Some people might think that micro comes naturally to you and can't be learned through hard work. But for a long time I have been trying to figure out a way of teaching the technique. Most pro players learn marine splitting by themselves and get good at it, but learning it is a slow process of figuring out things and almost endless clicking.
The aim of this guide is to accelerate your learning so that you won't need to put in quite as much effort as if you learned on your own. Keep in mind that these are my opinions, and you may find some parts more useful than others.
Before you start:
Marine splitting is not something that can be learned just by watching somebody else do it. It requires a lot of practice. But hopefully this guide can help speed up that process and provide some pointers.
Marine Splitting is a skill that, like other aspects of Starcraft 2, depends on hand-eye coordination, APM and fast thinking. Sure, the quicker you are, the better you can marine split (in theory), however speed is just one of the factors among others. The other factors include accuracy, efficiency and choice of moves. Most of these can be greatly improved with experience.
It is possible to split in any direction - not only in diagonals, but you should practice splitting in each direction separately. People usually find splitting in certain directions harder than others. This is because your hand uses different muscles to move in different directions. This is why it is important to train your “muscle memory” for each direction separately.
Hopefully you don't get surrounded from all directions like this!
Pick 4 directions to practice - You may choose to do diagonal directions or straight compass directions, it doesn't matter which you choose. Realistically, you're not going to need to practice all 8 directions separately, as that is very unnecessary in an actual game and makes little difference whether you go a few degrees one way or the other.
You will find that you progress faster overall if you stick with one or two directions first and get good at them before moving onto other directions, instead of practicing in all directions randomly. In a real game, you don’t get to decide which direction you run towards, therefore you should practice all of them.
To start off, I’d recommend starting by practicing on Unit Test Map. If you think you are already quite good at marine splitting, you could still do this to improve. Make about 16 marines and bunch them up, and try to split them in just 6 moves in a particular direction, where 1 move means 1 move command.
Start with 16 marines bunched up:
So what you do is split up your 16 marines in 6 moves, then bunch them back together and repeat, until you can split them well. You should aim to get your split down to under 3 seconds if possible (that gives you half a second per move). Don’t try to go too fast at the expense of accuracy. You should be able select what you want to select with reasonable accuracy. It doesn’t matter if each move takes a whole second to do. Do this over and over again until you can split them well, and at less than 3 seconds, for each direction.
This is what your 6 moves might look like if you choose to run to the right first.
The order in which you do moves 1-6 in the picutre is irrelevant. You may find doing 1, 4, 2, 5, 3, 6 easier, or any other order. This is not the only way to split, it is just an example.
Remember, there are no banelings involved in this, you should be splitting against “imaginary” banelings. This is to speed up the initial learning process (if you had to remake your marines and banelings each time, it would take a lot longer and not really help).
Keep in mind that splitting in larger groups of marines (30+) is not as simple as this. If you split out 60 marines into groups of 3s, you'd be clicking 20 times, which is ridiculously inefficient. There are more efficient ways to split which you will learn later.
Once you are good at this, you should test doing it against some banelings and see how many marines you can keep alive. Against 6 banelings, you should only lose at most 1-3 marines out of 16. Against 12 banelings, you should be able to have 5-6 marines remaining.
Practise this with banelings approaching from all directions – above you, below you, right or left. You should be able to do it in any direction. Then move up to a higher number of marines and do the same. Keep limiting yourself to 6 moves – this is important because anyone can split up a large group of marines in 20 moves. You won’t have time for that in a real game.
All these techniques are demonstrated in my video guide below, in more detail.
Practicing in Marine Split Challenge/Other Custom Maps
If you’ve been doing practising the first stage in the above sections, the chances are you’ve got bored of it before being able to reach perfection, and that’s understandable. You probably want to try practicing in a more realistic scenario and to test your skills. This is where marine split challenge helps.
In this map, Banelings come at you from any of 4 random directions each round. It can be hard to focus splitting in one direction because each round gives you a ¼ chance of getting the direction you want to improve at, which can be frustrating. One way around this is to wait until they come from the direction you want, or to just do your split pretending that they are coming from the right direction and see what happens.
In my opinion, marine split challenge is the best map to practice on (You can choose to enable or disable creep and stim). There are other maps out there though (There was one I found a while ago in which banelings always spawned in the same place and you start with many more marines, but I can’t find that map anymore). And the advantage to marine split challenge is that your progress is easy to measure.
Try getting up to level 10 first, then try to beat that level the next time you play. You will find that it becomes increasingly difficult and you will not perform consistently every day. You may find it easy to get up to level 20 one day but then very hard the next – this is natural. Consistency is learnt with time.
Don’t over obsess about the level you can get to (like I did). This ends up being counter-productive as you start to play in a way that gets you a higher level, but is rarely applicable to real games. I’ve linked a couple of videos that show some micro techniques used which can be copied.
This video demonstrates the things mentioned in this guide and quite a bit more on how to do certain marine splitting tricks. It breaks down the whole splitting process into smaller chunks that can be practiced and improved on:
And here’s another guide which I made just over a year ago. It explains how to split by selecting lines of marines from a group, which is a good way to improve mouse accuracy and speed.
In most pro games, marine splits last about 5 or 6 moves. It’s normally over in a few seconds but can be longer with late-game armies of 80+ marines. If you spend over 10 seconds just marine splitting without macroing in a 1v1, you could be wasting time that is better spent macroing. An exception to this is late game with very large armies (e.g. in that Happy video) where winning the fight and maintaining map control is a top priority.
You don't have to have insane APM to do efficient splits, and that is shown in this video. Each move is paused and demonstrated, showing which marines are moved where at every move. There are only about 7 moves in total, and all the clicking in between isn't entirely necessary.
Learning splitting in practice against an AI is one thing, splitting in a real game is another. However, the skills you need are roughly the same in either one, and there is a link between how well you can do in practice and how well you can do in a real game.
As you get better, you find yourself wanting to make more and more marines in TvZ to put your skills to the test. And then when the moment comes where you need to do a good split, you mess up and your hands freeze, or you completely forget what you've learned. This is normal, and can be removed with experience. It doesn't take that many games to be able to reach a similar level in a real game to what you can do in practice.
You may also be distracted by the addition of zerglings and mutas, or roaches. There is a custom map that throws lings into the mix (I think it's called Ultimate Marine Split challenge or something), but from what I've noticed, the addition of lings doesn't make that much difference to what you need to do - split your marines up as best you can. Obviously if there are only 2-4 banelings, you target them with your marines before they explode on you, however if there are too many banelings to target, splitting up is the best way to fight it. Keep in mind that you should be watching where the banelings are going and splitting appropriately, and once the banelings are dead, you should no longer be splitting but stutter stepping if possible.
Another difference of playing in a real game to practicing is the map's influence on which direction you can run. Don't get trapped in narrow areas where you can't escape, or surrounded from two directions. All of this can be avoided with experience.
Keep in mind that applying your practice skills to real games takes time, but no where near as much time as it takes to improve your skills in practice. I personally spend a lot of time marine splitting. However keep in mind that if your goal is to become better at 1v1s, then you should spend more like 80% of your time practicing 1v1s and only a small portion of your time practicing marine splitting.
Here’s a slow motion video of IM.MVP’s marine split – this shows how marine splits usually involve only 6 or 7 “effective” moves for the duration of the fight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7EWCMC0-uE
Innovation splitting in front of the crowd - not sure which event this was but it was on GOMTV. Btw the crowd and casters are getting a little over-hyped. Sure the split is good but far from the best I've seen!
Beatimg Innovation's split in practise
MKP Splitting in first person - this was captured from his stream. This is also analyzed near the end of my second guide.
And of course the original MKP micro that made him famous in the community.
I'll try and keep this as short as possible, but I've got quite a lot to say! Marine splitting is a technique that I fell in love with a couple of years ago after seeing the insane splits that MarineKing was doing in tournament matches. After seeing his amazing micro I was inspired to copy his technique and have been practicing regularly to try and achieve that goal.
So I practiced for hours, not only because it is a decent way to improve at TvZ in 1v1s but also because I thought it was a very cool skill to have in SC2. The other reason for practicing it was to measure my own abilities and see if I could rival that of the top players, at least in theory.
Having practiced marine splitting regularly (maybe 30mins-1hour a week on average) for over a year, after each month or two I was getting significantly better at it than before - and I started to get more satisfied with my improvement. It’s a good feeling when you split well in a 1v1 match and get complimented by your opponent for playing well or having good micro.
I have made a couple of video guides on marine splitting - if you're interested in watching them, check out the video guides spoiler below.
Does anyone know what mouse settings pro terrans use? I heard MKP uses 800dpi and Taeja uses 1200, but I don't know if its true or not. It sure would make a difference, potentially
hey, for your information Darglein´s micro trainer has a marine split section where the banes come only from 1 corner. it also gives you options to dis- enable Creep, speed, LINGS, Stim and CS.
On December 15 2013 14:52 CutTheEnemy wrote: Does anyone know what mouse settings pro terrans use? I heard MKP uses 800dpi and Taeja uses 1200, but I don't know if its true or not. It sure would make a difference, potentially
The settnings that you feel comfortable with are the best 800 and 1200 are both really good dpi.
On December 15 2013 14:52 CutTheEnemy wrote: Does anyone know what mouse settings pro terrans use? I heard MKP uses 800dpi and Taeja uses 1200, but I don't know if its true or not. It sure would make a difference, potentially
As for mouse sensitivity, you can figure out what the best sensitivity is for you fairly quickly.
The main 2 factors to consider in mouse sensitivity are these:
1) Ability to select a single marine reasonably quickly and accurately. This gets harder the higher the sensitivity is. But you will need to keep your sensitivity low enough to be able to select an individual marine without taking several seconds.
2) Ability to move the mouse from one edge of the screen to the other without moving your hand too far. For me, I would never select a sensitivity that is so low that I couldn't move from the left edge to the right edge in one swift movement. This means that my sensitivity is set high enough to be able to move across the screen without moving my arm at all.
So in conclusion, you want to have your sensitivity high enough to move to across the entire screen fast (this is to jump between units you need to select, to scroll the screen, etc). and low enough that you can select individual targets.
In general, I choose the lowest possible sensitivity that allows me to do 2) - going much higher than that provides very little benefit to mouse speed and just makes selecting units harder.
You know I think a couple of very simple steps will make huge improvements in your splitting, which is governed by this one immutable law:
Technique always comes before speed.
This I is true for anything I've ever done, be it Starcraft, Snowboarding, Golf or Counter Strike. Slowing everything down where you have close to 100% accuracy is the best approach. Later on, the speed comes naturally, not forced.
Same with playing Starcraft in general, low APM, correct movements, and basic solid macro. Playing fast is the natural side affect of knowing exactly what you are doing. You can't play fast for the sake of it because it doesn't do anything if you are only somewhat sure of what you are doing.
I disagree when you say that splitting vs. lings and banelings isn't any different than splitting against pure banelings. When you split against banes, you don't need to worry about dps at all, so you can just keep splitting and splitting your whole army without pause for the marines to fire. Also, it doesn't matter if you split your marines super far from the action, where they are needed. Against lings, though, you do need to get some dps in there, so you have to perfect splitting only where the banelings are, and not splitting any more than you need to. I don't know how many times I've been in a battle agaisnt ling/bling and just split all over the place, not letting the marines shoot. All the banes get killed but then there are still a ton of lings left. If you watch the best terrans split, like innovation, or taeja, their splits are very tightly controlled, and require minimal actions. Often they just split their army into 2 groups and run away the front lines while the banes all die, as opposed to reflexively splitting all their marines whenever they see a group of banelings. For instance, in the video of Innovation's marine splitting, he ONLY splits the marines that the banes are heading towards and thus maintains a better overall dps, instead of splitting everything all over the place.
On December 15 2013 14:52 CutTheEnemy wrote: Does anyone know what mouse settings pro terrans use? I heard MKP uses 800dpi and Taeja uses 1200, but I don't know if its true or not. It sure would make a difference, potentially
The settnings that you feel comfortable with are the best 800 and 1200 are both really good dpi.
Gumiho uses 400, presumably on a very low resolution. I use 1000 dpi playing on 1920x1080. 800 dpi playing on 1600x900, 400 dpi on 800x600. that gives me 2 inches to move the mouse cursor from the left edge of the screen to the right. most pros have 2-3 inches of horizontal mouse movement.
^ Yep, 800 is really great for me cause I can cross the screen without lifting my hand and still be quite precise. I'd like to lower it a bit but then it's too hard to click the minimap :< Also, what Pinhead said is true, you don't split the same against pure banes and ling banes. But knowing how to split against pure banes is always useful, plus it still improves your accuracy and speed to play MSC. I'm decent at MSC (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCr3jfc88I4 would be my best one I think, lvl 25 but on the custom game version not arcade, I guess they are the same though), but I don't split like that in actual games at all.
On December 31 2013 11:35 PinheadXXXXXX wrote: I disagree when you say that splitting vs. lings and banelings isn't any different than splitting against pure banelings. When you split against banes, you don't need to worry about dps at all, so you can just keep splitting and splitting your whole army without pause for the marines to fire. Also, it doesn't matter if you split your marines super far from the action, where they are needed. Against lings, though, you do need to get some dps in there, so you have to perfect splitting only where the banelings are, and not splitting any more than you need to. I don't know how many times I've been in a battle agaisnt ling/bling and just split all over the place, not letting the marines shoot. All the banes get killed but then there are still a ton of lings left. If you watch the best terrans split, like innovation, or taeja, their splits are very tightly controlled, and require minimal actions. Often they just split their army into 2 groups and run away the front lines while the banes all die, as opposed to reflexively splitting all their marines whenever they see a group of banelings. For instance, in the video of Innovation's marine splitting, he ONLY splits the marines that the banes are heading towards and thus maintains a better overall dps, instead of splitting everything all over the place.
Just to answer to this- I don't disagree entirely with what you say, but it depends on the situation. Sometimes you are better off targeting the banelings (for example if there are only 5 banelings and 20 zerglings). But sometimes you just need to split as much as you can (for example vs. 15 banelings and 20 zerglings). If the ratio of banes to zerglings is somewhere in the middle, then you are often better off only splitting, say, half of your army.
Also you're perspective of the "best terrans" splitting amazingly well is blown slightly out of proportion. Their splitting is far from perfect if you look at the units traded. Sure they are pretty tightly controlled most of the time, but they almost always could have traded units better by splitting out further.
To prove my point, I made a quick video showing how it was far from perfect splitting - even though it looked cool.
No offense, but I don't think the way you split is practical in real games. Don't forget the zerg will try to micro his units as well. Imagine if zerg would a-move at the moment your marines were surrounding the banelings. The banelings would spread in all directions, and from that point I don't think it's humanly possible to split from that position.
The way Innovation splits is more reactive and would also work if it was ling/bling instead of pure baneling - like in real games. He only splits when necessary, and does so the last moment before a baneling would connect. His marines spend way less time moving, and more time attacking which is something that shouldn't be overlooked. And he keeps everything more "together" which is good for multiple reasons.
Nonetheless, your split was more successful by the numbers and that's pretty cool. But it's really not fair to say you were closer to "perfect splitting" than he was.
No offense, but I don't think the way you split is practical in real games. Don't forget the zerg will try to micro his units as well. Imagine if zerg would a-move at the moment your marines were surrounding the banelings. The banelings would spread in all directions, and from that point I don't think it's humanly possible to split from that position.
The way Innovation splits is more reactive and would also work if it was ling/bling instead of pure baneling - like in real games. He only splits when necessary, and does so the last moment before a baneling would connect. His marines spend way less time moving, and more time attacking which is something that shouldn't be overlooked. And he keeps everything more "together" which is good for multiple reasons.
Nonetheless, your split was more successful by the numbers and that's pretty cool. But it's really not fair to say you were closer to "perfect splitting" than he was.
Fair enough, you're entitled to your own opinion, but there are some flaws in your argument... If you actually took a closer look at my splitting, I always micro the marines closest to the banelings so even if the banelings were microd it would make little difference. I keep enough distance to the banelings to be able to react to changes in direction. Secondly, did you realise that the baneling's pathing in innovations split bugged out? half the banelings stopped for like 4 seconds allowing him to just shoot down the other half much quicker. This is 1 split we're talking about here - it means nothing.
Also - microing against pure banelings is one thing, and against ling/blings is another - there's nothing saying you have to pick one style for both of them. Same goes for if you're microing vs infestor/ling/bling, ultra/ling/bling, etc. As for what looks cooler, well I can't really argue against that lol
I have a weird issue with this sort of micro. It stresses my hands/arms out. After I'm done gaming since switching to terran my arms hurt constantly. What can you do to prevent this? I haven't played much since this began, it has been very uncomfortable.
On January 10 2014 18:38 CutTheEnemy wrote: I have a weird issue with this sort of micro. It stresses my hands/arms out. After I'm done gaming since switching to terran my arms hurt constantly. What can you do to prevent this? I haven't played much since this began, it has been very uncomfortable.
Aside from the usual recommendations on good position (you can find a Day9 video on that, see spoiler), I would fiddle with your mouse DPI settings if you can and make it more or less sensitive. At 800 DPI and in 1080p, you're forced to kinda use your whole arm to do some moves, so it doesn't put as much stress on your wrist. Conversely, if you're already using a low DPI, try to set it higher (to like 1800) and use mostly your wrist instead of your arm if your arm is hurting. You'll lose in precision at first, but once you get used it you'll find that maybe you're even more precise than before, and it doesnt hurt as much