GKG TV Melee Instructional Videos

[Giant Killer General]

I am uploading some videos on my youtube channel of some melee duels I just did with Asmo. I think a lot of people can benefit from these videos. I want to add some instructional commentary to those videos here as well so you can understand what is going on in the videos a bit better.

Melee battles have several key points to them, but those points also have a very important prioritization. You want to make sure the most important points are taken care of first before moving on down the list to the other points. Those key points, from most important to least important, are this:

1) Tight formation - This is the foundation and the most important thing for all melee battles. The first video in the series (the first gimble game) where I lose badly is a good example of this (among other things I did poorly). When one person does this part well and another doesn't, that is where you see the big dominant melee victories.

2) Shaped formation - So once you have your formation nice and tight, you need to give it some shape. Just a standard box formation is a safe bet, but the more breadth you can give your formation to consume the enemy formation, the better. In the videos I demonstrate what I like to call the "smear" technique. I just take a big box formation of all my melee mixed together. I try to put certain unit types in front and some in back. To do this, separate them out by unit type first. Then make a big box with all of them. Then just click to move the box to the left or right, thus smearing the box a bit. You don't wait until they get into the new box, just keep smearing it, but make sure it is still keeping tight. If it loosens up too much then wait longer until the units get closer to their new position, it is a balance. You do this smearing until you get somewhat close to the enemy formation. If you see someone doing a line formation facing up against you, just run to the flank of it and it will force them to try to reposition until they naturally turtle up into a box-like ball anyway. That is why you don't do those. But you can smear your box to give it a little extra breadth without getting flanked like that.

3) Combat Insertion - This is moment of truth, the point where you engage the enemy formation. You want to a gesture click when you are literally just barely outside of melee range of the enemy formation. If you do this too far away, then just let your units close in a bit more for a second or whatever, and then gesture click again. But hopefully you don't lose your formation's shape along the way.

4) Box-select Micro - This is the point where the fight is on, there is nothing else for you to do with your formation at large. It is time to micro. One of the first things I like to do is work from the top down. So the big clumps of units that are moonwalking, box select them, then re-gesture click them. It is the quickest way to get large amounts of units back in the fight ASAP. 3 areas of biggest concern to watch for with this: first, the area right behind your front line in the middle. Usually a bunch of melee units get caught there, you are going to usually want to send them to the flank of the fight if you have too much melee in the middle. Keep some meat on your middle though, don't strip it too thin, or else you will get surrounded later after it crumbles. The other 2 areas are each flank of the formation, usually there are clumps moonwalking, those are very easy to fix with a box-select and a gesture click. You probably shouldn't spend more than 3 seconds or so in this phase of the fight before moving onto individual micro. This is just a gentle push and some quick cleaning to make sure everyone is in the fight right after the combat insertion.

5) Individual Micro - This is individually clicking units as the fight is breaking down. There are tons of things to look for. Beside from offensively microing down enemy units 2v1, 3v1, etc., you also want to defensively micro running your units away that are getting overwhelmed as well. Heals come into play here as well.

And that's pretty much the jist of it. Some things that take a while to know and understand are how each of the melee unit types match up against each other. That takes a lot of practice and honestly even I have forgotten a lot of that since back when I used to do a ton of melee duels. But just going off examples in the videos, here are some comments to make:

When analyzing priority of unit types, whether they should go in front or in back, etc. just think about their damage ability. If they are high DPS units, you want them slightly in the back, but you don't want them so far back that they are out of the fight for a significant amount of time. If they are low DPS units, then that is your meatshield / fodder, put them in front.

-Trow should be given very heavy if not the sole priority of all of your micro. Ideally they are lightly surrounded by a bit of a meatshield from your other units so they can't be hit, but can still kick things. If you could put a melee DPS meter on trow they would easily have the highest DPS obviously, so you want them kicking as much as possible, and taking as little damage as possible at the same time. Watch for exposure on trow as well, both yours and theirs. Use heals to stun enemy trow as needed.

-Myrks you don't actually want to gesture click these, it is better just to noob click them because ideally you actually want myrks to 1v1 melee units. They hit so fast and hard it is a good stun. They actually get less effective if you 2v1, 3v1 units with your myrk. Again, these are high DPS units so they follow very similar guidelines as Trow do.

-Brigands / Warriors are generally your meatshield / fodder units. Notice that thrall are less-so, because thrall actually hit pretty hard and do pretty good damage. This is how I lose the 2nd demise game, because I go in on his brigand formation which takes longer to kill and doesn't do much damage anyway.

Alright I think that's all for now. The videos should be done uploading in the next few hours. Melee battles are more difficult to pull off big dominant victories out of compared to arty battles, but it can still be done. I have always felt that melee was an area for big improvement for a lot of players so I think it is very important. I hope you enjoy the videos.

[Ksiaze]

Looking forward to get links.

[Giant Killer General]

its gkg tv...my youtube channel, everyone should have it bookmarked by now: http://www.youtube.com/user/meanmarinemachine

[adrenaline]

LOL can't believe u posted those 1v1 games... those were probably the worst 1v1s we've ever had...

I warned you. Hunting you down.

[Giant Killer General]

Yes well I wanted to play my best, which I rarely do, so I could show people in the recordings. In order to show my top speed, I needed someone capable of pushing me some which I hadn't had in any of my other videos really. So you made a valuable contribution as well.

EW has been quite challenging to 1v1 lately, I should probably get some videos with him sometime. My activity is a bit shaky right now though.

[shadow]

holy shit adrenaline

my eyes bleeding

I thought u was 5 baller and you play like average myth meat. Fail so hard on this videos. 3 balls at best.
Watching those PG games... where GKG win with 87% left ... is just... fuck you adren.
I think we must make collective legal action against you and compensate moral pain.

And all this excuses through every game. I mean everybody know you a master of 9000 excuses, but also very good player.
WTF WAS THIS SHIT ?
Don't play 1vs1 if you OUT OF YOUR MIND.
holy shit
so much shame
wonder if you ever redeem yourself

[c⁄J⁄Iılk c⁄J⁄Iån ◊§t◊]

GKG could you talk a little about how you decide which units to "smear" in front and which behind? I'd think you'd want your tougher units like mauls or thrall in front, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Is it by dmg, attack speed, or what? I noticed on proving for example that you put your wars in front and your mauls behind, and that on gimble you basically merged the two groups at the last second, with the thrall predominantly on one flank.

[Giant Killer General]

It is basically by DPS, which was the last part of my original post. There is a small factor of toughness as well. So for example, since warriors have a blocking ability, they are a bit tougher, which would make you want to put them in the front even more. I say the toughness is smaller factor because I think there is less of a variance in different melee unit toughness than the variance in their damage.

If I could take the myth unit stats, I would make a formula something like this:

(damage x attack speed) / (health x resistances)
i.e. DAMAGE / TOUGHNESS

You would have some modify warriors and anything else that has blocking / other abilities that might effect it.

Then you could rank everything from top to bottom, the things at the top (high damage vs toughness ratio) you want slightly in the back. The things at the bottom (high toughness vs damage ratio) you want in the front.

There are other factors to consider really though too...myrks have a high attack rate and a high dmg, so like I was saying before, sometimes it is actually better to have them go 1on1 with units instead of 2v1ing, etc. because the more they can flinch enemy melee units, the better.

[c⁄J⁄Iılk c⁄J⁄Iån ◊§t◊]

Ah yea I missed the DPS part, makes sense.

Mauls can block too btw but I guess on proving their DPS outweighs that?

[Giant Killer General]

Well whatever blocking mauls have is shit then anyway. In any case, their dps is certainly the more important thing. Not to mention you have to compare what unit types flinch against what other unit types. Flinches are caused by doing enough % damage to the enemy's health bar in 1 hit I believe.

[par73]

As GKG stated these are Melee Instructional Videos, not ohh look how badly this 'name' played blah blah blah shit. it is easier to be instructional when your opponent allows you to demonstrate.

[pallidice]

GKG how do you record yourself playing myth so i can rewatch myself where ive clicked and if i wanted to show someone else. Program name plz

[punkUser]

On windows you can use Fraps. On Mac I think LN can tell you what he uses.

[Giant Killer General]

I use bandicam which is a lot better than Fraps. You will get better performance out of it, and the major thing is it automatically compresses and encodes it for you right away. I have the paid version, but there is a free version as well.

[punkUser]

Yeah although GKG you gotta do something to fix your audio levels Your videos clip like crazy for some reason.

There are indeed a variety of tools on Windows, but IIRC you're on Mac right?

[pallidice]

yes on a mac