thors as his primary air defence, and much more.
Now some important figures: with no upgrades on either end, thors kill mutas in 3 hits. Thors with level 1 weapons and mutas with zero armor still kill mutas in three hits. With level 2 weapons, thors kill mutas in two hits unless the mutas have level 1 armor, then it takes 3 again (In this case mutas will have ONE HP left after the second hit due to that instant point of health regen).
Meager Analysis
What can the terran do? Certainly armor for thors will help as the glaives hit multiple times. But a better tactic is just spacing out the thors and taking advantage of their range. This will increase the time it takes for the mutas to get from one to the other, and eliminate glaive damage to an extent. Also, make good use of your SCVs.
What can the zerg do extra? Possibly get corrupters and use corruption to help the thors go down faster. Don’t necessarily target the thors. If you can pick off his tanks, you can pave the way for your ground army to mop the floor with everything else, which leads to the next point. Obviously don’t make ALL mutas unless you can see he’s really short on thors or AA in general.
Questions? Comments? Constructive criticism is welcome, as are data contributions.
EDIT: For the record, this technique has existed, and has been put to use before I ever discovered it for myself. This is evidenced by the fact that in higher diamond level play, terran players have already adapted, and the counter is indeed having marines support your thors. Since the mutas want to cloud directly over the thors, and the marines want to stim directly under the mutas, the solution is to simply surround the thors with marines. That, and the mech army is so vespane heavy, the marines are a great way to sink your minerals. However, with this, more people will also see that the mech army is in fact heavily reliant on a very fragile unit. And it is not so indestructible as many of us had thought.
Another note, I of course do not believe this FIXES ZvT. But if this technique makes you feel more positively about it, all for the better.
One note though, very rarely do you have vision of all of his thors so that you can casually stroll over them and pick them off. Usually what happens is you're attacking some part of his base(scvs, depots), and a thor walks over and attacks your mutas. When this happens your mutas are in a clumped position already from attacking whatever you were attacking, and it becomes very difficult to engage the thors as even a tiny bit of overlap in the mutas kills them.
This is one of the reasons why Blizzard is taking a bit of time to actually patch things despite the cries of the masses.
Mutas are so disgustingly strong if used well, not only do they make the terran waste minerals on turrets everywhere, take the map and give the zerg opportunity to take a few expos but also in a direct confrontation they can hold their own pretty well as long as you know what you are doing. Mind though that a terran will most likely have marines with his thors and/or turrets if he's slow pushing, but that's still all resources that aren't used against ground units, so massing ground straight after combat should catch the terran offguard.
omg i won with mutas first time ever. (actually not on some horrible peopel) but i actually killed 2 thors and a couple marines with 8 mutas impressive
This seems amazing. I really need to try this to stop that marauder hellion thor push, this could be the perfect counter. Thank you very much for your effort.
Good stuff! Mutas are so awesome. I almost always get them in every matchup. I would just be careful of getting too muta happy, because they are still pretty situational units and will get whipped if you're not careful. Awesome analysis on Muta vs Thor though. It's all about that little bit of extra direct move passed the Thors so you are dead overhead.
On August 20 2010 10:37 roronoe wrote: I like the big red letters, they actually help a lot, lol
They are for positive reinforcement.
On August 20 2010 10:30 Zarahtra wrote: This is one of the reasons why Blizzard is taking a bit of time to actually patch things despite the cries of the masses.
Mutas are so disgustingly strong if used well, not only do they make the terran waste minerals on turrets everywhere, take the map and give the zerg opportunity to take a few expos but also in a direct confrontation they can hold their own pretty well as long as you know what you are doing. Mind though that a terran will most likely have marines with his thors and/or turrets if he's slow pushing, but that's still all resources that aren't used against ground units, so massing ground straight after combat should catch the terran offguard.
Anyway good post.
One disadvantage, is that since you park right over them, you've already done half the work for the supporting marines (if they exist) because marines just want to get under them and stim. It's not exactly fool proof, especially vs. rines, I will admit that.
And also, it's really awesome that you guys are already getting results! Good stuff.
Funny enough, I got beat by a zerg that did this. We chatted for a while, played a couple more games, then they showed me this method in a unit tester map. It also works with banchees. I also cringe as a terran player since taking muta out of the game was the only reason to build thors. I will be modifying my strategy as this gets more common.
You really need to mix marines in to counter mutas. Stim is essential. It then becomes a race to see how many marines you can save against mass bling.
I think seeker missile might be a decent buy here too. I believe it one shots mutas and has a much larger splash radius than the thor. It could probably force a zerg player in-out-in-out of a fight. Probably deserves testing.
Problem is that you almost never find thors alone like this, and if you're focusing on keeping your mutas tight together in order to pick off tanks and other stuff and 2 or 3 thors walk up you just splat
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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! ^^
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is great, thanks a ton for this post. Didn't know that thors had such small splash radius (although it makes sense because it is TONS of dps if the mutas are stacked incorrectly). Tried it out myself and 18 mutas taking out 6 thors with 5 mutas leftover is CRAZY. Love it! Thanks a ton, and I will definitely be using this in-game!
edit: question...with a large number of mutas, is it better to hit "s" and stop them over the thors or to still target fire one, which may end up bunching a few...?
On August 20 2010 15:51 SeaSmoke wrote: omfg thank you gonna try this immediately.
edit: question...with a large number of mutas, is it better to hit "s" and stop them over the thors or to still target fire one, which may end up bunching a few...?
I found that hitting "H" is best cause they won't clump up for sure.
lol oh god something just occured to me. I hope Blizzard doesn't look at this and go "oh hey, Thor splash isn't really splashing anymore....let's increase aoe"
I will break my sc2 cd if that happens. That or change to P =P
On August 20 2010 15:41 Ouga wrote: 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.
Moving towards them is the easy part. Moving, parking, and shooting is the hard part. Try it. There is absolutely no reason you should be taking AoE while you're just moving (and using the magic box correctly) unless of course the thors are shooting hunter seeker missiles. (Which I hope Blizzard implements in the next patch)
I always knew this, but in the heat of battle i always just wave it off, now i know that this is probably imperative.
1. I think that the clumping is the natural tendency stemming from BW where clumping ur mutas where a do or die tactic.
2. The only problem with this in game application is you have to count in marine fire which is the biggest problem.
3. It also is a pain when harrassing because if u want to target fire a tech lab/scvs/turrets, you have to re split the mutas, possible, but a few more actions to have to do.
Seriously, I just played a game against a Terran that had been talking about how awesome his ZvT was all night during this KOTH we were having... throughout the game I killed at least 12 thors, 2 or 3 at a time, only losing half a dozen or so mutalisks doing so.
Thank you OP, I have a feeling this is going to change a LOT of players' opinions about the matchup... it certainly has for me.
ohm, pretty long post, but you could have written instead is:
Select your mutas, move them towards the area behind the thors, hit stop when you reach the Thors.
You could have saved a lot of time, and btw this was posted already in 2-3 topic starting posts iirc
Btw nobody uses Thors on their own, maybe in large enough numbers, but really, there's always support, so it's not this easy, actually it's really hard
Only a gold player here :p Yeah lets just let the naysayers say their nays. I just tried this on a terran pumping thors/mauraders. I went mass muta, saw his thors, and remembered what i saw in this thread earlier today and decided "might as well give it a shot"and it worked like a charm.
Much to my opponent's amazement my mutas were neither afraid of his thors, nor took very many losses at all. Pretty funny to watch his reaction when i kill his first 2 thors. "omg" is all he can say.
Hopefully this replay illustrates decent execution of this tactic, it worked well for me.
Thors beat mutas in both gas and supply. They are plenty sufficient and I'm not going to agree that mutas are OP simply because your 3 Thors can't kill 30 mutalisks unassisted. The thing that is OP as fuck about Thors in TvZ is that they are a soft counter to EVERYTHING. The perfect embodiment of TvZ right there: you would only get thors to stop mutas, its already been stated in this thread several times, it just so happens that they're pretty damn good against everything else Z has too.
Marines are an even better counter to mutas. 0 gas vs 100 gas? yes please. Again, also good against everything Zerg except banelings and ultras, still 0 gas vs 100+
Not knocking OPs post, because he has good pictures and such, but how is everybody acting like this is a new thing for Zerg? Mutas being able to take Thors roughly 4:1 is the only thing keeping ZvT not completely laughable right now.
Even with smooth moves like this, I lost a game today which came down to 23 mutas and about 4 roaches vs 5 thors, 16 marines, 3 hellions, and 5 SCVs, you know who won? The guy who right-clicked an auto heal ability, and 1a'd his way through 4 bases off of 2. For the record, 0 Thors died in the process.
Only a gold player here :p Yeah lets just let the naysayers say their nays. I just tried this on a terran pumping thors/mauraders. I went mass muta, saw his thors, and remembered what i saw in this thread earlier today and decided "might as well give it a shot"and it worked like a charm.
Much to my opponent's amazement my mutas were neither afraid of his thors, nor took very many losses at all. Pretty funny to watch his reaction when i kill his first 2 thors. "omg" is all he can say.
Hopefully this replay illustrates decent execution of this tactic, it worked well for me.
so he went marauders as support unit vs mutas? Yes, that rep must be a legit example how well mutas work against well built thor-based Terran armies
Btw i'm simply amazed so many people treat this as sg new, this has been discussed in topics, used by pros etc...
On August 20 2010 17:23 Jermstuddog wrote: Surprised that this is being treated as new info.
Thors beat mutas in both gas and supply. They are plenty sufficient and I'm not going to agree that mutas are OP simply because your 3 Thors can't kill 30 mutalisks unassisted. The thing that is OP as fuck about Thors in TvZ is that they are a soft counter to EVERYTHING. The perfect embodiment of TvZ right there: you would only get thors to stop mutas, its already been stated in this thread several times, it just so happens that they're pretty damn good against everything else Z has too.
Marines are an even better counter to mutas. 0 gas vs 100 gas? yes please. Again, also good against everything Zerg except banelings and ultras, still 0 gas vs 100+
Not knocking OPs post, because he has good pictures and such, but how is everybody acting like this is a new thing for Zerg? Mutas being able to take Thors roughly 4:1 is the only thing keeping ZvT not completely laughable right now.
Even with smooth moves like this, I lost a game today which came down to 23 mutas and about 4 roaches vs 5 thors, 16 marines, 3 hellions, and 5 SCVs, you know who won? The guy who right-clicked an auto heal ability, and 1a'd his way through 4 bases off of 2. For the record, 0 Thors died in the process.
Please stop acting like mutas are OMG OP...
You are right, however in all these "ZvT is unbalanced" threads we see a lot of plat/low diamond, hell even mid diamond, complaining that T is OP simply based on "marauders are OP", "Thors are too strong vs muta", "tanks are too strong" etc. etc. And this is simply because people at this level do not understand how to work around these units. This thread is great at making Z players atleast understand how to work around Thors.
Players like Idra are not complaining about the individual units are too strong, but simply that T has too many opening that are simply too hard to scout which makes the matchup somewhat a coinflip for Z.
Muta linx Banling would had done great in the sitiuation you descriped. Also yeah marines do very well against any air, but they also die hard from baneling and fungal or pretty much any AOE.
What im basicly saying is the people acting "OMG OP" are the people who arent high level and are complaining about all kind of jazz which they really shouldnt complaing about. (thor vs muta etc.)
Players like Idra are not complaining about the individual units are too strong, but simply that T has too many opening that are simply too hard to scout which makes the matchup somewhat a coinflip for Z.
Exactly. People need to actually understand the matchup before crying about the wrong thing. T v Z is imbalanced, but not for the things more people cry about.
Yeah, I know what I could have done in my spot. 10 more roaches, 5 blings, anything other than essentially pure muta would have been nice.
Maybe its just this thread did hit on something that isn't common knowledge yet, but should be.
As long as you spend MORE GAS ON YOUR MUTAS than T has on Thors (2:1 is a good number to aim for but 1.5:1 will suffice if you have other solid comp in the rest of your army) then you have the ability to shut down his Thors.
This is not an end-all-be-all thing though. There is a lot more going on in ZvT than Thors and Mutas, and T still holds all the cards.
Well, this gives some hope. This doesn't help in beating thors in MASSES, but against amount that you usually have in solo they might be tameable. 6 thors was the biggest amount I was able to beat with 20 mutas, but more thors than that it became impossible since you can't focusfire and keep mutas spread if there are more. Also the more spread his thors are, harder it is to reach them while spreaded, also increasing time that thors attack mutas while they move.
On August 20 2010 17:23 Jermstuddog wrote:Please stop acting like mutas are OMG OP...
I think I've read all the posts here, and there really hasn't been much talk about mutas being OP. They are really strong however. The word overpowered is really really overused when the topic of TvZ comes up.
In your post, I'd also like to point out though that you say you had 23 mutas and attacked his thors and marines, then he just killed your bases. Wouldn't it just have been better then to keep threatening his base and keep him in his base while you keep your 4 bases saturated and then steamroll him at either t3 or through sheer numbers?
On August 20 2010 18:14 Zarahtra wrote: In your post, I'd also like to point out though that you say you had 23 mutas and attacked his thors and marines, then he just killed your bases. Wouldn't it just have been better then to keep threatening his base and keep him in his base while you keep your 4 bases saturated and then steamroll him at either t3 or through sheer numbers?
I could post the replay, but it's really nothing special. The short answer is, no.
Once a Terran does his 1a, Zerg MUST respond or lose the game immediately. You can afford to lose 1 or 2 expos (this again is a point I messed up on, I attacked before the first expo ever went down) but as soon as he starts taking out tech buildings or at least 1/2 your hatcheries, its GG.
I should have done more harass before he ever pushed out maybe, but we were on Blistering Sands, and 3 Thors can cover about 90% of your main+natural. I am a firm believer in the 3 step Muta program: 1) Conserve your Muta count until he pushes out, every Muta lost is one more step towards your main that T will make. 2) Make him spend a shitload of money on Missile Turrets because once you get enough Mutas, you can just 1-shot them anyway. 3) Use proper support and the Move-Stop action to destroy Thors whenever he does move out. (the funny thing about Thors vs Mutas is that Mutas actually stack better than Thors until he has like 10+ (at that point you would have 40+ mutas and can't avoid clumping at all). The fact that he will inevitably have so many things standing shoulder-to-shoulder makes sure that every glaive bounce gets its full moneys worth.
I had successfully done all 3 (and thusly couldn't enter his base without losing several mutas in the process), except for having proper unit support while he had some. Yes it infuriates me that he won off 1a, and I did rage as the game was closing, but I didn't have the perfect unit mix to handle him and that's really what cost me the game.
On August 20 2010 17:23 Jermstuddog wrote: Please stop acting like mutas are OMG OP...
Lol who said overpowered. And YES it's news for a lot of people obivously. ZvT might still be slightly imba but this doesn't mean bad zerg players have to whine about everything ZvT realated. Mutas are arguably the best units in the game. This thread is interesting. That's it.
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.
My point was Thors are too slow to actually kill mutalisks on defense and Terran has to sit on 2-3 bases and can't really hope to defend it all against a mutalisk ball. If a zerg player gets a big wad of 15+ mutalisks the counter to it is to push on the zerg bases and come make his mutalisks engage your army. Protoss can counter mutas with phoenix but to counter mutalisk effectively as terran you have to attack.
Way too often I'm watching a replay and the Terran builds 3-4 Thors and the zerg player shuts down his mutalisk like they stand no chance because he has Thors.
I've been using a simliar tactic for a while now with great results. I love how simple you made it!
With terran mech once you shut down the thors you have free reign on their army. they're in a full scale forced retreat and thors aren't built very fast.
EDIT:: Just wanted to point out from my experiences that if their unit composition is Marine/Tank/Thor/[helion] then you have to be careful. Marines make up for the lack of splash very quickly when you fly all mutas into range.
After initially engaging the group of Thors (through force move)- do you guys get more effect from just hovering over them and straight attacking or flying (microing) while attacking?
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.
My point was Thors are too slow to actually kill mutalisks on defense and Terran has to sit on 2-3 bases and can't really hope to defend it all against a mutalisk ball. If a zerg player gets a big wad of 15+ mutalisks the counter to it is to push on the zerg bases and come make his mutalisks engage your army. Protoss can counter mutas with phoenix but to counter mutalisk effectively as terran you have to attack..
Aren't Vikings a Terran counter to mutas? I've had several games where my T opponent goes Vikings in response to my mutas (or simply for map control and overlord checking). I was basically forced to go for some sort of hydra/baneling/mutalisk mix that actually worked very well, but it was not as muta heavy as I would have liked. I'm not saying it's a smart T option since if Z does a tech switch any amount of Vikings over 4 or so are rendered worthless, but regardless they do deter mutas.
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.
My point was Thors are too slow to actually kill mutalisks on defense and Terran has to sit on 2-3 bases and can't really hope to defend it all against a mutalisk ball. If a zerg player gets a big wad of 15+ mutalisks the counter to it is to push on the zerg bases and come make his mutalisks engage your army. Protoss can counter mutas with phoenix but to counter mutalisk effectively as terran you have to attack..
Aren't Vikings a Terran counter to mutas? I've had several games where my T opponent goes Vikings in response to my mutas (or simply for map control and overlord checking). I was basically forced to go for some sort of hydra/baneling/mutalisk mix that actually worked very well, but it was not as muta heavy as I would have liked. I'm not saying it's a smart T option since if Z does a tech switch any amount of Vikings over 4 or so are rendered worthless, but regardless they do deter mutas.
Great technique for a struggling Zerg. I've been trying to make mutas work against Terran but I find Thors and marines shut them down too easily. Hopefully this helps against the thors.
Vikings don't really counter muta if there is a good number of mutas because of the splash although potentially, Terrans could also magic box spread their vikings to mitigate that.
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.
My point was Thors are too slow to actually kill mutalisks on defense and Terran has to sit on 2-3 bases and can't really hope to defend it all against a mutalisk ball. If a zerg player gets a big wad of 15+ mutalisks the counter to it is to push on the zerg bases and come make his mutalisks engage your army. Protoss can counter mutas with phoenix but to counter mutalisk effectively as terran you have to attack..
Aren't Vikings a Terran counter to mutas? I've had several games where my T opponent goes Vikings in response to my mutas (or simply for map control and overlord checking). I was basically forced to go for some sort of hydra/baneling/mutalisk mix that actually worked very well, but it was not as muta heavy as I would have liked. I'm not saying it's a smart T option since if Z does a tech switch any amount of Vikings over 4 or so are rendered worthless, but regardless they do deter mutas.
No, vikings don't counter mutas at all. That's because he can't make vikings fast enough and in small numbers they are worthless against the much faster and more numeraous mutas. If he invests super heavily in starports and vikings just tech switch to ultras and it's GG
Thank you OP. I managed to finally beat my T friend using a Burrow Roach/Muta build. I'm a low level player so I have been struggling to beat the Mech Builds he does.
I pushed my roaches up right under his marines, popped out and brought my Muta's in using this technique. Roaches ate a lot of that marine auto attack damage while my mutas cleaned up the Thors. He was quite surprised, so thanks again!
I don't quite understand the magic box concept just from reading... I will try this when I get home though to see what you mean. This could definitely be useful when it comes to playing ZvT
I always knew this, but this only really helps with defensive muta maneuvering against mech Terrans. Offensively/harassing, this is a much harder thing to do because of the efficiency of missile turrets and thors in combination.
Thanks, though! I don't wanna poop on the thread. Just wanted to say that this isn't a miracle cure.
I think the necessary solution to this would be to support your Thors with other forms of AA. The Thor has an absolutely ridiculous range on its GtA attack, so just one or two positioned well in either your army or your base can punish any attempts at harassment, where you would normally be able to fly circles around Marines. You'll be forced to eat damage until you commit to killing the Thor, and if that Thor is supported by Marines it simply won't be possible without losing all your Mutalisks. This, of course, requires you to keep a Marine ball alive against Banelings.
nice to see a thread like this. for some reason people think thors autowin vs mutas, sure maybe if theres like 4 mutas vs 1 thor and the mutas are balled up. its getting pretty annoying watching even casters say dumb crap like "oh no a thor, whys this guy still making da mutas?!?!" even when theres no marines/vikings to support them.
I've been doing this ever since my i found out tanks cant attack mutas. I build mutas in everyone of my ZvT's its my best MU by far ever since ^^ Zerg imba
why did you give up the secret.. ive known bout this for alittle bit now and have been finally beating T's with my mutas and laughing at 4 thors getting owned by my mutas.. now T players r going to adjust. ;(
This is gonna completely change ZvT. Without OP thors, terran will be forced to build marines in addition to mech, making them banling vulnerable just like MMM. Games are going to really be decided by tank placement, marine vs baneling splits, baneling micro and mutalisk harass. This make me worried, though, that banelings may have to recive a small nerf, thors a buff, or bio a buff.
Only down side I see is if the terran player micros the thors to force them to either clump up or stay where they are but be out of range. This is especially costly to the zerg if the terran has marines or vikings as support and lets the thors attack from a distance while luring the mutas to them.
In ZvT its extremely important to use this tactic to kill the first thor that pops out. That gives you a world of time to do more harass and really get your second/third expo up and running.
This is only really viable against someone who is going straight Thor/Hellion/Tank. It's still informative, but a lot of games I've played the terran also mixes in marines and even possibly vikings. This is generally due to being scouted very well by the T player. Maybe I should start throwing down dens and spires just to force the terran to make tanks/hellions and exclude vikings.
I love mutas vs Terran, but I have so much trouble surviving while the spire is building on lings/roaches alone. Without hydras and infestors it feels impossible to beat a certain sized MMM ball.
On August 20 2010 18:01 Jermstuddog wrote: Yeah, I know what I could have done in my spot. 10 more roaches, 5 blings, anything other than essentially pure muta would have been nice.
Maybe its just this thread did hit on something that isn't common knowledge yet, but should be.
As long as you spend MORE GAS ON YOUR MUTAS than T has on Thors (2:1 is a good number to aim for but 1.5:1 will suffice if you have other solid comp in the rest of your army) then you have the ability to shut down his Thors.
This is not an end-all-be-all thing though. There is a lot more going on in ZvT than Thors and Mutas, and T still holds all the cards.
Strictly speaking, spending more gas on your Mutas to beat Thors is perfectly fine because zerg should have access to 1-2 more bases than Terran.
It's exactly like in SC1 where trading a control group of mutas for like 5 High Templar is still reasonable for Zerg.
On August 21 2010 00:25 fenster wrote: Aren't Vikings a Terran counter to mutas? I've had several games where my T opponent goes Vikings in response to my mutas (or simply for map control and overlord checking). I was basically forced to go for some sort of hydra/baneling/mutalisk mix that actually worked very well, but it was not as muta heavy as I would have liked. I'm not saying it's a smart T option since if Z does a tech switch any amount of Vikings over 4 or so are rendered worthless, but regardless they do deter mutas.
Vikings have been a poor response to Mutas since they got their base armor lowered to 0. They don't get bonus damage, aren't fast enough to kite Mutas, and can't benefit from the dramatic reduction in muta damage that comes with armor because of the fact that they don't share upgrades with Thor/Tank/Hellion.
this has been known about since beta started i think. Except that with the influx of new people in sc2, people wanted to whine and cry instead of check the obvious.
This is insane, so useful and yet so simple. Sure makes me feel like a moron for not thinking about it before. Crazy part is that not even the top zerg players have been doing it. This changes alot.
I never really have an issue with straight thors, it's thors+scvs that really hurt. Often I manage to catch a player with non turrets and one lone thor against 6 muta but can't actually win against it because of scvs. Are there any tricks to this or is repair just too strong to overcome without massive number advantage?
I've suggested this before... the problem is, how often do you get this many mutas? How often does terran NOT have any marines? How often your banelings will be able to get in range of marines with tanks in the back/hellions in the front??
It definitely works... it's definitely a great way to stop an idiot that masses nothing but thors and tanks...
Doesn't really fix ZvT tho... I mean 24 mutas is SO MUCH MONEY! =(
On August 20 2010 11:59 sacrificetheory wrote: Yes this is news that most good zerg players already know. But a very nice post and good for the masses.
I've done this before, when I had no choice but to try to fight with my mutas, but I never realized I could use it as an actual mech counter. So thanks OP.
On August 21 2010 08:03 Darkn3ss wrote: I've suggested this before... the problem is, how often do you get this many mutas? How often does terran NOT have any marines? How often your banelings will be able to get in range of marines with tanks in the back/hellions in the front??
It definitely works... it's definitely a great way to stop an idiot that masses nothing but thors and tanks...
Doesn't really fix ZvT tho... I mean 24 mutas is SO MUCH MONEY! =(
PS: I'm mad that I never made this topic tho! XP
There's another thread for this, where you take your 3rd and 4th super fast after you harass good with your first 8 muta's or whatever and only saturate the gas on 3rd and 4th, and that gas will allow constant production of Muta's and then massive amounts of lings. Which rapes tech.
i was so happy and then you said its not foolproof.. seriously a great post. its one think to know that this is possible and actually doing it in battle. i guess i will try to remember and execute it better from now on.
On August 20 2010 11:35 eH wrote: Problem is that you almost never find thors alone like this, and if you're focusing on keeping your mutas tight together in order to pick off tanks and other stuff and 2 or 3 thors walk up you just splat
On August 21 2010 07:52 Numy wrote: I never really have an issue with straight thors, it's thors+scvs that really hurt. Often I manage to catch a player with non turrets and one lone thor against 6 muta but can't actually win against it because of scvs. Are there any tricks to this or is repair just too strong to overcome without massive number advantage?
Baneling those scvs.
I really think this unit combo balances zvt. The downside is that every tvz will be about the baneling vs stimmed marines battle. If marines don't die, terran wins. If marines die, zerg wins. Feels like bw lol.
On August 20 2010 11:59 sacrificetheory wrote: Yes this is news that most good zerg players already know. But a very nice post and good for the masses.
Oh wow, what a know-it-all prick.
Theres quite a few gracing us with their presence and sunshine in this thread. Just gotta ignore em. :p
On August 21 2010 08:13 Dubo wrote: the scv is a spy!.
this is a thread that will help all zergs so freakin much. i was wondering also why sometimes mutas clump and other times they dont, u just came up with the concept earlier. does this also work for patrol
isnt it ironic? the key to sc1 mutas was clumps and the key here in sc2 (thors) is no clump and clump (somewhat) for other scenarios
On August 20 2010 11:35 eH wrote: Problem is that you almost never find thors alone like this, and if you're focusing on keeping your mutas tight together in order to pick off tanks and other stuff and 2 or 3 thors walk up you just splat
Kinda makes mutas a bit inbalanced don't you think. What's the point of thor splash if it's never used. It's not like terran players have the capacity to make their thors do more splash.
On August 21 2010 11:00 TheFinalWord wrote: Kinda makes mutas a bit inbalanced don't you think. What's the point of thor splash if it's never used. It's not like terran players have the capacity to make their thors do more splash.
Um, Thors shouldn't be the be all end all solution for Mutas. There is a reason why Terran mech vs Zerg is imbalanced right now. Tanks and hellions would dominate anything on the ground and Thors would annhilate Mutas [well not anymore ] and do exceptionally well on the ground aswell. Now with this change, the Terran will have to make a different unit compisition of either more vikings (which are not that great versus mutas) or more marines (which will allow banelings to shine a bit more).
I think this was known, but it is great for someone to make a big post to show exactly how to do it. Anyway, it seems like the gosu micro in Starcraft 2 will revolve more around spreading out an army to take away splash damage.
Another example was SarenS versus IdrA in Game 1. SarenS spread his bio army to reduce the Baneling damage by a ton. While this alone didn't win him the game, it helped a lot.
On August 21 2010 12:00 Xiran wrote: This is great news for zerg players!
Not so much a zerg specific technique. As has already been mentioned, this makes banelings even more worthless, reducing Zergs T1 units to bad, worse, and worthless.
On August 21 2010 12:00 Xiran wrote: This is great news for zerg players!
Not so much a zerg specific technique. As has already been mentioned, this makes banelings even more worthless, reducing Zergs T1 units to bad, worse, and worthless.
It will give zerglings the ability to surround a little better.
sorry if I stole your thunder. When I edit the post, I'll make it clear that I'm not the inventor. I just stumbled across it on my own and thought I'd share.
On August 21 2010 15:40 Zelniq wrote: i posted on this like a couple days after they gave thors splash antiair attack during beta..but i guess nobody saw it
it's perhaps one of the most useful tactics to know zvt
Lol same here... too bad it's not a solution... it's just a way NOT to lose ALL of your mutas in an instance... xD
keep in mind when comparing costs of the two units, yes thors will be cheaper in gas but zerg should be able to outexpand a meching terran at least when I play zerg I do. 4 mutas beat a thor. Also has anyone tried this with 1 corruptor for every 2 thors as corruption could make a hell of a difference
On August 22 2010 01:53 Kfish wrote: How is this a bug/exploit?
And, Tarson reinforced with the wrong unit, too many hellions, shoulda had marines.. this is why we see Korean Terrans go bio/mech.
Because it's just a technique to keep your units in formation? And I'm sure zergs would be more than happy to start fighting more bio heavy builds if they start doing that as a counter.
You can try to micro the marines and maybe add some hellions. Marines and hellions should be reinforced endlessly since they cost no gas and you only need a few upgrades, what other options are there? Ravens for hunter seeker missile against the mutas?
Mutas vs pure mech wins.
Mutas vs bio/mech, the better micro wins.
So far I think thats what we can see.
This should evolve into something nice, more ravens possibly.
I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
On August 22 2010 01:52 Kurumi wrote: I consider this a bug/exploit and I am not going to use it.
Have fun continuing to let Thors evaporate your mutalisks then.
It's a game mechanic, not a bug. Think about it....how much sense does it make for 16 mutalisks to actually be able to occupy the same space (which is what they do when you r-click to attack)? That to me is more of a "bug" (or poor game mechanics) than this. Understanding how the game works and using that to your advantage is not an exploit, it's just smart.
I cheered when Apollo mentioned that IdrA had a new technique for controlling his Mutas (having read this thread yesterday) and then again when he successfully took down Tarson's whole army with it. It's REALLY awesome to see such a breakthrough for Zerg.
On August 22 2010 01:58 Redmark wrote: I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
As hard as it is to believe, he didn't know about it before this thread, and neither did Day9 obviously.
Alot of people here are saying that this has been known since forever, and it probably has. But it has not been generally known before, not even by top of the line players like IdrA, believe it or not.
On August 22 2010 02:03 brn4meplz wrote: If Blizzard wants Thors to be a hard counter to Muta's they are just going to buff the AoE.
They can't buff splash further because then people who don't use this will get raped a bit too much by Thors...
The game has to be balanced at a pro level to be successful.
This has nothing to do with balance. It is a tactic how to use Mutas vs Thors with maximum effect. Any pro will learn fast to spread Thors and not clump them and when Mutas come over 2 Thors, rest will rape them. Or any simillar strat.
And as people say, this has been around for a long time so I doubt there is gonna be a major game brakedown.
I knew this since the phase 1 of beta. Doesn't help me much. It takes a strong muta commitment. If so the opponent can take scvs when pushing and add other units like vikings marines. Mass muta doesnt work for me.
Um you do realize that Blizz designed this mechanic, right? It's not news to them. If they intended Thors to be able to hard counter correctly spaced Mutas they would have given the splash damage greater range to start with.
On August 22 2010 01:58 Redmark wrote: I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
As hard as it is to believe, he didn't know about it before this thread, and neither did Day9 obviously.
Alot of people here are saying that this has been known since forever, and it probably has. But it has not been generally known before, not even by top of the line players like IdrA, believe it or not.
I find it VERY hard to believe that IdrA didnt know about this before, if you watched the game you could see he knew exactly what he was doing, he didnt just stumple across this in this thread and read about it, it was clearly something he had practiced. Its safe to say he hasnt known about it for too long tho, as he apparently told Apollo before that he found a "new" technique to counter mech. I would assume people, including IdrA, knew about this trick but hadn't fully explored its potential until fairly recently.
On August 22 2010 02:03 brn4meplz wrote: If Blizzard wants Thors to be a hard counter to Muta's they are just going to buff the AoE.
They can't buff splash further because then people who don't use this will get raped a bit too much by Thors...
The game has to be balanced at a pro level to be successful.
This has nothing to do with balance. It is a tactic how to use Mutas vs Thors with maximum effect. Any pro will learn fast to spread Thors and not clump them and when Mutas come over 2 Thors, rest will rape them. Or any simillar strat.
And as people say, this has been around for a long time so I doubt there is gonna be a major game brakedown.
I am not saying they should or should not buff thors because of this play style. what i am saying it you can't use the argument that players should not have to use specific micro technique to make units effective. Those people who don't use this technique will need to learn it.
On August 22 2010 02:10 Calidus wrote: The game has to be balanced at a pro level to be successful.
MW2 wasn't 'balanced' at a pro level, heh, it wasn't even capable of supporting pro play, yet it was immensely successful.
Also, stop thinking that Blizzard will do some sort of knee-jerk nerf to change this. And those of you trolling about it being a bug...
MW2 was not sucessfull it was a bland game and it failed missrable.
MW2 was hugely successful in that it sold tons of units and made tons of money. It is not as successful as a competitive game. It seems pretty clear that people are operating with two different notions of success here.
(Edit: MW2 was, for instance, the best selling piece of entertainment in the UK last year in terms of units moved, not just money spent. It sold 33% more units than the second-place finisher, a Harry Potter DVD, despite costing so much more.)
On August 22 2010 01:58 Redmark wrote: I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
As hard as it is to believe, he didn't know about it before this thread, and neither did Day9 obviously.
Alot of people here are saying that this has been known since forever, and it probably has. But it has not been generally known before, not even by top of the line players like IdrA, believe it or not.
On August 21 2010 15:40 Zelniq wrote: i posted on this like a couple days after they gave thors splash antiair attack during beta..but i guess nobody saw it
it's perhaps one of the most useful tactics to know zvt
There have been lots of threads about this. Maybe Zelniq's was the first. Who knows. But I have no idea why this thread in particular has been getting so much attention when it's been common knowledge to Zerg players for a while now.
On August 22 2010 02:10 Calidus wrote: The game has to be balanced at a pro level to be successful.
MW2 wasn't 'balanced' at a pro level, heh, it wasn't even capable of supporting pro play, yet it was immensely successful.
Also, stop thinking that Blizzard will do some sort of knee-jerk nerf to change this. And those of you trolling about it being a bug...
MW2 was not sucessfull it was a bland game and it failed missrable.
MW2 was hugely successful in that it sold tons of units and made tons of money. It is not as successful as a competitive game. It seems pretty clear that people are operating with two different notions of success here.
(Edit: MW2 was, for instance, the best selling piece of entertainment in the UK last year in terms of units moved, not just money spent. It sold 33% more units than the second-place finisher, a Harry Potter DVD, despite costing so much more.)
On August 22 2010 02:10 Calidus wrote: The game has to be balanced at a pro level to be successful.
MW2 wasn't 'balanced' at a pro level, heh, it wasn't even capable of supporting pro play, yet it was immensely successful.
Also, stop thinking that Blizzard will do some sort of knee-jerk nerf to change this. And those of you trolling about it being a bug...
MW2 was not sucessfull it was a bland game and it failed missrable.
MW2 was hugely successful in that it sold tons of units and made tons of money. It is not as successful as a competitive game. It seems pretty clear that people are operating with two different notions of success here.
(Edit: MW2 was, for instance, the best selling piece of entertainment in the UK last year in terms of units moved, not just money spent. It sold 33% more units than the second-place finisher, a Harry Potter DVD, despite costing so much more.)
Pyrthas u hit the nail on the head ty
BW and CS is success, and that is the kind of success I think most people on TL refer too. Sellling millions of copy and being a horrible game like MW2 is not. Realize that many people bought MW2 cause MW1 was such a good game, and then getting facefucked by Activision.
Hahaha, oh how I hope terrans start mass crying about this. Going to be great laying into them like they've done all the zerg players for the last 2 months.
Why is Idra getting credit for introducing this to NA/Europe?
Casters need to stop talking out of their ass, even Day9 and the other caster during the IEM semi-finals were saying Idra was using some previously unknown technique.
If you're going hellion-thor-tank, you have to constantly harass with the hellions to prevent zerg from building a large muta army (hellions are faster and zerg won't have any ground forces besides lings because of the large gas cost of mutas, making it very easy). If you want to play a more passive-push style, you need marines instead of hellions.
On August 22 2010 02:46 0c3LoT wrote: Why is Idra getting credit for introducing this to NA/Europe?
Casters need to stop talking out of their ass, even Day9 and the other caster during the IEM semi-finals were saying Idra was using some previously unknown technique.
Just cause they're commentators doesn't mean that they know of every technique for every race. It was new to them, they got exited. I for one hasn't seen this being used in high level pro games before, even tho people has known about it for some time.
I wonder: is it a real BW magic box, do you have to select the units by moving the mouse from one corner of the box to the other, or can I just double click one muta to select all and it will work the same?
On August 22 2010 02:03 brn4meplz wrote: If Blizzard wants Thors to be a hard counter to Muta's they are just going to buff the AoE.
They can't buff splash further because then people who don't use this will get raped a bit too much by Thors...
The game has to be balanced at a pro level to be successful.
This has nothing to do with balance. It is a tactic how to use Mutas vs Thors with maximum effect. Any pro will learn fast to spread Thors and not clump them and when Mutas come over 2 Thors, rest will rape them. Or any simillar strat.
And as people say, this has been around for a long time so I doubt there is gonna be a major game brakedown.
I am not saying they should or should not buff thors because of this play style. what i am saying it you can't use the argument that players should not have to use specific micro technique to make units effective. Those people who don't use this technique will need to learn it.
I love the implications that this magic box has for ZvT metagame.
First of all, this magic box technique finally gives Zerg players like me the opportunity to play proactively, rather than purely reactively.
Second, this will result in some entertaining battles for spectators. I think that we'll see players who commit to 100% mech support thors with ravens for HSM and PDD, which means that 200/200 fights will involve more micro, as Zerg players run from HSM and try to take down PDD without stacking.
T can also go biomech, mainly marine/tank. The zerg will go bling/muta/ling of course. This will also be entertaining for spectators because the terran must put himself in a position for his sieged tanks to engage the mass banelings at max range, target firing the blings while the marines run away, giving the Zerg player the opportunitiy to snipe tanks w/ mutas for a few seconds. Its a tense scenario, where either side can come away with a one sided victory if he outmicro's the other. We've already seen Morrow and thestc play games like this.
Definitely starting to see opportunities for there to be more micro in SC2 than SC1 (but still less macro,) which is very exciting.
On August 22 2010 02:53 HowardRoark wrote: I wonder: is it a real BW magic box, do you have to select the units by moving the mouse from one corner of the box to the other, or can I just double click one muta to select all and it will work the same?
On August 22 2010 02:46 0c3LoT wrote: Why is Idra getting credit for introducing this to NA/Europe?
Casters need to stop talking out of their ass, even Day9 and the other caster during the IEM semi-finals were saying Idra was using some previously unknown technique.
On August 22 2010 02:35 blastedt wrote: Haven't people been doing this for ages against Valkyries and Corsairs in Brood War?
Yeah and especially against archons ....
Duh you spread against anything with splash but that isn't the interesting part. Many people including myself weren't familiar with auto spread or the small splash of the thor.
Check 3:55 in the video. It's of Idra using mutalisks against thors. See how he has to manually spread mutalisks? Then comes a cute technique that facilitates the process and damage is minimized
On August 22 2010 01:58 Redmark wrote: I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
As hard as it is to believe, he didn't know about it before this thread, and neither did Day9 obviously.
Alot of people here are saying that this has been known since forever, and it probably has. But it has not been generally known before, not even by top of the line players like IdrA, believe it or not.
I find it VERY hard to believe that IdrA didnt know about this before, if you watched the game you could see he knew exactly what he was doing, he didnt just stumple across this in this thread and read about it, it was clearly something he had practiced. Its safe to say he hasnt known about it for too long tho, as he apparently told Apollo before that he found a "new" technique to counter mech. I would assume people, including IdrA, knew about this trick but hadn't fully explored its potential until fairly recently.
Do you realize how easy it is to use? It's not like he would have to train day and night for weeks to practice it. I could pull it off perfectly the first time I tried it and i'd imagine pretty much any zerg player could. Just order your mutas to fly past (normal move command) the thors and hit "H" when you're over their heads. You could hardly call it micro.
On August 22 2010 01:58 Redmark wrote: I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
As hard as it is to believe, he didn't know about it before this thread, and neither did Day9 obviously.
Alot of people here are saying that this has been known since forever, and it probably has. But it has not been generally known before, not even by top of the line players like IdrA, believe it or not.
I find it VERY hard to believe that IdrA didnt know about this before, if you watched the game you could see he knew exactly what he was doing, he didnt just stumple across this in this thread and read about it, it was clearly something he had practiced. Its safe to say he hasnt known about it for too long tho, as he apparently told Apollo before that he found a "new" technique to counter mech. I would assume people, including IdrA, knew about this trick but hadn't fully explored its potential until fairly recently.
Do you realize how easy it is to use? It's not like he would have to train day and night for weeks to practice it. I could pull it off perfectly the first time I tried it and i'd imagine pretty much any zerg player could. Just order your mutas to fly past (normal move command) the thors and hit "H" when you're over their heads. You could hardly call it micro.
Im not talking about the micro, I'm talking about the mass muta anti-thor/mech build, which obviously relies heavily on magic boxing. Also, thinking one of the best zergs in the world doesnt know about something that is considered "common sense" to any competative zerg is ridiculous.
No one is asking to buff Thor's, I simply made the comment that if Blizzard wanted Thors to hard counter Muta's they could do that.(just like they could do alot of things) I don't personally use Thors in my gameplay the unit is too much of a resource sink for me. I'd rather have more of something then less of big things.
On August 22 2010 01:58 Redmark wrote: I find it difficult to believe that IdrA didn't know about this before. I mean, he plays this game professionally. Surely it's not that hard to figure out?
As hard as it is to believe, he didn't know about it before this thread, and neither did Day9 obviously.
Alot of people here are saying that this has been known since forever, and it probably has. But it has not been generally known before, not even by top of the line players like IdrA, believe it or not.
I find it VERY hard to believe that IdrA didnt know about this before, if you watched the game you could see he knew exactly what he was doing, he didnt just stumple across this in this thread and read about it, it was clearly something he had practiced. Its safe to say he hasnt known about it for too long tho, as he apparently told Apollo before that he found a "new" technique to counter mech. I would assume people, including IdrA, knew about this trick but hadn't fully explored its potential until fairly recently.
Do you realize how easy it is to use? It's not like he would have to train day and night for weeks to practice it. I could pull it off perfectly the first time I tried it and i'd imagine pretty much any zerg player could. Just order your mutas to fly past (normal move command) the thors and hit "H" when you're over their heads. You could hardly call it micro.
Im not talking about the micro, I'm talking about the mass muta anti-thor/mech build, which obviously relies heavily on magic boxing. Also, thinking one of the best zergs in the world doesnt know about something that is considered "common sense" to any competative zerg is ridiculous.
Watched a cast uploaded by HDStarcraft recently where IdrA did clump his mutas when engaging thors: (4 minutes in). Not sure when this was played.
I just sat there when Idra played and was thinking so hard that I hope he knew about this, and was so happy when i saw those first mutas fly past Tarsons thors.
magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
On August 22 2010 03:57 Ciddass wrote: magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
Spreading thors out is the best way to counter this, having a thor move mid battle lowers its DPS by loads because of its low mobility, and is essentially -1 thor while the rest of your army gets raped.
On August 22 2010 03:57 Ciddass wrote: magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
It doesn't make Muta's the be-all-end-all against Terran mech. What it does do though is punish a Terran going pure mech. With this threat, Terrans will be forced to use different strategies and tactics. This find basically gives Zerg a little more opportunity to "call the shots" in ZvT, as mutas can really put the hurt on.
I don't have a computer at the moment to try this, but I'm really excited to see the possibilities that arise because of this find.
Would it be possible to use this with other units as well? For example, a player could split his roaches up just like the mutas but manually, move into some tanks, and press hold position?
All the people claiming "LOL NO BIG DEAL KNOWN THIS FOREVER" are pretty hilarious.
Mutas hurttttttt mech with this technique, and most meching terrans aren't using a marine-heavy enough comp to deal with this effectively (and the ones that are are bling vulnerable). If this was really as "common knowledge" as all of you claim, and you had been using this to such great effect vs. Terrans, it would have been brought up in balance discussions long ago as a viable response.
Even if you all knew about the technique or had the basic idea of it, there's no way in hell you had regularly used it in an effective fashion before now.
On August 22 2010 03:57 Ciddass wrote: magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
It doesn't make Muta's the be-all-end-all against Terran mech. What it does do though is punish a Terran going pure mech. With this threat, Terrans will be forced to use different strategies and tactics. This find basically gives Zerg a little more opportunity to "call the shots" in ZvT, as mutas can really put the hurt on.
I don't have a computer at the moment to try this, but I'm really excited to see the possibilities that arise because of this find.
Well let me tell you something........
It works awesome! And 6 mutas > 2 thors ezpz (Not at the same time) but you'll also probably have roaches to stop the hellions and they do fairly well against marines too so that will add to the DPS against thors once everything else dies.
Problem is... ONE simple misclick and you're FUCKED! I played a ZvT on Kulas yesterday (against my friend, who's B- Iccup... no scrub!) and Terran was as gay as terran can be on Kulas... I held off every little hellion/thor/tank/marine push he threw at me with some roach/muta (you just can't go lings vs upgraded hellions lol).
I'm taking my third and fourth. He moves out with ~5 thors and a shitload of M&M... I have a shitload of roach/baneling and like ~12 mutas... since he busted the back door and went up the high ground behind my nat I panicked a bit and did what a lot of people do. 1a2a3a... While trying to fix what I've done and keep my mutas spread out and target fire rines with banelings while roaches tank I totally screwed up by having half of my army chase a couple of his units while the other half died (including my mutas). Game went downhill from there.
Moral of the story: Tho it is awesome thing to know/practice... you CANNOT afford to mismicro! If you do - it's GG cuz you'll lose the bulk and the muscle of your army.
The problem is still the early game. Securing a fast expo safely in early game and powering drones is almost non-existent in SC2... sole existence of Reapers denies your hatch before pool even if your opponent is not planning on doing it.
Free bunkers don't help either... Terran is the perfect race to play atm... Zerg is severely crippled... I give a lot of credit to zergs who consistently win vs terran! ^^
On August 22 2010 03:46 Ghad wrote: I just sat there when Idra played and was thinking so hard that I hope he knew about this, and was so happy when i saw those first mutas fly past Tarsons thors.
soon as appollo said he had figured out a new technique i was fistpumping :D
On August 22 2010 03:57 Ciddass wrote: magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
yeah this is actually awesome cuz it'll make for some interesting muta vs thor micro
This technique is great but it won't stop thors from countering muta's quite hard. In the idra vs tarson game it was 31 !! muta vs 5 thors in the critical fight. Thats over twice the amount of minerals and three times the gas cost so it wasn't too weird the thor's lost.
MORE importantly though, tarson didn't have the proper upgrades against muta's. Thors do 4 * 12 = 48 damage per volley against mutalisks. With 1 attack upgrade thats 56 and with 2 thats 64. 2 attack upgrades is therefore the critical amount against mutalisks who have 120 hitpoints 0 armor. Tarson had 1-1 upgrades which is much less effective then 2-0. With proper upgrades like 2-1 or so thors still counter mutalisks very hard and with some proper scv backup 5 thors can still take out a huge load of mutalisks (like 20). (unless the muta's have 2 armor upgrades in which case you need 3 attack upgrades for thor).
The only thing this technique changed is that muta's dont get useless the moment 3 thor arrive to the scene but muta massing can still be countered with just thors alone. And this isn't the 'end' of terran mech in a long shot...
On August 22 2010 04:46 Markwerf wrote: This technique is great but it won't stop thors from countering muta's quite hard. In the idra vs tarson game it was 31 !! muta vs 5 thors in the critical fight. Thats over twice the amount of minerals and three times the gas cost so it wasn't too weird the thor's lost.
MORE importantly though, tarson didn't have the proper upgrades against muta's. Thors do 4 * 12 = 48 damage per volley against mutalisks. With 1 attack upgrade thats 56 and with 2 thats 64. 2 attack upgrades is therefore the critical amount against mutalisks who have 120 hitpoints 0 armor. Tarson had 1-1 upgrades which is much less effective then 2-0. With proper upgrades like 2-1 or so thors still counter mutalisks very hard and with some proper scv backup 5 thors can still take out a huge load of mutalisks (like 20). (unless the muta's have 2 armor upgrades in which case you need 3 attack upgrades for thor).
The only thing this technique changed is that muta's dont get useless the moment 3 thor arrive to the scene but muta massing can still be countered with just thors alone. And this isn't the 'end' of terran mech in a long shot...
Read the OP before you post stuff like this.
Mutas kill Thors at a 3:1 ratio or better at numbers ~12 and greater. Upgrades do matter obviously but if you're going Mass Mutas there is no reason why you cannot upgrade Air Carapace.
A Zerg can and should be able to out-produce a Terran building pure Thors with Mutas, simply because Zerg is usually up one base and Thors require multiple factories/tech labs. But of course, almost nobody builds pure Thors because they do not work once the Zerg spends even a fraction of his minerals on Zerglings. The key to the Muta build is that it stops pure mech, which invests a huge amount of resources in Hellions and Tanks. If it were just Thors or Thors + Hellions Zerg would just go mass Roach.
On August 22 2010 04:28 RampancyTW wrote: All the people claiming "LOL NO BIG DEAL KNOWN THIS FOREVER" are pretty hilarious.
Mutas hurttttttt mech with this technique, and most meching terrans aren't using a marine-heavy enough comp to deal with this effectively (and the ones that are are bling vulnerable). If this was really as "common knowledge" as all of you claim, and you had been using this to such great effect vs. Terrans, it would have been brought up in balance discussions long ago as a viable response.
Even if you all knew about the technique or had the basic idea of it, there's no way in hell you had regularly used it in an effective fashion before now.
It was mentioned on here a few times during the beta. I pretty much just brushed it off as hearsay and never really gave it a second thought. What a mistake that was.
It's great to see this technique written up in such detail! Actually really helped me understand the idea behind it. I also didn't about the magic box, and it made me go DUH when it was explained.
On August 22 2010 04:28 RampancyTW wrote: All the people claiming "LOL NO BIG DEAL KNOWN THIS FOREVER" are pretty hilarious.
Mutas hurttttttt mech with this technique, and most meching terrans aren't using a marine-heavy enough comp to deal with this effectively (and the ones that are are bling vulnerable). If this was really as "common knowledge" as all of you claim, and you had been using this to such great effect vs. Terrans, it would have been brought up in balance discussions long ago as a viable response.
Even if you all knew about the technique or had the basic idea of it, there's no way in hell you had regularly used it in an effective fashion before now.
Pretty sure I saw people everyday saying mutas were the answer. The problem with the majority of people on this forum is people can't/won't think for themselves. Every strat is newb silver/gold league shit until a pro does it in a tournament. People need to be more open to new strategies instead of instantly writing it off until they see it on some well known stream.
On August 22 2010 04:46 Markwerf wrote: This technique is great but it won't stop thors from countering muta's quite hard. In the idra vs tarson game it was 31 !! muta vs 5 thors in the critical fight. Thats over twice the amount of minerals and three times the gas cost so it wasn't too weird the thor's lost.
MORE importantly though, tarson didn't have the proper upgrades against muta's. Thors do 4 * 12 = 48 damage per volley against mutalisks. With 1 attack upgrade thats 56 and with 2 thats 64. 2 attack upgrades is therefore the critical amount against mutalisks who have 120 hitpoints 0 armor. Tarson had 1-1 upgrades which is much less effective then 2-0. With proper upgrades like 2-1 or so thors still counter mutalisks very hard and with some proper scv backup 5 thors can still take out a huge load of mutalisks (like 20). (unless the muta's have 2 armor upgrades in which case you need 3 attack upgrades for thor).
The only thing this technique changed is that muta's dont get useless the moment 3 thor arrive to the scene but muta massing can still be countered with just thors alone. And this isn't the 'end' of terran mech in a long shot...
Read the OP before you post stuff like this.
Mutas kill Thors at a 3:1 ratio or better at numbers ~12 and greater. Upgrades do matter obviously but if you're going Mass Mutas there is no reason why you cannot upgrade Air Carapace.
A Zerg can and should be able to out-produce a Terran building pure Thors with Mutas, simply because Zerg is usually up one base and Thors require multiple factories/tech labs. But of course, almost nobody builds pure Thors because they do not work once the Zerg spends even a fraction of his minerals on Zerglings. The key to the Muta build is that it stops pure mech, which invests a huge amount of resources in Hellions and Tanks. If it were just Thors or Thors + Hellions Zerg would just go mass Roach.
The OP talks about upgrades but hardly goes into details about it. It's not like mutalisk armor upgrades even out with thor attack upgrades.... Thor attack upgrades give a thor +2 vs light while a armor upgrade only does -1 so if terran upgrades attack and zerg armor the terran will win out. Stating that thors beat muta's in a 3:1 ratio at number great then 12 is just complete nonsense. A terran on 2 bases can easily counter muta's from a zerg on 3 bases with thor's only. I'm not saying mass muta is a bad strategy and this technique isn't great but people on these boards just overreact way too often. One 'new' technique and people are exclaiming the end of mech and when you try to state that isn't true someone who doesn't know his facts claims you didn't read properly... Also just like muta micro can make thor splash irrelevant (though the muta's do have to receive 1 volley before getting into position) thor micro can void muta splash as well. Proper usage on both sides and thors still beat muta's easily.
Terran just has to scout better once zerg master this technique and not blindly go some thors and some tanks but rather adjust to muta and roach with thor and tanks respectively. But I don't see the end of terran mech vs zerg in a long shot, upgrades in this game still favor going one 'style' (mech or bio) over a combination and mech is still better then bio against zerg in most cases.
So now what is a terran supposed to do? Feels like the coin has flipped.
Thors don't cut it versus mutas when you do this. You are forced into stimmed marines. And what does marines die hard to? banelings! banelings punish T bio SO, SO hard, which is why everyone goes mech. Bio play once many blings with speed comes into play is just crazy.
Saw how idra had free reign with mutas. How are you going to defend 2 bases, let alone 3? When people stacked mutas, you could just have a thor guard and repair him, but now? Three marine troops solo against an army of mutas?
Just a little suggestion... what about changing the baneling somehow? currently banelings dominates zvz too and makes it quite tedious... noone really likes ZvZ as it is now. The baneling is also forcing T into mech play.
And mech play in itself is really strong, just not against mutas. So what about a nerf to mech And a nerf to bling?
On August 22 2010 03:57 Ciddass wrote: magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
Spreading thors out is the best way to counter this, having a thor move mid battle lowers its DPS by loads because of its low mobility, and is essentially -1 thor while the rest of your army gets raped.
spreading your thors has no impact on the damage that mutas get. when they are spread thors won`t do splash damge to them no matter from what angle the thors attack. this will only reduce the cleave dmg mutas do and force the Z to micro properly when the 1st thor is down => move above the next thor and regain spread.
how stupid some people on here are reacting is just rediculous. Idra beats tarson with muta's in 1 game where tarson just underestimated the muta's and didn't have the proper upgrades & spacing and suddenly mech is useless? Without thor splash 1 thor still beats 3 to 4 mutalisks and with scv repair this gets a lot better. The more upgrades on both sides the more the thor vs muta balance shifts towards the terran, offcourse muta's give map control so it's hard to balance that vs thor immobility as it depends a lot on the map etc. but mech can still do fine.
On August 22 2010 04:46 Markwerf wrote: This technique is great but it won't stop thors from countering muta's quite hard. In the idra vs tarson game it was 31 !! muta vs 5 thors in the critical fight. Thats over twice the amount of minerals and three times the gas cost so it wasn't too weird the thor's lost.
MORE importantly though, tarson didn't have the proper upgrades against muta's. Thors do 4 * 12 = 48 damage per volley against mutalisks. With 1 attack upgrade thats 56 and with 2 thats 64. 2 attack upgrades is therefore the critical amount against mutalisks who have 120 hitpoints 0 armor. Tarson had 1-1 upgrades which is much less effective then 2-0. With proper upgrades like 2-1 or so thors still counter mutalisks very hard and with some proper scv backup 5 thors can still take out a huge load of mutalisks (like 20). (unless the muta's have 2 armor upgrades in which case you need 3 attack upgrades for thor).
The only thing this technique changed is that muta's dont get useless the moment 3 thor arrive to the scene but muta massing can still be countered with just thors alone. And this isn't the 'end' of terran mech in a long shot...
Read the OP before you post stuff like this.
Mutas kill Thors at a 3:1 ratio or better at numbers ~12 and greater. Upgrades do matter obviously but if you're going Mass Mutas there is no reason why you cannot upgrade Air Carapace.
A Zerg can and should be able to out-produce a Terran building pure Thors with Mutas, simply because Zerg is usually up one base and Thors require multiple factories/tech labs. But of course, almost nobody builds pure Thors because they do not work once the Zerg spends even a fraction of his minerals on Zerglings. The key to the Muta build is that it stops pure mech, which invests a huge amount of resources in Hellions and Tanks. If it were just Thors or Thors + Hellions Zerg would just go mass Roach.
I have a question, As a mid-level player I feel like this "spread affect" also applies to other ranged units, albeit differently though.
Here's what my idea is: Say, for instance, you have a sizeable (ground )army and need to break down some rocks. Lets say you have 20 roaches. If you select all the roaches and simply press attack, then the roaches will automatically spread into a firing line. However, from what I've seen, this line is formation puts the ranged attackers at their maximum range, normally a good thing, right? Well a problem with this is the units stuck behind the line cannot attack and cannot add to the overall DPS. How I remedy this- I move my ranged attackers closer to the rocks. This allows ALL of the roaches to attack at once, since it puts the previously out of range roaches (or any unit) into range. Is this practical in army fights?
I find that if I mass corrupter and pit them against an enemy's air army this "thor muta splash" also takes affect. Units not on the front line will take any splash damage (be it from any source,) however they cannot attack back until the units on the front die. Any thoughts?
Its not a magic box you silly forum goers, it's called moving and holding above to keep line of movement straight. See martijn's video on pathing during the KotB tourny. I believe he even uses muta/Thor; the opening demonstration with two spread apart marines maintaining their distance from each other while being told to mmove compared to coming together when being told to a-move is what is being demonstrated...
On August 22 2010 04:46 Markwerf wrote: This technique is great but it won't stop thors from countering muta's quite hard. In the idra vs tarson game it was 31 !! muta vs 5 thors in the critical fight. Thats over twice the amount of minerals and three times the gas cost so it wasn't too weird the thor's lost.
MORE importantly though, tarson didn't have the proper upgrades against muta's. Thors do 4 * 12 = 48 damage per volley against mutalisks. With 1 attack upgrade thats 56 and with 2 thats 64. 2 attack upgrades is therefore the critical amount against mutalisks who have 120 hitpoints 0 armor. Tarson had 1-1 upgrades which is much less effective then 2-0. With proper upgrades like 2-1 or so thors still counter mutalisks very hard and with some proper scv backup 5 thors can still take out a huge load of mutalisks (like 20). (unless the muta's have 2 armor upgrades in which case you need 3 attack upgrades for thor).
The only thing this technique changed is that muta's dont get useless the moment 3 thor arrive to the scene but muta massing can still be countered with just thors alone. And this isn't the 'end' of terran mech in a long shot...
Read the OP before you post stuff like this.
Mutas kill Thors at a 3:1 ratio or better at numbers ~12 and greater. Upgrades do matter obviously but if you're going Mass Mutas there is no reason why you cannot upgrade Air Carapace.
A Zerg can and should be able to out-produce a Terran building pure Thors with Mutas, simply because Zerg is usually up one base and Thors require multiple factories/tech labs. But of course, almost nobody builds pure Thors because they do not work once the Zerg spends even a fraction of his minerals on Zerglings. The key to the Muta build is that it stops pure mech, which invests a huge amount of resources in Hellions and Tanks. If it were just Thors or Thors + Hellions Zerg would just go mass Roach.
This beta patch was reversed on release I think. Thors do get +2 vs light from one attack upgrade, check in game stats and look at a replay and you will see.
On August 22 2010 06:16 Markwerf wrote: how stupid some people on here are reacting is just rediculous. Idra beats tarson with muta's in 1 game where tarson just underestimated the muta's and didn't have the proper upgrades & spacing and suddenly mech is useless? Without thor splash 1 thor still beats 3 to 4 mutalisks and with scv repair this gets a lot better. The more upgrades on both sides the more the thor vs muta balance shifts towards the terran, offcourse muta's give map control so it's hard to balance that vs thor immobility as it depends a lot on the map etc. but mech can still do fine.
Uh, there are dozens of pro games just not on the IdrA level of Zergs using this vs Terran mech and it completely demolishing them.
On August 22 2010 06:16 Markwerf wrote: how stupid some people on here are reacting is just rediculous. Idra beats tarson with muta's in 1 game where tarson just underestimated the muta's and didn't have the proper upgrades & spacing and suddenly mech is useless?
"mech" as in only/almost only mech is...not optimal, no. The top Terrans already knew that, which is why they all use biomech.
Without thor splash 1 thor still beats 3 to 4 mutalisks and with scv repair this gets a lot better. The more upgrades on both sides the more the thor vs muta balance shifts towards the terran, offcourse muta's give map control so it's hard to balance that vs thor immobility as it depends a lot on the map etc. but mech can still do fine.
Repair isn't going to do much to bouncing-glave mutalisks. At lower numbers of mutas sure, but not massed ones. The SCVs just melt.
I suppose you could mass thors. Pity about giving up so much map control you get macrod to death, but at least you'd have lots of thors.
Mech simply isn't very good at AA. People got tricked into thinking it was by zergs clumping their mutalisks and attacking a splash damage unit.
Ok you guys, people are interested in upgrades. So I'm going to edit that section with this later:
Sweet spot upgrade situations for...
TERRAN Thor weapons 2 Muta Carapace 0 2-hit kill
Thor weapons 3 Muta Carapace 1 2-hit kill
2-hit also happens when they are at 3-0 obviously
ZERG
Thor weapons 0 Muta carapace 2 4-hit kill
obviously the same is true with 0-3
All other upgrade situations make it three hits.
I tested by having the critical number of thors attack all at once so we wouldn't see any long term health regen.
Quick analysis: As soon as thor hit level 1 weapons it is impossible to get 4-hit. Once the mutas get level 2 carapace it's impossible to get 2-hit.
Just taking a numerical analysis, which is theoretical and could easily be wrong when applied: thors can potentially do 33% better against mutas or 33% worse. so in these sweet spot situations the ratio could change from 3:1 to 4:1 or 2:1. Which actually still looks pretty damn good for the zerg if you ask me.
On the other side, glaive does terribly vs armor upgrades.
0 vs 0, mutalisks do 8+2+0 to thors. 50 shots to kill 1 thor +bounce damage
0 vs 1, 7+1+0. 57 hits to kill 1 thor and bounces are 1/2 as effective.
So by default, to counter mutalisks, the first thing you should look at is their armor upgrades, if they have 0: +2 weapons, anything else: +1 is fine. After that, pumping armor ups will at a minimum, reduce glaive bounce damage by 50%
And to counter the thors, its the opposite direction get +2 armor, its always useful. After that, go to weapon ups.
On August 22 2010 09:33 Gigaudas wrote: Is S for Stop or H for Hold recommended?
S is more recommended because mutas have such short range, clumping to clean up the last few thors is ok, you just need to make sure your muta army doesn't evaporate immediately.
On August 22 2010 09:52 Jermstuddog wrote: On the other side, glaive does terribly vs armor upgrades.
0 vs 0, mutalisks do 8+2+0 to thors. 50 shots to kill 1 thor +bounce damage
0 vs 1, 7+1+0. 57 hits to kill 1 thor and bounces are 1/2 as effective.
So by default, to counter mutalisks, the first thing you should look at is their armor upgrades, if they have 0: +2 weapons, anything else: +1 is fine. After that, pumping armor ups will at a minimum, reduce glaive bounce damage by 50%
And to counter the thors, its the opposite direction get +2 armor, its always useful. After that, go to weapon ups.
On August 22 2010 03:57 Ciddass wrote: magic box ? it`s just that they`re vertically above the thors right, and need basically 0 range to attack since sc2 is 3d so they don`t clutch. all that hhe terran needs to do is move the focused thor a little bit and that`s it. nice nonetheless
Spreading thors out is the best way to counter this, having a thor move mid battle lowers its DPS by loads because of its low mobility, and is essentially -1 thor while the rest of your army gets raped.
spreading your thors has no impact on the damage that mutas get. when they are spread thors won`t do splash damge to them no matter from what angle the thors attack. this will only reduce the cleave dmg mutas do and force the Z to micro properly when the 1st thor is down => move above the next thor and regain spread.
microing away the focused unit is the best way.
There is no focus tho... once you hit stop, mutas attack targets closest to them. If you target fire they'll clump up again or AT BEST form a ring around that target (depends on the number of mutas)... which will still cause some stacking and unnecessary splash damage... Best thing for terran to do is to target fire one muta after another so you get rid of them faster. If you start moving away individual thors mutas will just have free shots since one of the thors won't be attacking while it's walking away. All the zerg has to do in response is move-"S", move-"S" in the same direction the thor is going.
Disclaimer: Using common sense here as I haven't tested it myself...
On August 22 2010 04:28 RampancyTW wrote: All the people claiming "LOL NO BIG DEAL KNOWN THIS FOREVER" are pretty hilarious.
Mutas hurttttttt mech with this technique, and most meching terrans aren't using a marine-heavy enough comp to deal with this effectively (and the ones that are are bling vulnerable). If this was really as "common knowledge" as all of you claim, and you had been using this to such great effect vs. Terrans, it would have been brought up in balance discussions long ago as a viable response.
Even if you all knew about the technique or had the basic idea of it, there's no way in hell you had regularly used it in an effective fashion before now.
Yes is great news if you didn't know mutas could take on thors but its not something that will change the MU.
This is not a response to OP (good post) but to the ppl claiming that ZvT will be a breeze now. Its still a tricky MU and while it might not be imba it still has its issues.
On August 22 2010 09:52 Jermstuddog wrote: On the other side, glaive does terribly vs armor upgrades.
0 vs 0, mutalisks do 8+2+0 to thors. 50 shots to kill 1 thor +bounce damage
0 vs 1, 7+1+0. 57 hits to kill 1 thor and bounces are 1/2 as effective.
So by default, to counter mutalisks, the first thing you should look at is their armor upgrades, if they have 0: +2 weapons, anything else: +1 is fine. After that, pumping armor ups will at a minimum, reduce glaive bounce damage by 50%
And to counter the thors, its the opposite direction get +2 armor, its always useful. After that, go to weapon ups.
I don't believe the third bounce is 0 in either case. In BW all attacks did a minimum of 0.5 damage IIRC, and I think there's a nonzero minimum in SC2 but I haven't tested what it is (but I think you can, for example, damage a 5-armor Ultra or Planetary Fortress with unupgraded Zerglings).
This doesn't affect at all that armor is a much better upgrade vs mutas of course.
sweet post!! Finally Zerg has a small chance at TvZ (not complaining about imba's or anything, just saying zerg have a really tough time).
Just tried it out against my terran partner and i am currently 3-1 in the favor of me :D
this new muta usage causes my partner to switch to a bioball in order to combat my mutas, thus allowing ling/bane play to emerge to squash his ground forces. Stimming/medivacs still cause a lot of trouble for bane/lings but this is definitely an improvement in the TvZ matchup!!!
Not able to try this out at home (traveling at the moment), but I was wondering since Vikings stack up at times, would this strat work on keeping Vikings from taking a lot of AoE damage in TvTs?
On August 23 2010 16:34 ziggymondais wrote: Not able to try this out at home (traveling at the moment), but I was wondering since Vikings stack up at times, would this strat work on keeping Vikings from taking a lot of AoE damage in TvTs?
I would imagine in air vs air battles the vikings would bunch up again anyways when they start shooting.
On August 23 2010 16:34 ziggymondais wrote: Not able to try this out at home (traveling at the moment), but I was wondering since Vikings stack up at times, would this strat work on keeping Vikings from taking a lot of AoE damage in TvTs?
On August 23 2010 16:34 ziggymondais wrote: Not able to try this out at home (traveling at the moment), but I was wondering since Vikings stack up at times, would this strat work on keeping Vikings from taking a lot of AoE damage in TvTs?
Yes, it would. Same premise but different unit.
No, it would not. Remember, the mutalisk attack is a bounce attack, not an AoE attack. The automatic distance is not enough to avoid bounces. So mutalisk attacks will still do maximum damage. In fact, if you autospread your vikings, only the front ones will take damage. When you bunch your vikings the damage will be spread better over all your vikings, so it will take a little longer before vikings start dropping due to bounce damage.
On August 23 2010 16:34 ziggymondais wrote: Not able to try this out at home (traveling at the moment), but I was wondering since Vikings stack up at times, would this strat work on keeping Vikings from taking a lot of AoE damage in TvTs?
Yes, it would. Same premise but different unit.
No, it would not. Remember, the mutalisk attack is a bounce attack, not an AoE attack. The automatic distance is not enough to avoid bounces. So mutalisk attacks will still do maximum damage. In fact, if you autospread your vikings, only the front ones will take damage. When you bunch your vikings the damage will be spread better over all your vikings, so it will take a little longer before vikings start dropping due to bounce damage.
What can the terran do? Certainly armor for thors will help as the glaives hit multiple times. But a better tactic is just spacing out the thors and taking advantage of their range. This will increase the time it takes for the mutas to get from one to the other, and eliminate glaive damage to an extent. Also, make good use of your SCVs.
I would actually get attack upgrades and just a couple of marines, when the terran is 2 ahead with the vehicle upgrades mutas get 2 shotted by thors, else they get to really low hp which some marines can finish of
Holy... thank you so much for this post. Everytime I complained about thors wiping out my muta, people just say 'lolnoobspreadoutmuta' but they never could tell you HOW to to it. This is greatness and thx.
I believe 8 mutas died (?). I'd say thors did better than they should when outmassed in such manner. Notice how there were absolutely no other antiair units soaking hits from mutas.
I feel IEM as overall only made balance worse. 5rax start is so much easier to pull off decently than to counter it. I couldn't see close to any mistakes on idra's play on finals, yet he was beat pretty convincingly. Now mutas may work against thors slightly better, but you usually can't get TO mutas
i really hope blizzard doesn't patch the magic box or increase thor splash or anything. this has really helped zvt, and is encouraging strategies that require more skill than an unstoppable 1a thor/racecar push (such as morrow's micro intensive reaper build). i don't think that zvt is fixed yet, but by god that magic box has helped so much.
On August 24 2010 05:10 universalwill wrote: i really hope blizzard doesn't patch the magic box or increase thor splash or anything. this has really helped zvt, and is encouraging strategies that require more skill than an unstoppable 1a thor/racecar push (such as morrow's micro intensive reaper build). i don't think that zvt is fixed yet, but by god that magic box has helped so much.
I wouldn't be suprised if blizzard knew exactly how the spacing of mutas when they are not stacked is what they based thor splash on. It just took people a while to figure it out.
On August 24 2010 06:45 captive411 wrote: Now do a test and show me how many speedlings it takes to rip down 4 thors. I'm guessing under 500 minerals worth?
Now do a test and see how many hellions it takes to take down 500 minerals worth of zerglings..... or 1000... or 5000?
On August 24 2010 06:45 captive411 wrote: Now do a test and show me how many speedlings it takes to rip down 4 thors. I'm guessing under 500 minerals worth?
Good post, and not to burst your bubble, but Day[9] has been talking about this on his cast since the middle of the beta. Your analysis is more complete and in-depth, though, so thanks for that. I'll definitely need to play around to get a sense of the SC2 magic box.
Won a game today cause of this, I essentially killed 3 thors with 14 mutas. I had first killed all his scvs while he was pushing out, and my ling/baneling combo killed majority of rines, then muta killed everything else.
On August 24 2010 06:45 captive411 wrote: Now do a test and show me how many speedlings it takes to rip down 4 thors. I'm guessing under 500 minerals worth?
Terran poster spotted.
But yeah, 20 lings (500mins) wouldn't kill even one, if they were tightly packed. This doesn't have anything to do with reality, because thors move with hellions. 200 lings would stand no chance against decently positioned 4thor+8hellion. Pure lings simply can't go for bunch of hellions unless they're completely loose while on move. Thors automatically attack air over ground, so lings wouldn't even soak any dmg.
On August 24 2010 07:49 zipz0p wrote: Good post, and not to burst your bubble, but Day[9] has been talking about this on his cast since the middle of the beta. Your analysis is more complete and in-depth, though, so thanks for that. I'll definitely need to play around to get a sense of the SC2 magic box.
On August 24 2010 08:08 Saracen wrote: That's funny, because he seemed pretty out of the loop when he casted the IdrA vs Tarson semifinals game 3 at IEM...
I just finished watching the IdrA vs Tarson game.
Day9 was doing the nice thing.
While the other guy was going crazy about this "new thing" he was like "uhh... yeah... how... is... he... doing that...". You could totally hear in his voice that he knew exactly what IdrA was doing, but didn't want to make his co-caster look retarded.
In other words, nothing new to see here, move along.
On August 24 2010 18:09 Nightbiscuit wrote: Done this three times now and oh do the Terran tears taste good!
By the way, will pressing stop have a different effect than pressing hold position, cause that's what I'm doing now.
If you use Hold your units will not move after stopping. So any units out of range will not move into range, they will not follow fleeing units, etc. They have the same effect as long as you continue to micro. If you use hold and stop microing then you can get mauled. The same is true in this case with Stop though. If the Thors are microd and you Stop your Mutas will bunch back up. If the Thors are microd and you Hold your Mutas will be out of range.
And as far as this being around for a long time? It has. It's what people meant by 'spread out your mutas'. Some needed a more detailed description, I guess. All it does it takes it from needing ~6 Mutas to ~4. It makes them a bit easier to use against Mech, but it isn't a quick fix. It just changes Thor's from being a seriously brutal counter to still being a decent hard counter.
On August 24 2010 07:49 zipz0p wrote: Good post, and not to burst your bubble, but Day[9] has been talking about this on his cast since the middle of the beta. Your analysis is more complete and in-depth, though, so thanks for that. I'll definitely need to play around to get a sense of the SC2 magic box.
Day9 talked about spreading your mutas IN GENERAL. Not any particular technique to do that though.
On August 20 2010 10:30 Zarahtra wrote: This is one of the reasons why Blizzard is taking a bit of time to actually patch things despite the cries of the masses.
Mutas are so disgustingly strong if used well, not only do they make the terran waste minerals on turrets everywhere, take the map and give the zerg opportunity to take a few expos but also in a direct confrontation they can hold their own pretty well as long as you know what you are doing. Mind though that a terran will most likely have marines with his thors and/or turrets if he's slow pushing, but that's still all resources that aren't used against ground units, so massing ground straight after combat should catch the terran offguard.
Oh my god, LOL. Zerg is so disgustingly overpowered and needs nerfing because one of their units is actually strong enough to damage terrans.
Nevermind that terran has a hard counter for them (marines), and that terran is often sitting on 1500+ minerals by the time mass mutas exist (good thing the hard counter costs no gas), and that zerg would be very lucky to live this long outside of the pro levels. Clearly the one effective zerg unit needs a nerf.
On August 20 2010 10:30 Zarahtra wrote: This is one of the reasons why Blizzard is taking a bit of time to actually patch things despite the cries of the masses.
Mutas are so disgustingly strong if used well, not only do they make the terran waste minerals on turrets everywhere, take the map and give the zerg opportunity to take a few expos but also in a direct confrontation they can hold their own pretty well as long as you know what you are doing. Mind though that a terran will most likely have marines with his thors and/or turrets if he's slow pushing, but that's still all resources that aren't used against ground units, so massing ground straight after combat should catch the terran offguard.
Oh my god, LOL. Zerg is so disgustingly overpowered and needs nerfing because one of their units is actually strong enough to damage terrans.
Nevermind that terran has a hard counter for them (marines), and that terran is often sitting on 1500+ minerals by the time mass mutas exist (good thing the hard counter costs no gas), and that zerg would be very lucky to live this long outside of the pro levels. Clearly the one effective zerg unit needs a nerf.
I'm glad you're doing what the OP suggested and not have nothing but Mutas.... Zerg is the reactive race, why are you letting the Terran out unit-comp you? If you attack anyone as any race with one single type of unit, you will lose unless they are a really bad player.
On August 20 2010 10:30 Zarahtra wrote: This is one of the reasons why Blizzard is taking a bit of time to actually patch things despite the cries of the masses.
Mutas are so disgustingly strong if used well, not only do they make the terran waste minerals on turrets everywhere, take the map and give the zerg opportunity to take a few expos but also in a direct confrontation they can hold their own pretty well as long as you know what you are doing. Mind though that a terran will most likely have marines with his thors and/or turrets if he's slow pushing, but that's still all resources that aren't used against ground units, so massing ground straight after combat should catch the terran offguard.
Oh my god, LOL. Zerg is so disgustingly overpowered and needs nerfing because one of their units is actually strong enough to damage terrans.
Nevermind that terran has a hard counter for them (marines), and that terran is often sitting on 1500+ minerals by the time mass mutas exist (good thing the hard counter costs no gas), and that zerg would be very lucky to live this long outside of the pro levels. Clearly the one effective zerg unit needs a nerf.
I'm glad you're doing what the OP suggested and not have nothing but Mutas.... Zerg is the reactive race, why are you letting the Terran out unit-comp you? If you attack anyone as any race with one single type of unit, you will lose unless they are a really bad player.
Preach!!!
I also wonder how all these zergs let Terran out-harass, out-expand and later out-macro them... it's pathetic!
All these noob zergs QQ all day long! L2P and stop whining!!!
Also all these zerg that can't dodge psi-storm when their opponent has like 10 HT's... so noob T_T moar!!!
On August 20 2010 10:30 Zarahtra wrote: This is one of the reasons why Blizzard is taking a bit of time to actually patch things despite the cries of the masses.
Mutas are so disgustingly strong if used well, not only do they make the terran waste minerals on turrets everywhere, take the map and give the zerg opportunity to take a few expos but also in a direct confrontation they can hold their own pretty well as long as you know what you are doing. Mind though that a terran will most likely have marines with his thors and/or turrets if he's slow pushing, but that's still all resources that aren't used against ground units, so massing ground straight after combat should catch the terran offguard.
Oh my god, LOL. Zerg is so disgustingly overpowered and needs nerfing because one of their units is actually strong enough to damage terrans.
Nevermind that terran has a hard counter for them (marines), and that terran is often sitting on 1500+ minerals by the time mass mutas exist (good thing the hard counter costs no gas), and that zerg would be very lucky to live this long outside of the pro levels. Clearly the one effective zerg unit needs a nerf.
Without getting dragged into the "omg OP discussion" I do want to correct you a bit there. Marines are not the "hard counter" to muta's. Marines with armour upgrade (at least +1 if the mutas have no attk upgrade), combat shield, stim AND medivacs are a very strong counter though. But you see there's some gas needed there
This also nerfs hunter seeker missiles so we may have to see some viking play before broodlords are out to help defend areas that marines aren't fast enough to get to.
On August 26 2010 21:43 GreEny K wrote: So this works for all splash or is it only the Thor splash becausae it is such a asmall area?
It works for all splash but especially against thors because their area of effect is just slightly too small in the case of mutas. You should definitely do this against high templars and archons as well.
On August 24 2010 08:08 Saracen wrote: That's funny, because he seemed pretty out of the loop when he casted the IdrA vs Tarson semifinals game 3 at IEM...
I actually just watched IEM and noticed that myself. I thought that's what he had been talking about in casts at least... maybe I misunderstood him to be saying something more useful
On August 26 2010 05:19 Jermstuddog wrote: Wait, 50 minerals > 100 minerals 100 gas isn't a hard counter? sounds like one to me...
First of all it takes about 3 marines per muta if you wanna win, that's if you have stim/combatshield and a medic healing (100/100 per medic). Marines begin to HARD counter mutas if they're multiple armour upgrades ahead of the mutas damage upgrade, because of the triple reduction you get there with mutas splash.
A fresh out of the box vanilla marine gets roflstomped by a muta, so will he and a couple of his friends .
Obviously marines are good to get against mutas as a quick response, in the long run you have to invest in them to make them worthwhile, turn them into a HARD counter as was said. I guess I'm argueing semantics and everyone knows this right! :D
First of all it takes about 3 marines per muta if you wanna win, that's if you have stim/combatshield and a medic healing (100/100 per medic). Marines begin to HARD counter mutas if they're multiple armour upgrades ahead of the mutas damage upgrade, because of the triple reduction you get there with mutas splash.
Uhmm no. They don't need armor upgrades or medivacs. Stim is the most important thing for marines. As long as the group of mutas don't significantly outnumber your marines and you have stim, you'll tear the muta's to shreds. Add combat shields on top of that and its a done deal.
Oh my god this shows how much I've been keeping up in SC2. I saw a thread where everyone was mentioning magic box and I thought huh. Then I did a search and found this O_O Glad to see it has some form of application in SC2 too.
EPT![[image loading]](http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3777/mutamagicbox.png)
![[image loading]](http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/2743/badmutas.png)
![[image loading]](http://img576.imageshack.us/img576/5194/goodmutas.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-140768.jpg)
the good thor vs muta times are over it seems :p
