Oh, though that fierce Winter of Patch 1.3 has scoured the world of the majestic Viking flowers, with Spring comes rebirth! Rebirth of air units stacking proudly! Stalwart fleets against the incursions of foreign powers!
Yet soon shall return the mighty Blizzard's wrath, that inescapable extermination deemed once a pest; So cherish these glorious beacons that guide your path to Victory in war, until finally in peace, they rest.
In the recent patch, Blizzard removed the traditional 'Viking flower', a way to stack air units on top of each other. Just in case you don't know, this was done by spam right-clicking in the middle of the units to cluster them up, and then issuing a patrol command on that spot. This was removed by disallowing patrols that only goes a small distance. However, a few months ago, I found a different way to stack units, and it turns out that that method still works. In short, you can still make Viking flowers until Blizzard again patches out this trick.
The method is basically just as simple as the original. Select your air units, issue a patrol command that would cause them to stack up (by magic box rules), and then press shift+(stop) before they reach the patrol destination. All air units will go to that exact point and stop, never spreading out. This is actually a perfect stack (with some rounding errors), but it does lack the attractive spinning motion of the original flower.
To expand a bit more on the trick, after the patrol, you can use either shift+(stop) or shift+(hold position). In fact, even after they are clustered, you can switch between stop and hold. Of course, the only difference is how the AI behaves. Also, the trick does still work even if the units are in a magic box and hence will preserve formations, but it just doesn't have the stacking behavior. This is important because if you already stacked them, you don't have to worry about magic boxes and can patrol+shift+stop them to any other spot still stacked.
Here is a video I made demonstrating the trick. My apologies for any issues you may have with its quality.
Sockfolder, you definately have the most revolutionary and meaningful content per post ratio on this entire forum. Thank you for your great OPs once again!
why does Blizzard have to keep patching away any cool trick that's "not intended by design" :\ I'm glad they werent patching BW past a year or so, otherwise it could've been bye bye Muta stacking
wow i accidentally did this with phoenix, but couldn't figure out how to do it again. i was tellin everyone i know i stacked them, but nobody believed me :/
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
That would likely require a complete change in design philosophy if all their past patches are any indicator, they've had a ton of chances to make such a "realization" and have not yet done so and I fail to see any reason why they will in the future.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
It's not about hiding the number of units you have, it's about them all attacking at once on the first thing that comes in range of them and instantly evaporating it.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
It's not even about hiding the number of units, which I think shows how little Blizzard actually understands about micro. It's about having all units on the same spot so that they'll all open fire simultaneously. It's a tactic that sacrifices mobility for stronger defensive presence, a fantastic complement to siege tanks and an interesting dynamic to Terran play. How does removing it make the game better?
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
You seriously think hiding information from your opponent isn't a good idea? Sure it doesn't make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other, but then again it doesn't make sense that all zerg units come from the same larvae, or that a BC is about a tenth of the size it should be in game, or that if protoss is so highly advanced, how come they lose to purely biological units?
This is a game, it doesn't have to make sense. (Notice I didn't say "just" a game )
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
It's not even about hiding the number of units, which I think shows how little Blizzard actually understands about micro. It's about having all units on the same spot so that they'll all open fire simultaneously. It's a tactic that sacrifices mobility for stronger defensive presence, a fantastic complement to siege tanks and an interesting dynamic to Terran play. How does removing it make the game better?
How does keeping it make the game better? It requires very little APM to use and virtually none to maintain. Anyone can do it, even a Bronze-leaguer; all they need to know is how to do it. You can do that just by reading this thread.
Now compare this to Mutalisk micro from SC1. This requires constant APM. A "Bronze-leaguer" can't even begin to do it well. Hell, even among professional players, there are some who do it better than others. That is skill depth.
These two kinds of things aren't even in the same ballpark. The Viking flower is problematic because it doesn't increase skill depth. It detracts from the game by making Vikings en masse far more powerful than they should be, while requiring nothing from the Terran player.
On March 25 2011 12:14 ArvickHero wrote: why does Blizzard have to keep patching away any cool trick that's "not intended by design" :\ I'm glad they werent patching BW past a year or so, otherwise it could've been bye bye Muta stacking
Agreed, same with stop lurkers. I mean there are some things that are clearly broken but I don't think this trick is one of them, it made the game interesting. I wish they would keep this kind of thing in the game. Not to mention I can't make my scouting overlord spaz out on their main base anymore :/
On March 25 2011 13:25 Mailing wrote: It never needed to be removed in the first place.
If you see a ball of vikings spinning, would you attack it with air anyway? What's the difference if you can't tell if it's 5 of 15.
It also leaves the vikings extremely vulnerable to a thor shot.
It's extremely important in conservative TvT (Tank-Viking-Marine mirror) because depending on how many resources you spend in vikings you can either win the battle through air dominance with the right amount of vikings or lose the ground battle because you build way too much vikings. Not able to "count" the amount of vikings or even guess it, although they are all scouted on the screen, really hurts the TvT and creates a luck factor in my opinion. I'd guess if you have to spend alot of micro in the viking flower it's more or less a tolerable thing, but pre patch it was too easy and even post patch it's too easy in my opinion So good catch OP, like I already said. But I do hope it get's at least a bit nerfed in the future...
On March 25 2011 13:25 Mailing wrote: It never needed to be removed in the first place.
If you see a ball of vikings spinning, would you attack it with air anyway? What's the difference if you can't tell if it's 5 of 15.
It also leaves the vikings extremely vulnerable to a thor shot.
It's extremely important in conservative TvT (Tank-Viking-Marine mirror) because depending on how many resources you spend in vikings you can either win the battle through air dominance with the right amount of vikings or lose the ground battle because you build way too much vikings. Not able to "count" the amount of vikings or even guess it, although they are all scouted on the screen, really hurts the TvT and creates a luck factor in my opinion. I'd guess if you have to spend alot of micro in the viking flower it's more or less a tolerable thing, but pre patch it was too easy and even post patch it's too easy in my opinion So good catch OP, like I already said. But I do hope it get's at least a bit nerfed in the future...
Though it also lets the other player make a single Thor and splash your entire Viking fleet, especially since a traditional TvT player is going to have tech labbed factories, an armoury and probably vehicle weapon upgrades anyway. It has its upsides and downsides.
Even ignoring this, you can still do an approximation of the flower by just patrolling them in an area slightly larger than the size of the unit. Same effect for all attacking at once. That was the only fix they did, your patrol just has to be between two spots that are further than the size of the unit.
On March 25 2011 18:08 oOOoOphidian wrote: Even ignoring this, you can still do an approximation of the flower by just patrolling them in an area slightly larger than the size of the unit. Same effect for all attacking at once. That was the only fix they did, your patrol just has to be between two spots that are further than the size of the unit.
And it looks even more silly, and you still can't count the number of Vikings in it. Great job Blizzard.
On March 25 2011 13:25 Mailing wrote: It never needed to be removed in the first place.
If you see a ball of vikings spinning, would you attack it with air anyway? What's the difference if you can't tell if it's 5 of 15.
It also leaves the vikings extremely vulnerable to a thor shot.
Someone said it best here on TL awhile ago about the change, it gave even more defenders advantage to a match up that already favors the defender quite heavily.
Sockfolder, who is da man, also released a video called Mineral Boosting 2.0 which boosts mining by ~4% using a cool movement technique. The video explaining this doesn't have nearly enough views.
since it allows banshees and vikings to still stack onto each other this will probably be removed as well. (the reason the other trick was removed, armored banshee ftw)
On March 25 2011 22:15 senor_gomez wrote: Sockfolder, who is da man, also released a video called Mineral Boosting 2.0 which boosts mining by ~4% using a cool movement technique. The video explaining this doesn't have nearly enough views.
On March 25 2011 13:25 Mailing wrote: It never needed to be removed in the first place.
If you see a ball of vikings spinning, would you attack it with air anyway? What's the difference if you can't tell if it's 5 of 15.
It also leaves the vikings extremely vulnerable to a thor shot.
or a well placed fungal growth! :D
One of the unsung effects of the infester buff is that countering broods with vikings will now be harder, since fungal (always an "okay" counter to vikings) will now do 30% more damage and do it quicker.
post-patch it's very difficult to get all vikings in the 'flower'. most of the time at least one viking is too close to the patrol point and does not move. that's easily remedied with another patrol+(hold), however. it's not a perfect replacement
On March 25 2011 22:15 senor_gomez wrote: Sockfolder, who is da man, also released a video called Mineral Boosting 2.0 which boosts mining by ~4% using a cool movement technique. The video explaining this doesn't have nearly enough views.
Just to clarify the Mineral Boosting 2.0 trick since some people seem to have found it, it does still work, but I thought it was too ineffective to really advertise. To put it simply, it increases mining speed by like 1% on half the patches and 7% on the others, generally the farther ones that are not mining at the beginning. The real ineffectiveness though is just that you can't spam it like the original trick, so it is impossible to boost more than around 2 workers. But you do have actions to spam at the beginning, so I guess you can get 5 more minerals or something. The most practical variation of the trick is probably having zerglings patrolling in your minerals (as shown in the second half of the video).
Oh, the internet. Always finding ways to break everything in the most arcane ways possible. I don't know why Blizzard even tries to prevent this stuff.
Really hate that change. Not only does it kill the uniqueness of it, but now I can't patrol my probe to block a hatch because it refuses to patrol short distances.
Hey sockfolder, couldn't you double the effect of that trick by issuing a shift-return cargo command close to the hatchery, thus negating the "mineral-patch-to-hatchery" deceleration as well?
On March 27 2011 15:19 moose162 wrote: Really hate that change. Not only does it kill the uniqueness of it, but now I can't patrol my probe to block a hatch because it refuses to patrol short distances.
You can still patrol a probe the width of a hatchery.
On March 27 2011 15:19 moose162 wrote: Really hate that change. Not only does it kill the uniqueness of it, but now I can't patrol my probe to block a hatch because it refuses to patrol short distances.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
That would likely require a complete change in design philosophy if all their past patches are any indicator, they've had a ton of chances to make such a "realization" and have not yet done so and I fail to see any reason why they will in the future.
Nah, they kept the muta magic box trick, they just seem to keep it whenever it doesn't screw up balance.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
That would likely require a complete change in design philosophy if all their past patches are any indicator, they've had a ton of chances to make such a "realization" and have not yet done so and I fail to see any reason why they will in the future.
Nah, they kept the muta magic box trick, they just seem to keep it whenever it doesn't screw up balance.
This show how lost is the Blizzard Team about SC2: trying to patch minor things, failing miserably, while successfully applying useless modifications like Bunker build time. They don't know what to do, and they don't know how to do it.
Do you feel those 10 years of RTS management knowledge?
On March 27 2011 15:19 moose162 wrote: Really hate that change. Not only does it kill the uniqueness of it, but now I can't patrol my probe to block a hatch because it refuses to patrol short distances.
You still can, just have it patrol slightly further
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
These kind of posts make me so goddamn mad.
Have you any idea what Starcraft is? Why it's the most interesting multiplayer game ever?
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
These kind of posts make me so goddamn mad.
Have you any idea what Starcraft is? Why it's the most interesting multiplayer game ever?
Yea I know what Starcraft is, I just want to know how many vikings my opponent has so that I can get just enough vikings to break the wall.
Hopefully they actually leave it in the game, it adds some dynamic to it. Nice sockfolder, always coming up with tricks :p. So many tricks that people keep finding after release, pretty cool.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
These kind of posts make me so goddamn mad.
Have you any idea what Starcraft is? Why it's the most interesting multiplayer game ever?
Yea I know what Starcraft is, I just want to know how many vikings my opponent has so that I can get just enough vikings to break the wall.
You asked how it helped and then basically gave one of the reasons. It is something that takes just that tiny bit more of skill and knowledge but makes a unit dramatically better. You can't just whine and say, "But it makes the game harder for me, Johnny Bronze!" I just use "Johnny Bronze" as a placeholder, of course; it doesn't matter if you're in masters even (though I don't understand how someone that high up would actually think this).
StarCraft is supposed to be a hard game. That's why there are professional players.
as much as i love the flower... it does kind of cheapen the game, as you can no longer count how many vikings they have which... well makes it so you can never judge the correct amt of vikings to make so you over make them and lose because you made to many vikings this is indeed a game of deception and economy but something like this is a Imbalance even to the pros who i am sure find it frustrating to be unable to count the vikings. i am an avid user of the viking flower and win many many TvT games because my opponents over make vikings then lose the ground war... every time its because of the flower nothing else... just them not being able to make an accurate count, muta stacking some would argue is just as deceiving ... its not really as you can judge about how many mutas they have by how fast they kill something.
If you p + shift h across the map with an OL or slow unit in the group they will stack even if it is far outside of their normal magic box provided there's nothing to attack in the way. Pretty useful for mutas, it's pretty much BW style magic box but executed a bit differently.
From there it's very easy/fast to just a+click and right click to keep the mutas grouped. I usually do this anyway to keep my mutas in a tight group, but with p and h thrown in it starts (1) long before you actually get to the place (2) requires less apm/time to setup.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
These kind of posts make me so goddamn mad.
Have you any idea what Starcraft is? Why it's the most interesting multiplayer game ever?
Yea I know what Starcraft is, I just want to know how many vikings my opponent has so that I can get just enough vikings to break the wall.
You asked how it helped and then basically gave one of the reasons. It is something that takes just that tiny bit more of skill and knowledge but makes a unit dramatically better. You can't just whine and say, "But it makes the game harder for me, Johnny Bronze!" I just use "Johnny Bronze" as a placeholder, of course; it doesn't matter if you're in masters even (though I don't understand how someone that high up would actually think this).
StarCraft is supposed to be a hard game. That's why there are professional players.
No not really, it doesn't make the game better at all when the effect of scouting is nullified.
It's like you can make all your buildings invisible by some random trick or exploit and it completely nullifies any scouting. Performing the flower doesn't take any skill, it's not like that you plan ahead and place your tech in a location that you don't think is likely to be scouted or at the last second stop a scouting SCV from seeing it.
It doesn't help the game at all when you can nullify scouting with a stupid trick that takes no skill to perform whatsoever, it helps the game when you get to make the decision to hide your real viking numbers by putting them not in one place and suddenly surprise the opponent by revealing you have a lot more vikings than he thought and win the game by that.
Come on, would you approve if you could perform a similar trick to make a dark shrine invisible, I mean, take the shakuras bug, I'm sure you agree it's good that it's patched, it takes no skill whatsoever to place a dark shrine, pylon, or spire there, you just have to know, and it nullifies scouting.
Now, if it took skill to pull off I can see where you're going, it's a good thing they kept the magic box because it actually takes skill to perform.
Hiding the number of vikings with the flower trick TvT is lame imo. A viking count can be crucial in that match up so that's probably why Blizzard is taking it away. Stacking for other air units seems fine though..
On April 27 2011 04:30 mind0killer wrote: Thank you for helping to find and share these flaws so that Blizzard can patch them out :
I sense sarcasm.
I wish they kept this.. all it does it let players control their units better... there is alot of AOE damage vs air in the game, blizzard should man up.
On April 26 2011 Blizzard stupidly wrote:
Fixed a bug where players were still able to stack flying units on top of each other.
On April 27 2011 04:30 mind0killer wrote: Thank you for helping to find and share these flaws so that Blizzard can patch them out :
I sense sarcasm.
I wish they kept this.. all it does it let players control their units better... there is alot of AOE damage vs air in the game, blizzard should man up.
On March 25 2011 12:14 ArvickHero wrote: why does Blizzard have to keep patching away any cool trick that's "not intended by design" :\ I'm glad they werent patching BW past a year or so, otherwise it could've been bye bye Muta stacking
I really wish Blizzard would realize that just because something is not intended does not make it automatically bad, the viking flower was useful but didn't give some broken advantage and I really hope that Blizz doesn't either notice this or decide to do anything and finally realizes part of what makes some games great are the little unintended tricks people find.
On March 25 2011 12:47 Ezekyle wrote: Let's hope Blizzard realises that these cool tricks actually help the game and lets it stay in this time.
How does it help the game to hide the number of units you have? It doesn't even make sense for planes to stack up on top of each other. Hopefully this will be patched soon.
It actually does make sense for air units to stack up in the same spot. The reason air units behave this way and ground units don't is because air units fly (trust me on this one), and thus have a "height", that height can be different for every unit. So while you're seeing them all stack up in the same spot, in "reality", they're simply flying at different heights. For clarity, in the game they're simply shown as stacked on the same spot (the same reason battlecruisers and ultralisks are so small in-game when in "reality" they should be many times larger).
On August 15 2012 22:37 JonIrenicus wrote: May I ask how is this trick useful?
In tvt you can get a slightly quicker volley off since they are all stacked they are all instantly in range, but vikings aren't used as much anymore. Same counts for tvp before storm is researched I guess. In TvZ I'd never dare use this - one fungal and your pretty flower lost you the game.
EPT
Thanks for the finding!
)
