Countering Carrier/Sair as Zerg

Excel Excel

142 Posts

May 02 2010 13:52 GMT

Is this even possible at Lair tech? I can hive up in time for the attack and have defilers with consume out, but the P army's mobility just means that they walk away and rape the other parts of my base. Plague is not very effective, and neither is massed hydras with swarm, as the carriers exploit terrain advantage and still have a shield wall to sit behind while my tech/overlords die. (Scourge barely works because of the sairs.)

So far my only solution is to prevent the P from getting carriers to start with, but I don't want to think of carriers as a game-ending unit: they have it and I'm done for? That's a pretty pessimistic view of the game.

P.S. Before you suggest devourers, try it out yourself.

Switchb4ck

United States2 Posts

May 02 2010 14:16 GMT

hey, im also a zerg player. still pretty noob but i thought id put in my 2 cents. since the carriers are UBER slow, what you need might need to do is continously scout if not doing so, that way you can see when they are coming to attack you. and when they are coming to attack simply do drops and harass his bases and force him to choose between killing your bases or protecting his own. as for your ovys, you should have speed by hive tech and can use scourge escorts to protect the ovys from sairs while avoiding slow carriers. as for tech buildings, you may need to rebuild or branch them a few times at expos to keep him from killing them all at once.also once there is hive, try to utilize nydus if possible to have some kind of defense movement for your army. hope anything i said help

SoMuchBetter

Australia10606 Posts

May 02 2010 14:33 GMT

youre problem is stemming from a weak economy. Take the map if your opponent is only building sairs and hiding behind cannons. you should have hive your hive before he has carriers then you can counter with defilers, hydras. devourers/muta is also a stronger combination than sair/carrier, or you can just build devourers to help deal with sair and primarily use hydras.

just be sure to keep all the expansions scouted during early-mid so he doesnt get away with taking them behind your back while youre building up

Papvin

Denmark610 Posts

May 02 2010 14:55 GMT

You need to post a replay, as it says in the guidelines for postin in strat forum. Carriers are weak against zerg because that zerg has high mobility, and to get to carriers, the p either let the z take the rest of the map or just die to a hydra bust or sumthing.
Anyway, general guidelines against protoss mass air is simply to mass hydras. At the time he has many carriers, you should be closed to maxed with hydra/devourer and eventually just transitioning into mass mut/devourer, which will eat carrier/sair alive.
Also, you seem to not understand how powerful devourers and defilers are against mass p air. Plague against carriers is DEVASTATING!! Carriers have 4 natural armor, so removing all their hitpoints (which is 2/3 of it's total life) make them so vulnarable, and, they can't heal it up :D.
And, I have tried devourers out myself. They are insanely as support units against corsairs, because acid spores completely negates corsairs. They're not that good against carriers, but the p will always have sairs in his army, so devourers rock!
Again, post a replay, it'll help us help you immensly.

Piste

6167 Posts

May 02 2010 15:13 GMT

mass hydras with swarm -> invincible army.
devourers + plague is damn effective. Don't know what makes you think otherwise.

Carriers are damn slow and as a zerg your hydra army moves fast especially when you have nydus canals. Use also queens for ensare and parasite.

Plague also interceptors and they will not come out of the carrier before plague has gone off.

Remember upgrades.

Lightwip

United States5497 Posts

May 02 2010 16:21 GMT

Well, if you're at lair and they have plenty of carriers/sairs, that pretty much means your economy sucks.
Hydra+swarm pretty much makes them invincible. With plague they'll get eaten pretty fast by hydras. Maybe burrow would help?

holyhalo5

United States187 Posts

May 02 2010 16:44 GMT

bisu did this to jaedong (my favorite rep of all time). why didnt JAEDONG go for devourers?

3FFA

United States3931 Posts

May 02 2010 17:43 GMT

Rep please because with a bad OP you get bad answers and with a good OP you get... + Show Spoiler +

good answers!

Severedevil

United States4832 Posts

May 02 2010 17:48 GMT

Carrier/sair works fine on maps with island-ish qualities, such as Outsider or Andromeda, but I'm sure you'll do better to open sair/reaver or sair/DT, and harass to keep the Zerg's economy from becoming absurd before you transition to carrier/sair... and you'll still want stuff like templars/dts/reavers to fly along with your army anyway, because carriers don't do all that much damage. (Also, you generally need either reavers or templars to prevent Zerg from branking your front.

You counter sair/reaver or sair/carrier by having a massive economy. And then you get a buttload of hydra/devourer/scourge/muta with plague and upgrades.

blahman3344

United States2015 Posts

May 02 2010 17:51 GMT

#10

On May 03 2010 01:44 holyhalo5 wrote:
bisu did this to jaedong (my favorite rep of all time). why didnt JAEDONG go for devourers?

even pro gamers make some bad decisions sometime.
in the most recent jaedong vs stork (on match point i think), stork had mass zealots, while jaedong knew this, he could have made lurkers, but he continued to pump ultras.

but on topic:
carriers have nothing on hydras + swarm.
and for a protoss player to be able to mass carirers and corsairs, he shouldn't be able to do anything about you expanding over the map and powering an econ. also if mobility is a problem, that's why zergs have nydus canals =P

edit: as the others have been saying, you need to post a replay in order for me to zero in on what it is you need to do. =\

DarkSaieden

South Africa254 Posts

May 02 2010 18:04 GMT

#11

And queens (for pure air). Use your mobility to split up the sairs from the carriers. Then ensnare, let devs take a shot, pull devs away while moving in muta, move in devs. A good ratio is 2 devs to 3-4 muta. Remember dev's spore reduces armor by one per spore (so with 9 spores on every unit, 0/# mutas do 9+3+1+(3x9) = 40 per glaive) and attack rate is reduced. And carrier/sair is more expensive. Just be uber careful of stasis. If you do get stasis'd badly, just run. He must now choose between chasing, waiting or splitting up and doing both, so try and abuse whatever he does by either a backstab, expanding if possible, or catching either the sairs or carriers alone. Your mobility and more powerful unit combos give you a lot of options, unless you're really behind, so use them

kineSiS-

Korea (South)1068 Posts

May 02 2010 18:54 GMT

#12

Devours get raped by carriers I am not even joking. The only good thing they do is tank the damage of the corsairs and slow down the sairs attack seriously. I'm pretty sure I've seen a Sair/Reaver transition into Carrier/Sair/Reaver/Disruptor Web against somoene else besides Bisu vs Jaedong, Devours get OHKO'd by carriers and on Andromeda with someone like Bisu' 350 APM, it's easy to own the shit out of the zerg. Also on map's like outsider, it's freaking annoying to see a carrier/sair transition from early/mid game Sair/Reaver

Papvin

Denmark610 Posts

May 02 2010 18:59 GMT

#13

On May 03 2010 03 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 03 2010 03 end_of_the_skype_highlighting:54 kineSiS- wrote:
Devours get raped by carriers I am not even joking. The only good thing they do is tank the damage of the corsairs and slow down the sairs attack seriously. I'm pretty sure I've seen a Sair/Reaver transition into Carrier/Sair/Reaver/Disruptor Web against somoene else besides Bisu vs Jaedong, Devours get OHKO'd by carriers and on Andromeda with someone like Bisu' 350 APM, it's easy to own the shit out of the zerg. Also on map's like outsider, it's freaking annoying to see a carrier/sair transition from early/mid game Sair/Reaver

It seems like you don't play the devourers as they're supposed to be played. They're a support unit. Pure devourer is aweful against anything. And yes, devourers are not good against carriers, but they're imba against sairs, which the protoss will always have.

TriniMasta

United States1323 Posts

May 02 2010 19:15 GMT

#14

plague on interceptors forces the interceptors to stay in the carrier until the plague effect wears off...it cuts their attacking units by one half or more

GeMicles

Canada307 Posts

May 02 2010 20:55 GMT

#15

flank with scourge, attack from as many angles as possible. then go mass devourers. it should reduce the effectiveness of the sairs and your scourge should have a better time committing suicide

jolenar

United States23 Posts

May 02 2010 21:00 GMT

#16

There was a game on Andromeda between Stork and some Zerg where the Zerg used Devourers to neutralize Sairs and then Scourged all the Carriers. With Plague, Carriers die to 2 Scourge. 9 acid spore'd Corsairs can't kill Scourge at all.

Also morph a Guardian here and there to harass his expansions/islands and force him to split off Corsairs to deal with them.

seRapH

United States9718 Posts

May 02 2010 21:15 GMT

#17

On May 03 2010 06:00 jolenar wrote:
There was a game on Andromeda between Stork and some Zerg where the Zerg used Devourers to neutralize Sairs and then Scourged all the Carriers. With Plague, Carriers die to 2 Scourge. 9 acid spore'd Corsairs can't kill Scourge at all.

Also morph a Guardian here and there to harass his expansions/islands and force him to split off Corsairs to deal with them.

ggplay? epic game.

devourers > corsairs, and tanks damage well.

complement them with either mutalisks or mass, mass scourge (a bit harder to micro).

Saracen

United States5139 Posts

May 02 2010 21:51 GMT

#18

Hydra/defiler/queen should be enough, but you need to play greedy as hell. Don't forget your upgrades.

lone_hydra

Canada1460 Posts

May 02 2010 22:36 GMT

#19

Hydra and scourge, and a spore at each base, expand, put a sunken in each base as well if you feel you can't keep up, and go devourer if the game is not decided by late game.

CakeOrI)eath

United States327 Posts

May 02 2010 22:39 GMT

#20

Post a rep next time please! The amazingly helpful and skilled people here at TL will be able to point out what you did wrong, and often its not what you thought it was. Carriers are such a late game unit that the counter to them is very dependent on how strong each of your economies are before they even show up. There is no "hard" counter to sair-carrier so dont ask for one, sc1 isnt that simple of a game.

Carriers are such a huge investment not just in resources but in time (it takes a long time before the money you put into them becomes useful). As such there either is some sort of timing window where you can either attack and kill him OR, more likely, you can be confident that the toss can only harass and not do a full powered attack. In this second case you have to focus on defending the harass (sair reaver or sair DT) and out expanding/macroing the toss so that when carriers DO show up, you might not have a cost effective option to fighting them but you will still win because you will have a stronger econ.

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