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This article is about the gameplay tactic. You may be looking for:

Dancing, also called kiting, refers to a hit and run tactic, retreating with ranged troops while they are in cooldown. This forces enemy units to stop attacking and chase them, as well as letting you make a controlled retreat towards another location. Dancing takes advantage of how cooldown counts down even while units are moving.

To dance a group, right-click move in the desired direction. Once the cooldown should be done, hit hold position to force the group to stop, wait for them to fire on the enemy, and then repeat the process. Hold position allows many units to attack faster than stop, which causes their cooldown to reset.[1]
If you are particularly fast and want a specific target, you can hit right-click a target to attack it rather than hold position once the cooldown is complete.

This advanced tactic counters focus firing if you dance the one focused-on unit away, causing the focus firers to chase him while the rest of your units get free shots.

Dancing Units[]

StarCraft[]

Dancing is most common with dragoons, whose high hit points, speed, and long cooldown make it easiest to pull off, and vultures, whose speed allows them to dart past and shoot without getting stopped. Hydralisks are also common, particularly when dodging psionic storm.

Units with instant-fire attack animations, such as wraiths, mutalisks, and vultures, can dance using patrol without having to stop moving.

StarCraft II[]

Stalkers can dance even more effectively using the blink ability.[2]

To kite against melee units, the ranged units must have a speed advantage over their opponents. Marauders can kite non-massive opponents since their attacks slow down non-massive enemies, while any zerg ranged ground unit can kite effectively on creep since they gain a speed bonus (enabling them to retreat more quickly).

References[]

  1. JimBobRay. January 25, 2007. How to dance goons?. Teamliquid.net Forum. Accessed 2022-05-15.
  2. Karune. 2008-07-16. StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 41. Battle.net StarCraft II General Discussion Forum. Accessed 2008-07-16.
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