Load balancing through selective multicast replication of data packets in a computer network. Specifically, selective multicast replication entails facilitating the graceful removal or hitless addition of one or more load balancing nodes in a load balancing cluster by multicasting, rather than encapsulating, received data packets from any given client to the load balancing cluster. Further, selective multicast replication considers whether received data packets are synchronize (SYN) or non-synchronize (non-SYN) data packets, in order to employ an appropriate forwarding group towards forwarding the received data packets to one or more appropriate load balancing nodes in the load balancing cluster.