Let's talk about wall walking techniques

[SpiritBreaker]

Let's talk about wall wallking.


Section 1: Finger positioning

Currently the way I do it, is the "issue the build command for the next wall while building the current one".

I'm right handed, using a QWERTY keyboard (Razer Blackwidow, if you're interested). My finger positioning is left index finger for B, left middle finger for W, S, F (depending on what I want to walk with - sometimes it has to be a shelter if I have none built -_-).

And when I want to cancel the current structure, my left hand shifts and I press escape with my left middle finger, and quickly after that press 1 with my left index finger.

So it'd look like (Finger Button):
Index B, Middle W, LC (left click to build), drag select the currently building structure, Middle Esc, Index 1, REPEAT.


Section 2: Wall walking tactics

I usually wall walk at 1 wall-sized gaps. This means that the gap between the current wall and the next wall is the size of one wall. This fails and you die if you are slowed by the Titan's Hunting passive ability. In which case, I'm pretty sure you can only escape more attacks from the titan if you wall walk with no distance between the next wall and the current wall, and only if you do it in the South-West quadrant direction (otherwise you have to walk for a split second rather than starting building instantly, due to the bottom left spawn location rule).

Now, I only have experience wall walking with Faerie, so if you don't have Panic or Blink, the above applies. I'm not sure about Mak, who has a slow aura. Perhaps they can afford to wall walk with further gaps even when slowed?

So, if you are an orc-style builder with no escapes available, what do you do in terms of wall walking? Would you shift queue a few walls adjacent to each other in the South-West quadrant direction, and not cancel one or two (as you need to keep queuing a lot more) and then start cancelling after you have queued quite a few?
Because I can't reliably wall walk with no gaps between the current and next wall. It turns into a sloppy feed walk. (Which is mainly cos I need more practice at speed and accuracy.) Another issue with it is the "I CAN'T BUILD THERE" since you're trying to place it directly adjacent to the current wall and might overlap with the current wall.


Section 3: Blocking the next wall

Another thing fitting to talk about, is how to avoid the Titan blocking your next wall. Be it using the Titan/Minions, Wards, Items, Shade, Mini minis, etc. And likewise, as Titan, how to maximize the chance of you blocking the next wall, and how to capitalize on that if you succeed.

Section 4: Drag select priorities

So this is something that I need to test, but let's discuss it. The way drag-select works, is that it will prioritize certain things over others. I'm not sure EXACTLY what the priorities are, but I'll make a simple map with all the different things to see how it works.

This relevant when you're walking near other things.

"Things" being:
[*] Owned units. (Units including built and unbuilt structures, as well as wards).
[*] Allied units.
[*] Enemy units.
[*] Dropped items and tomes.

I have a feeling that the select priorities will be the following:
1. All owned normal (non-ward, non-structure) units get selected, with a maximum of 12. If more than 12, they are selected according to the drag-select direction.
2. All owned finished buildings will be selected, again with the rule of max 12 applied as outlined above.
3. All owned unfinished buildings will be selected, again with the rule of max 12 applied as outlined above.
4. Owned Wards, again with the rule of max 12 applied as outlined above.
5. One allied or enemy unit (including structures, built or unbuilt), depending on the direction of the drag select.
6. One dropped item/tome, depending on the direction of the drag select.

===

I might make a video later, if needed, to better explain the points.

If you have any tips or advice not related to these sections, still feel free to post them!

/Discuss

PS: I know I have quite a few discussions going on the forum at this stage, but that's the whole point of a forum, isn't it? To be able to pursue different discussions simultaneously and have them archived forever. I even have other topics I want to discuss, but I feel like posting more would be too much for now, as some people might not check everything.

[Lynx]

Me; qwerty keyboard, right handed

1=builder control group

Index B > Pinky W > Drag select wall > Pinky ESC > Pinky 1.

This is only for one wall. If I'm wallwalking I queue up another wall while im inside the one I'm currently building so it is like this;

Index B > Pinky W > Index B > Pinky W > Drag select 1st wall> Pinky ESC > Pinky 1> Index b > Pinky W > Drag select 2nd wall > Pinky ESC > Pinky 1

and so on.

Pro tip, have your ESC and 1 keys next to each other so you can press those two in one swooping motion.

edit, spirit added another section. i might add something else if i feel like it.

Off topic:
who cares if you spam forums, it's nice to see some activity.

[Burn]

Section one input:

1 = builder control group

Index = pointer/second/index finger
ring = fourth/ring finger
middle = third/middle finger

index B> ring W > drag select wall > index/pointer ESC > middle 1

You must have big hands if you can use middle and pointer finger from B to W.

Section two input:

There are multiple ways to wall walk.

The SAFEST way by far, is to finish most of your buildings when you are wall walking. Strategic placement will ensure your safety much more than deny wall walking unless you have low enough delay that you are wall walking faster than the titan is running (RC walking). But in the end, you will always run out of space to wall walk, so you have to still wall at choke points.

Here's a couple videos showing me wall walking with different styles:

Guide to spam wall walk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSguZiKoWqU
In this video, you can see all three types of wall walking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msbng1eeoL0

The best wall walk style is a combination of all the wall walk styles. You use whichever is the best for the scenario, which can be shown here in this 2 year old + video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msbng1eeoL0

Keep in mind I have a much different wall walk style now since it's a 2 year old video , more adjusted to delay, but that video really showcases the multiple wall walk styles well, so I linked it. The titan was controlled by a new player, and the minion controlled by Pongu (Pongu has a bit of delay, but I still have much more delay than Pongu though)

Flag wall walk style: At 0:00 the minion chases me down, but when the minion gets in front of me at 0:09, I see I couldn't build, so I switched to spam wall walk. This was the start, where I was not as used to wall walking, so I got caught off guard by Pongu.

Feed walk style: 0:17 I made a little base for myself, and it didn't even feed, because the minion ran away, and I would've denied it with my builder.

Spam wall walk style: 0:36 I didn't want to get insta-nuked by Demonicus, so I was spam wall walking at the very start, clearly overestimating the titan.

Spam wall walk style: At 1:00 next to the wall, it is clearly the best style in this scenario, where all you need to do is hug the wall, and it's really hard for them to catch up, because you can just make another wall in front of them. At 1:09 the minion catches up by going more south, which is why he caught up to my much delayed 150ms+ wall walk speed.

Shift wall walk style: 0:44 Clearly the titan was new, so I was doing triple shift wall walks implemented into my run, just to mess around with the titan. This is also easier on the fingers, which is the main reason why I do it.

At 1:20, you can see I ran out of space to wall walk, so I had to resort to either feed walking, or blowing my escape ability. In an inhouse, I'd just blow my panic, and wall at the choke point to guarantee safety. (as long as there's a wand deto I guess) Generally in inhouses you shouldn't get yourself in wall walk situations anyway though, if you play well enough, unless titan is aiming you hard.

The wall walk styles explained:

The first wall walk style which is recommended for beginners is flag wall walking.
Basically, you use the move command after you're already inside the wall. This prevents the "you can not build there" if the titan walks on where you previously queued a wall, and allows you to walk before you make another wall. I use this occassionally against decent titans because I have delay, and there's more chance of me surviving.

The second wall walk style is for intermediate players, the spam wall walk
This is the nuke dodge wotw dodge wall walk style, mainly for multiple units.

The third wall walk style is the shifted style. In the example video above it shows me do a triple shift wall, but if you have time, you can do much more than just three walls. This is for super advanced players, since it is hard to pull off, easy to mess up, and really not that practical. It's just for fun against new titans. This is easy to do, but it's seriously not recommended by either decent or beginner wall walkers, the hard part is surviving. I do this only because I'm lazy and it needs less buttons to wall walk.

The fourth wall walk style is where you finish your walls, or more infamously named, the "feed walk". It's really not feed walk, because a minion + map reveal is a hell of a lot more valuable than just a few walls. It's also great for stalling titan early, which creats space for other builders to gold. It's also needed when you run out of room to deny walk.

I'll convert all this to a proper guide later.

-Burn

[SpiritBreaker]

Thanks for yet another excellent reply @Burn. I've read through it once, but will yet have to watch the videos and re-read it in detail.

Off-topic: I don't think I have big hands rofl.


Building wall with Index B, Middle W


Cancelling wall with Middle Esc, Index 1 (drag select then quickly Esc, 1)


Hand-size comparison. The Razer BlackWidow keyboard's dimensions are "Approximate size: 475mm/18.72” (Width) x 171mm/6.74” (Height) x 20mm/0.79” (Depth)". (Taken from here.)

[Burn]

Use http://imgur.com to host your image.

-Burn

[SpiritBreaker]

Tried, wouldn't let me for some reason. Kept failing. Which is weird, because I always use imgur.

What's wrong with Google Drive though? More reliable than imgur anyway. Lol.

[Burn]

i cant see it

-burn

[SpiritBreaker]

Interesting. Let me try to reupload to imgur.

Edit: Still can't. Ffs...

Edit: Uploaded to http://postimg.org, can you see it now?

[SpiritBreaker]

After having watched the video, I'm not sure I understand the difference between the first and second style.

The second style ("spam wall walk") is where you build the next wall while you are in the current one, right?

And the first style ("flag wall walk") is where you cancel the wall first and the build the next one? That cannot be right though because if the titan just attack moves you will be attacked if you don't instantly build another wall, no?

[Burn]

If the titan is above you, then no, because he can't reach you in time until you make another wall.

If the titan is directly under you, yes. But then he'll only get one hit off, then you get a lot more flag wall walks because he just stood still trying to attack you. If you are spam wall walking and he moves directly on your wall, it could mean death. In the video Pongu was being a Bob and attacking the walls instead of attacking me, but later he got better at the very bottom and started chipping at my life.

Also, players are recommended to just blow your escape ability on first hit against a decent titan then start spam wall walking (panic users), not applicable to gnoll/panda. When under panic, the chances of the titan catching up to you is lowered and the panic buff is extended when you are in the structure, theoretically giving you infinite panic.

Flag wall walk is recommended for beginners and advanced players because if you do it fast enough, it is basically the same as spam wall walk anyway, and it's safer to do and thus I recommend it more in inhouses, you'll also be less likely to get stuck in build menu because you're moving in the right direction and not standing still if it gets cancelled.

Also, I forgot to mention RC walking, which is something I do very often. Works best with Arachnid, because his RC is the easiest to be able to drag click. I think Faerie's new RC is good for RC walking now, which is why I play Faerie a lot too. RC walking means you will pop out 4 units instead of just wall, which is 2 units. The problem with RC walking is if you fail the drag click (pretty easy to do for RC for some reason), the titan will catch up and get under you, and you'll likely feed your RC. So you could also use fruit tree so that if you fail the fruit tree, it can even help you by drawing aggro from titan.

-Burn

[ApomTom]

You guys have some interesting key pressing techniques

[Burn]

Also, even in that picture, fourth/ring finger works a lot better than middle finger, but, whatever works for you, I guess.

-Burn

[SpiritBreaker]

I'm experimenting with using the four buttons: `1TabQ

Where ` is Esc, 1 is 1
Tab is B and Q is W

This way I can just keep tapping very fast to wall walk. Since using this method my hand doesn't need to move at all, with enough practice this style of wallking will yield MUCH faster walks, where I can cancel the current wall much faster.

My biggest problem with this method is not giving myself enough selection time and so the Esc goes through before the wall is selected sometimes. But practice will fix that.

If I practice this with shift RC wallking, where I can achieve non-stop RCs being made and instantly cancelled, I can literally outrun the Titan without panic. (If building towards the south-west quadrant, of course.)

Wallwalking is broken.

As for getting Tab and Q back, Razer makes it easy. Fn+1234567890 change the Profile. So I can have Profile 2 be the wall walking one with `, Tab and Q changed, and Profile 1 be the standard WC3 profile. Once I'm done wall walking, I can switch back if I want to use Tab or Q.

[BeeKauzh]

Fn+1234567890 change the Profile. I can have Profile 2 be the wall walking one and Profile 1 be the standard WC3 profile. Once I'm done wall walking, I can switch back

Dude, you like totally have an unfair advantage over me, my keyboard can't do that.
Get bunned pls.

[Lynx]

Razer synapse op