|
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.
|
wow this seems really helpful, cant wait to try it. i had no idea you could just hold the burrow hotkey down and click haha.
|
Nifty, be sure to try that out, thanks 
|
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.
|
Oh man, I see some really wonderful things coming from this idea.
can't wait till there are some replays showcasing legit sweet roach burrow micro in the style of that hacker......if only I played zerg.
Oh well, this is a wonderful find OP.
|
He had 700 APM, thats kinda impossible...
|
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)
|
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.
|
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.
|
Canada13389 Posts
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.
|
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 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 11:27 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
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
