Okay, so I posted this over in /r/Starcraft because I very rarely actually frequent the TL boards, just use the site for its stream list, news, etc. I got a very positive response over there in less than an hour, so I have a feeling this is something that isn't too well-known yet, even if a few people have figured this out. My searching didn't show any posts that explain this concept so I thought I'd share it over here too.
Here's a c/p of my post from over there:
If you hold down whatever your hotkey is for 'hold position', instead of just hitting it once when your pack of Muta's first fly into position over Thors, Muta's will not move at all if you target fire something under them, even if you click inside of the magic box. I.E. you can issue focus-fire commands on individual Thors, and your Muta's will focus-fire without stacking over that targeted unit!
Previously, I was finding my Muta's to be totally ineffective if I did anything other than let them auto-target whatever they wanted once getting into range. If there was a Thor, for example, that I wanted to prioritize over a bunch of other units in a ball, I found that I was unable to focus-fire that Thor, or else (as I'm sure many of you have experienced) my Muta's would instantly begin clumping around the Thor to all try to get in their pot-shots on it. This resulted in some ridiculous micro efforts that never worked quite as I hoped, involving me spamming hold position frantically in between right clicks, trying desperately to stop my Muta's from clumping together in between each shot. Out of the blue today I thought to myself "why the fuck haven't I tried just holding down the 'hold position' hotkey to see if it overrides the attack command?" Well, I did, and the results are astronomically improved engagements.
I loaded up the map editor and threw 5 thors into the middle of Antiga Shipyard along with around 25-30 Muta's. Using this technique, I was able to fly over the Thors one by one, focus fire them each in 1-2 volleys of my Muta pack, and clean up the entire mob in less than 15 seconds with losses of maybe 4 or 5 Muta's. Normally, I would watch my Muta's flail around like retards and shoot 4 different Thors while chipping off the health of some and killing none. If I would try to focus fire one of the Thors, all my Muta's would stack and disappear in, literally, one volley of fire from the group of Thors. This has happened to me in-game numerous times thanks to very, very inopportune misclicks. This should never happen again.
Now, in a mixed composition there would be Marines scattered around, possibly even missile turrets, making this attack even more difficult, but I came up with this idea while thinking about how to continue to engage with Muta's if a Terran builds multiple Thors in a pure mech build. In this case, Thors are THE anti-air for the entire army, and if my testing proves effective in a real game scenario, it appears to me that the entire anti-air foundation of the mech army can be eradicated in seconds, leaving the rest of the hellions and tanks completely defenseless.
I feel that this technique could potentially aid Muta/Ling play in the PvZ matchup as well, where Archons can feel just as threatening as Thors at times. I have no idea if this is something that's common knowledge, but I definitely don't remember reading to hold down the 'hold position' hotkey anywhere when I first learned about magic boxing; just that you were supposed to hit it to stop your Muta's from clumping once in range of a Thor, then let them go to work. I still see Pro's lose packs of Muta's to Thors frequently enough that I imagine there are plenty of other people who don't know this either. Forgive me in advance if it's already well-known, but I thought I would share this revelation with all of my fellow Zergs who have seen double-digit numbers of Mutalisks get shredded in half a second by three or four Thors.
Since not being able to focus fire was the downpart of magic boxing which i assumed to be quite fair because it was strong still, this makes it really mighty. Too bad thors are out in HOTS but with the warhound being more massable it might be even more crucial to bring them down fast without clumping.
On October 31 2011 07:24 snively wrote: if the hold position overrides the attack command, why does the target firing still work? o_O
Holding a button down is the same as pressing it really quickly.
So if you hold H down and right click on a unit, you're basically saying "Attack this unit, don't move" in very rapid succession. So as long as the muta is in range of the thor, it will attack it.
Contrast this with the old magic box where you are just flying and hit H. You're basically saying "stop here," and then your muta attacks whatever it wants - which is probably not the thor, if there's anything else around.
On October 31 2011 07:24 snively wrote: if the hold position overrides the attack command, why does the target firing still work? o_O
It's not that it's overriding the command, it's that by holding down the hold position key you're spamming hundreds of 'hold position' commands per second. When you target fire, you issue a command to fire, which still goes through, but another command to hold position comes in micro seconds after you click, so the Mutalisks fire but are immediately stopped from moving. Since all it takes is one command to fire, the fact that you're issuing a hold command microseconds later doesn't matter, the command to fire has already been issued, your Muta's have already fired and are now targeting whatever you chose to focus-fire. After that they continue attacking whatever they're already being told to attack. Pressing hold position doesn't change the Muta's attack priority to attack whatever's in range, it simply tells them to stop moving and continue attacking whatever they were already being told to attack. Thus, they continue to attack whatever they were told to focus before the hold position spam comes in.
On October 31 2011 07:24 snively wrote: if the hold position overrides the attack command, why does the target firing still work? o_O
Well, by holding H down, you're saying to your mutas "Hold your position" about 20 times per second (on my computer/keyboard, i don't know about yours).
If you right click on a thor, your mutas will instantly attack it but will NOT have the time to move cause in 1/20seconds, they obviously can't pack.
...
This is awesome, how could i never try this before ! Great find.
Edit : Obviously, in the classic Mutas/Ling/Bling vs Marines/Tank/Thor fight, if you micro your mutas, you can't micro your banelings on splited marines anymore.
This is awesome, but most top Terrans know you can't go PURE mech in TvZ. Even MVP doesn't do it. You have to sprinkle in marines because magic boxing is so effective, especially once muta numbers get high. If you have even just 20 or so marines in that composition, mass muta against mech becomes incredibly cost inefficient.
Put hey, if your opponents are going pure mech, use this and free win =)
Sounds good. How easy is it to click on the Thors with a pack of mutas over them? I feel like I'd mess it up a lot. Also, are you right-clicking the Thors or a-clicking them? I assume right clicking, but I want to be clear.
On October 31 2011 12:47 tgb wrote: Sounds good. How easy is it to click on the Thors with a pack of mutas over them? I feel like I'd mess it up a lot. Also, are you right-clicking the Thors or a-clicking them? I assume right clicking, but I want to be clear.
I right click the Thors that I want to focus fire.
As for all the positive responses, thanks for the thanks! I'm glad that this is something that I was able to help a bunch of fellow Zergs with. ^^
can you please post a replay comparing magicboxing with and without focus firing? I have found no difference when attempting to do it, if anything i tend to lose more mutas with focus firing.
I read through all the comments and I did not see this question that I still have: Is it then possible to shift+ H + right click a bunch of individual units.. ?
On October 31 2011 15:53 Temporarykid wrote: I read through all the comments and I did not see this question that I still have: Is it then possible to shift+ H + right click a bunch of individual units.. ?
Or would that not work at all?
I predict no.
The reason OP's trick works is because holding "H" results in a rapid stream of "hold position commands" to your units. This keeps the muta from actually moving after you tell them to target a thor, because even though an attack command overrides the old hold position command, a new one is issued immediately. Since units keep shooting the target they were already shooting when a hold position command is issued, the muta in range of the thor continue to focus it after attack command and immediately subsequent hold position command are issued.
Shift queues up commands, so holding shift and alternating attack and hold position commands means you would issue the command to target a thor till it dies, THEN hold position, Then target the next thor (overriding previous hold position command), THEN hold position, etc.
I would test this myself, but I do not have access to a SC II capable computer atm. If you test it, post results!
On October 31 2011 17:25 Morphs wrote: Great! Anything that makes Thors less retarded is welcome. Lately i loose a lot against them when they're in bigger numbers. This may give an edge.
What's retarded is making mech's only reasonable answer to mutas absolutely useless against...
mass mutas
through a "feature" that takes absolutely no skill to perform. Have fun only playing against bio and cheeses untill HoTS. I look forward to the expansion and to no longer being pigeonholed into mass marines because of this.
When you win ZvT vs mech terrans thanks to this, is it gratifying?
On October 31 2011 18:51 K9GM3 wrote: Enjoy it while it lasts... this seems like a perfect target for Blizzard's nerfbat, and I honestly can't even argue with that.
This is the sort of micro trick that will not get nerfed, like the marine stutter step.
OP's trick works because 1. holding "h" makes your keyboard repeatedly send a signal that you are pressing "h" over and over 2. units don't move when you issue a hold position command, 3. the AI is smart enough to keep attacking the thing you told it to target after you give it a hold position command.
Blizzard can't change 1, keyboards just work that way. They definitely can't change 2, units have to stay still when you issue a hold position command. Changing 3 won't happen either, Dustin Browder has said repeatedly in interviews that he won't nerf units by making the AI worse.
mmm interesting find, it was easy to use multiple group of mutas to focus fire thors before, though the opponent could see it and move their thors out of harms ways. Here they will still think you have no idea what you are doing until their thors die super fast. noted when seeing one cloud of mutas do the thor jump as well.
On October 31 2011 18:51 K9GM3 wrote: Enjoy it while it lasts... this seems like a perfect target for Blizzard's nerfbat, and I honestly can't even argue with that.
This is the sort of micro trick that will not get nerfed, like the marine stutter step.
OP's trick works because 1. holding "h" makes your keyboard repeatedly send a signal that you are pressing "h" over and over 2. units don't move when you issue a hold position command, 3. the AI is smart enough to keep attacking the thing you told it to target after you give it a hold position command.
Blizzard can't change 1, keyboards just work that way. They definitely can't change 2, units have to stay still when you issue a hold position command. Changing 3 won't happen either, Dustin Browder has said repeatedly in interviews that he won't nerf units by making the AI worse.
Aye, they can't change that. But they could make Thors or Archons stronger, or nerf other aspects of the Mutalisk.
It seems like when you have a spread out flock of mutalisk, and they have more than a couple thors, it would be ideal to right click multiple thors while holding H? This way the mutalisks not in range of the first Thor you target would focus down a different thor, instead of being left to the auto-targeting AI
I presume this will get patched one way or the other with the next version. Still unsure on whether or not that's the right course of action, but it's the one Blizzard will likely take IMHO.
On October 31 2011 18:51 K9GM3 wrote: Enjoy it while it lasts... this seems like a perfect target for Blizzard's nerfbat, and I honestly can't even argue with that.
This is the sort of micro trick that will not get nerfed, like the marine stutter step.
OP's trick works because 1. holding "h" makes your keyboard repeatedly send a signal that you are pressing "h" over and over 2. units don't move when you issue a hold position command, 3. the AI is smart enough to keep attacking the thing you told it to target after you give it a hold position command.
Blizzard can't change 1, keyboards just work that way. They definitely can't change 2, units have to stay still when you issue a hold position command. Changing 3 won't happen either, Dustin Browder has said repeatedly in interviews that he won't nerf units by making the AI worse.
Aye, they can't change that. But they could make Thors or Archons stronger, or nerf other aspects of the Mutalisk.
UHHHHHHHH Thors and Archons even stronger??? No thanks. I think this is a good opportunity for players to try different builds and find out different things that work for them. Besides, SC2 is still young. Look at the development of SCBW. It was because of things like this that made units avoidable. It wasn't really fixed by buffing the disadvantaged units in said situations.
you can Shift queue 2 orders after you did that hold position spam, when the targets are in range
you can do this with Terran Bioball too, if you are split up and want to Kill Banelings, or Mutalisks if you Focus Fire while hold pos spam with Marine Tank, only Tanks in Sight do Focus Fire the targets
you cant do this too well with zerglings in the mineral line, i mean there is a new bug that only 1 worker get attacked
On November 01 2011 07:56 K9GM3 wrote: they could make Thors or Archons stronger, or nerf other aspects of the Mutalisk.
They did already announce the addition of the warhound and tempest in HOTS. I wouldn't expect anything else sooner.
Also, they haven't nerfed anything in response to a micro trick in the past. If the devs nerf and buff things every time a new micro trick or build order is discovered, this game will get stale FAST.
People talk about all of this "sc2 skill ceiling and micro already capped it's too low" bullshit and now we find something like this... Great find! Hope we find more of these things in the near future :D...
On November 01 2011 10:33 Phoose wrote: you can Shift queue 2 orders after you did that hold position spam, when the targets are in range
you can do this with Terran Bioball too, if you are split up and want to Kill Banelings, or Mutalisks if you Focus Fire while hold pos spam with Marine Tank, only Tanks in Sight do Focus Fire the targets
you cant do this too well with zerglings in the mineral line, i mean there is a new bug that only 1 worker get attacked
Shift-queueing 2 orders after hold position will eliminate the entire point of this thread. The point is that there is another hold position order immediately following the target fire, thus preventing mutas from grouping. Then, once that subsequent Hold Position command is received the queue'd commands will be wiped out and the muta will only continue attacking what it is attacking, then who knows what it attacks after that. Another focus attack command will be required at that point, followed by the instant hold position to follow, since it's still being held down.
people are just realizing this? seems strange to me... could a pro / top level zerg comment on this? i don't even play zerg (protoss) but when i do random team games and roll zerg i always go mass muta... and i've known about this since the magic box trick was first discovered, as I thought that was how you did a magic box o.O
im actually amazed at how many people didn't know you could hold position then attack command to target fire magic box. so strange.
Just came by to drop a meaningless and completely worthless post like "Awesome!" or "Nice find!", therefore raising my post count by 1.
About the subject at hand, it would be advisable for people to think about what holding a key down for a few seconds represents in terms of gameplay. The find in itself is interesting but pretty much worthless unless you're straight up using a flack of mutas against 1 or 2 thors, with no other units involved. In most scenarios the Zerg 1As the Terran, moves the mutas over the thors and then micros his lings and banelings. In high level play, you can't simply not micro your ground units.
For all of you who are anxious to try this out, keep this in mind. It doesn't really matter how the command works. It's the simple fact that you can't do anything else while holding down the H key.
whats the problem? we all know zergs dont have to micro at all, so they have plenty of time. the only skill they need is to hold down keys for drohnes/zerglings/mutas/banes, so that adds just a 5th key to hold down. pretty easy, i guess;-)
Thors will definitely need a buff in response to this, or maybe blizzard will be content just to ignore the issue and mech will become even more dead then it already is.
This is a great find for zerg players. As a terran, it is a sad day because my already bad mech play just got that much worse. Ahh well we will adapt and conquer!!
i dont want to create a new thread but, i play lately alot more with hold positioning, even with Roaches, but i know another tool for a better Unit control.
in another thread some guys postet a reaction statistic that showed Units under Patrol mode are shooting faster, f.e learned it by using a Banshee or 2 of them by arriving the harass spot with rally waypoint behind the mineral line where they beginn attack command, or they get microed.. since 2 banshees kill inefficiently fast the marines or probes you can split the damage..
so a phenomenom in sc was to rightclick focus fire a unit, while you begin splitting the army by boxes and let them engage via rally, Area off effect damage is by this way nullified, also you could retreat faster but you wont have to..
when the army is positioned well, you can hold down the position and switch the focus fire rate at the middle or the angles of the fight.. like you would shoot probes with 2 banshees
if you kill tanks or banelings, the whole back of the army can be waiting with holdposition, by a selection box you can split them up freakin fast.
great, lets abuse mutas even more, render thors completely useless and make the terrans mu even all the more impossible for them, in the meantime whining more about their "OP"ness. But w8, it must be ok, I mean if 10 korean terrans dominate the korean SC scene, then terrans must be really op.
Hopefully this gets fixed in a patch. Micro should improve a units effectiveness, not make them hard counter the unit that is supposed to hard counter them.
On November 06 2011 21:53 MockHamill wrote: Hopefully this gets fixed in a patch. Micro should improve a units effectiveness, not make them hard counter the unit that is supposed to hard counter them.
Although this micro is very useful, it won't make mutas hard counter them at best soft counter them since most terrans wont let their thors get stranded probably supported by missle turrent or marines etc.Plus, terrans almost always go marine + tanks against zerg with a few thors.i dun think this is gamebreaking in my opinion
On October 31 2011 17:08 Cibron wrote: If this really works as well as it sounds then Thors have officially replaced hydras as the worst unit in the game.
Hopefully it's hard to execute correctly when facing 3+ thors. Moving magic boxed mutas AND switching targets while holding is probably not very easy.
Nothing beats the hydra as the worst unit in the game currently even with this find.Thor is the worst unit in the game????. Please dun make me laugh.
On November 06 2011 21:53 MockHamill wrote: Hopefully this gets fixed in a patch. Micro should improve a units effectiveness, not make them hard counter the unit that is supposed to hard counter them.
Although this micro is very useful, it won't make mutas hard counter them at best soft counter them since most terrans wont let their thors get stranded probably supported by missle turrent or marines etc.Plus, terrans almost always go marine + tanks against zerg with a few thors.i dun think this is gamebreaking in my opinion
What about a meching terran? Mech already had very little AA and with this, Mass Mutas beats Mech unless the terran just goes Hellion Thor. Then Roaches demolish it. Its a big deal for Terran Mech
There 2 months of planing for mech balance in pvz in hots just got to waste But srsly great find, tl should be ashamed reddit had it posted first, to bad im not a zerg
Holding down any key in SC2 constantly issues that command at an alarming rate. That is precisely why some people had 400 apm and I suspect that is why they changed how APM is counted. I mean, if I were to hold Z for Zerglings the APM bar would pass 500. Stupid, right? No:D Cause how its possible to super magic box
On November 06 2011 22:55 Alpina wrote: So funny terran players whinning in this thread. This find won't change that much, cause it's just very minor thing imo.
Being able to hard counter mech by spamming mutalisks is just a very minor thing, yep.
On November 06 2011 22:55 Alpina wrote: So funny terran players whinning in this thread. This find won't change that much, cause it's just very minor thing imo.
Being able to hard counter mech by spamming mutalisks is just a very minor thing, yep.
Yeah, must suck to have to make a few marines to go with your mech.
On November 06 2011 21:53 MockHamill wrote: Hopefully this gets fixed in a patch. Micro should improve a units effectiveness, not make them hard counter the unit that is supposed to hard counter them.
Although this micro is very useful, it won't make mutas hard counter them at best soft counter them since most terrans wont let their thors get stranded probably supported by missle turrent or marines etc.Plus, terrans almost always go marine + tanks against zerg with a few thors.i dun think this is gamebreaking in my opinion
What about a meching terran? Mech already had very little AA and with this, Mass Mutas beats Mech unless the terran just goes Hellion Thor. Then Roaches demolish it. Its a big deal for Terran Mech
Mech is like the worst composition to go against mutalisk+lings+blings since most of the zerg players go for it.Even more so due to the infestor nerf again albeit FG is still powerful overall.
Rarely people go mech versus zerg due to not being mobile and also slow + little AA like you mentioned .Overall, they lack map control and just let zerg basically do anything.
Meching is generally bad in the current meta game against zerg . Pretty stupid to continue complaining about it just have to wait for blizz to fix at HotS.
You still got your standard Marines+Tanks.So use it instead -.- Doesn't terran have a lot of options?
Wow, great tip thank you! Going to start doing this now that I know I think of this as one of those little "micro tricks" that every player(zerg) should know.
On November 07 2011 02:21 zmansman17 wrote: Wow 5 thors and only 4 mutas lost of 25. That's less than 1 muta for each thor. I'm saddened by this good find :D
To be fair, 5 thors are worth 1500 minerals, 1000 gas. 25 mutalisks are worth 2500 minerals, 2500 gas.
Straight up, the muta force is worth twice as many resources as the thor ball. If you consider that gas is worth more than minerals, then the mutas are relatively even more valuable.
On November 07 2011 02:21 zmansman17 wrote: Wow 5 thors and only 4 mutas lost of 25. That's less than 1 muta for each thor. I'm saddened by this good find :D
To be fair, 5 thors are worth 1500 minerals, 1000 gas. 25 mutalisks are worth 2500 minerals, 2500 gas.
Straight up, the muta force is worth twice as many resources as the thor ball. If you consider that gas is worth more than minerals, then the mutas are relatively even more valuable.
Yes but it's also easier to mass mutas than thors and zerg almost always have better gas income.
On November 07 2011 02:21 zmansman17 wrote: Wow 5 thors and only 4 mutas lost of 25. That's less than 1 muta for each thor. I'm saddened by this good find :D
To be fair, 5 thors are worth 1500 minerals, 1000 gas. 25 mutalisks are worth 2500 minerals, 2500 gas.
Straight up, the muta force is worth twice as many resources as the thor ball. If you consider that gas is worth more than minerals, then the mutas are relatively even more valuable.
So what, you can't compare units cost for cost because that ignores so many other factors like build time, tech, general army composition, etc. Gas may be more valuable to Zerg because it is the limiting factor but to terrans Gas is not that useful which is a definitive disadvantage. You'll often see Terrans not taking the assimilators of their fourth and fifth bases because you can't really use it but while a lot of people think this is an advantage ("omg, he is killing my expensive gas units with mineral only units") it means that your army costs a lot more minerals than that of your opponent and a lot less gas which means that you will outmine your expansions earlier and the gas is actually not really of use to you at a certain point in the game. Sure it's nice that ghosts cost less gas during the early mid game but after that it is actually really bad for your mineral efficiency in the late game.
every Unit had its own style how it can be used. Im very sad that this is something new to my rts buddies, hold position is a tool i had to use in most rts games which had worse pathfinding AI.
after 4 seasons of sc2 there is so much hate about Opness, you should know the time for Attack move is over, get used to Positioning Battles, stand still. moving forward by attack command is some of the worst micro actions.
this micro is so new to most of us, lets try another OLD part vom RTS Tactics, lets imagine you want to break a Siegeline.
why you make 1 Army Ball, or "Split" small groups to small amounts of units that you throw in that Siegeline.
go back then let your army patrol at a distance a very long - -- - - -- -- -- - - -- - -- -- -- - -- -- -- - - line
now push the stop command, waste a little load of units and go in No NO not with that A-Move Do it Smart, try the Move and Patrol "tab attack" just ran in with your army, but attack by doing a patrol command, overwrite it with rightclick or move behind or next to the tanks, not in the tanks.. if you patrol command now, your units dont get clumped while they try to attack 1 unit or 1 location, if you want to focus fire tanks, do it via hold position, but do a selection box on the units which can shoot directly that tank, hotkey select your army or make a new box and move/rally your way to the next tanks.
some good Timings are 70-100 Supply 120-140 Supply and 200Supply Army Trades
*notice that patrol only let your units fire faster, you have to position your units well in line and do some smart focus fire
EPT
Thanks for sharing this!
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