Oh Micro, Where Art Thou? - Page 60

I didn't read all 60 pages of replies to this thread, but the title of the OP is definitely misleading. Your title makes it sound as if Micro as a whole is not as big a part of SC2 as it was in SC1, but your content only talks about a single SC1 Micro trick: the moving shot.

Yes, the moving shot isn't present in SC2, but that doesn't mean SC2 has less micro involved.

In fact, the very proliferation of high bonus damage against specific armor types, which you also complained about in your OP, leads to very micro-intensive battles.

Lets take a PvT early battle as an example: Protoss are fond of a 3-4 Warpgate + Robo timing push against Terrans.

Stalker/Sentry/Immortal/Zealot vs. Marine/Marauder/Ghost. In this battle, the Protoss needs to be doing a few things:

1. Keeping Guardian shield up on his entire army, using as few number of shields as possible so that you still have energy to Forcefield. This might seem easy, but how many people have you actually seen Micro their Sentries so that the shields cover their whole army, but don't overlap too much?

2. Form a good firing arc, in which all his Stalkers and Immortals are shooting at targets, but be as far range as possible at the same time so that the least amount of Marauders and Marines can fire back. Sounds easy, but how many battles have you witnessed where the Protoss has a few Stalkers or an Immortal out of range to fire, and they're just wandering aimlessly in the back lines, trying to move forward?

3. Have his Stalkers and Immortals always targeting Marauders, not Marines. Stalkers and Immortals gain large bonus damage chunks by shooting at Marauders, so ideally they should never fire a single shot against a Marine until all the Marauders are dead or are too far away. A single shot on a Marine by an Immortal is a potential +30 bonus damage being wasted.

4. At the same time, you can't just have all your Stalkers and Immortals on a single control group, and target fire Marauders, due to overkill. Stalker shots aren't instant, so I believe too many firing on a single Marauder will overkill it, wasting Stalker shots.

5. Have your forces spread out as much as possible to reduce the effect of EMP.

6. Use Forcefield as needed to disrupt the Terran firing arc, and keep Terran reinforcements away for as long as possible.

These individual points might sound easy for a Top 10 Plat, but here's the kicker: you have to be doing all of this at the same time.

You have to be doing #2, forming a good firing arc in which all your units are the perfect distance to do max damage and take min damage, while at the same time doing #5, making sure they're spread out as far as possible to reduce EMP damage.

You have to be doing #1, Microing your Sentries so that GS covers your whole army, while doing #3 and #4, constantly Microing your Stalkers and Immortals so they always shoot Marauders, while never overkilling any.

Are you doing this all perfectly, every battle, every game? No? Well then you're not utilizing the Micro potential of SC2 to its fullest. Oh, and lets not forget, you have to be doing all of this in the span of ~7 seconds, before the battle is already over and decided with.

Compare the scenario I described above to the common Protoss Bulldog timing attack vs. Terran Siege-Expand opening in SC1:

1. Drop your Zealots and bomb the tanks.

2. Shoot-move your Dragoons in until they're in range to shoot the tank(s), then target-fire the tank(s). Make sure not to overkill.

That's it. Two steps.

Sure SC2 may not have the number of Micro tricks (read: game engine bugs, aka Muta stacking) that SC1 had. But, that doesn't mean Micro is less prevalent in SC2.