Zerg real problem with mass carrier+how to fix - Page 2

On August 07 2015 02:49 Railgan wrote:

I simply wanted to show what it looks like ingame when Protoss has no idea what they are doing. The protoss simply amoved in that Gif and still ended up killing my army without even using his templars.

I just noticed that the Thread has no actual gameplay of what carrier engagements actually look like.

On August 07 2015 03:05 BisuDagger wrote:
I can't remember if they have, but the return of fungal range might help for this. I feel like fungal on a group of interceptors should kill all of them.

On August 07 2015 04:28 Sholip wrote:
I don't know if that's a solution but I think you can also Parasitic Bomb the Interceptors. Since they are pretty stacked up and have low HP, they should all die from a couple. Then you can kill the defenseless Carriers. If you PB the Carriers and they split, or you simply don't have enough PBs and the Carriers survive, you are screwed. But you can't split with Interceptors.
It's still depends on Vipers very heavily, though, and a couple of Feedbacks/Storms will make it kind of hard.

On August 07 2015 00:13 Energizer wrote:
I love how people are so ignorant about balance that they go out of their way to outright condemn any problem zerg has vs air by saying "just use pb".

Heres the thing, PB is only useful against clumped air units, units like phoenix, muta, medivacs and to a certain degree vikings and VR. What PB is terrible at is dealing with capital ships - you know - like the fucking carrier. When was the last time you saw a protoss who decided "Herp Derp ill just keep right clicking to keep all of my carriers clumped!". Carriers naturally spread out. And even if you hit 5 pb's on carriers, the best you can hope for is a removal of all their shields and hoping your corruptors can finish the job (dont worry, they wont).

But thats not even the biggest concern about the carriers, its the fact that zerg has to invest so heavily to dealing with those monstrosities that if the protoss player only makes 3-5 and invests in a ground army complete with archons, its nearly unbeatable. Even if you kill off those carriers, the interceptor release will be sure to wreck any remaining army you have if any.

It was changed precisely for that reason. Parasitic bomb can not target interceptors anymore.

On August 07 2015 06:36 KingAlphard wrote:


You're right PB isn't great against carriers. But it kills all interceptors which makes carriers useless and vulnerable. Same story as why widow mines are the best counter to carriers.


EDIT:
If this is true (I stopped going carriers when parasitic bomb killed 200 interceptors in 1 second) then PB isn't enough to counter carriers, but it still helps since you should have vipers in your army anyway. The below point remains:

You should realize that if carriers were so OP in LotV you would at least see them in HotS from time to time, instead, not a single protoss ever builds a carrier against zerg (maybe 1 game out of 1000, since I know someone will dig out that terminator vs dark vod).

In fact, the problem here is not that carriers became broken in LotV but the players who wouldn't be able to deal with carriers in HotS either where we can all agree that they are absolutely terrible. Fighting stats weren't improved, only building time, which is irrelevant in maxed out situations, and the 'release interceptor' command which is also irrelevant if you have enough anti air to kill the interceptors quickly.

Even without PB you could still apply the hots counter - mass spores which kill the interceptors immediately, vipers to abduct the carriers 2 at a time and safely snipe them with your corruptor cloud, a few infestors to lock on the carriers if they get too close to your static defenses.

On August 07 2015 01:46 Railgan wrote:
would like to throw this gif into the discussion of me playing against mass carrier

http://gfycat.com/DirectOfficialGuernseycow

On August 07 2015 07:28 KingAlphard wrote:
The problem with release interceptors is you can't focus fire (unless they changed it). This makes them weaker in most situations compared to when they are controlled by the carrier.

The thing with carriers isn't just the building time though. Building time is a nice improvement but carriers will still be worse than tempests as a lategame unit because of their low range ( they are outranged by abduct, fungal, vikings, yamato cannons, tempests, etc. ) and also the fact that interceptors are expensive and will die immediately against a maxed out army + AA static defenses, resulting in thousands of minerals loss.



Prime example of a zerg player having no idea on how to engage a skytoss army. For me this is like a gif of a zerg player amoving hydras into sieged tanks and complaining that tanks are OP. You need to abduct carriers one by one, snipe them with corruptors and retreat.
You can do this without losing anything because abduct has a higher range than carriers. All you need to do this is time, so you need a spore crawler forest + a few infestor to prevent your opponent from actually killing you before you can abduct all his carriers.
Again this engagement looks exactly like it would in HotS, so if you use this to prove that carriers are OP in LotV you would also be proving that they're OP in hots, while we know that the opposite is true.

On August 06 2015 16:31 wrj wrote:
As a player who plays the beta TONS of hours i can tell you my is my biggest problem with the carriers.
Yes they deal a lot of damage
Yes they can come out really fast which make them possible option for the protoss which i never said its a bad thing
Biggest issiue is the release interseptos

why?

First of all it can make them really cost effiect.To give u an example think of an army that contain 10 carrier and a mothership. Since zerg air unites are not that mobile as lings/roach/hydra etc... they cant defends all the bases so these 10 carriers come release they Interceptors on 1 zerg base and just recall back with the mothership and zerg got 2 option:
If they are lucky enough to be close to that base to actully try to defend it the protoss will loss some mineral but the zerg will loss a lot of unites which are gas based not to mention the fact that the only unit which kill Interceptors really fast is hydra.

on the worst case zerg wont make it in time and your base is lost even if your base has a lot of spore i seen how 10 carriers snipe that base before u can do something which very little risk.

Now lets look on the zerg case

Lets say i want to attack a base of protoss.
First of all the airtoss games rely on a lot of expend and i often see 10 cannons on each base which force u to bring at least half of your army to try to attack it, and if you try to bring all of your army, unlike zerg the protoss got air unites "nydes warm" called mothership so defending it is really easy
so until now we saw that carrier can be really cost efficient on attacking zerg and can deal with zerg attacks very easy

But what make it worst about release Interceptors on 200 supply vs 200 supply?
Since brood-war everyone knows that if u play vs carrier just focus them down and you will win the fight thing is there are 3 options that can happen

1)zerg will try to attack and see that they are too weak an try to run and will loss a lot of army because chasing carriers is SUPER strong so running is not an option

2)zerg will just force the Interceptors and leave the carrier. I tried it and the best unit to do that is hydra but hydra is very low hp which mean that until to will get to the carrier you will loss at least 70% of your army of hydra and if protoss got storms i seen how 20 hydra die without doing anything.

3)zerg focus the carrier using mass corupters and vipers:So far this was the best for me but still its not working, and thats because that even when i shoot all the carriers my unites have to fight against 8 Interceptors+what the carrier had built until he died(actually yes carrier can can make more than 8 Interceptors for the fights) and even if you killed half of the carrier army which is what happen to me on most of the cases still carrier army is way more cost efficient since zerg anti air are heavy on gas.

This is the point when i am sure people will say well you are zerg your eco need to be better than protoss one but to these people i say that i remind them that the only real harass zerg unit which can do something is muta and that not a smart thing to do vs airtoss which protoss got tons of harass unites and they can take bases with carrier really fast which in total make your eco weak

in conclusion; carrier is a very strong unit that can be fixed but just removing the release ability. The build time buff was enough to make them visible strategy on lotv

Would love to hear your commend about it

On August 07 2015 07:28 KingAlphard wrote:
The problem with release interceptors is you can't focus fire (unless they changed it). This makes them weaker in most situations compared to when they are controlled by the carrier.

The thing with carriers isn't just the building time though. Building time is a nice improvement but carriers will still be worse than tempests as a lategame unit because of their low range ( they are outranged by abduct, fungal, vikings, yamato cannons, tempests, etc. ) and also the fact that interceptors are expensive and will die immediately against a maxed out army + AA static defenses, resulting in thousands of minerals loss.



Prime example of a zerg player having no idea on how to engage a skytoss army. For me this is like a gif of a zerg player amoving hydras into sieged tanks and complaining that tanks are OP. You need to abduct carriers one by one, snipe them with corruptors and retreat.
You can do this without losing anything because abduct has a higher range than carriers. All you need to do this is time, so you need a spore crawler forest + a few infestor to prevent your opponent from actually killing you before you can abduct all his carriers.
Again this engagement looks exactly like it would in HotS, so if you use this to prove that carriers are OP in LotV you would also be proving that they're OP in hots, while we know that the opposite is true.