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~170ish Zinc protoss here.
I posted this in the strategy forums because the replay I am going to include is really driven by a micro trick that all protoss players should know about, that they may have not considered, and that will change the effectiveness of their blink. I apologize if this sounds like a Dumb and Dumber "we've landed on the moon" discovery, but for those of you that weren't already doing this and are tired of losing half your stalkers on failed cliff blinks I suggest you incorporate this into your play.
Essentially, when you have a ball of stalkers and you're doing blink harass you need to be able to quickly get up and down the ledges without doing that cute little blink where your stalkers have no landing area and, thus, dont budge... blink goes on CD... they die... rage ensues. The problem we have to work around is how to keep the landing space clear enough to not lose any stalkers no matter how big your stalker army. The answer is pretty simple and in about 5 minutes of practice you'll have this fun and useful technique ingrained into your muscle memory.
1.) Highlight ANY number of stalkers and make sure you have vision on a cliff or ledge. I was just using steppes of war for practice with a pylon up on one of the ledges.
2.) Right click the ground right up against the ledge/cliff you are going to blink up to. Its really important that this first click is as close to cliff as possible or you risk leaving some stalkers behind.
3.) Hold Shift, hit "B", then left click the blink destination (it can be anywhere the direction you want to blink... your stalkers will be blink that direction regardless of whether or not they can make it that far).
4.) Continue holding shift and Right click another location... the location where you want your stalkers to move after the blinks have gone through.
This series of waypoints ensures that your stalkers will only blink once theyve gotten to the initial location from step 1. Step 4 ensures that there will be ample landing space for all of your stalkers. While testing this out I was able to succesfully blink a 100 stalker army without losing a single one. Its easy once you get used to it and the clicking doesnt have to be as fast as you'd think.
Here is a link to a replay of some very top level players... a PvZ on delta quadrant. Watch how effective this use of blink can be. Delta Quadrant is probably one of the best maps for this type of play, but as such, I think this replay is the absolute best example of incredible blink stalker micro. Its definitely worth watching no matter what race you play, but if you are a protoss player I think its a must see and its definitely worth incorporating this micro tactic into your play.
Here is that replay:
http://sc2rep.net/replays/starcraft-2-replay-p-huhuman-vs-z-ogssuperstar-delta-quadrant-09-05-2010
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Also, when in a firefight blink back to the back of your army those stalkers with the lowest health and let them rejoin the fight, meaning you lose less stalkers. woop
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I endorse this. I saw that replay earlier and this micro is incredibly strong and important for Protoss to get used to.
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Ha HDStarcraft already talked about this.
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Ah, I haven't seen an HDStarcraft video since being promoted to Zinc league.
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DrunkBobby vs IdrA happend way back in beta, so I think individual stalker blink is pretty well known
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yeah this "smart blinking" has been known since beta. good try though
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like the Number 1 best zerg player in the world, and no.1 pasty'est XD
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Old trick but good reminder for the newer players I guess.
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I have heard this called Smart Blink by some. Great micro technique.
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Whilst smart blinking is pretty old news, I think this is interesting if only for the fact that it highlights a particular vulnerability on delta quadrant. Trying to think of other maps where this kind of thing would be hard to defend...
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I think it would be pretty solid on any map where blink would be good. An obvious BAD map for "smart blinking" as a focal point in your strategy would be steppes of war. Another GOOD map besides delta quadrant would be lost temple if you had an obs between their natural and main... you can blink down behind naturals minerals then up into the main..... then blink out the other side. I think as long as there is enough open area to blink back down it would be good, but the technique itself is important any time you have blink...
I'm sorry if this is old news but I was just really impressed by this replay and its a technique I didn't really use until watching these guys play the other day. That's why I put a disclaimer in the OP, but I guess some folks missed that and decided they had to comment.
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Yah I figured this out the first time I even used blink. I thought it was pretty obvious, you can waypoint pretty much anything haha.
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On September 08 2010 07:36 m00nchile wrote:
DrunkBobby vs IdrA happend way back in beta, so I think individual stalker blink is pretty well known
huh? lol not every watched every beta game ever cast. While I did know about this, it had nothing to do with some beta game. Good post OP hopefully more people will improve their blink play thanks to this =)
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I thought I'd watched a good number of replays from both the beta and beyond but I'd never seen the so-called smart blinking detailed here until a recent shoutcast by HD. He briefly described how it was done but I couldn't really grasp it until I got a chance to read through the steps. Thanks, I'm anxious to try it out.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
you mean shift blinking? this has been around since the beta.
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Yes, plenty of people know about this, and yes plenty of people have been doing it since Beta.
Some people don't know about it, and will be thankful for the OP explaining the process.
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EPT
