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I know I am not by any means a good or knowledgeable player but hear me out on this one:
In Protoss vs Terran, what do you guys think of doing Corsair/Dark Archon to break a tank siege instead of using Arbiters? The Corsairs would use Disruption web on a tank line as soon as it sets up, and a Dark Archon would feedback Science Vessels that tried to EMP the Corsairs.
In the late-late game, the Protoss can eventually build an arbiter for Recall, using the Corsairs to block any missile turrets that may have been set up.
The biggest threat I can forsee in this build are goliaths. Especially with the range upgrade, they can easily snipe several Corsairs each time one flies in to cast Disruption Web, even if the Protoss player casts at an angle. One solution to this would to be to incorporate more High Templar in one's army than is normal, as once the Disruption Webs are cast, the Goliaths may be able to be stormed, and the tanks certainly can.
What do you guys think? I know I've floated a lot of wacky theories around here but I actually think this one, with some work put into it, might have merit.
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It's a nice theorycraft scenario. In reality, you can pull that off against very slow Terrans, the ones with timings shrug that off, cause they'll kick your ass before you have a large enough ground army. In late game, it might be worth a try, but again: probably supply for army is missing, as well as the time needed to effecitvely control the sairs.
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150/100 minerals and 125 mana is a lot for a single spell and nothing else. Not to mention cost of the fleet beacon and research.
But u can use a single corsair in PvT, if u want to skip robo and tech up straight to carriers. It's very nice to see inside the terran's base.
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Hmm. So are timings the only real problem there? Corsairs build as fast as Zealots, and Arbiters comparatively take a while to build and tech to. So wouldn't a good player be able to get at least 1 or 2 Corsairs with D-web out?
The main thing with D-Web I guess is that if you (theoretically) can pull it off, then the Dragoons get mini free-reign for a while. The Zealots can engage vultures, and if they're lucky, mine-drag them. Once the vultures are taken care of, Dragoons have a few precious seconds of free shots at the tanks.
For me the big question is, does all of that add up to being more valuable than stasis at the time of a push?
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I do think corsairs are under-estimated in the PvT matchup. Although it really has to be at point where the map is being mined out and you have a huge bank and all upgrades maxed and the game is almost getting into a stalemate situation and you would probably be getting carriers alongside (carriers + corsairs + observers is quite good).
The 125 energy requirement is too long of a wait for a "standard" late game PvT. I think in a standard game you want to be using your stargates and gas for arbiters. I do remember a Proleague game in the late 2000s where Pusan went corsairs. I think he got some nice d-webs off and won a few battles but in the end it wasn't enough
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As with all strategies that haven't been explored, there are two limiting factors:
1) Strategic viability
This strategy needs the protoss player to use all three tech-trees of protoss, unless he wishes to forgo going for observers in the terran match-up, a key unit that is not only important for intelligence, but keeping the effectiveness of spider mines to a minimum.
Unless you are talking about extreme late-game situations, where optimizing your economy is less vital, the time needed to build this composition of units will leave the protoss player at the mercy of his enemy.
2) Ease of execution
I've seen professional players play team-melee (three players sharing the responsibilities of a single player), and I've got to say that arbiters, when used at that level of execution (coming from separate angles, and micro-managed individually), are fucking deadly as fuck compared to how mechanically demanding they are.
+ Show Spoiler +
Even if we had a mechanical god who puts Bisu to shame, he would most likely go for arbiters in the terran match-up, due to their ease of execution.
Now, if we were discussing AI programs who are not limited by human limitations in terms of mechanical abilities, I would be less sceptical of your ideas.
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recently I have tried using it in late game, I have not lot of experience with it but the way I did it is make 2-3 corsairs before tech to arbiter, and add beacon and upgrade a bit later, then I used Dwebs + stasis it was great lol
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It is possible if you get a nice advantage in the early / mid game to go corsair / DWeb along with goon / zealot heavy army, instead of doing a full on transition to Carriers, the only issue is that it costs 125 energy to cast a Disruption Web, so it takes the Corsair a little bit of time to build up that energy, on top of that you would need about 4-5 for it to be considerably efficient (taking into consideration that you landed nice DWeb's on top of tanks), and each Corsair will have less energy than the one before it obviously, so there is a lot of timing and execution / build order tweaking that would have to go on in the midst of everything else to make this a cost worth investment.
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you need the arbs more than the Dwebs, Dwebs is more situational than stasis I think, and also arbs give cloack and its significant power increase for your ground army, so you get more out of it for having just a few arbs than a few corsairs, so if T is any close to 200/200 yeah make sure you have stasis not just disruption I think (but show me wrong, huhu^^). Making DAs on top of it sounds like overcommit to me, except for late game scenarios where you have lots of gas.
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On August 13 2017 02:37 blabber wrote:
I do think corsairs are under-estimated in the PvT matchup. Although it really has to be at point where the map is being mined out and you have a huge bank and all upgrades maxed and the game is almost getting into a stalemate situation and you would probably be getting carriers alongside (carriers + corsairs + observers is quite good).
The 125 energy requirement is too long of a wait for a "standard" late game PvT. I think in a standard game you want to be using your stargates and gas for arbiters. I do remember a Proleague game in the late 2000s where Pusan went corsairs. I think he got some nice d-webs off and won a few battles but in the end it wasn't enough
It's definitely true that the Corsair is kind of dead-weight except for the D-Web. Save for a crazy scenario in which someone was successful with this strat and the Terran player built Valkries in order to knock down the Corsairs O.O
I feel like they can be worth it, but it's just something that really brings you down to the wire. The way I would do it personally is that I would always keep my Dragoons/Zealots fairly close to the Terran, spying on him with observers, and the second the Siege Tanks began the "Siege-Up" animation, I would send in the Corsairs and engage immediately. Hopefully what would then happen is the vultures would die quickly, and if Disruption web wore off or if the Terran players moved his/her tanks, it would just be tanks vs Dragoons with a very small gap in between. Which would then allow the Protoss to just run the Dragoons right next to the tanks.
Something truly horrifying for a Protoss player would be if the Terran player sieges juuuuust outside the Disruption Web, and Dragoons have no choice but to go around the tanks in order to be out of the Disruption Web's range. Oh man, oh man.
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Jangbi built a corsair in two different games vs Fantasy in the Jin Air OSL finals. He didn't do much with them though so I'm not sure what the point was besides scouting.
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On August 13 2017 02:37 blabber wrote:
I do remember a Proleague game in the late 2000s where Pusan went corsairs. I think he got some nice d-webs off and won a few battles but in the end it wasn't enough
He did it in a tourney game against Flash. The game would not change anything (Flash was already going to advance, Pusan was knocked out) so Pusan went corsairs as a joke and crowd pleaser.
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I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy.
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The thing that makes the Arbiter the go to unit is that it does many things while the Corsair in this scenario is only good for the one tactic, breaking tank lines.
Arbiters allow you to break tank lines, recall around tank lines and of course provide constant threat of cloaking if the Terran is out of position with his Science Vessels.
The Dark Archons might be a nice trick but again they would pair probably better with Arbiters than with Corsairs.
This is all assuming late game scenarios. Earlier on as Protoss you need a strong ground army and spending resources in support units is very risky due to the timings already mentioned in this thread.
I personally just don't see where Corsairs fit in here.
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On August 13 2017 04:04 radley wrote:
I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy.
Hmm. If you were REALLY smart with how you placed your D-webs, than maybe you could theoretically place some right on the tank line and some right behind it so you can box in some of them or something but idk.
If you're unsieged then it's also easier to fight you if you have a lot of Zealots, which, depending on the map, you may have if you have a shortage of Corsairs.
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On August 13 2017 04:15 Vindicare605 wrote:
The thing that makes the Arbiter the go to unit is that it does many things while the Corsair in this scenario is only good for the one tactic, breaking tank lines.
Arbiters allow you to break tank lines, recall around tank lines and of course provide constant threat of cloaking if the Terran is out of position with his Science Vessels.
The Dark Archons might be a nice trick but again they would pair probably better with Arbiters than with Corsairs.
This is all assuming late game scenarios. Earlier on as Protoss you need a strong ground army and spending resources in support units is very risky due to the timings already mentioned in this thread.
I personally just don't see where Corsairs fit in here.
So the theory goes like this: Many, many Dragoons/Zealots + Arbiters are typically needed to fight in PvT. And that's true for StarCraft in general, one of the reasons macro is so important is that, well, you need a lot of units!
If you pull of the Disruption Web tactic effectively, then you can lose a lot less Dragoons/Zealots than normal, allowing you to pool the leftover resources into more buildings, upgrades, or whatever floats your boat.
That's really the main advantage over arbiters, the tank line scenario. You don't have to face Tanks head on as much if you pull it off. That and if you get really good at it, you can do some serious mine-dragging if the Terran incorporates missile turrets into the push.
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I use corsairs in PvT occasionally, just to have fun. After many games, I came to the conclusion, that it is a terrible idea. Here is, what I have observed:
- I can crush first terran push, but I can never break any of his base afterwards, because I have already spent all mana. Also, his bases are covered with turrets and mines and tanks are spread on cliffs and also come out of factories, so there is really nothing to dweb to.
- If terran goes heavy on vultures, than I cast the spell, than spend all the time to kill vultures and mines and when the spell wears off, tanks just kill my goons
- Sairs, spell and goons are gas heavy. I end up with too many minerals. If I want to go for zealots and legs too, than I just die to a timing attack, because citadel, legs, fleat beacon, dweb and sairs means, than my army is tiny.
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On August 13 2017 04:34 jtkirk wrote:
I use corsairs in PvT occasionally, just to have fun. After many games, I came to the conclusion, that it is a terrible idea. Here is, what I have observed:
- I can crush first terran push, but I can never break any of his base afterwards, because I have already spent all mana. Also, his bases are covered with turrets and mines and tanks are spread on cliffs and also come out of factories, so there is really nothing to dweb to.
- If terran goes heavy on vultures, than I cast the spell, than spend all the time to kill vultures and mines and when the spell wears off, tanks just kill my goons
- Sairs, spell and goons are gas heavy. I end up with too many minerals. If I want to go for zealots and legs too, than I just die to a timing attack, because citadel, legs, fleat beacon, dweb and sairs means, than my army is tiny.
Interesting experience. If you don't mind me asking, have you ever tried using High Templar for the later pushes? If you can storm vultures, and still shoot at them with the goons, you can probably kill them quickly.
Honestly for ending the game and destroying the bases, you either have to get the energy upgrade, get arbiters, or even carriers. You'd need a lot of full energy, upgraded corsairs to consistently attack and destroy bases while fending off pushes.
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On August 13 2017 04:24 UndeadProtoss wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2017 04:04 radley wrote:
I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy. Hmm. If you were REALLY smart with how you placed your D-webs, than maybe you could theoretically place some right on the tank line and some right behind it so you can box in some of them or something but idk. If you're unsieged then it's also easier to fight you if you have a lot of Zealots, which, depending on the map, you may have if you have a shortage of Corsairs.
Yeah mass zealots are really good against siege tanks, but when they are sieged... (-_-; )
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On August 13 2017 04:42 radley wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2017 04:24 UndeadProtoss wrote:On August 13 2017 04:04 radley wrote:
I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy. Hmm. If you were REALLY smart with how you placed your D-webs, than maybe you could theoretically place some right on the tank line and some right behind it so you can box in some of them or something but idk. If you're unsieged then it's also easier to fight you if you have a lot of Zealots, which, depending on the map, you may have if you have a shortage of Corsairs. Yeah mass zealots are really good against siege tanks, but when they are sieged... (-_-; )
Having Corsairs AND observors AND High Templar is very gas intensive and would likely mean you'd have a small army, but depending on the point of the game, high templar would be effective since they could storm the tanks from behind the dragoons and destroy them while the Zealots are taking the damage.
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EPT
