Just my impressions, when those units can be useful, which I got after playing, as well as watching a lot of pro videos. Feel free to correct if I am wrong.
Dark archon
Great counter to mutas: maelstorm prevents them from sniping HTs. Popular even on pro level. However DAs are almost never built for other purposes than anti-muta. Maelstorm does not work on non-zerg units, and it does not make sense to freeze anything except muts and ultras. And ultras are rarely seen in ZvP. Although it can be used on a big clump of hydras and lurkers, too.
Mind control has only single very niche use: steal SCV when protoss get maxed, to put terran on death clock timer. Does not work on pro level, though.
In theory mind control could also be used to counter shuttle drops in PvP, but games mostly end before someone can get a DA and research spell. Also it hard counters carriers and BCs, but both are not built vs protoss...
Feedback is sometimes used on defilers and high templars. Very cost efficient counter, though not popular on pro level.
Queen
Popular great counter to mech on pro level - since only pros have enough apm to micro multiple queens. Killing tanks with spawn broodlings is extremely cost efficient, because queens often survive. And there is no direct counter to them for terran (irradiates and goliaths do not kill them fast enough to save tanks, EMP needs a very lucky hit) except rushing zerg before losing too many tanks.
Spawn broodlings is also seen sometimes in very late ZvP, when protoss builds extremely well defended bases (cannons, reavers, HTs with full energy, archons). The only way to break them is super cost inefficient attacks or guardians switch. But storms counters guardians. Mutas cannot snipe HTs because of archons. So queens become a logical choice. Once HTs are gone, even if protoss can afford restarting production of corsairs, they will not be able to kill guardians before it is too late.
Ensnare is used for countering mass wraiths, if terran player`s micro is too good and wraiths are too annoying. Ensnared wraiths cannot cloak and get killed by mutas very easily.
Also rarely seen in muta wars. Spending resources on queen and ensnare instead of more mutalisks is risky, unless you already have huge army, but it pays off later: ensnaring stack of mutalisks basically guarantees a victory.
Parasite is hardly ever seen. Maybe if zerg for some reason has a queen with energy and nothing else to do, or needs to see where HTs are on super defended base in very late game.
In theory can be good vs mech, giving vision of the Terran mech army, and to put on a SV, since a SV already costs more than a queen, so for 75 energy you've either forced Terran to throw away a unit that costs more than queen or giv yourself a vision advantage.
Guardian
Guardians can be very good in very late ZvP - see above.
Also a couple of guardians can annoy protoss with probes harassing behind mineral lines, once corsairs are gone.
Sometimes guardian rush can surprise and destroy terran, since they ignore turrets due to very long range and twoshot marines. Fast guardians also can protect against siege tank pushes, at least in theory.
Devourer
Generally useless unit. In theory their acid spores are great help in muta wars, but sadly ZvZ almost never reachs hive tech.
In theory they also counter carriers+corsairs thanks to high armor and buffing mutalisks attacks, but who would build carriers in PvZ...
Ghost
Trash unit, except for very rarely seen nuke rush build or equally rare nuking of tank lines in late TvT.
In theory their lockdown is perfect counter to BCs and carriers, but cost, research time, vulnerability and most importantly micro demands result in everyone skipping ghosts.
Scout
Trash unit. They get built only to humiliate inferior players.
Infested terran
A joke, not an unit. Never seen in competitive games, the only exception were decades old ZvP games on one old weird map, which had neutral command CC, so zerg could infest it, and they were surprisingly strong in that matchup. But it is no longer actual.
P.S. Imho it is a pity that arbiters are not seen in late PvZ. Cloak is annoying since it forces zerg to always have many overlords with his army (and lose them, if he is forced to retreat after the battle). Surprise recall could bypass standard sunken-lurker defense and wreck zerg tiny base with all their precious tech structures, as well as some production: late game protoss army has very high damage output. And archons or stasis on ramp would make counterattacking really hard.
P.P.S. On island maps things are different. Protoss can use DAs mind controlling shuttles, and ensnare and devourers used against corsairs. But those maps are not competitive anymore unfortunately.
I would disagree with Devourer part, I think it is actually by design a very solid units on its own. The only reason it doesn't get used enough or very much at all is because of defiler make zerg ground units way too cost effective.
I think in some iteration of strategy that queen is almost a must in Z v T in some cases, it just does enough damage to make terran has to lift the CC then you steal it to deny them a comeback chance or basically a huge economy blow.
I think for the longest time as a kid I try to come up with build that involves dark archon to mind control their shuttle with 2 reavers in it , LMAO, it was fun when it worked, which is very very rare, LMAO.
The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
/cries in dweb Maybe with all the scourge/5muta meta and turtling behind walls from Z's we'd see it more, but jesus christ, the thing is a 500/400 with beacon included, takes 125 energy and lasts only like 15 seconds - slightly longer than it takes to make one worker...
And the energy takes so long to gather, that you could start beacon after your last sair is done, and by the time the web is done, the corsair will be a few seconds away from the cast.
For contrast: dark swarm lasts 2.5x longer, has a much larger radius, is not as easy to counter as "move out of it", and is free energy-wise.
Kinda want to see a scouting corsair in at least PvT, though - you can go from nothing to corsair across the map in 1:30-ish, and it takes around 2:20+ for an obs(shuttle first scouts can be faster, this is why we see shuttle scout sometimes). Could be used for either dweb transition later, or just the solo sair to distract turrets for the shuttle.
But fitting it in is very awkward...maybe you could delay robo/obs if very fast scouting lets you avoid having to pull back goons against possible drops, zoning out the vultures longer. But if you try to use that tempo advantage to e.g. grab a faster third, on most maps it'd still be hard for T to mine up one of the routes and use it to siege up nearby for free. Maybe you could use it to grab a 5:30-ish 3rd on no robo vs 1 fac armory builds, but everyone is going 2 fac these days, anyway. And you can't really deny a mine triple from Terran with this, best you'd get is an early heads up to go greedy yourself.
Fun fact: it takes comparable time to get dweb(and necessary energy) on 3 sairs, as it is to get robo -> obs -> shuttle -> reaver -> fly the slow shuttle across. Of course, you'd still need an observer when going sairs, and sairs are almost dead weight for 4 minutes...
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
I love scout, especially the few time people block their probe in with pylon, so they can stack scout like muta stack micro, is super cool
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
Great unit, really? What openings are viable? Corsairs are much stronger vs zerg, and even then do not last long.
On December 19 2024 12:22 TT1 wrote: i saw the ULTRA DEVO (HEAVY GAS UNIT + HEAVY MINERAL UNIT = COST BALANCED strong comp) combo used on artosis' stream many times
ultra wipes out ground and devo wipes out air, its the ultimate a move wombo
But ultras cannot wipe out protoss armies... And do not do much vs upgraded terran army without defiler support.
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
Great unit, really? What openings are viable? Corsairs are much stronger vs zerg, and even then do not last long.
On December 19 2024 12:22 TT1 wrote: i saw the ULTRA DEVO (HEAVY GAS UNIT + HEAVY MINERAL UNIT = COST BALANCED strong comp) combo used on artosis' stream many times
ultra wipes out ground and devo wipes out air, its the ultimate a move wombo
But ultras cannot wipe out protoss armies... And do not do much vs upgraded terran army without defiler support.
I think scout was viable for a while in early time, I do recall when people figure out if you jail a probe between pylon/mineral you can stack them like muta, it was used for a while. But that was so long ago, which means people were not as good as now.
Utral do wipe out protoss ground, cause it tanks so much zerglings clean floor like nothing. SC2 zerglings are so dogshit.
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
Great unit, really? What openings are viable? Corsairs are much stronger vs zerg, and even then do not last long.
On December 19 2024 12:22 TT1 wrote: i saw the ULTRA DEVO (HEAVY GAS UNIT + HEAVY MINERAL UNIT = COST BALANCED strong comp) combo used on artosis' stream many times
ultra wipes out ground and devo wipes out air, its the ultimate a move wombo
But ultras cannot wipe out protoss armies... And do not do much vs upgraded terran army without defiler support.
I think scout was viable for a while in early time, I do recall when people figure out if you jail a probe between pylon/mineral you can stack them like muta, it was used for a while. But that was so long ago, which means people were not as good as now.
Utral do wipe out protoss ground, cause it tanks so much zerglings clean floor like nothing. SC2 zerglings are so dogshit.
There is a reason why ultralings are rarely seen against protoss. Reavers, archons, even mass dragoons murder them. And storms clear lings. Hydras are much more cost efficient that ultras.
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
Great unit, really? What openings are viable? Corsairs are much stronger vs zerg, and even then do not last long.
On December 19 2024 12:22 TT1 wrote: i saw the ULTRA DEVO (HEAVY GAS UNIT + HEAVY MINERAL UNIT = COST BALANCED strong comp) combo used on artosis' stream many times
ultra wipes out ground and devo wipes out air, its the ultimate a move wombo
But ultras cannot wipe out protoss armies... And do not do much vs upgraded terran army without defiler support.
I think scout was viable for a while in early time, I do recall when people figure out if you jail a probe between pylon/mineral you can stack them like muta, it was used for a while. But that was so long ago, which means people were not as good as now.
Utral do wipe out protoss ground, cause it tanks so much zerglings clean floor like nothing. SC2 zerglings are so dogshit.
There is a reason why ultralings are rarely seen against protoss. Reavers, archons, even mass dragoons murder them. And storms clear lings. Hydras are much more cost efficient that ultras.
Very true. I think the most efficient combo against Protoss late game is lurker, ling, defiler with some hydras sprinkled in as needed.
Queens and guardians are even more popular in non pro games!
You don't need much APM to use them because you can queue the broodling and an automatic retreat path with Shift. Because non pro Terran pushes are slower it gives Zerg more time to do this.
I agree on Arbiters. I think Best did a few recalls in ASL vs Zerg on a hard to navigate by ground map.
Holy World SE fun map. We need more neutral CCs.
1 Queen should be used to infest CCs when possible (pros don't do this because Terrans cry it's BM apparently I've heard).
Maelstrom DOES work on ALL biological units.
Liquipedia https://liquipedia.net › starcraft › Maelstrom Aug 6, 2022 — Maelstrom is an area of effect ability that stuns all Biological units in a three-matrix radius (one matrix being a thirty-two pixel square).
Arbiter is imo underused vs zerg in late game situations... very gas heavy in fact, but if u manage to play a goon heavy composition with decent upgrades into the midgame, getting arbiter at arround 20:00 min mark is not crazy at all... u have to plan ahead very early and not waste gas units, but makes a lot of sense, if u add +5 sairs from earlier, shit becomes imba if controlled well.
On December 21 2024 20:49 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: Queens and guardians are even more popular in non pro games!
You don't need much APM to use them because you can queue the broodling and an automatic retreat path with Shift. Because non pro Terran pushes are slower it gives Zerg more time to do this.
I agree on Arbiters. I think Best did a few recalls in ASL vs Zerg on a hard to navigate by ground map.
Holy World SE fun map. We need more neutral CCs.
1 Queen should be used to infest CCs when possible (pros don't do this because Terrans cry it's BM apparently I've heard).
Maelstrom DOES work on ALL biological units.
Liquipedia https://liquipedia.net › starcraft › Maelstrom Aug 6, 2022 — Maelstrom is an area of effect ability that stuns all Biological units in a three-matrix radius (one matrix being a thirty-two pixel square).
WTF, that cry must be dumb...... I remember watching the games back then this was a legit strategy cause it would force terran to lift their 2nd expansion and get it with queen while tech up to hive is like the master play, not BM at all
I only get pissed when my friend mass scout vs my noob ass like Snow did to artosis :D
But man scout is awesome as a unit tho, kinda cool
On December 21 2024 20:49 LUCKY_NOOB wrote: Queens and guardians are even more popular in non pro games!
You don't need much APM to use them because you can queue the broodling and an automatic retreat path with Shift. Because non pro Terran pushes are slower it gives Zerg more time to do this.
I agree on Arbiters. I think Best did a few recalls in ASL vs Zerg on a hard to navigate by ground map.
Holy World SE fun map. We need more neutral CCs.
1 Queen should be used to infest CCs when possible (pros don't do this because Terrans cry it's BM apparently I've heard).
Maelstrom DOES work on ALL biological units.
Liquipedia https://liquipedia.net › starcraft › Maelstrom Aug 6, 2022 — Maelstrom is an area of effect ability that stuns all Biological units in a three-matrix radius (one matrix being a thirty-two pixel square).
WTF, that cry must be dumb...... I remember watching the games back then this was a legit strategy cause it would force terran to lift their 2nd expansion and get it with queen while tech up to hive is like the master play, not BM at all
I only get pissed when my friend mass scout vs my noob ass like Snow did to artosis :D
But man scout is awesome as a unit tho, kinda cool
I think it's a genius cry actually on the Tesagi part. Imagine if you can shame your opponent into not using a strategy they would benefit from!
I've heard the argument that gas is so tight for Zerg it is not a great use for it AND the queen might die but I think most times u can end a command center u should. Especially since u probably lost army trying to get to half health anyway. IDK...
I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
You still got that replay of you vs gorush with scouts?
On December 19 2024 09:21 G5 wrote: The scout is a great unit imo and there are slightly viable openings with them PvZ but they're too expensive. If speed came with them or you didn't need a fleet beacon to be upgraded, they'd be used more.
DA's, Queens, and Devourers are the best underutilized units imo.
Infested Terrans are gimmick units but they would be better if they cost less and acted like Banelings where they explode and kill everything around them on death. Right now, they only do damage if they connect with their Intended target which basically renders them as useless as a unit can be.
You still got that replay of you vs gorush with scouts?
Dark Archon isn't as popular at killing defilers because it is a ground unit.
Unlike a vessel which is not impeded by allies nor has its vision obscured by high ground the Dark Archon is much slower at reacting to defilers.
The vision can be mitigated by protoss players not losing their corsairs before hive tech comes into play.but the positional issue can't be mitigated.
Maybe it doesn't need to be but It's obvious why most people, forget about pros, are not happy with the idea of putting a ground based spell caster in front of their army.
Maybe this is the one use case that could make hallucination relevant but so far noone has tried it.
Devourer/ muta is the best air to air unit combo in the game, period.
But there is no point for devourers to be used.
Hydra's has sufficiently carried zerg when corsairs were an issue and terran folds to scourge unless they get battlecruisers which is so rare and has always ended up in small enough numbers hydra plague has been good enough.
The only way you can force zerg to use devourers is to create a secondary objective that devourers can attack after the muta/devo combo wins the air battle.
That means at the pro level you will only see devourer in ZvZ because overlords meet that condition.
If Terran had a building that was valuable while flying then devourers could also see play then.
I've often wondered if putting maelstrom on Zealots in a large PvP battle, could tip the odds in one's favor. Would probably be very situational, but would it ever be worth it? F.ex. go goon heavy comp, so that one's own Zealots don't end up in the maelstrom too. Then again, there'd be a wall og Zealots between the armies then. Hmm!
On January 27 2025 20:37 mutantmagnet wrote: Dark Archon isn't as popular at killing defilers because it is a ground unit.
Unlike a vessel which is not impeded by allies nor has its vision obscured by high ground the Dark Archon is much slower at reacting to defilers.
The vision can be mitigated by protoss players not losing their corsairs before hive tech comes into play.but the positional issue can't be mitigated.
Maybe it doesn't need to be but It's obvious why most people, forget about pros, are not happy with the idea of putting a ground based spell caster in front of their army.
Maybe this is the one use case that could make hallucination relevant but so far noone has tried it.
Devourer/ muta is the best air to air unit combo in the game, period.
But there is no point for devourers to be used.
Hydra's has sufficiently carried zerg when corsairs were an issue and terran folds to scourge unless they get battlecruisers which is so rare and has always ended up in small enough numbers hydra plague has been good enough.
The only way you can force zerg to use devourers is to create a secondary objective that devourers can attack after the muta/devo combo wins the air battle.
That means at the pro level you will only see devourer in ZvZ because overlords meet that condition.
If Terran had a building that was valuable while flying then devourers could also see play then.
Devs see play in ZvT guardian rushes to stop wraith/valks from being able to reliably kill the guardians. You just need like 1-2 devourers when you morph the initial guardians and it basically stops Terran's air-air defenses.
Zerg frequently just runs a defiler at a Terran/Protoss army to get a plague off, I'm not sure why Protoss can't do the same with Dark Archons (granted, plague is area of effect and deals tremendous damage while feedback is only on 1 unit, so the risk-reward for getting a big plague off and losing the defiler is more advantageous for Zerg than a DA running forward to get feedback off. Still, I think Protoss could learn a thing from Zerg and occasionally try to snipe defilers before a fight.
For sure worth it if you combine it with splash storm/archon/rvr. I do think it has got to be game winning to chose this option over feedbacking two enemy templars (and min/gas not spent on maelstrom).
DA being chunky and ground is a big con. If DA could mineralwalk on your own units, that would make it way more viable offensively. And not as broken as if it could fly like a vessel.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
That's the hottest take of 2024 my guy. Even an infested Terran is better than Ghosts.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
That's the hottest take of 2024 my guy. Even an infested Terran is better than Ghosts.
I disagree. Both are trash, but ghost at least has a bit of use: nuke rush. Infested terran has zero use.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
That's the hottest take of 2024 my guy. Even an infested Terran is better than Ghosts.
I disagree. Both are trash, but ghost at least has a bit of use: nuke rush. Infested terran has zero use.
I remember one map that had a neutral CC zerg could infest that made infested terrans viable because they're actually very strong against protoss.
I think the optimal way to play PvT is to do the 11 minute bisu push and then get some corsairs for disruption web. But I'm just a contrarian nobody when it comes down to it.
Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
On January 27 2025 20:37 mutantmagnet wrote: Maybe it doesn't need to be but It's obvious why most people, forget about pros, are not happy with the idea of putting a ground based spell caster in front of their army.
Maybe this is the one use case that could make hallucination relevant but so far noone has tried it.
It might be worth making hallucinations of HT for this reason. Or whatever high value unit you think Zerg will go after. Zerg likes to come in and snipe HT that are too close to the front line whenever the opportunity is there. But you can use this as a mindgame for better storms or just free damage.
there were two short periods of time in 2021 and 2022 where ghosts were introduced into the meta by RoyaL. Rush and ssak used them for a short bit after that too but Ghost very quickly faded out of the meta. They were used for TvP mainly as recall defense. Did see Rush try to make a nuke rush vs zerg work to break open the third, but he could not make it consistent.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
That's the hottest take of 2024 my guy. Even an infested Terran is better than Ghosts.
I disagree. Both are trash, but ghost at least has a bit of use: nuke rush. Infested terran has zero use.
I remember one map that had a neutral CC zerg could infest that made infested terrans viable because they're actually very strong against protoss.
I think the optimal way to play PvT is to do the 11 minute bisu push and then get some corsairs for disruption web. But I'm just a contrarian nobody when it comes down to it.
That map has not been used for many years.
If you invest in otherwise useless corsairs and wait for energy to gather, you have less dragoons and zealots, and likely die to tank push. Besides, zealot bombing or storm dropping basically does the same job as D-web would.
On January 27 2025 20:37 mutantmagnet wrote: Maybe it doesn't need to be but It's obvious why most people, forget about pros, are not happy with the idea of putting a ground based spell caster in front of their army.
Maybe this is the one use case that could make hallucination relevant but so far noone has tried it.
It might be worth making hallucinations of HT for this reason. Or whatever high value unit you think Zerg will go after. Zerg likes to come in and snipe HT that are too close to the front line whenever the opportunity is there. But you can use this as a mindgame for better storms or just free damage.
Too much micro requirement even for pro players for not that big benefit, most likely.
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
On January 27 2025 20:37 mutantmagnet wrote: Maybe it doesn't need to be but It's obvious why most people, forget about pros, are not happy with the idea of putting a ground based spell caster in front of their army.
Maybe this is the one use case that could make hallucination relevant but so far noone has tried it.
It might be worth making hallucinations of HT for this reason. Or whatever high value unit you think Zerg will go after. Zerg likes to come in and snipe HT that are too close to the front line whenever the opportunity is there. But you can use this as a mindgame for better storms or just free damage.
Too much micro requirement even for pro players for not that big benefit, most likely.
Yeah, perhaps. The way I envisioned it though, was that you would send a clone one direction, then HT on the front where the Zerg's not looking. You can get a really good storm, you know like those ones where you kill 8+ hydra, and the upside of 2 really good storms is better than 3 weaker ones. Also, if you can anticipate Zerg's movement like this, then you can sort of guarantee when you get picked, so you have a better idea of how many storms you've got. Sometimes you try to storm and your HT gets picked anyway, so it goes to waste. With this however, you can guarantee something I think. Just my theorycraft as a Protoss player.
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
Covert Ops (50/50) + Cloaking (100/100) + Ocular Implants (100/100) + Nuclear Silo (100/100) + Nuke (200/200/8) + Ghost (25/75/1) costs 575/625/9, which is pretty comparable in price to four tanks + siege (750/550/8). Tanks are more consistent, but they can't break an entrenched lurker + swarm defense. Whereas a nuke forces the Zerg to move its defensive line, either forward to overrun your ghost (which you can d-matrix so it doesn't just die immediately) or backward to get out of the blast radius. If Terran has firebats, they can punish the Zerg for running forward...
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
Covert Ops (50/50) + Cloaking (100/100) + Ocular Implants (100/100) + Nuclear Silo (100/100) + Nuke (200/200/8) + Ghost (25/75/1) costs 575/625/9, which is pretty comparable in price to four tanks + siege (750/550/8). Tanks are more consistent, but they can't break an entrenched lurker + swarm defense. Whereas a nuke forces the Zerg to move its defensive line, either forward to overrun your ghost (which you can d-matrix so it doesn't just die immediately) or backward to get out of the blast radius. If Terran has firebats, they can punish the Zerg for running forward...
Might be practical, might not.
Sounds like a dream scenario. You need a Factory anyway in order to tech.
I promise this will be the only time I theorycraft a patch that will never happen:
Change Dweb to be actually utilized in PvZ:
- upgradeable from cybernetics core - Only lasts 10 seconds but only costs 75 energy - reduce max energy on corsairs from 200 to 125 (maybe 150?); - energy upgrade in fleet beacon gives them 200 energy (maybe 250?)
On January 30 2025 01:34 Ideas wrote: I promise this will be the only time I theorycraft a patch that will never happen:
Change Dweb to be actually utilized in PvZ:
- upgradeable from cybernetics core - Only lasts 10 seconds but only costs 75 energy - reduce max energy on corsairs from 200 to 125 (maybe 150?); - energy upgrade in fleet beacon gives them 200 energy (maybe 250?)
fast dweb can affect PvT ... not sure this is suitable. Terran FE look much more complicate with dweb into play
I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
Yes, I was wondering how much longer we have to wait for that after all those years. Especially vs carriers they enable some possibilities of crazy cost efficiency.
Edit: I am too stupid to post a video here, just look on youtube for "Boxers Lockdown vs Nal_rA" and watch a 1 minute video of boxers ghosts dealing with Nal_rAs Carrier fleet. (no nukes used)
On January 30 2025 01:34 Ideas wrote: I promise this will be the only time I theorycraft a patch that will never happen:
Change Dweb to be actually utilized in PvZ:
- upgradeable from cybernetics core - Only lasts 10 seconds but only costs 75 energy - reduce max energy on corsairs from 200 to 125 (maybe 150?); - energy upgrade in fleet beacon gives them 200 energy (maybe 250?)
fast dweb can affect PvT ... not sure this is suitable. Terran FE look much more complicate with dweb into play
Hm yea you might be right. very hard to think of how to buff it without affecting PvT too much lol. Not that dweb being used in PvT would necessarily be horrible, but probably not as early as that would allow.
On January 27 2025 20:37 mutantmagnet wrote: Maybe it doesn't need to be but It's obvious why most people, forget about pros, are not happy with the idea of putting a ground based spell caster in front of their army.
Maybe this is the one use case that could make hallucination relevant but so far noone has tried it.
It might be worth making hallucinations of HT for this reason. Or whatever high value unit you think Zerg will go after. Zerg likes to come in and snipe HT that are too close to the front line whenever the opportunity is there. But you can use this as a mindgame for better storms or just free damage.
High templar are too cheap and hallucination is too expensive for this combo to be considered.
It takes 1 minute 40 seconds to get back 75 energy.
You are always better off using storm.
But when it comes to Dark archons I don't think anyone trains more than 2.
Therefore spending mana to protect them with illusions, as well as shuttles and arbiters which are also trained at very low numbers, justifies the high cost because you aren't interested in having too much supply taken up by these types of units.
On January 30 2025 01:34 Ideas wrote: I promise this will be the only time I theorycraft a patch that will never happen:
Change Dweb to be actually utilized in PvZ:
- upgradeable from cybernetics core - Only lasts 10 seconds but only costs 75 energy - reduce max energy on corsairs from 200 to 125 (maybe 150?); - energy upgrade in fleet beacon gives them 200 energy (maybe 250?)
I have been thinking about how dweb could be different and I think the best thing that could happen is if it was cancellable if the caster was stunned, killed or manually activated the cancellation.
I get why some people ask for longer webs but I personally wish I had more control on when I wanted them around. At the same time dwebs getting stronger through manual cancel should be easier to counter hence they should also be cancelled through death or stasis/lockdown.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
That's the hottest take of 2024 my guy. Even an infested Terran is better than Ghosts.
Why is that? Lockdown seems like a crazy good spell on paper and ghosts are pretty cheap. Outside of being super micro intensive, what makes ghosts so bad in your opinion?
I can see in the future ghosts being used to freeze shuttles mid air or as a counter to carrier. I realize it would require god like multitasking, but it also seems to me that people are getting better and constantly pushing the boundaries of what was thought to be realistically possible.
On January 27 2025 20:37 mutantmagnet wrote: Devourer/ muta is the best air to air unit combo in the game, period.
But there is no point for devourers to be used.
Hydra's has sufficiently carried zerg when corsairs were an issue and terran folds to scourge unless they get battlecruisers which is so rare and has always ended up in small enough numbers hydra plague has been good enough.
The only way you can force zerg to use devourers is to create a secondary objective that devourers can attack after the muta/devo combo wins the air battle.
That means at the pro level you will only see devourer in ZvZ because overlords meet that condition.
If Terran had a building that was valuable while flying then devourers could also see play then.
Or if protoss builds carrier-corsair fleet. It is really rare, but happens sometimes on semi-island maps, where hydralisks are not very good counter because of carriers much superior mobility. I saw great Snow vs Larva carriers game on such map.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
That's the hottest take of 2024 my guy. Even an infested Terran is better than Ghosts.
Why is that? Lockdown seems like a crazy good spell on paper and ghosts are pretty cheap. Outside of being super micro intensive, what makes ghosts so bad in your opinion?
I can see in the future ghosts being used to freeze shuttles mid air or as a counter to carrier. I realize it would require god like multitasking, but it also seems to me that people are getting better and constantly pushing the boundaries of what was thought to be realistically possible.
It is not just micro intensity. Ghosts are very squishy, have to wait to accumulate energy for lockdown+cloak, then have to get close to carriers without getting smashed by protoss ground army (a single storm or volley from dragoons might kill them all). Then you still need to have AA around to kill disabled carriers, as well as ground army big enough to fight off toss ground army...
Goliaths can fight carriers more reliably and from much longer distance. And as surprise option wraiths are superior: way more mobile thanks to speed and flight, and can quickly kill carriers on their own. Both do not require nearly as much babysitting as ghosts.
That said, disabling shuttles is a good idea. In theory, if players had more apm than now, and could afford controlling ghosts simultaneously with the rest of their army. Shuttle drops can deal terrible damage to terran, that lockdowning them might be a difference between defeat and victory.
On December 23 2024 12:48 Biff The Understudy wrote: I’m quite sure that if people keep playing starcraft at high level, we will end up one day with ghosts being a standard unit.
For what they do, they are extremely cheap. A ghost can basically one shot a shittle, an arbiter, a reaver or a carrier. The only drawback is that no one has the skill to use such an insanely demanding unit on what is without context the most demanding race multitasking wise.
But i can totally see a future where ghosts are standard to defend bases in tvp versus drops or recall and in TvT to neutralize battlecruisers against which they are honestly a very, very strong counter.
I am old enough to remember extremely strong players arguing that we would never see EMP in tvp on this very forum because it was too expensive and too micro intensive. So i wouldn’t discard lockdown. It’s an incredible ability considering how little ghosts cost.
On February 05 2025 12:01 SiarX wrote: That said, disabling shuttles is a good idea. In theory, if players had more apm than now, and could afford controlling ghosts simultaneously with the rest of their army. Shuttle drops can deal terrible damage to terran, that lockdowning them might be a difference between defeat and victory.
I assume at the very least they could be a very strong drop defense option. Whether it’s arbiter or shuttles, a couple of ghosts with lockdown would make a location, be in an expo or a main, very hard to drop to, a little bit like people use vessels to emp incoming arbiters. And that doesn’t require to protect or cloak ghosts.
Then again, StarCraft is practical game, and i assumes that it has been tried. Maybe they get a niche at some point, like dark archons do in pvz.
I still think Corsairs have a place in some small percentage of PvT games. Specifically, following a partial army trade off the Bisu 11 minute 4-base 200/200 attack to either crush the 3rd or trade armies.
That build practically guarantees a partial reset on the tank count on many maps, and if executed properly, even if defended against perfectly, forces the T to stay back and rebuild. So, after the trade, instead of rushing to a 5th base or arbs, get a fleet beacon, disruption web, and 4 corsairs. Let the T expand to a 4th, then crush it hard with storms and D Web.
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
No, because Zerg can build more sunkens behind while getting guards or ultras or swarm
nuke is only a few seconds to one shot all sunkens and stim in
Artosis showed this build vs. crazy Zerg and you can hit before +4 ultra. Wouldn't work against swarm tech because it can't hit before swarm (unless Zerg is too slow to tech)
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
No, because Zerg can build more sunkens behind while getting guards or ultras or swarm
nuke is only a few seconds to one shot all sunkens and stim in
Artosis showed this build vs. crazy Zerg and you can hit before +4 ultra. Wouldn't work against swarm tech because it can't hit before swarm (unless Zerg is too slow to tech)
Well, guardians are not good vs terran, so easy to kill... Ultras get countered by tanks. Swarm is an issue as always, but still: ghost is so much easier to kill than several tanks (which can try to retreat), especially at zerg base which always has overlords. And then you have wasted ghost, ghost tech and nuke.
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
No, because Zerg can build more sunkens behind while getting guards or ultras or swarm
nuke is only a few seconds to one shot all sunkens and stim in
Artosis showed this build vs. crazy Zerg and you can hit before +4 ultra. Wouldn't work against swarm tech because it can't hit before swarm (unless Zerg is too slow to tech)
Well, guardians are not good vs terran, so easy to kill... Ultras get countered by tanks. Swarm is an issue as always, but still: ghost is so much easier to kill than several tanks (which can try to retreat), especially at zerg base which always has overlords. And then you have wasted ghost, ghost tech and nuke.
Maybe nuke can work as very rare surprise.
huh? Guardians are fine against Terran, they 2 shot marines and have great range. If terran tries to irradiate, you simply spread the guardians.
Haven't been following the discussion but I just want to say, I'm not sure what is the point of making criticism when it comes to theorycraft. Doesn't seem constructive to me in any way to say "you can't do that/it doesn't work." If there's an idea, people are free to try it and explore it, and if they can make it work in some way, great, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. Spending time to anti-theorycraft an idea seems senseless IMO.
On January 28 2025 12:24 Severedevil wrote: Ghosts are the cheapest caster, but they're at the top of the tech tree and require additional research before they're useful. It's real awkward to hit timings.
That said, SK Terran often has spare resources and map control but no way to break hardened positions. Nukes would be a fun solution.
Would not several tanks be cheaper than ghost tech + ghost + nuke? And tanks would not die as easily to even smallest counterattack.
No, because Zerg can build more sunkens behind while getting guards or ultras or swarm
nuke is only a few seconds to one shot all sunkens and stim in
Artosis showed this build vs. crazy Zerg and you can hit before +4 ultra. Wouldn't work against swarm tech because it can't hit before swarm (unless Zerg is too slow to tech)
Well, guardians are not good vs terran, so easy to kill... Ultras get countered by tanks. Swarm is an issue as always, but still: ghost is so much easier to kill than several tanks (which can try to retreat), especially at zerg base which always has overlords. And then you have wasted ghost, ghost tech and nuke.
Maybe nuke can work as very rare surprise.
Ultras don't get countered by tanks, they get countered by mines. Marine/tank doesn't work well vs. ultra/ling
for one, tanks splash each other and ultras attack from up close
if you have d matrix and the zerg doesn't have swarm yet they have no way to kill a ghost because one volley from 11 mutas doesn't remove d matrix and if you have energy you can apply it again
the problem with tanks is not that zerg will take them out, but that they will sit there hitting sunkens until Zerg is ready to kill your whole army
On February 28 2025 08:53 ThunderJunk wrote: I still think Corsairs have a place in some small percentage of PvT games. Specifically, following a partial army trade off the Bisu 11 minute 4-base 200/200 attack to either crush the 3rd or trade armies.
That build practically guarantees a partial reset on the tank count on many maps, and if executed properly, even if defended against perfectly, forces the T to stay back and rebuild. So, after the trade, instead of rushing to a 5th base or arbs, get a fleet beacon, disruption web, and 4 corsairs. Let the T expand to a 4th, then crush it hard with storms and D Web.
I also think that there would be a lot of value to have fleet bacons mixed up in other builds than carrier transition.
Right now if a terran scans a bacon he knows carriers are on the way and will react with as timing push and a transition to Goliaths. Not knowing if it’s going to be disruption webs on his tank line or carriers would make reaction much more awkward.
The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
I guess you can also make the point that arbiter achieve the same results through stairs and have other utilities.
Saw TY go ghosts and nukes in a game vs Stork this week, but I assume it was for the memes rather than anything else. He did nuke him three times, though, and killed a zillion workers though he ended losing the game.
I think devourers and infested terrans could see use if zerg played hive more. The reason I say this is because the units to sustain these units need hive tech which is late. Are devourers and mutalisks that much more economical than ultraling+defilers? Are infested terran pushes viable when the infested command center can be reclaimed by terran at any time if the base isn't overrun by zerg which never happens in a current zvt game. Either the base is abandoned, or cleared from zerg before the command center can be infested by a queen. I say this because they reflect a staying power deficit in the zerg air arsenal. A single valkyrie can disperse the air superiority and it never goes past the instantaneous zerg skirmish. There is never a zerg air endgame goal in sight. The way zerg is designed is you should take fights with guardians, ensnaring queens and plaging defilers at the same time under static hydralisk defence while devourers modify mutalisk and hydralisk damage output 300% and 200% respectively. However splash damage is a fact and you cannot wait while the enemy withers and dies when you are the weaker party. Also, guardians and hydralisks effectively have the same dps making high tech a dilemma for zerg.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
125 energy for 15 second effect from a 2 supply unit is just not that good for a PvT engagement. There's more use for dweb in PvZ, I'd say... Corsairs are useful for triggering turret aggro, but from midgame onwards, so is just yoloing an extra shuttle.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
On March 04 2025 19:58 Soft_General_5023 wrote: how about queens zvp? i am watching snow and if it goes to late game he just storms everything and wins
Sometimes they are used in very late ZvP to snipe HTs. By that time corsairs are long gone.
On March 05 2025 23:59 mtcn77 wrote: I think devourers and infested terrans could see use if zerg played hive more. The reason I say this is because the units to sustain these units need hive tech which is late. Are devourers and mutalisks that much more economical than ultraling+defilers? Are infested terran pushes viable when the infested command center can be reclaimed by terran at any time if the base isn't overrun by zerg which never happens in a current zvt game. Either the base is abandoned, or cleared from zerg before the command center can be infested by a queen. I say this because they reflect a staying power deficit in the zerg air arsenal. A single valkyrie can disperse the air superiority and it never goes past the instantaneous zerg skirmish. There is never a zerg air endgame goal in sight. The way zerg is designed is you should take fights with guardians, ensnaring queens and plaging defilers at the same time under static hydralisk defence while devourers modify mutalisk and hydralisk damage output 300% and 200% respectively. However splash damage is a fact and you cannot wait while the enemy withers and dies when you are the weaker party. Also, guardians and hydralisks effectively have the same dps making high tech a dilemma for zerg.
The question is what devourers can be used for. When zerg faces big threat from air? Carriers almost never are built vs zerg, wraiths come too early for devourers to be available, valkyries are dealt with by scourges + mutas... They are great only in muta wars. Unfortunately ZvZ in 98% cases ends before hive tech.
As for infested terrans, I do not see point of their existence. Slow melee suicide bombers... marines kill them so easily.
On March 05 2025 23:59 mtcn77 wrote: I think devourers and infested terrans could see use if zerg played hive more. The reason I say this is because the units to sustain these units need hive tech which is late. Are devourers and mutalisks that much more economical than ultraling+defilers? Are infested terran pushes viable when the infested command center can be reclaimed by terran at any time if the base isn't overrun by zerg which never happens in a current zvt game. Either the base is abandoned, or cleared from zerg before the command center can be infested by a queen. I say this because they reflect a staying power deficit in the zerg air arsenal. A single valkyrie can disperse the air superiority and it never goes past the instantaneous zerg skirmish. There is never a zerg air endgame goal in sight. The way zerg is designed is you should take fights with guardians, ensnaring queens and plaging defilers at the same time under static hydralisk defence while devourers modify mutalisk and hydralisk damage output 300% and 200% respectively. However splash damage is a fact and you cannot wait while the enemy withers and dies when you are the weaker party. Also, guardians and hydralisks effectively have the same dps making high tech a dilemma for zerg.
The question is what devourers can be used for. When zerg faces big threat from air? Carriers almost never are built vs zerg, wraiths come too early for devourers to be available, valkyries are dealt with by scourges + mutas... They are great only in muta wars. Unfortunately ZvZ in 98% cases ends before hive tech.
As for infested terrans, I do not see point of their existence. Slow melee suicide bombers... marines kill them so easily.
Quick note: 9 Devourers and 3 Mutalisks have the same dps as ~14.4 Mutalisks. When combined, however, the dps count is equal to 57.5 Mutalisks(equal to a 3.9866x increase). That is 9 devourers and 3+14, 17, mutalisks for you. This is profound, hold on to that for a second. I went back to how much a comparable hydralisk+guardian combo would do. 26 Hydralisks plus 12 Guardians have comparable cost to 9 Devourers +17 Mutalisks, however against air, the air army of Devourers+Mutalisks is 43.75% stronger! I haven't mixed Devourers with Hydralisks. You can say Devourers 1.9x hydralisk strength, 3x mutalisk strength, so you can trust in Devourers ability to soften up air targets. PS: okay I have found a simpler way to compare Hydralisks vs Mutalisks. When 9 Devourers are present, a Mutalisk has 2x higher dps than a Hydralisk. That is essentially 1 Mutalisk with devourers equals 2 hydralisks without devourers. Make the most of it. I think the issue with zerg can be stated as such: air to air units hit 2x as much as ground to air units which they themselves, hydralisks, hit as much as air to ground units while twice cheaper. That makes zerg air to ground 4 times more expensive than air to air. 1 mutalisk= 2hydralisks= 2guardians. You heard that right: two of the upgraded units hit only as much as 1 of the unupgraded units! Essentially, Guardians are 2.8 times more mineral intensive 4 times more gas intensive than Mutalisks, past their initial 9 Devourer investment. It is a sizable investment, though: it is equal to 19.8/13.5 times what a Mutalisk costs. It also means 9 Devourers+9 Mutalisks have the same dps as 21.375 Hydralisks in air battles and 32 Mutalisks. Against ground, 2 Hydralisks= 3Mutalisks= 2Guardians. Looking at these numbers, it is amazing how crazy expensive zerg air is. Even in the best case, Mutalisks only offload 50 minerals cost for 50 vespene gas if they equal 2 Hydralisks fighting air. It is much better making Hydralisks since they aren't vespene gas dependent, although larva dependent. I wonder if this could be used for some kind of lategame rush 9 Devourers and 9 Mutalisks for air superiority... 9D9M costs 3650/2250 while 9D12H costs 3550/1650. Remember 32 Mutalisks cost 4000/3200. Are there any games with 32 Mutalisks spawned in total? 2 Hatch muta into 9D12H could be a thing.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
On March 06 2025 01:05 Soulforged wrote: 125 energy for 15 second effect from a 2 supply unit is just not that good for a PvT engagement. There's more use for dweb in PvZ, I'd say... Corsairs are useful for triggering turret aggro, but from midgame onwards, so is just yoloing an extra shuttle.
If you look at any 140+ supply engagement, the first 15 seconds of the engagement are basically determinate of the outcome of the fight.
Imagine, opponent has 12 tanks - and you can invalidate 8 of them - even if they're spread out - for 8 supply. What other Protoss unit can do that?
Disruption Web is only useful during a fight, whereas you can use Broodling to kill tanks outside of fights. That makes Broodling a much easier answer to tanks.
On March 05 2025 20:02 Biff The Understudy wrote: How did you avoid getting zoned by goons?
Queens work against mech because terran usually lacks substantial anti air when going heavily tank / vultures.
Terran almost always gets anti-air against Zerg, or else their fancy mech army dies to a hotkey of mutas. And goliaths are much better anti-air than dragoons, so I doubt that's the reason Zerg rarely use broodlings against Protoss.
On March 06 2025 01:05 Soulforged wrote: 125 energy for 15 second effect from a 2 supply unit is just not that good for a PvT engagement. There's more use for dweb in PvZ, I'd say... Corsairs are useful for triggering turret aggro, but from midgame onwards, so is just yoloing an extra shuttle.
If you look at any 140+ supply engagement, the first 15 seconds of the engagement are basically determinate of the outcome of the fight.
Imagine, opponent has 12 tanks - and you can invalidate 8 of them - even if they're spread out - for 8 supply. What other Protoss unit can do that?
D-web is just worse than psystorm in all metrics and the Corsair is just not very useful against Terran.
Corsair is in theory more useful against Z if only because it is built for hunting overlords. Dweb can have some applications against Z as well. Dweb in front of cannons is a good technique for defense. Plug up the cannons with a good wall/zealots so Z can't run through and you can delay a sizeable Z attack. And if Zerg wants to clump up all their overlords in one spot to defend against corsairs. I wonder what would happen if P just ran in there and dwebbed all the defense, what would happen to those poor overlords?
I found something funny in the game. If you divide a devourer's mineral cost to a hydralisk's, overlord included, you get the pi approximate 22/7. Also, cost efficiency parity is right on 29/7 H:D ratio. If you have less than 4 hydralisk to every devourer, you are at a net dps loss. If you have less than 32 hydralisks, you are at a mineral loss when adding devourers; however past 32 hydralisks they become cost efficient at any devourer count. The respective dps and mineral ratios for mutalisks are 9.53 and 22 Mutalisks - it may be cheaper to amass mutalisks instead of 32 hydralisks to make devourers pay for themselves. PS: can anybody test out hydralisks and devourers? If we can bridge the gap between mutalisks and hydra-devourer, I think zerg can have a better lategame staying power. TL;DR: it might relieve tremendous pressure of the zerg economy to deal dps by making +1 devourer per every 4 hydralisk and 10 mutalisks. TL;DR 2: you won't believe this. 22 Mutalisks and 32 Hydralisks have the same initial mineral cost structure. 22 Mutalisks cost 2750/2200, 32 Hydralisks cost 2800/800.
Why aren't we using queens to snipe HTs instead of mutas? Is it just the wait time? I often see like 9-11 mutas being sacked to kill 4-6 HTs. Maybe half the resources in queens can do the job?
On March 06 2025 17:56 Navane wrote: Why aren't we using queens to snipe HTs instead of mutas? Is it just the wait time? I often see like 9-11 mutas being sacked to kill 4-6 HTs. Maybe half the resources in queens can do the job?
Queens require 2 minutes to save the energy to kill a unit that takes half a minute to warp and can cast storm just after 15 seconds thereafter.
Mutas can threaten mineral lines too, which queens can't. Queens are dead supply until you get the 150, after that they're dead supply again till the next 150. Which is completely fine, and preferable, IF minerals are scarce.
With mutas you barely have to plan ahead, with Queens you do. It's more viable once a player is more predictable. Mutas you can fly in and just right click those hts, Queens you gotta clone and then you still need vision first.
Queens are not as practical, even if they can do the same job cheaper. 4-6 templar will likely do 1k/1k worth of damage and potentially a lot more when they survive fights, so sacking mutas and not having to worry about having to dodge storms for a while is fine. APM/attention is a resource as well and shortage of min/gas you don't have to worry about until it's time to.
TL;DR: Queens are only ideal cost wise, and if you are clairvoyant.
Question: how do you scale the economy while you make 9 devourers? •Option 1: by making hydralisks. In this case, you need 700/200 every 8 Hydralisks. It can be harvested at a speed of 12 Hydralisks every minute since a vespene gas brings 300/m. You need 20 drones to mine 1050/m, 4 drones for likely optimal vespene saturation. 13.5 larvae per minute requires ~2.835 hatcheries. It takes no more than 2:40 minutes to harvest this sum from 2 bases with 3 harcheries and 28 drones. Once you reach 32 hydralisks you make hive, greater spire and devourers. 9450/3150. Option 2: by making Mutalisks. Even at best, single base 300 per minute vespene harvesting rate is very cost prohibitive. You need some 3 bases just to jump start the initial mutalisks down to 2:47. Tech takes 4000/650. 22 Mutalisks take 2200/2200, 9 Devourers take 2450/1350. 8650/4200.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
On March 06 2025 17:56 Navane wrote: Why aren't we using queens to snipe HTs instead of mutas? Is it just the wait time? I often see like 9-11 mutas being sacked to kill 4-6 HTs. Maybe half the resources in queens can do the job?
They are used in very late ZvP sometimes. Before that though scarce resources are not an issue, and protoss replaces HTs easily. Meanwhile zerg whose army is weaker because of queens built can dies easily to push. Mutas are more scary and universal threat.
On March 06 2025 20:29 mtcn77 wrote: Question: how do you scale the economy while you make 9 devourers? •Option 1: by making hydralisks. In this case, you need 700/200 every 8 Hydralisks. It can be harvested at a speed of 12 Hydralisks every minute since a vespene gas brings 300/m. You need 20 drones to mine 1050/m, 4 drones for likely optimal vespene saturation. 13.5 larvae per minute requires ~2.835 hatcheries. It takes no more than 2:40 minutes to harvest this sum from 2 bases with 3 harcheries and 28 drones. Once you reach 32 hydralisks you make hive, greater spire and devourers. 9450/3150. Option 2: by making Mutalisks. Even at best, single base 300 per minute vespene harvesting rate is very cost prohibitive. You need some 3 bases just to jump start the initial mutalisks down to 2:47. Tech takes 4000/650. 22 Mutalisks take 2200/2200, 9 Devourers take 2450/1350. 8650/4200.
What would you be making Devourers to fight against?
What’s the scenario and the use case, and how do the timings match up versus common T and P styles and compositions?
It’s like you just theorycraft in a manner completely devoid of what an opponent can actually do, and is likely to do.
Hey I fucking suck at BW, what do I know? Just pumping hydras and pushing for devourers who can’t shoot down, isn’t it pretty trivial to build an anti-hydra comp and just ignore the devourers? You’ll have to cut something, be it fewer lurkers or squeezing fewer defilers/or at a later timing.
Cool I’ll cut a few gateway units to get me a quicker reaver or two, good luck engaging a handful of Templars, with reaver support.
Add some extra tanks to your standard SK Terran, or mech switch and what are you doing with that comp?
Perhaps I’m just taking crazy pills here but I really don’t think I am
On March 06 2025 20:29 mtcn77 wrote: Question: how do you scale the economy while you make 9 devourers? •Option 1: by making hydralisks. In this case, you need 700/200 every 8 Hydralisks. It can be harvested at a speed of 12 Hydralisks every minute since a vespene gas brings 300/m. You need 20 drones to mine 1050/m, 4 drones for likely optimal vespene saturation. 13.5 larvae per minute requires ~2.835 hatcheries. It takes no more than 2:40 minutes to harvest this sum from 2 bases with 3 harcheries and 28 drones. Once you reach 32 hydralisks you make hive, greater spire and devourers. 9450/3150. Option 2: by making Mutalisks. Even at best, single base 300 per minute vespene harvesting rate is very cost prohibitive. You need some 3 bases just to jump start the initial mutalisks down to 2:47. Tech takes 4000/650. 22 Mutalisks take 2200/2200, 9 Devourers take 2450/1350. 8650/4200.
What would you be making Devourers to fight against?
What’s the scenario and the use case, and how do the timings match up versus common T and P styles and compositions?
It’s like you just theorycraft in a manner completely devoid of what an opponent can actually do, and is likely to do.
Hey I fucking suck at BW, what do I know? Just pumping hydras and pushing for devourers who can’t shoot down, isn’t it pretty trivial to build an anti-hydra comp and just ignore the devourers? You’ll have to cut something, be it fewer lurkers or squeezing fewer defilers/or at a later timing.
Cool I’ll cut a few gateway units to get me a quicker reaver or two, good luck engaging a handful of Templars, with reaver support.
Add some extra tanks to your standard SK Terran, or mech switch and what are you doing with that comp?
Perhaps I’m just taking crazy pills here but I really don’t think I am
The costs are so high, I get your point. I did it to see if you can amass some guardians into the mix in order to take the heat away from them. Purely 32 Hydralisks cost 5400/1100. 3350/2050 to double the effective rate versus air to add more air units to give more ground range seems far fetched. You'll never have enough firepower, Flash always gives up the main and starts busting zergs expansions. You never amass enough for a successful push, let alone defending your bases.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
I guess you can also make the point that arbiter achieve the same results through stairs and have other utilities.
Saw TY go ghosts and nukes in a game vs Stork this week, but I assume it was for the memes rather than anything else. He did nuke him three times, though, and killed a zillion workers though he ended losing the game.
The problem with TY's Ghosts play was that, i guess he doesnt know that Occular Implants upgrade increased Nuke range by 2(he never researched it and it was evident by him trying to circumvent Cannons to try Nuking the Nexus without loosing his Ghost) and he build like 3 barracks to train Ghosts, when he could have just landed his original rax and maybe build one more for x2 production if he needed it. Also he should have build the raxes in a more secure location in his main and also build his Nuclear Silo in his main CC so Stork ísnt aware of the tech until he hears the "Nuclear launch detected" warning.
Another problem in his play was that he kinda stopped playing the game and focused on nuking Stork and just sat on his 3-4 bases instead of playing normally and pushing somewhere on the map with his army and nuking somewhere on the other side or even siege a base and nuke it at the same time. Hell, if he didnt do that stupid push at Stork's 3rd where he lost like 12+ tanks and didnt do much he would have probably won the game while trolling with Ghosts at the same time.
Last thing: TY didnt seem to invested in trying to make the Ghost works, because a subscriber donated quite a bit of of money to make him use Ghosts or at least thats what i read in the comments of the video.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
This is going to sound the Most sacreligious - but that push doesn't need templar tech. So, just skip storm until you have your D-web pressure running. 200 gas for templar archives. 200 gas for storm. 600 gas for 4 HTs. That's 1000 gas. 150 for stargate. 200 for fleet beacon. 200 for d-web. 4 corsairs. 950 gas.
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
This is going to sound the Most sacreligious - but that push doesn't need templar tech. So, just skip storm until you have your D-web pressure running. 200 gas for templar archives. 200 gas for storm. 600 gas for 4 HTs. That's 1000 gas. 150 for stargate. 200 for fleet beacon. 200 for d-web. 4 corsairs. 950 gas.
I think it can actually work.
I think D-Webs need Reavers, or Carriers to shine. You need some trump card, or air attack to make the 15 seconds ground disable count. The problem is not siege tanks, it is all the support units surrounding them that Dragoons struggle with. About High Templars, consider this: from 2 HTs, instead of 6 storms, you cast 5 storms, 1 hallucinate, or 4 storms and 2 hallucinate. Would it work?
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
This is going to sound the Most sacreligious - but that push doesn't need templar tech. So, just skip storm until you have your D-web pressure running. 200 gas for templar archives. 200 gas for storm. 600 gas for 4 HTs. That's 1000 gas. 150 for stargate. 200 for fleet beacon. 200 for d-web. 4 corsairs. 950 gas.
I think it can actually work.
I think D-Webs need Reavers, or Carriers to shine. You need some trump card, or air attack to make the 15 seconds ground disable count. The problem is not siege tanks, it is all the support units surrounding them that Dragoons struggle with. About High Templars, consider this: you cast 5 storms, 1 hallucinate. You end up with 2 hallucinated high templars and make 2 archons from 2 high templars and 2 hallucinated ones. Alternatively, you cast 2 storms from 1 HT. The second HT hallucinates it. You make an Archon from the depleted HT and hallucination. When the Archon is summoned you hallucinate the Archon and make a second Archon from the other HT hallucination with the second HT. Thereby, you end up with 2 Archons, 2 hallucinated Archons from 2 HTs. Imagine 1 psyonic storm, 1 Archon and 1 hallucinated Archon from 1 HT - that is 1080HP from 2 depleted HT's. I think there is a whole another side to starcraft unbeknownst to us.
Thing is, will that "bug" be allowed? I don't really see a problem with it, but I do want to see Protoss grow.
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
This is going to sound the Most sacreligious - but that push doesn't need templar tech. So, just skip storm until you have your D-web pressure running. 200 gas for templar archives. 200 gas for storm. 600 gas for 4 HTs. That's 1000 gas. 150 for stargate. 200 for fleet beacon. 200 for d-web. 4 corsairs. 950 gas.
I think it can actually work.
I think D-Webs need Reavers, or Carriers to shine. You need some trump card, or air attack to make the 15 seconds ground disable count. The problem is not siege tanks, it is all the support units surrounding them that Dragoons struggle with. About High Templars, consider this: you cast 5 storms, 1 hallucinate. You end up with 2 hallucinated high templars and make 2 archons from 2 high templars and 2 hallucinated ones. Alternatively, you cast 2 storms from 1 HT. The second HT hallucinates it. You make an Archon from the depleted HT and hallucination. When the Archon is summoned you hallucinate the Archon and make a second Archon from the other HT hallucination with the second HT. Thereby, you end up with 2 Archons, 2 hallucinated Archons from 2 HTs. Imagine 1 psyonic storm, 1 Archon and 1 hallucinated Archon from 1 HT - that is 1080HP from 2 depleted HT's. I think there is a whole another side to starcraft unbeknownst to us.
Thing is, will that "bug" be allowed? I don't really see a problem with it, but I do want to see Protoss grow.
You guys are sleeping on parasite. Imagine you either force a unit to be taken out of the army or track where the while Protoss army is. It's way better than broodling early game. Put it on archons, corsairs and shuttles.
If they sack the unit or put it in the corner of the map it's the same result as casting broodling, the unit doesn't participate. If they do keep it around, the vision benefits are even better
On March 03 2025 18:55 SiarX wrote: The issue is that accumulation of energy for disruption webs takes so long, and corsairs are otherwise useless, so you have wasted a lot of resources on corsairs, d-web and fleet beacon, and you smaller ground army is at risk of being overwhelmed... Why not to spend them on shuttles with zealots instead? They will do the same job.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
A lot, since tanks also fire at each other. Just look at any pro game where protoss choses to play speed shuttles.. They are really effective. Also it is hard to spread tanks think, and then they start firing at each other. If they group up, then they get stormed.
Not to mention that zealots can drag mines at terran positions.
Terran always has goliaths with extremely long range and turrets, corsairs wont be able to scout much anyway.
The same argument can be made about queens in ZvT. J/S
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
This is going to sound the Most sacreligious - but that push doesn't need templar tech. So, just skip storm until you have your D-web pressure running. 200 gas for templar archives. 200 gas for storm. 600 gas for 4 HTs. That's 1000 gas. 150 for stargate. 200 for fleet beacon. 200 for d-web. 4 corsairs. 950 gas.
I think it can actually work.
I think D-Webs need Reavers, or Carriers to shine. You need some trump card, or air attack to make the 15 seconds ground disable count. The problem is not siege tanks, it is all the support units surrounding them that Dragoons struggle with. About High Templars, consider this: you cast 5 storms, 1 hallucinate. You end up with 2 hallucinated high templars and make 2 archons from 2 high templars and 2 hallucinated ones. Alternatively, you cast 2 storms from 1 HT. The second HT hallucinates it. You make an Archon from the depleted HT and hallucination. When the Archon is summoned you hallucinate the Archon and make a second Archon from the other HT hallucination with the second HT. Thereby, you end up with 2 Archons, 2 hallucinated Archons from 2 HTs. Imagine 1 psyonic storm, 1 Archon and 1 hallucinated Archon from 1 HT - that is 1080HP from 2 depleted HT's. I think there is a whole another side to starcraft unbeknownst to us.
Sounds cool vs zerg and maybe protoss, but do not those archons still receive double damage?.. Also storm effectively saves up more of your units by killing enemy units in mass, I think
On March 07 2025 17:00 iopq wrote: You guys are sleeping on parasite. Imagine you either force a unit to be taken out of the army or track where the while Protoss army is. It's way better than broodling early game. Put it on archons, corsairs and shuttles.
If they sack the unit or put it in the corner of the map it's the same result as casting broodling, the unit doesn't participate. If they do keep it around, the vision benefits are even better
No, because insta kill of tank (with queen likely surviving, since terran mech anti-air is not very good vs zerg) is so much better than 15 secs D-web. It basically puts terran mech on death clock timer, like carriers.
But with Corsairs, you get to decide before the engagement where the web will go, so you can lock out the defenses at a 3rd or 4th.
You can also put a dweb between two tanks, even if they're spaced out and still lock out 2 tanks, whereas broodlings can only get 1 tank in that scenario.
Low goon count? All zealots? Lots of spider mines? Dweb solves that problem too. Spider mines don't activate under D-web.
And funny you should mention carriers.. we already have a fleet beacon! So the transition to carriers is that much closer.
Vs mech queen does things, which no other zerg unit can do. Corsair does the same thing which zealot +shuttles do, but worse because corsairs contribute nothing otherwise (zealots might even survive,and if they do not, they do not remain a dead supply), take long time to build energy and make your ground army weaker.
How many well-spread tanks, vulture-supported can you invalidate in a fight with 3 zealots in a shuttle? That's the same supply as 4 corsairs with disruption web, which can nullify the entirety of a terran's army for 15 seconds regardless of how entrenched the position is.
And they're not strictly useless.. they move fast. They're pretty much the best scouting tool Protoss has. If an observer gets scanned, it's dead. Corsairs can run away from anything besides a whole bunch of goliaths turning a corner. But if the T has a whole bunch of goliaths, their ground vs ground army is quite a bit weaker too.
In a 200/200 scenario, I'd ALWAYS rather have 4 corsairs with d-web over one shuttle with 3 zealots.
After trading gateway units for tanks at 11 minutes, instead of taking more bases, go d-web! If T scans you and sees one stargate and a fleet beacon at 13 minutes - they'll assume there's another stargate somewhere and start prepping for carriers. Corsair D-web comes online quite a lot faster than carriers. D-web only takes 50 seconds to research. You can STUFF their pre-carrier timing push with d-web. If they don't scan/push and play defensive, d-web cracks a base every time you push.
I honestly can't think of a situation where it would be worthwhile to research Argus Jewel, since it takes 100 seconds to research.. but 2 webs per corsair does seem pretty insane.
It takes 3:54 to charge 2 D-Webs. Most of the benefit of zealot bombs is not just switching between targets. Tanks literally take time to swivel their turret. You lose something to the tune of 0.5-1.0 seconds that they don't fire on incoming enemy. If they do it twice, you dropped behind the siege line and they have to spin twice, that is 1-2 seconds delay - literally %33-65 of reload time. Two consecutive drops are like 1 missed volley. It is priceless. What is more, I just watched Rain vs Ssak on Namkraft. Rain literally lost time on Dragoons just to push mines between SCVs and siege tanks. It is only by grace of 2 vultures that Ssak was able to disarm them in time while Dragoons were struggling to get through the SCVs. Zealot bombs don't just delay entrenchments, they also break them by triggering mines. I forgot to say they also trigger friendly fire. D-Webs don't. What is even more it takes 25.2 and 37.8 seconds to train a zealot and a shuttle respectively.
That's really cool information. Thanks for that!
I agree that MOST of the time corsairs aren't a sensible option in PvT. But consider this specific game state:
You've just attempted to crack the 3rd at like 11:20 using a big gateway man push off 4 bases - and you succeeded in trading away about 50 supply in the Terran army, but the T kept his 3rd up. He has 1 armory. You have 1 forge. Your robo has only made observers - no robotics support bay - no speed for shuttles.
You can't crack the 3rd with another push because of tanks in the back line on high ground, but Terran also can't move out against you. So, Terran gets the 2nd armory and turtles on 3 bases.. You know you have about 3 or 4 minutes to play with before a big push or Terran secures his 4th.
You have 3 gas. Your tech is delayed, but you have attack upgrades. You lost a lot of zealots but you kept a bunch of your goons alive.
In this specific situation, most Protoss players would expand again, and try to catch up with delayed storm and drop tech. I'm proposing that in this situation, instead of expanding again - and trying to survive with fewer storms than you really need, only to get flattened by the follow-up push and strong Terran economy... You put down a stargate, pop out 2-3 corsairs, and research disruption web.
It seems to me like d-web is the only thing in that situation that can swing the game, because your high goon count ensures that the Terran army has to move together, but by moving together it becomes more vulnerable to d-web. Either take an actually cost-effective trade against their army when they push out so you can expand again and THEN tech, or completely sack their 4th base, and have a couple d-webs in reserve to take the cost-effective trade in a 4-3 base scenario.
I don't know if it's completely tenable, but it seems like a better option than expanding to a quick 5th and just dying.
I was going to say I agree once you have 200/200, protoss has a whole another arsenal of units squeezing water out of rock with hallucinated units and D-Webs. Though it needs someone smarter than me to push ahead with this. I cannot even decide how many hatcheries in my gameplay.
This is going to sound the Most sacreligious - but that push doesn't need templar tech. So, just skip storm until you have your D-web pressure running. 200 gas for templar archives. 200 gas for storm. 600 gas for 4 HTs. That's 1000 gas. 150 for stargate. 200 for fleet beacon. 200 for d-web. 4 corsairs. 950 gas.
I think it can actually work.
I think D-Webs need Reavers, or Carriers to shine. You need some trump card, or air attack to make the 15 seconds ground disable count. The problem is not siege tanks, it is all the support units surrounding them that Dragoons struggle with. About High Templars, consider this: you cast 5 storms, 1 hallucinate. You end up with 2 hallucinated high templars and make 2 archons from 2 high templars and 2 hallucinated ones. Alternatively, you cast 2 storms from 1 HT. The second HT hallucinates it. You make an Archon from the depleted HT and hallucination. When the Archon is summoned you hallucinate the Archon and make a second Archon from the other HT hallucination with the second HT. Thereby, you end up with 2 Archons, 2 hallucinated Archons from 2 HTs. Imagine 1 psyonic storm, 1 Archon and 1 hallucinated Archon from 1 HT - that is 1080HP from 2 depleted HT's. I think there is a whole another side to starcraft unbeknownst to us.
Sounds cool vs zerg and maybe protoss, but do not those archons still receive double damage?.. Also storm effectively saves up more of your units by killing enemy units in mass, I think
You can trade between 6 psionic storms from 2 HTs lategame all you want. Hallucinate is still 50% faster than psionic storm to research at the beginning of the game. I tried it in a game. It needs more work, you wait more than the second HT for a hallucination, more like a third.
I watched zelot vs scan CNSL5 6th game over two years ago and I think I'm correct in assuming guardian rushes need air superiority on the zerg's part. Scan moves out with valkyries and M&M. Zelot's guardians are in the open and he doesn't order the hydralisks to target 7 valkyries. What happens next is a complete steamroll. Guardians should come only after devourers since there isn't a way to protect them once marines take attack priority and valkyries can clean house. What instead should happen is devourers to cover for guardians coupled with hydralisks. PS: Zelot could have opted for 9 devourers 3 guardians and 5 mutalisks instead of 8 guardians 9 mutalisks and 14 hydralisks. They have the same investment cost.
Guardian rushes need air only terrain first of all, preferably a high ground area at the Terran's natural where the gas is exposed. And just forget about it if Terran has 2 port already and scanned your greater spire. If you don't surprise the Terran with it, you shouldn't win.
Zelot was in a scenario he should never be in. Resources spent on devourers wouldn't help him there. Devourers suck ass, because they're literally an anti air support unit. Their cooldown sucks, their speed sucks, their cost sucks. Everything about them sucks in your average TvZ, Building them to first to gain aiir superiority is just auto-loss.
The only time you should build Devourer is when you have useless (hurt) mutalisks and you're sieging Terran's natural with Guardians while terran is spamming wraiths to hold on for dear life while sitting fortified with turret/tank/bunker/mm.
Zelot is probably the most likely to build guardians because his play style is literally all in, which is something Scan is well aware of, and also why Zelot never accomplished anything big in BW.
On March 10 2025 22:54 Peeano wrote: Guardian rushes need air only terrain first of all, preferably a high ground area at the Terran's natural where the gas is exposed. And just forget about it if Terran has 2 port already and scanned your greater spire. If you don't surprise the Terran with it, you shouldn't win.
Zelot was in a scenario he should never be in. Resources spent on devourers wouldn't help him there. Devourers suck ass, because they're literally an anti air support unit. Their cooldown sucks, their speed sucks, their cost sucks. Everything about them sucks in your average TvZ, Building them to first to gain aiir superiority is just auto-loss.
The only time you should build Devourer is when you have useless (hurt) mutalisks and you're sieging Terran's natural with Guardians while terran is spamming wraiths to hold on for dear life while sitting fortified with turret/tank/bunker/mm.
Zelot is probably the most likely to build guardians because his play style is literally all in, which is something Scan is well aware of, and also why Zelot never accomplished anything big in BW.
Just before the big engage at 18:00 he just lost 9 mutalisks. Those could be revitalized into devourers and terran had 0 armor, likewise for zelot. That is not the gist of it, though. He was traversing the plateau with his guardians. If he had an air army, he could coast outside of the ridge and expect valkyries to come. He was flying above the plateau just because he was counting on the ground hydralisk cover to provide safe passage for the guardians. I don't think guardians are good vs buildings. They are only good against marines because they are small units that hydralisks lose 50% of their dps fighting against. Guardians keep marines away, devourers and mutalisks keep valkyries away, the rest of the army pick at other things. PS: I think this army is too overwhelming unless the queen ensnare ability is also used. Whatever the case I don't think that is the only unit composition for a 3150/2850 zerg army. PS 2: I rechecked and behold, 5 Devourers 9 Mutalisks have 18.2% higher dps than 9 Devourers and 5 Mutalisks. That is 600/200 more resources we can lift up our main army with. That is 8 Hydralisks.
Valks can outrange mutalisk by a lot, and they can fire twice in the time a devourer can shoot once. Devourers/muta don't keep valks away unless the Terran literally doesn't know how to patrol micro
To fight guardians on air only terrain you need gas. Guardians practically shit on anything that sits on the ground, not just marines.
On March 10 2025 23:32 Peeano wrote: Valks can outrange mutalisk by a lot, and they can fire twice in the time a devourer can shoot once. Devourers/muta don't keep valks away unless the Terran literally doesn't know how to patrol micro
To fight guardians on air only terrain you need gas. Guardians practically shit on anything that sits on the ground, not just marines.
Devourers aren't for damage, they are for damage buff. Each attack reduces army by 1. It is no small feat. They are not used just like queen ensnares are not used, eventhough queens have a 9 range from which to cast ensnare to slow the approaching army. They are easier than plague and plague is used every game. PS: according to liquipedia, devourer acid spores stack up to 7 and increase cooldown by ⅛th. Suppose you hit with the ensnare ability of the queen first - that neutralises stimpack - each marine would be slowed to its original speed and 7 valkyries would hit at 53% rate. I don't know which side of the isle you sit, but I'm taking my chances that is better than what we saw.
Anything more than 3-4 devourers is a joke. If you can get away with more, It implies you already won but your opponent has Fantasy gg timing.
Buffing muta is not very helpful when Valkyries have twice the range and the same movement speed (and can do patrol micro...) You'd need the ensnare you were talking about, which is even more resources investment on a support unit.
The scenario where you can afford queen/guard/dev/muta, needs ensnare used effectively before you can get guard/dev without dying... ...in which case plague follow up would probably be better >95% of the time.
On March 11 2025 00:06 Peeano wrote: Anything more than 3-4 devourers is a joke. If you can get away with more, It implies you already won but your opponent has Fantasy gg timing.
Buffing muta is not very helpful when Valkyries have twice the range and the same movement speed (and can do patrol micro...) You'd need the ensnare you were talking about, which is even more resources investment on a support unit.
The scenario where you can afford queen/guard/dev/muta, needs ensnare used effectively before you can get guard/dev without dying... ...in which case plague follow up would probably be better >95% of the time.
Devourer acid spores last 50.4 seconds according to liquipedia. Also, you recall I compared Zelot's army composition to my 9D5M3G composition and then corrected saying 5D9M3G does more and applied the 600/200 saving for 8 hydralisks. Well, you already have a queen's nest when you go hive for greater spire. Ensnare and Queen is just 100/100 & 100/100 away from that. You are still within budget. It takes only 38 seconds for queen to charge 75 energy for an ensnare. Plague would definitely help, but that would mean Scan is fighting against Action, not Zelot for starters. PS: it is still possible to cancel 2 more guardians and get 5D11M1G8H1Q army. PS 2: you can cancel 1 devourer and get 2 more hydralisks as above. 3D13M1G12H1Q is in fact 7.5% better than the above 8 hydralisk composition. PS 3: I compared upgrades. Ironically, 13 mutalisks and 3 devourers don't make an air attack upgrade as viable as 1 ground attack upgrade for 12 hydralisks. In this case replacing literally 2 mutalisks for half the price.
On March 11 2025 00:06 Peeano wrote: Anything more than 3-4 devourers is a joke. If you can get away with more, It implies you already won but your opponent has Fantasy gg timing.
Buffing muta is not very helpful when Valkyries have twice the range and the same movement speed (and can do patrol micro...) You'd need the ensnare you were talking about, which is even more resources investment on a support unit.
The scenario where you can afford queen/guard/dev/muta, needs ensnare used effectively before you can get guard/dev without dying... ...in which case plague follow up would probably be better >95% of the time.
trying to have a proper discussion about starcraft with this guy is a joke. The dude loves fellating himself over numbers and not actually playing the game.
On March 11 2025 00:06 Peeano wrote: Anything more than 3-4 devourers is a joke. If you can get away with more, It implies you already won but your opponent has Fantasy gg timing.
Buffing muta is not very helpful when Valkyries have twice the range and the same movement speed (and can do patrol micro...) You'd need the ensnare you were talking about, which is even more resources investment on a support unit.
The scenario where you can afford queen/guard/dev/muta, needs ensnare used effectively before you can get guard/dev without dying... ...in which case plague follow up would probably be better >95% of the time.
trying to have a proper discussion about starcraft with this guy is a joke. The dude loves fellating himself over numbers and not actually playing the game.
On March 11 2025 00:06 Peeano wrote: Anything more than 3-4 devourers is a joke. If you can get away with more, It implies you already won but your opponent has Fantasy gg timing.
Buffing muta is not very helpful when Valkyries have twice the range and the same movement speed (and can do patrol micro...) You'd need the ensnare you were talking about, which is even more resources investment on a support unit.
The scenario where you can afford queen/guard/dev/muta, needs ensnare used effectively before you can get guard/dev without dying... ...in which case plague follow up would probably be better >95% of the time.
trying to have a proper discussion about starcraft with this guy is a joke. The dude loves fellating himself over numbers and not actually playing the game.
At least I root for the underdog.
There is no spoon dog. Regular or under.
People aren’t rooting against it, I dare say many would love to see some revolutionary player redefining metas, or even just the occasional notable win with unfashionable unit compositions.
On March 11 2025 00:06 Peeano wrote: Anything more than 3-4 devourers is a joke. If you can get away with more, It implies you already won but your opponent has Fantasy gg timing.
Buffing muta is not very helpful when Valkyries have twice the range and the same movement speed (and can do patrol micro...) You'd need the ensnare you were talking about, which is even more resources investment on a support unit.
The scenario where you can afford queen/guard/dev/muta, needs ensnare used effectively before you can get guard/dev without dying... ...in which case plague follow up would probably be better >95% of the time.
trying to have a proper discussion about starcraft with this guy is a joke. The dude loves fellating himself over numbers and not actually playing the game.
At least I root for the underdog.
There is no spoon dog. Regular or under.
People aren’t rooting against it, I dare say many would love to see some revolutionary player redefining metas, or even just the occasional notable win with unfashionable unit compositions.
That would be sick!
Exactly this. I loved FlaSh for his ability to 1) change the meta game so well and define the meta, and 2) carry a pretty mediocre KT side to greatness until they finally got reinforcements by developing players like Stats during Kespa era. Not sure how this is relevant at all either.
I do not think air zerg stands any chance vs mass valkyries, unless he uses ensnare well. Mass devourers will not help, they are support units for mutas, and valks wreck mutas,
Restoration costs just as much to upgrade as one queen takes to build - so wouldn't it pretty much ALWAYS be worth it to get one queen to parasite the first or second science vessel that comes out?
(I remember seeing a pro parasite a science vessel once and it completely wrecked the Terran's strat because he never felt like he could move his vessel out onto the map and he was effectively just down his first vessel.)
Also, isn't ensnare actually really good? It lasts 40 seconds, makes bio worse, and if you land it on vessels they're doomed to scourge.
So, wouldn't it be sensible to get just one queen every ZvT game?
And Protoss doesn't even have any solution to parasite besides killing their own unit in cold blood. So, why not get one in every ZvP, too?
On March 11 2025 02:44 ThunderJunk wrote: Restoration costs just as much to upgrade as one queen takes to build - so wouldn't it pretty much ALWAYS be worth it to get one queen to parasite the first or second science vessel that comes out?
I remember seeing a pro parasite a science vessel once and it completely wrecked the Terran's strat because he never felt like he could move his vessel out onto the map and he was effectively just down his first vessel.
The vessel can just be kept on top of the marines, and honestly once vessels are our and terran begins to get the bio contains at each of the zerg bases, zerg sorta already knows where the terran units are.
On March 11 2025 02:44 ThunderJunk wrote: Restoration costs just as much to upgrade as one queen takes to build - so wouldn't it pretty much ALWAYS be worth it to get one queen to parasite the first or second science vessel that comes out?
I remember seeing a pro parasite a science vessel once and it completely wrecked the Terran's strat because he never felt like he could move his vessel out onto the map and he was effectively just down his first vessel.
The vessel can just be kept on top of the marines, and honestly once vessels are our and terran begins to get the bio contains at each of the zerg bases, zerg sorta already knows where the terran units are.
If the Z main is bottom right, and knows that T is lurking outside the bottom right base, and Z has a third bottom left, there are moments where Z can make a non-gamble, informed judgment call to squeeze out an extra drone or two at the unpressured third. In a scenario where you could squeeze out one extra drone in this way, the queen will have paid for itself and also the drone in just 4.5 minutes... Okay, that doesn't actually sound very impressive in retrospect :\
Getting a parasite on a dropship would feel amazing though
On March 11 2025 02:44 ThunderJunk wrote: Restoration costs just as much to upgrade as one queen takes to build - so wouldn't it pretty much ALWAYS be worth it to get one queen to parasite the first or second science vessel that comes out?
I remember seeing a pro parasite a science vessel once and it completely wrecked the Terran's strat because he never felt like he could move his vessel out onto the map and he was effectively just down his first vessel.
The vessel can just be kept on top of the marines, and honestly once vessels are our and terran begins to get the bio contains at each of the zerg bases, zerg sorta already knows where the terran units are.
If the Z main is bottom right, and knows that T is lurking outside the bottom right base, and Z has a third bottom left, there are moments where Z can make a non-gamble, informed judgment call to squeeze out an extra drone or two at the unpressured third. In a scenario where you could squeeze out one extra drone in this way, the queen will have paid for itself and also the drone in just 4.5 minutes... Okay, that doesn't actually sound very impressive in retrospect :\
Getting a parasite on a dropship would feel amazing though
But science vessels are slow. If you play cat and mouse it won't be able to irradiate your mutalisks. That is the point of parasite.
If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
On March 11 2025 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
Parasite is pretty big vs mech when using broodlings. Give u low risk vision of mech armies for easier broodling pre-targeting from further away. Bunch of pros frequently use it like that.
On March 11 2025 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
Parasite is pretty big vs mech when using broodlings. Give u low risk vision of mech armies for easier broodling pre-targeting from further away. Bunch of pros frequently use it like that.
Yup. It’s also a valid option when going ensnare against a wraith build. There is nothing wrong with parasite when you already have queens. It’s a spell that’s situationally quite good.
Going queen when you are transitioning from muta to lurker ti parasite a vessel is something else. If anything, ensnare is super good against those late early game bio balls because it negates stim and allows muta to take out bioballs. But at that super crucial point of the game you have bigger things to worry about than to get vision from a science vessel.
On March 11 2025 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
Restore costs just as much to research as a queen takes to build - so if you force that reaction off one queen you're still even on resources.
It's going to be a lot easier to keep your mutas alive and time your lurkers correctly if you have an exact read on how the marines are clumped and where the Terran army is.
Would you rather have 9 mutas and be blind or 8 mutas and 1 queen but know exactly what to do with them? You'd save a lot of APM using your Mutas if you didn't have to worry about them running into a bio ball because you know the bio ball is somewhere else - and if the science vessel isn't with the army it's stuck at home and that's more than worth a queen.
If T sees it coming and researches restore, that's one less tank to bust your natural - wouldn't you always be willing to sacrifice one muta to kill one tank?
On March 11 2025 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
Parasite is pretty big vs mech when using broodlings. Give u low risk vision of mech armies for easier broodling pre-targeting from further away. Bunch of pros frequently use it like that.
Yup. It’s also a valid option when going ensnare against a wraith build. There is nothing wrong with parasite when you already have queens. It’s a spell that’s situationally quite good.
Going queen when you are transitioning from muta to lurker ti parasite a vessel is something else. If anything, ensnare is super good against those late early game bio balls because it negates stim and allows muta to take out bioballs. But at that super crucial point of the game you have bigger things to worry about than to get vision from a science vessel.
Not to prove a counter point, but you do know when you have full vision of a unit you can switch to peripheral vision and go about your business while you monitor the unit inside the minimap. Even the best of us are not immune to map awareness. Jaedong lost the groupstage to Light because he assumed Light would go to 5' o'clock base when he went to the main 2' o'clock and he couldn't reach the sunkens with mutalisks in time. A similar thing occured to Bisu, forgot which. I think map awareness is like proprioception, it is the first skill to go when a Starcraft pro retires.
On March 11 2025 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
Restore costs just as much to research as a queen takes to build - so if you force that reaction off one queen you're still even on resources.
It's going to be a lot easier to keep your mutas alive and time your lurkers correctly if you have an exact read on how the marines are clumped and where the Terran army is.
Would you rather have 9 mutas and be blind or 8 mutas and 1 queen but know exactly what to do with them? You'd save a lot of APM using your Mutas if you didn't have to worry about them running into a bio ball because you know the bio ball is somewhere else - and if the science vessel isn't with the army it's stuck at home and that's more than worth a queen.
If T sees it coming and researches restore, that's one less tank to bust your natural - wouldn't you always be willing to sacrifice one muta to kill one tank?
If Terran spends mana on restore, that is equal to 10 marines wasting 1 stim. The majority of games Terran loses is because they get scared and overuse stimpacks. The way Zerg wins is doing fake dives until Terran is just out of mana until doing it for real. I think everything about Queens is pure win when faced with bio - oh and one more thing: ensnare doesn't work on terran mech units.
On March 11 2025 21:55 Biff The Understudy wrote: If parasite was so interesting in the mid game (it’s not), terran would research restore and use a medic to get rid of it.
Generally the idea that in a phase of the game where every apm and every second counts and where you can die to a bust because you mismicroed your mutas once or because your lurkers are 4 seconds later than the terran bust, you will make a Queen to get vision by microing it to a vessel and using parasite to get to see stuff you already know are happening is a bit baroque.
Restore costs just as much to research as a queen takes to build - so if you force that reaction off one queen you're still even on resources.
It's going to be a lot easier to keep your mutas alive and time your lurkers correctly if you have an exact read on how the marines are clumped and where the Terran army is.
Would you rather have 9 mutas and be blind or 8 mutas and 1 queen but know exactly what to do with them? You'd save a lot of APM using your Mutas if you didn't have to worry about them running into a bio ball because you know the bio ball is somewhere else - and if the science vessel isn't with the army it's stuck at home and that's more than worth a queen.
If T sees it coming and researches restore, that's one less tank to bust your natural - wouldn't you always be willing to sacrifice one muta to kill one tank?
My point is that terran wouldn’t research restore anyway because zerg wouldn’t bother with it, because at that point of the game it makes zero sense.
The transition between muta harass to lurker and then defiler is on an absolute knife edge, it’s all a matter of seconds and survival. There moment you guys are talking about is after science vessel come out and before defilers are out, that’s a small window where Zerg absolutely knows where terran is: Terran is moving out to kill him. When you have defiler, i don’t think that parasite makes much sense when you have plague instead. You are going to use your resources and apm to reduce the vessel count, not to get some intel that your opponent can easily counter.
As i said there is a niche application for the spell when you are fighting merch and you are making queens anyway.
On March 11 2025 02:44 ThunderJunk wrote: Restoration costs just as much to upgrade as one queen takes to build - so wouldn't it pretty much ALWAYS be worth it to get one queen to parasite the first or second science vessel that comes out?
(I remember seeing a pro parasite a science vessel once and it completely wrecked the Terran's strat because he never felt like he could move his vessel out onto the map and he was effectively just down his first vessel.)
Also, isn't ensnare actually really good? It lasts 40 seconds, makes bio worse, and if you land it on vessels they're doomed to scourge.
So, wouldn't it be sensible to get just one queen every ZvT game?
And Protoss doesn't even have any solution to parasite besides killing their own unit in cold blood. So, why not get one in every ZvP, too?
Zergs should get one or more queen in every zvp game that goes to hive and in most zvt games where hive is started. This is honestly one of the areas where there is most room for improvement.
But parasite vs t is kinda meh, aside from what people are saying, using broodling vs mech. The thing people need to remember is that starcraft isn't a game with just 2 resources - minerals and vespene - but a third one too; attention. Queens require a dedicated hotkey to be used well, and those hotkeys are in limited supply. Parasite has long range, but the utility of it, vs a bio-terran who can get restore to counter it, is pretty limited.
As the - honestly - biggest queen proponent in the western world, and probably the player with the most experience using them, these are the ways queens should be used:
Parasite against mid-late/late game protoss. Throw them on archons and shuttles. Not something to rush for, but no reason not to build 2 queens for this purpose after you've gotten hive and defiler tech - it's definitely worth it, and protoss has no answer. The only downside, honestly, is that this might inspire more protoss players to go for dark archons, and those are pretty good and we should be happy if p doesn't bother with them.
Parasite to help you clone broodling against mech armies. You might only get to do it once before t counters with restore, but that one time is often game winning.
Parasite against protoss players going sair reaver. (Here, you're also getting queens for ensnare, but parasiting a few sairs so you know where the army is headed means your hydras are always in place to defend and suddenly you've neutered part of the strength of sair reaver - that you won't have overlords in place to know where he's going. Protoss will often send their parasited sairs into a corner/suicide them - in this case, keep parasiting, that's obviously worth it for you)
Ensnare: Ensnare vs wraiths is just fantastic Ensnare vs bio if you are going crazy zerg or hydra lurker. But if you're doing a standard muta into lurker into defiler, you should prioritize the defiler, and honestly, queens are a bit too demanding to add to the mix in this scenario. Going crazy zerg though? 100% get queens for ensnare.
Vs protoss, ensnare is less good. It's fantastic against sair reaver (or any really committed sair build), but generally not awesome against protoss ground, especially not if it's a dragoon/templar based army. P can usually wait it out and just storm in that case, and the queens might get picked off. It's not like it's bad - if you manage to ensnare 15 p units then that's definitely annoying for p, but it's not outright game winning.
One exception: In the super late game, when protoss has abandoned goons (because of defilers) and their army consists of mass archon, reavers, templars and zealots, zerg has an army combination that obliterates this, but which hardly ever sees the light of day: The queen guardian (hydra) mix. I've genuinely won a lot of games where protoss had a 12 archon 6 templar 4 reaver lots of zealots army by making this switch - you have parasited the archons, you do a cloned broodling attack on the templars, and then you ensnare the archons and swoop in with guardians. This can genuinely allow a zerg to completely destroy a more costly protoss army, with hardly any losses - completely unheard of if you stick to hydra lurk ling defiler ultra like most do. This is more of a post 25-30 minute thing, but honestly, in games lasting more than 30 minutes, zergs should often make 6-12 queens and utilize all 3 spells. Before that point, generally too costly and knife edgy.
Broodling: Well, vs mech is obvious. This, and to counter wraith play, are the two ways where queens are so obviously good that you frequently see people do it. Aside from that, it's also viable when going hydra lurker and facing bio with double factory tank support.
Additionally, the aforementioned mass broodling vs templar (or even goon templar) in the super late game. Here's an example -
You can see that I've parasited the archon so I have perfect view of the army, then I just clone broodlings and easily kill the base using hydras after. Would defiler lurker ling work? Sure, but it'd almost certainly be more costly - I kill 8 goons, 2 archons, 2 templars, 4 cannons, 2 zealots, while only losing like 8 out of a 24 hydra army, here. All the queens survive and get to broodling more later on.
Queens are APM taxing, this is why zergs usually do not bother getting them. They already have enough on their hands: muta micro, then defiler and lurker micro, larva...
On March 13 2025 02:51 SiarX wrote: Queens are APM taxing, this is why zergs usually do not bother getting them. They already have enough on their hands: muta micro, then defiler and lurker micro, larva...
Queens are viable only vs Mech, wraiths and situationally marines around 10-13 minutes when terran doesnt have absolutely massive marines groups. Also viable in super late game vs protoss but thats rare.
The restore argument some made can work. But I have seen only RoyaL do it because he loves to experiment with rarely used tech. He used restore for his vessels, not vs parasite though.
On March 13 2025 14:56 pyrogenetix wrote: Dark archons have been more and more popular these days in pvz since they directly counter the muta ball sniping templars
Feedback is also amazing against defilers. Mini used it to fast effect against Jaedong this week in their bo7 duel.
On March 13 2025 02:51 SiarX wrote: Queens are APM taxing, this is why zergs usually do not bother getting them. They already have enough on their hands: muta micro, then defiler and lurker micro, larva...
Queens are viable only vs Mech, wraiths and situationally marines around 10-13 minutes when terran doesnt have absolutely massive marines groups. Also viable in super late game vs protoss but thats rare.
The restore argument some made can work. But I have seen only RoyaL do it because he loves to experiment with rarely used tech. He used restore for his vessels, not vs parasite though.
Queens can infest Command Centers, though. It can be a huge Terran counter since Terran is the only race who can float buildings. Infesting the Command Center balances that. Otherwise, Terran is always economically ahead when the base is fully depleted.
EPT
