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Hello all!
So I've been messing around with muta stacking and have stumbled upon another way to stack mutalisks.
So here's how to do it:
Put 1 mutalisk in a control group(for this example 2)
Put the rest in another control group(for this example 3)
Select group 3 and right click the lone group mutalisk.
This will make all the mutalisks follow the lone one, resulting in interesting behavior:
-When you move the lone mutalisk the others will group up really tight and follow.
-When you hold position the lone mutalisk the group behaves in relatively the same way.
If there is an enemy unit/building they will all attack. You can move the muta group into the enemy base, hold position the lone one, all will attack, then move the lone one again and they will all follow still tightly grouped up. This makes this method really good for mineral line harassment.
Sorry that I do not have a video demonstrating this, but i have a screenshot to at least show the movement.
![[image loading]](http://i923.photobucket.com/albums/ad72/masansk5/Screenshot2012-03-2213_37_41.jpg)
Some possible issues with this method is if the lone muta dies the rest will stop and begin to spread.
I do not think will be too serious of an issue though considering muta stacking is primarily used to harassment. For most engagements you want to magic box, not stack, if anything.
So thoughts? questions?
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mmm i always thought the mutas had not enough range for this, never tryed it with hold posi though, will test that, will also make you quiet save against thor shots as only the front muta is hit. I love to make thor traps to get all the mutas on one spot hehe. But when you stack mutas you want to focus fire, and this works abit against it, so not sure if it is really helpful.
Generally i use it for vikings in tvt before thors but let them follow a flying building and let it patrol after turning around, to have all vikings in one range level if the opponent attacks. Does alot of overkill, but the opponent has the same problem.
My personal favorite on autofollow staccking air units was phoenix though, it was a bit harder to pull off against mutas, but you had all except one phoenix in range of the opponents mutas. Whiped the floor with mutas and if you messed up you only lost a single phoenix. Now with +2 range mutas don't stand a chance against this technique and you can even fight in a ratio of 1:4 against mutas with phoenix.
sc2 has tons of possibilities to optimize your units pre battle, autofollow is just one of them, though its really rarely used, personally i use magic box and autofollow every game to keep my army spread out against aoes. Just like i use hold positioned and move commands to spread lings and banelings when attacking into a terran position with to many siege tanks. Sc2 will look alot better if people start to use those things. Took a while until all the secret moves in bw saw the light, so i am optimistic.
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United States7166 Posts
I don't find this very useful as the mutalisk stack lags behind, and therefore they also attack noticeably later than the 1st (leader) mutalisks does. like when i attack an scv line, the first mutalisk attacks, then the rest do shortly after, rather than they all attack at the same time. also yes while harassing, because the first one is taking all the damage cus it's in front, it'll die first and fast (to say turrets/marines)
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This is fantastic when you are dodging maybe turrets on one side and marines on one side (I.e you don't have a map edge to work with), makes you run trough the tiny corridor unharmed rather then branching out. And you can't click on the ground as usual when you are harassing as you are running away.
Really good escape technique.
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Well for mineral lines I don't see it being good, as the group would overkill tons of workers. If they are spread out and shoot all different workers, it'd be much more effective per volley.
But if indeed this proves to be useful in other situations I suspect it will be patched, Blizzard frowns upon air stacking (that isn't manual clicks)
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On March 23 2012 03:16 Zelniq wrote:
also yes while harassing, because the first one is taking all the damage cus it's in front, it'll die first and fast (to say turrets/marines)
This vulnerability alone makes this trick nearly useless. Stacking isn't just to allow for all your mutas to shoot at once (which this trick also doesn't manage very well), it's meant to protect mutas from focus fire, so that marines target different mutas and can't get a kill before you can pull your mutas away.
The other problem is the fact that the stack itself lags well behind the lead muta, so that well-stacked shots don't occur quickly, or from maximum range. This means the lead muta will more often than not be dancing inside of turret range, eating shot after shot. This problem might be avoidable using some kind of perpendicular-to-target approach such that the lead muta and the stack are roughly equidistant from the turret or target, but that just decreases the efficacy of harassment that much more. And this isn't even considering the lagging effect of moving the lead muta directly backwards... then a full second later, the stack follows once the lead muta has moved far enough back. A dangerous scenario, and we haven't even considered what happens when the lead muta gets kill in the middle of any of these maneuvers.
Interesting find, but as it stands now, not really useful.
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@FPC
That might have been part of the effectiveness of muta stacking in BW. But your not going to be attempting to stack so you can send a volley at a few marines and back away. Marines are way too clumped in sc2 for you to ever try that. In BW, because ground units weren't very clumped, you could abuse that fact and pick off marines with your 11 mutas that were in the same spot fighting 1-2 marines at a time. This is the same reason against a very good muta player hydras were not viable in ZvZ
This trick (even without a lead mutalisk needed) would never be used for that same purpose.
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I don't see the gain from doing this? You can also massclick one point close to the mineral line, which makes them stack up and then go in... Sure, they'll spread out a bit, but they'll still be pretty much in one big flock. And they'll attack alot faster.
Plus... Thors, archons, fungals and storm would love a word with you 
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I tried this out a while back. There's a *major* problem: the following group doesn't actually respond to your commands. What it's doing at any given moment is actually just moving towards the "leader" mutalisk... which is fine until you change direction.
Consider a 180 degree turnaround. The leader's slightly out front, then turns and heads directly back towards the followers. From the followers' persective, "towards the leader" is still straight ahead, and they will go in the exact opposite direction from what you just ordered until they meet in the middle.
Now consider why you probably just suddenly tried to pull back. Maybe some marines cut you off and you grazed the edge of their range. Their stimmed cooldown is about half a second. Do you want to turn around *now*, or half a second from now?
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Its hard to tell, but maybe the cluster lags far enough behind that you could use the lead muta to draw a shot from a thor and then do damage while waiting for the cool down.
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I could see this being useful in those situations where your mutas get cornered on the edge of the map with stalkers or w/e on each side. Then again if they attack that would just be suicide so nvm.
Its nifty, idk how practical this is though.
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muta stacking is pretty bad. especially against terran, where its exactly what you dont want to do. but gl doing this against thors.
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this isn't really worth while. Zelniq is right that the "lone mutalisk" will just die first.
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That one mutalisk is gonna die pretty darn fast. You would have to switch out leader mutalisk pretty often, personally i feel the regular method of just spam clicking to stack all of them up is better.
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oh shit this guy just invented muta stacking
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I would like someone to answer the following questions:
what if someone who had the mechanics of jaedong used this technique? what would happen if someone with 5x my resources played sc2? would it be useful then?
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On March 23 2012 06:42 TheNessman wrote:
oh shit this guy just invented muta stacking
nope, there are already better muta stacking techniques
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On March 23 2012 03:16 Zelniq wrote:
I don't find this very useful as the mutalisk stack lags behind, and therefore they also attack noticeably later than the 1st (leader) mutalisks does. like when i attack an scv line, the first mutalisk attacks, then the rest do shortly after, rather than they all attack at the same time. also yes while harassing, because the first one is taking all the damage cus it's in front, it'll die first and fast (to say turrets/marines)
what if your muta ball was so big you just sacrificed one muta every time? like if you have 30, you micro down the 2 turrets while 1 dies, you're left with 29 and an exposed min line.
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On March 23 2012 06:44 darkscream wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2012 06:42 TheNessman wrote:
oh shit this guy just invented muta stacking nope, there are already better muta stacking techniques
link?
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EPT
