after watching savior lose to stork to mass carriers in the recent replay i noticed something.
it seems that the traditional 3 hatch savior style zergs are losing to the stargate/corsair build protosses that players like bisu and stork use.
the zergs almost always get mass devourers or hydras and get plague ensnare and swarm to kill the carriers. some try to get a lot of scourge but that requires a lot of control to not waste scourge and a lot of them get killed by corsairs in a few seconds.
why dont they use devourers and mutas? devourers with the acid spores are pretty useless when the hydras can keep up with the carriers who run away and the spores arent that good when the only unit attacking is devourers.
getting a 3 to 1 ratio of mutas to devourers worked so well for me vs protoss air because the mutalisks fast attack and splash glaives benefit the MOST from the devourers acid spores. a mass number of mutalisks with 3 3 upgrades wont get destroyed by 3 3 corsairs if you spread them out evenly and its much easier to mass up more mutas than it is to mass up corsairs any ways.
mutalisks cost a LOT more gas and the combination still doesn't fare well enough to make it better than the fact that you can follow carriers around with hydra/defiler
muta/devourer is sort of putting all your eggs in one basket and its not effective enough to work on most cases. you'd have to be pretty far ahead and even then you'd have to be pretty good at managing larva to keep him from expanding
the problem is you cant really stop a protoss from expanding and getting more gas for more corsairs and more carriers so eventually hes gonna win
you can't choke him like you can with hydra/defiler and you can't destroy his flying army in a fell swoop like you'd need to
it does work if your control is vastly superior and you're ahead economically, or even if your opponent just sucks or what have you, but its not the best method
the problem is that mass mutas die too easy to corsairs so you have to either spread them out very well (impossible once you have like 24 mutas) or wait until the corsairs are cleared. nothing better than mutas against spored carriers though. i always bring some mutalisks along with the devourers, but i think 3:1 is too much, 1:1 is probably better. then wait for the devourers to fire some shots, spread spores and kill some sairs before you bring in your mutalisks.
you're post is confusing me a little though. first you're talking about early game builds and then you are discussing late game units? of course you need hydras. devourers aren't available early enough.
actually the mutalisk's bounce divides the damage, so you're looking at 18, then a third of that which is 6, then a third of that which is 6. its not a flat increase of 9.
as well carriers have a natural 4 armor so the damage isnt as ridiculous as it would seem
On July 27 2007 18:07 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: actually the mutalisk's bounce divides the damage, so you're looking at 18, then a third of that which is 6, then a third of that which is 6. its not a flat increase of 9.
as well carriers have a natural 4 armor so the damage isnt as ridiculous as it would seem
You sure about that? If the acid spores decrease the effective armor, it wouldn't matter that the damage is divided because it would be like an enemy with -9 armor which gets hit for 1 damage, adding up to 9.
Well i'm not arguing with 9-> 9/3-> (9/3)/3 but it depends if you put the modifier inside the parentheses or outside.
And if acid spores are armor, i would think it goes outside of the (9/3) because this is why everyone in ZvZ gets armor first, it drops the 3 damage splash to 2 and the 1 damage splash to 0.
Testing this would require a volunteer to to play me because splash won't work on your own units.
Devourers aren't quite as good as people think against corsairs. Assuming equal upgrades the corsair does 2.5 damage a hit against a mutalisk (small target) Assuming equal upgrades the corsair does 3 damage a hit against a devourer While devourers have far more armour the explosive damage modifier means that they should fare no better than mutalisks. It is because of the vastly increased hp and acid spores that they do. But cost for cost, Corsairs are by far the stronger units, unless Z has a big mineral advantage or plagues to back them up then a straight air battle will be lost.
^ Good is very subjective, I personally found devours vastly powerful vs corsairs.
Have you seen a 9 acid spore corsair attack? It attacks slower than a mutalisk. Not to mention the insane bouncy damange mutalisks would've done...
I think hydra/dev is a good combo though, mutalisks tend to vaporise in 3 seconds vs corsairs if you are not careful, but hydras you have abit of a leeway.
Steve I'm pretty sure he's talking about 9 acid spores being on something, hence: (9/1) + 9; (9/3) + 9; (9/9) + 9 18;12;10
Right? Because when the bounce leaves, it's determined to do 3 damage, no? It's not like the game takes a bounce and goes "that should have done 9+9=18 but it was a bounce so 18/3 = 6".
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass but I don't think I am.
On July 27 2007 19:39 Chill wrote: Steve I'm pretty sure he's talking about 9 acid spores being on something, hence: (9/1) + 9; (9/3) + 9; (9/9) + 9 18;12;10
Right? Because when the bounce leaves, it's determined to do 3 damage, no? It's not like the game takes a bounce and goes "that should have done 9+9=18 but it was a bounce so 18/3 = 6".
Maybe I'm talking out of my ass but I don't think I am.
I think you're right, I believe armour modifiers always come last and the acid spores are simply an armour modifier. But I haven't tested it so this is simply a logical agreement, rather than a factual one.
Devourer/muta is really strong against Protoss air, however, the real problem you face is maelstrom plus psi storm. And versus Terran it's irradiation. Your devourers will die very quickly to that shit, and then Protoss or Terran air rapes you. If devourers were a non-organic unit, i.e. not affected by that (except psi storm), they would be much more useful. Also, it usually takes quite a while to kill all Protoss air, as they have so much HP/armor or are rebuilt so fast (corsairs).
well psi storm and maelstrom will probably be faced whether i make mutas or devourers. both will be equally hindered by these spells.
dont even talk about irradiate cause we are not talking about vs terran.
i dont see maelstrom being used as much as its being praised in this thread but having less devourers and having more mutas seem to work better than what chojja did by just massing pure devourers. the devourers dont benefit much from having spores added to their targets while mutas gain a huge damage boost.
Acid spores increase the damage by 9 on each bounce(if the target has 9 spores on it of course) which is usually close to 27 extra damage(for example, against a target with 3 armor muta with max attack ups will deal 9-1-0.5 without spores and 18-10-6.33 damag with spores, which is a bit less than 24 damage increase). Muta/Dev combo is generally much beter than pure devourers(12 devourers+12 mutas beat 24 devourers although they cost much less), but the main problem is that mutas die extremely fast to archons/storm.
If you go devourer muta your more susceptible to DA simply because more units add clutter to be maeled, and also a good sair user can pick off your muta first thing and then you would have no dmg dealer, the same can't be said of devourer hydra.
Devourers are mostly support, they fuck sairs because they make them shoot slower. And devs have high armor which makes them take less from sairs. Also they make mutas do more damage with splash etc.
If you wanna know why Zergs don't go all air vs carrier/sair watch this:
Personally I think part of the problem is to get devos you sacrifice muta. To even be moderately feasible, you need a crapload of muta. At this point, you're sacrificing a lot and the Toss can just go with more ground based stuff, making your expensive devos useless.
Or more likely you'll lose them all to corsairs and storm anyways...
fuck, that game was so annoying to watch. That whole time toss was trying to take that base on top left he could have been sending cracklings around raping buildings. If the protoss sends sairs and cars over to counter it drop on the left side. Rinse , repeat. Zerg had map control, economic advantage, and mobility advantage. Terrible.
On July 28 2007 17:05 Andaroo wrote: 1 defiler to plague, 1 queen to ensnare, 12 hydras to kill =).
You might need a bit more hydras, but u get the point xD.
Theorycraft... That's good but you need to be extremely lucky to be able to put all those sauces on them. That never happens like we want. Still you'd want to get devourers since it's the safest way to counter it, but you'd really need a lot of minerals... Defilers + hydras in each base can work but the carriers can simply just kill the hatch while the corsairs disrupt-web the hydras.
It seems to me that using Devourer/Hydra is much less gas heavy and mutas can get killed by sairs sooo fast expecially if sairs have attack ups and mutas have no defense ups.
Also hydras keep map control and won't be held back from destroying an expo protected by mass cannons like mutas might be (although I guess you could just morph a few guards).
On July 28 2007 04:04 ahk-gosu wrote: well psi storm and maelstrom will probably be faced whether i make mutas or devourers. both will be equally hindered by these spells.
dont even talk about irradiate cause we are not talking about vs terran.
i dont see maelstrom being used as much as its being praised in this thread but having less devourers and having more mutas seem to work better than what chojja did by just massing pure devourers. the devourers dont benefit much from having spores added to their targets while mutas gain a huge damage boost.
And get completely raped by a group of sairs in no time flat.
On July 28 2007 17:05 Andaroo wrote: 1 defiler to plague, 1 queen to ensnare, 12 hydras to kill =).
You might need a bit more hydras, but u get the point xD.
Theorycraft... That's good but you need to be extremely lucky to be able to put all those sauces on them. That never happens like we want. Still you'd want to get devourers since it's the safest way to counter it, but you'd really need a lot of minerals... Defilers + hydras in each base can work but the carriers can simply just kill the hatch while the corsairs disrupt-web the hydras.
Theorycraft? I've played games P comes out with 9 carriers out of the blue (dt sair opening with a secret expo) and I would have lost had he massed ground me. with 3 base vs 3. But I simply sweeped him off the floor with plague and hydra. after you plague em it takes 2 scourge to kill a carrier. You might need devourer to take sair fire but you'll take down tons of carrier with scourge/some dev.
Devourer muta is better than going pure dev at least. Devs are so very expensive and do considerably less DPS against sairs. Just plague sairs, send in devs, then send in muta. Scourge after if he has cars. Now thats much much cheaper than making 40 devourers. No?
On July 27 2007 18:39 Kwark wrote: Devourers aren't quite as good as people think against corsairs. Assuming equal upgrades the corsair does 2.5 damage a hit against a mutalisk (small target) Assuming equal upgrades the corsair does 3 damage a hit against a devourer While devourers have far more armour the explosive damage modifier means that they should fare no better than mutalisks. It is because of the vastly increased hp and acid spores that they do. But cost for cost, Corsairs are by far the stronger units, unless Z has a big mineral advantage or plagues to back them up then a straight air battle will be lost.
One thing about this, devourers are far much better because their armor absorbs all the splash damage corsair deal, so that's really why they fare far better than mutas (plus what was said above): because corsair hit 1 dev with each hit, while it hits every muta with each hit (though it depends on attack/armor upgrades with devs).
On July 27 2007 18:39 Kwark wrote: Devourers aren't quite as good as people think against corsairs. Assuming equal upgrades the corsair does 2.5 damage a hit against a mutalisk (small target) Assuming equal upgrades the corsair does 3 damage a hit against a devourer While devourers have far more armour the explosive damage modifier means that they should fare no better than mutalisks. It is because of the vastly increased hp and acid spores that they do. But cost for cost, Corsairs are by far the stronger units, unless Z has a big mineral advantage or plagues to back them up then a straight air battle will be lost.
One thing about this, devourers are far much better because their armor absorbs all the splash damage corsair deal, so that's really why they fare far better than mutas (plus what was said above): because corsair hit 1 dev with each hit, while it hits every muta with each hit (though it depends on attack/armor upgrades with devs).
Corsairs do equal damage to a certain radius, so the biggest part of the splash damage isn't partial and the armor doesn't have any affect.
For their partial damage, they won't be much more superior to mutas. Muta's small size still cuts the splash damage in half so if the sairs do 3 partial damage, a muta would take 1.5 and a devourer would take 1. Not so impressive of a difference.
fuck, that game was so annoying to watch. That whole time toss was trying to take that base on top left he could have been sending cracklings around raping buildings. If the protoss sends sairs and cars over to counter it drop on the left side. Rinse , repeat. Zerg had map control, economic advantage, and mobility advantage. Terrible.
go ground and evade the sairs. now you're only taking damage from the carriers. so what you can do is send in hydras and defilers and plague/shoot the carriers and the sairs won't bother you.
On May 31 2009 23:22 redneck_mike wrote: go ground and evade the sairs. now you're only taking damage from the carriers. so what you can do is send in hydras and defilers and plague/shoot the carriers and the sairs won't bother you.
Nice bump. Maybe i'll be like you someday. That was from two years ago. OP won't respond to that.
On July 29 2007 16:40 LxRogue wrote: I just tested the acid spore/muta attack thing, and the secondary bounce did 12 damage to an ovie with 9 acid spores.
Wow, that means that against an opponent army of 9-acid spored units, each muta does more than triple damage! (18 + 12 + 10 = 40 > (9 + 3 + 1)*3)
EPT
