I've been wondering for quite a few days about corsairs in PvZ.
Now we know that the corsair was the key fundamental is giving balance back to neo PvZ back in the days of late 2007 where Bisu mauled Savior pretty badly with aggressive corsair play.
Corsairs not only apply pressure directly, but they also give passive pressure to zerg by forcing zerg to keep guessing where your attacks willbe coming in from his overlords and focing him to be on his toes.
However, I find that this new age of PvZ doesn't really put corsairs into that huge of a use right now. Most P nowadays hardly have corsair play.
Moreover, we find more plays of corsair dt than corsair reaver. IMO, I think corsair reaver is a sort of safer mode of play because reavers can be used as really good defense in the case of 3 hatch hydras and also for good harass. The only difference I see is the amount of control you need for corsair reaver.
I been playing PvZ for a while now and I'm actually wondering why Bisu's style of play doesn't suit any longer. Please help.
The reason that the original Bisu style is less popular today is because of Jaedong's macro frenzy play style, defending corsair/shuttle with hydra/scourge with a bunch of borrowed lings to scout. As Z got more comfortable defending shuttle harasses, the lack of a ground army really puts P at a disadvantage due to Z being able to grow unchalleneged.
As to DT vs reaver. With reaver you have a shuttle early on and you can directly threaten Z's drone supply right away. With DT you only do good damage if you pull off a run by, but if Z is good at defense, chances are you won't do any initial damage. However, DTs can monitor expansions and P has a much smoother time transitioning into ground play, since you already have the templar archive.
Well, corsair are still important staples in the Protoss' PvZ arsenal for scouting purposes and knocking off an overlord or two, but since Zerg have been dealing with it for years it's simply become easier for them to defend. Zerg build order timings now allow them to get scourge/hydra out to defend before corsair are a major threat, and can properly scout to prepare for a build like sair/reaver (which is not only much harder for Protoss to control since they're a /lot/ more micro intensive, and the Protoss will have no ground army to defend with).
DTs are just great all-around fuck you units that are easy to obtain since you want your Templar Archives for storm anyway. If you can slip one into an expo and kill 5 drones because you managed to take out that overlord it really puts the Zerg way behind, and doesn't make you commit to a sair/reaver game.
Why do you have to go DT or REaver. you could just go normale Zlot+storm and use Sair for scouting. Or if you build them up and can prove really effective to make Z clump up their ovies, or try to spread them out in which you just pick them off one by one. If they group then thats when u use dts with or w/o shuttle to harass them. my 2 cents
Getting the stargate, imo is to mainly scout, its important to know the amount of hatcheries/gas/lair timing/amount of units, and to deter the zerg from making mutalisks, then to defend from them if they do (its incredibly hard to fight them off early game w/o cosair) but not to win the game with, or get a huge advantage, unless that really is your strategy. Then, after this initial bit, their use continues on, you can use them to harass overlords, and open the way up for DT harass.
Agree with rage. Any inkling of this from a scouting overlord makes for easy counter. Burrow lings at strategic locations and prepare hydras for sniping.
From the vods I've watched, and the games I've played (though I lose almost 100% of games to zerg, period) sair/reaver is very situational. The last high-profile match I saw this used successfully in was + Show Spoiler +
Reach v. Yellow
but a closer look at the match would tell you that by the time P moved out with his sair/reaver force, he already had quite an economic advantage because of the repeated failed attempts by Z to break P's nat. The force ended up being primarily a cleanup crew for undefended Z bases.
I like how Stork has been using corsairs lately, he does a standard play with a sair scout. If he loses it he gives up on sairs and does normal ground force play, until mid game or late game. Then he starts massing sairs again since the Z usually stop sair defense this late into the game, and he goes around sniping every Ovie he can manage to get all teh while attacking with his ground force so the Z cant mass anymore units and has to balance production out between ovies and units. Its actually quite briliant since the Z cant respond instantly and handle that many attacks on so many different fronts.
On July 25 2009 07:30 CaptainPlatypus wrote: As Rage said, zergs have figured out that early scourge into mass hydra rolls the fuck over this. +1 zealot/archon, in turn, rolls the fuck over THAT.
Actually the +1 zealot/archon build is meant to be a counter to three hatch mutalisk.
I'd say another reason why reaver sair is hardly used is that it requires quite a lot of multitasking to be effective and it's very risky since if you lose one shuttle full of reavers game's practically over.
On July 25 2009 07:30 CaptainPlatypus wrote: As Rage said, zergs have figured out that early scourge into mass hydra rolls the fuck over this. +1 zealot/archon, in turn, rolls the fuck over THAT.
Actually the +1 zealot/archon build is meant to be a counter to three hatch mutalisk.
Nah I won't agree with that. Just watch some of the savior games, he really wreck zealot/archon army before bisu style become popular thx to lurkers
What I feel about the hydra/scourge opening is that it actually really is weak to a timing attack of archon/zealot before the hydras hit a critical mass as zerg will be short on lurkers and his army will be spread over his expansions to deal with corsairs. Also an early archon really is BRUTAL vs low number of hydras with zealot support, contrary to what some people think (hydra>archon).
Watch this game and see how the lack of early lurkers hurts against the unit composition bisu used. Basically you gotta exploit zerg's lack of lurker, as protoss ground army >>> zerg w/o lurker and zerg has to use early gas for hydra/scourge.
Sair/Reaver works well on outsider I believe because of the incredibly mobility to harass, while you only have to worry about getting hit on one front.
EPT
