I'm making this post because I've noticed something strange about the autocast functionality of Unburrow.
Say you have your activated autocast on your Roaches' Unburrow (or any unit for that matter). They unburrow and attack the enemy. Say you decide that the battle isn't turning into your favour so you naturally decide to Burrow your roaches. Unfortunately, since Unburrow is on autocast, they immediately unburrow and are exposed again.
I can understand the use of autocast on Unburrow (auto baneling ambush) but the fact that it works like this once it's on autocast, doesn't really make it a really wise choice to activate autocast, does it?
It's a bad choice even for banelings. Competent players will send 1 unit in front of the rest, and when your banelings pop up to kill the poor guy, he will know that IT'S A TRAP!!!
I think what he's saying Kimera is that if he uses Autocast and they unburrow, afterwards he cannot reburrow them while units are near because autocast is still on and they will immediately pop back up. I haven't tested if how much time you have to turn it off but from the OP's description it's probably not much.
I didn't even know burrow had an autocast . . . but I don't think I'll ever use it.
One thing you might want to consider is binding "burrow" and "unborrow" to different hotkeys, so you always know whether your units are going to go up or down when you press a key (helpful when you have a lot of units and some of them are already burrowed and you're not sure if you're in the right tab group). For example, I have my burrow key on W and my unborrow on E.
I think its primary usage is for banelings, or cheap single zergling as static scout / alarm - because you will get audio signal and minimap highlight, and not just the plain minimap dot, which is easier to miss.
Any other units are at disadvantage usually, because they will not unburrow all together, but only as they are reached. And yes, it is difficult to reburrow them again - not impossible, but the time gap is very small. I tried and managed to do it with a little practice, but it's still quite hazardous move.
Talking about useless burrowed ability - is there any significant application for baneling's burrowed explode? I can't think of almost anything, except perhaps very fast ground units crossing in spread formation, in case it allows them to escape the unburrowed baneling, but get the damage otherwise. Still quite improbable situation, imo. Or is it the 1sec unburrow time which makes it usable?
Also makes me think whether attacking a unit is always better than exploding the baneling at place. Note that the baneling splash damage affects every unit for exactly the same loss, even if on the edge of AOE. This means for units in a square formation like this: + + + + it may be better to explode at the center of gravity and actually affect all units, instead of exploding at one of them and missing the other 3 - because half the diagonal is shorter than the edge.
This feature, as most others in the game, it an option given to use to be used whenever we personally feel it is appropriate. I use it a certain way, and not too often, but it does have it's uses.
It's a useful tool that, as any tool, can be used effectively or ineffectively. The choice is yours!! 8)
unburrow autocast is really more of a crutch for low apm players (like me) who don't have the concentration to be watching the minimap at all times to manually detonate their traps. I don't expect it to be used in high level play but it'll be a nice boon for people learning the game
On June 21 2010 22:59 MangoTango wrote: Or, you know, you can turn off autocast right before you decide to hide your army because it's losing. It's a single right-click.
But the Unburrow button is hidden while the units are on the surface.
On June 21 2010 22:59 MangoTango wrote: Or, you know, you can turn off autocast right before you decide to hide your army because it's losing. It's a single right-click.
But the Unburrow button is hidden while the units are on the surface.
Does it show up before the units are finished burrowing, or only after? Maybe the solution is just to make it show up that half second earlier.
BTW, we shouldn't even bother with this - Blizzard should fix the autocast for unburrow to switch off, on the first trigger, so each time it only triggers once, and then is turned off. That's just more comfortable to control. As of now it's so unnecessarily stupid, that I'm sure they'll have to fix it.
On June 21 2010 23:19 Nyx wrote: That's a skill you need to develop. You shouldn't miss a single dot.
Sure, yet it eases your attention, and gives you one more second to react. Suppose you have two burrowed flanks *** and a single suicide zergling + on auto-unburrow in the middle: ((**** + *****)) When it triggers, the enemy army stops for a split second to attack the poor hero zergling, which is enough for you to switch attention and manually unburrow the main flanks.
Another use is, if you have a bigger army on auto-unburrow, since only the first few units closest to the enemy will unburrow, you have time to switch off the auto of the others, before unburrowing them manually. Using this allows attacks from any direction to trigger your defenses as early as possible, while still saving most units from the suicidal inability to reburrow.
The whole argument is a bit odd, because: - if you can detect the enemy as fast as the auto-unburrow, then you can turn it off, before unburrowing - if not, then it saves you some time, alarming you as early as possible Right?
On June 21 2010 19:38 Ghostcom wrote: It's a bad choice even for banelings. Competent players will send 1 unit in front of the rest, and when your banelings pop up to kill the poor guy, he will know that IT'S A TRAP!!!
Disagree, until players naturally have scouters infront of their main army whenever playing against Zerg, the first batch of banelings is always a surprise, which forces the opponent then be extra cautious.
Even better, use this:
Replace lurkers with banelings.
Replace hold-lurkers with banelings without autocast.
On June 21 2010 20:32 QuothTheRaven wrote: One thing you might want to consider is binding "burrow" and "unborrow" to different hotkeys, so you always know whether your units are going to go up or down when you press a key (helpful when you have a lot of units and some of them are already burrowed and you're not sure if you're in the right tab group). For example, I have my burrow key on W and my unborrow on E.
'How did you do this? Being unable to unburrow units when I have a group of both burrowned and burrowed units is making me mad. Should be default like tanks, where you can seige the unseiged ones and unseige the seiged ones while they are both in the same control group.
Seems like Auto-cast should disable itself when they pop up. Having units automatically pop out, attack, then reburrow on the same spot and wait for the next victim is kind of pointless. They'll just bring along detection and ruin your day. You're going to want to Burrow for protection, or move those units somewhere else, anyway.
If you burrow with autocast on, do they stay burrowed long enough to become invisible? Becuase it could be really handy to disrupt focus firing, every time they target a roach you burrow and auto unburrow so they have to retarget.
EPT
