GKG TV Melee Instructional Videos
Posted: 03 May 2013, 19:29
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.
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.
Your videos clip like crazy for some reason.