I very recently saw a replay in this thread that showcased some phenomenal Roach Burrow micro. The consensus seems to be that the person in that replay was hacking, but nevertheless it made me wonder if there was a way to come close to that level of speed when Burrowing injured Roaches individually (or indeed any other Zerg unit, but it's most applicable to Roaches due to the increased health regen). Currently you have to select a Roach then hit the Burrow hotkey (repeat), which adds a small delay to each Burrow. This can result in the Roach's death.
After a few minutes I came up with the following, which I couldn't find anywhere in a search:
First of all, you might want to turn your keyboard repeat rate up, and the repeat delay down. This will probably already have been done for most Zergs as it helps when building units from multiple larva, but it also helps here so I thought I'd mention it. Next, bind the Roach's Burrow and Unburrow commands to different hotkeys. It doesn't matter what they're set to, as long as they're different and comfortable. Then, once you have your group of Roaches and they're fighting the enemy, select an injured one and then HOLD DOWN the Burrow hotkey. After that, click on injured Roaches one-by-one as fast as you can, without letting go of the hotkey. When you don't want to Burrow any more Roaches, let go of the hotkey.
That's it! You can Unburrow regenerated Roaches in the same manner, or by box-selecting, or by selecting all your Roaches and hitting the Unburrow hotkey.
I find this method to be noticeably faster than hitting Click-Burrow-Click-Burrow (it's essentially limited to how fast you can spot an injured Roach and click on it, which I think is optimal -- it removes the delay from pressing the Burrow button individually), and you can't accidentally Unburrow any Roaches you want to keep Burrowed.
The only problem I can see is that it might take a bit to get used to the different Unburrow/Burrow hotkey for Roaches, depending on what you change one/both of them to.
As an aside, this idea was based on my attempt to perform quicker Blink micro by holding down the Blink button. Unfortunately, though, the disablement of the Blink hotkey isn't immediate, so you'll sometimes try to Blink the same Stalker twice, which seems to kill that idea.
Nice tip. I have had burrow and unburrow on spacebar but I find myself constantly fumbling around if I try to do midbattle micro. I'll give this a shot.
Does anyone know of a roach micro UMS like the marine split challenge? There's always the unit tester but a minigame would be kind of fun.
This is F*cking awesome. [read in epic deep voice plz] No longer shall I do the weak click-burrow click-burrow, but I shall now pwn the armies of the protoss and terran with my epic roach micro. :D
Absolutely awesome find. This is incredibly useful, even though I rarely play zerg.
I think it works this way if you're hotkeys are set to grid already. I can't recall ATM but I believe they have different letters to press to burrow and unburrow (or cloak/siege/transform)
I wish they made burrow and unburrow work like ground and air mode for vikings, or siege and unsiege for tanks. I hate when you have a group of roaches, some burrowed, and you want to either burrow or unburrow them all but it only gives you one option, so you have to tab to get the right one, and sometimes you accidentally do the exact opposite of what you want. Would be much easier if you could just have burrow and unburrow be different hotkeys and work like siege/unsiege.
On April 07 2011 10:53 orotoss wrote: Really nice tip, I will try this.
I wish they made burrow and unburrow work like ground and air mode for vikings, or siege and unsiege for tanks. I hate when you have a group of roaches, some burrowed, and you want to either burrow or unburrow them all but it only gives you one option, so you have to tab to get the right one, and sometimes you accidentally do the exact opposite of what you want. Would be much easier if you could just have burrow and unburrow be different hotkeys and work like siege/unsiege.
Um.........
Burrow and unburrow can be set to different hotkeys.
But anyway, this is a really interesting find. I've always had a bit of trouble with burrow micro for the exact reasons OP listed. Will be sure to try this out.
On April 07 2011 10:53 orotoss wrote: Really nice tip, I will try this.
I wish they made burrow and unburrow work like ground and air mode for vikings, or siege and unsiege for tanks. I hate when you have a group of roaches, some burrowed, and you want to either burrow or unburrow them all but it only gives you one option, so you have to tab to get the right one, and sometimes you accidentally do the exact opposite of what you want. Would be much easier if you could just have burrow and unburrow be different hotkeys and work like siege/unsiege.
Did you read OP? The second step tells you to bind hotkeys different.
Why are people so mean? He obviously is talking about being able to burrow/unburrow mixed roaches without tabbing. If you have two siege tanks selected, one sieged and one unsieged, the icon for both options is available in the ability grid. No need to tab. It would be cool if burrow worked like this.
Gonna try this in ladder today since I've been practicing using roaches to go under the forcefields like IdrA's been doing in stream for a while. Never new about the keyboard repeat rate and delay, Ill try that out too. Thanks Severian, nice tip.
On April 07 2011 11:05 smocca wrote: Why are people so mean? He obviously is talking about being able to burrow/unburrow mixed roaches without tabbing. If you have two siege tanks selected, one sieged and one unsieged, the icon for both options is available in the ability grid. No need to tab. It would be cool if burrow worked like this.
I think he's talking about changing the hotkey itself. It is possible to use custom hotkeys (change burrow to d and unburrow to e.) Just go to the hotkeys editor in the menu.
edit: nevermind I understand what you're saying now.
I realize that you can change the hotkeys for each. I was super excited to fix this very problem when they allowed us to make custom hotkeys. Unfortunately, roaches act differently than tanks and vikings. When some are burrowed, it treats them as a different subgroup within the whole group, so you have to tab between unburrowed and burrowed roaches.
For example, suppose I have burrow hotkeyed to "B" and unburrow hotkeyed to "N." I have 8 roaches burrowed and 12 unburrowed. Suddenly, the opponent scans and I need to unburrow and run. I select all of my roaches (its hard to double click unburrowed units when there are units standing on them) and hit N. This does nothing because the main group it selected was the unburrowed ones. So I have to hit tab and then B, which wouldn't be too much of an issue if it always chose to select one group first over the other, but it seems to choose randomly.
Sometimes, you burrow all your roaches, and then a few rallied reinforcing roaches walk over them and when you box all your units you suddenly have to hit tab to unburrow them. It's annoying because it is so inconsistent. I really don't understand why they don't work like tanks.
On April 07 2011 11:27 ZeromuS wrote: Changing repeat rate IMO is a cool idea but that wont help you if you ever play at a lan with your own accesories and provided computers.
Yes it will, this is a basic hardware setting like Windows mouse speed, which players often do and are allowed to change.
On April 07 2011 11:27 ZeromuS wrote: Changing repeat rate IMO is a cool idea but that wont help you if you ever play at a lan with your own accesories and provided computers.
Why wouldn't you be able to change the kb settings?
I have seen the replay and though your idea and theory is a good tip, I dont think it really explains completely all of the shadiness of that players actions
On April 07 2011 10:50 Bio0rMech wrote: He had 700 APM, thats kinda impossible...
I think he had 700 APM because he held down the burrow hotkey with a very quick repeat rate.
On April 07 2011 11:38 Syben wrote: I have seen the replay and though your idea and theory is a good tip, I dont think it really explains completely all of the shadiness of that players actions
Yes, I did not mean to imply that the replay was an example of this technique. I was just telling the story of what made me decide to experiment. I don't think any human is capable of doing what was in that replay. I don't think my APM goes higher than 300-400 when I do this technique as fast as possible without concern for which Roaches I burrow.
On April 07 2011 11:41 Wolf wrote: Whoa. I wonder if you can do this with blink.
If you managed to adjust your keyboard repeat rate such that it doesn't repeat the keypress before the hotkey is disabled (which I think is dependent on latency), then it would work. However, that doesn't seem practical. You'll occasionally try to Blink a Stalker which is already on cooldown, from what I've tried, which gets you "stuck" in the targeting-cursor mode and you can't select another Stalker without right-clicking.
This probably explains the Map Hack Micro Bot thread, holding down a hotkey DOES cause your APM to shoot up past 600-700. It's the same thing that happens when you hold down Z to make 100 lings at once.
The best keyboard settings to use are: Repeat Rate: Fastest Repeat Delay: Shortest
I think it'd be best to do a combination of the regular method and this one, so you can keep Burrow on the same hotkey. Hold down R when you have to burrow individual Roaches quickly, release it everytime you no longer have to burrow. This would allow you to quickly burrow AND unburrow Roaches while holding R. Seems like it'd work better just as long as you don't hold R for too long (would make the Roach burrow then unburrow).
On April 07 2011 10:50 Bio0rMech wrote: He had 700 APM, thats kinda impossible...
I think he had 700 APM because he held down the burrow hotkey with a very quick repeat rate.
The replay linked is of a hacker. The OP is just saying that it inspired him to look for a better way to do burrow micro, not that the replay uses this technique.
On April 07 2011 11:48 lysergic wrote: This probably explains the Map Hack Micro Bot thread, holding down a hotkey DOES cause your APM to shoot up past 600-700. It's the same thing that happens when you hold down Z to make 100 lings at once.
The best keyboard settings to use are: Repeat Rate: Fastest Repeat Delay: Shortest
I think it'd be best to do a combination of the regular method and this one, so you can keep Burrow on the same hotkey. Hold down R when you have to burrow individual Roaches quickly, release it everytime you no longer have to burrow. This would allow you to quickly burrow AND unburrow Roaches while holding R. Seems like it'd work better just as long as you don't hold R for too long (would make the Roach burrow then unburrow).
No, it doesn't explain the other thread and OP has said this himself. The hacker in that thread is clearly botting and there's no excuse for it. He wasn't even individually selecting his queens and roaches.
On April 07 2011 10:41 smocca wrote: Nice tip. I have had burrow and unburrow on spacebar but I find myself constantly fumbling around if I try to do midbattle micro. I'll give this a shot.
Does anyone know of a roach micro UMS like the marine split challenge? There's always the unit tester but a minigame would be kind of fun.
On April 07 2011 11:41 Wolf wrote: Whoa. I wonder if you can do this with blink.
It wouldn't work quite as well because blink required a target point, but I can imagine holding down B for blink, then click on a unit --> clicking behind army --> repeat to work well.
Stop going on about the hacker. Multiple times individual units were burrowed and unburrowed while not selected or all of them were selected. Anybody got a goddamn micro technique where you don't even click on the unit?
Why would you want to have burrow and unburrow on different hotkeys? For mid-size platoons of roaches you're probably still going to be individually clicking on them one by one...
On April 07 2011 11:48 lysergic wrote: This probably explains the Map Hack Micro Bot thread, holding down a hotkey DOES cause your APM to shoot up past 600-700. It's the same thing that happens when you hold down Z to make 100 lings at once.
The best keyboard settings to use are: Repeat Rate: Fastest Repeat Delay: Shortest
I think it'd be best to do a combination of the regular method and this one, so you can keep Burrow on the same hotkey. Hold down R when you have to burrow individual Roaches quickly, release it everytime you no longer have to burrow. This would allow you to quickly burrow AND unburrow Roaches while holding R. Seems like it'd work better just as long as you don't hold R for too long (would make the Roach burrow then unburrow).
Ugh, if you had watched the replay, the replies in that thread and had a good sense of what is humanly possible in a game, you wouldn't be saying this. It's kinda annoying that people keep pretending he might have been just really good when what he did was literally impossible physically.
On April 07 2011 11:48 lysergic wrote: This probably explains the Map Hack Micro Bot thread, holding down a hotkey DOES cause your APM to shoot up past 600-700. It's the same thing that happens when you hold down Z to make 100 lings at once.
The best keyboard settings to use are: Repeat Rate: Fastest Repeat Delay: Shortest
I think it'd be best to do a combination of the regular method and this one, so you can keep Burrow on the same hotkey. Hold down R when you have to burrow individual Roaches quickly, release it everytime you no longer have to burrow. This would allow you to quickly burrow AND unburrow Roaches while holding R. Seems like it'd work better just as long as you don't hold R for too long (would make the Roach burrow then unburrow).
Ugh, if you had watched the replay, the replies in that thread and had a good sense of what is humanly possible in a game, you wouldn't be saying this. It's kinda annoying that people keep pretending he might have been just really good when what he did was literally impossible physically.
Nice find! I think ill hotkey unburrow to 'T' and give this a shot. With aussie lag I usually have to burrow a roach the second he gets hit to keep them alive
On April 07 2011 11:48 lysergic wrote: This probably explains the Map Hack Micro Bot thread, holding down a hotkey DOES cause your APM to shoot up past 600-700. It's the same thing that happens when you hold down Z to make 100 lings at once.
The best keyboard settings to use are: Repeat Rate: Fastest Repeat Delay: Shortest
I think it'd be best to do a combination of the regular method and this one, so you can keep Burrow on the same hotkey. Hold down R when you have to burrow individual Roaches quickly, release it everytime you no longer have to burrow. This would allow you to quickly burrow AND unburrow Roaches while holding R. Seems like it'd work better just as long as you don't hold R for too long (would make the Roach burrow then unburrow).
No, it doesn't explain the other thread and OP has said this himself. The hacker in that thread is clearly botting and there's no excuse for it. He wasn't even individually selecting his queens and roaches.
And also the hacker not only burrowed the roaches but also move them in a short distance and then unburrowed them
damn, I bound burrow and unburrow to different keys as soon as 1.3 came out but had never thought about holding down burrow and selecting units. Works great, thanks alot for the tip!
On April 07 2011 11:41 Wolf wrote: Whoa. I wonder if you can do this with blink.
It wouldn't work quite as well because blink required a target point, but I can imagine holding down B for blink, then click on a unit --> clicking behind army --> repeat to work well.
holding down B for blink then trying to just click on stalkers and clicking on ground doesn't work at all.
After seeing that guy micro pure roaches against the same number of roaches + infestors I have also been trying to do this micro and I am almost positive that he was cheating, it is so ridiculous that he had 700 APM during that and I am almost positive he was using a 3rd part program. However, I do think burrow roaches can be micro'd efficiently and will continue to work on ways of improving burrow roach techniques, thanks for your thoughts and post!
On April 08 2011 05:06 ruiyang wrote: Sick im gonna make the changes for sure, as should all zergs. Great find, cant believe i didnt think of this myself.
there is really no need for binding burrow on 2 different buttons imo. instead of holding down R and waiting for my roaches to get to red life, i'd rather try microing and burrowing the red ones when i see it. Watching the battle unfold and waiting for red roaches doesnt really seem like something I'd ever do because i wouldn't be able to macro since I'll have to be holding down R (burrow).
On April 08 2011 05:06 ruiyang wrote: Sick im gonna make the changes for sure, as should all zergs. Great find, cant believe i didnt think of this myself.
there is really no need for binding burrow on 2 different buttons imo. instead of holding down R and waiting for my roaches to get to red life, i'd rather try microing and burrowing the red ones when i see it. Watching the battle unfold and waiting for red roaches doesnt really seem like something I'd ever do because i wouldn't be able to macro since I'll have to be holding down R (burrow).
Having burrow on 2 buttons greatly decreases the chance of making a mistake. It makes the burrow command and unburrow command so much clearer and easier to execute.
On April 08 2011 05:12 HEROwithNOlegacy wrote: After seeing that guy micro pure roaches against the same number of roaches + infestors I have also been trying to do this micro and I am almost positive that he was cheating, it is so ridiculous that he had 700 APM during that and I am almost positive he was using a 3rd part program. However, I do think burrow roaches can be micro'd efficiently and will continue to work on ways of improving burrow roach techniques, thanks for your thoughts and post!
people cant still be serious right ?, this has to be a well done troll, you are ''almost positive'' that burrowing roaches without selecting them is a hack ? what a great find of you
I'll deploy this technique next time I have a roach v roach situation . I've been experimenting with roachburrow move to snipe infestors anyway so I already have burrow.
I don't think this is worth it unless you have a clear roach number advantage though, because if you don't outnumber the opponent, macroing will get you back into the fight. If you DO outnumber, you can preserve roaches to continiue drilling into your opponent.
On April 07 2011 10:29 Severian wrote: I very recently saw a replay in this thread that showcased some phenomenal Roach Burrow micro. The consensus seems to be that the person in that replay was hacking, but nevertheless it made me wonder if there was a way to come close to that level of speed when Burrowing injured Roaches individually (or indeed any other Zerg unit, but it's most applicable to Roaches due to the increased health regen). Currently you have to select a Roach then hit the Burrow hotkey (repeat), which adds a small delay to each Burrow. This can result in the Roach's death.
After a few minutes I came up with the following, which I couldn't find anywhere in a search:
First of all, you might want to turn your keyboard repeat rate up, and the repeat delay down. This will probably already have been done for most Zergs as it helps when building units from multiple larva, but it also helps here so I thought I'd mention it. Next, bind the Roach's Burrow and Unburrow commands to different hotkeys. It doesn't matter what they're set to, as long as they're different and comfortable. Then, once you have your group of Roaches and they're fighting the enemy, select an injured one and then HOLD DOWN the Burrow hotkey. After that, click on injured Roaches one-by-one as fast as you can, without letting go of the hotkey. When you don't want to Burrow any more Roaches, let go of the hotkey.
That's it! You can Unburrow regenerated Roaches in the same manner, or by box-selecting, or by selecting all your Roaches and hitting the Unburrow hotkey.
I find this method to be noticeably faster than hitting Click-Burrow-Click-Burrow (it's essentially limited to how fast you can spot an injured Roach and click on it, which I think is optimal -- it removes the delay from pressing the Burrow button individually), and you can't accidentally Unburrow any Roaches you want to keep Burrowed.
The only problem I can see is that it might take a bit to get used to the different Unburrow/Burrow hotkey for Roaches, depending on what you change one/both of them to.
As an aside, this idea was based on my attempt to perform quicker Blink micro by holding down the Blink button. Unfortunately, though, the disablement of the Blink hotkey isn't immediate, so you'll sometimes try to Blink the same Stalker twice, which seems to kill that idea.
i just tried what you suggested and the part where you unburrow the roaches from a control group doesn't work instant, you need to press tab + unburrow, if you think there is any other solution than please share with us? But that tip about holding down burrow hotkey and pressing roaches is golden :D
...one of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments!
I already hold down 'd' when I have my hatches selected as 'd' is my alternate button (I use BOTH 's' and 'd') to select larvae, so by simply holding 'd' I instantly make a drone as soon as a larvae is available. I'd also hold down 'Z', or 'E' for making zerglings or transforming banelings. Why not spam burrow? :D
On April 08 2011 08:30 vojnik wrote: i just tried what you suggested and the part where you unburrow the roaches from a control group doesn't work instant, you need to press tab + unburrow, if you think there is any other solution than please share with us?
Unfortunately that part isn't as easy, as I believe there's no guarantee which order the sub-groups will be in (ie whether you need to press Tab or not). However, as Burrow and Unburrow are on different keys, you can press the Unburrow key safely without accidentally Burrowing anything.
So, if we assume that Unburrow is set to T, we can press:
T, Tab, T
...which will Unburrow all of the selected Roaches.
For anyone that said maybe that guy in the replay wasn't hacking. He was injecting the whole game at perfect times without even selecting his queens. He also didn't have to deelect all his roaches to burrow individual ones.
^^ TO YOU my dear friend, learn to read the OP. He stated that the person in the replay was a hacker, and that he wasn't, he was merely inspired by the amazing power of roach micro in the replay to try to figure out an efficient way to do that kind of micro that way and found it.
To OP: Thanks for the work, very awesome, and I hope to see it used against me... (I kinda deserve it after all my silver league blink rushes vs. zerg... :/)
On April 07 2011 10:50 Bio0rMech wrote: He had 700 APM, thats kinda impossible...
I think he had 700 APM because he held down the burrow hotkey with a very quick repeat rate.
I really doubt he had insane that APM, the fact that the roaches burrowed then moved in the back and were brought up as soon as they had green health with them all selected makes me really doubt he was playing legitimately.
On April 08 2011 15:38 Nightsend wrote: those who find the default repeat rate is still too slow when set to max can increase it further by editing some registries.
On April 07 2011 10:50 Bio0rMech wrote: He had 700 APM, thats kinda impossible...
I think he had 700 APM because he held down the burrow hotkey with a very quick repeat rate.
I really doubt he had insane that APM, the fact that the roaches burrowed then moved in the back and were brought up as soon as they had green health with them all selected makes me really doubt he was playing legitimately.
Yep, I answered the guy without watching the replay, a big mistake as he indeed is hacking.
On April 07 2011 10:41 smocca wrote: Nice tip. I have had burrow and unburrow on spacebar but I find myself constantly fumbling around if I try to do midbattle micro. I'll give this a shot.
Does anyone know of a roach micro UMS like the marine split challenge? There's always the unit tester but a minigame would be kind of fun.
How do u change JUST burrow hotkey? I cant seem to figure it out? And unburrow for that matter.
On April 07 2011 10:41 smocca wrote: Nice tip. I have had burrow and unburrow on spacebar but I find myself constantly fumbling around if I try to do midbattle micro. I'll give this a shot.
Does anyone know of a roach micro UMS like the marine split challenge? There's always the unit tester but a minigame would be kind of fun.
How do u change JUST burrow hotkey? I cant seem to figure it out? And unburrow for that matter.
Go to the Hotkey menu -> select Zerg -> select Roach -> you get 2 windows of actionbuttons, one for being unburrowed and one for being burrowed. Burrow and unburrow are essentially two different actions but are bound to same key by default.
Also regarding the Roach burrow stuff, I tried this on unit tester with 30 roaches against a repaired Planetary Fortress and its not only easy to do, but with average 100-120 overall APM in normal games I managed to burrow micro with 450-500 APM for extended period of time. Also the burrowed roaches flee if they take damage, meaning that if I burrow a roach, and the roach next to it gets hit by the PF splash, the roach runs away from the PF for couple of seconds. This is quite similiar of the behaviour seen in the "hacker replay". I'm not commenting whether or not there was a hack used in the replay, but basically if you can click with 700 APM, you can burrow micro with 700 APM.
Here is a quick and dirty video of the results.
Note that in Starcraft terms, I'm normally really slow 100-120 APM with not that great of a mouse accuracy. Also single PF is easier to micro against than armies, but you get the point what real pros could do with megagosu burrow micro.
On April 09 2011 06:17 Malpractice.248 wrote: So; its under Standard? Does that mean it wont work w/grid ? o.O
That's correct.
I'm a grid user but I wanted to make a few changes so I just recreated grid under a standard hotkey scheme. It doesn't end up exactly like grid, but very close and you can then customize things like this burrow hotkey and anything else.
I think it is completely ridiculous that there has been blink micro for the longest time, but no zergs have done burrow micro... I have a feeling we will soon see zergs actually micro their roach armies... especially for those roach timing attacks with burrow... again... it seems so strange that it still hasn't happened and I have been wondering for awhile.
Of course they still have to macro, but the same goes for every race.
On April 08 2011 11:14 ImmortalTofu wrote: ^^ TO YOU my dear friend, learn to read the OP. He stated that the person in the replay was a hacker, and that he wasn't, he was merely inspired by the amazing power of roach micro in the replay to try to figure out an efficient way to do that kind of micro that way and found it.
To OP: Thanks for the work, very awesome, and I hope to see it used against me... (I kinda deserve it after all my silver league blink rushes vs. zerg... :/)
Where in my post did I direct my comment to OP? Please show me.
On April 07 2011 10:41 smocca wrote: Nice tip. I have had burrow and unburrow on spacebar but I find myself constantly fumbling around if I try to do midbattle micro. I'll give this a shot.
Does anyone know of a roach micro UMS like the marine split challenge? There's always the unit tester but a minigame would be kind of fun.
How do u change JUST burrow hotkey? I cant seem to figure it out? And unburrow for that matter.
Note that in Starcraft terms, I'm normally really slow 100-120 APM with not that great of a mouse accuracy. Also single PF is easier to micro against than armies, but you get the point what real pros could do with megagosu burrow micro.
EPT
