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I'm making this thread on behalf of a buddy of mine who's currently working his way to the top of Gold League as a Protoss. I'm only a Platinum Terran myself, so there's a limit to how much I can help him.
Anyways, between the two of us, we've got no idea what to do about someone who makes Void Rays and then just parks them behind your main. Stalkers can beat them in a straight fight, but there's no way to actually make that happen. Until then, your army is stuck defending your main while your enemy does whatever he wants, and any prospective expansion is threatened.
So, we turn to you, TL'ers, to offer us guidance.
REPLAY
Yes, my buddy makes a lot of basic mistakes. He's in Gold. He knows.
In this game, it seemed like his opponent opened up safely, then used the threat of Void Rays to secure a macro advantage and eventually win by brute force.
Things I thought of that may or may not work:
Blink Stalkers: Beat Voids in a fight if costs are even remotely even, but can't do anything to break out of a contain, as seen in this replay.
Dark Templar: It's on the same tech path as Blink and there's a pretty good chance the opponent won't have a Robotics Facility, but most Void Ray users (including this opponent) get Cannons early in general. A Warp Prism seems tempting, but risky when the enemy has air control.
Observers: There were several times when the enemy moved his Void Rays away and my buddy could have attacked, but he didn't know. Observers tailing the Void Rays might have won him the game there, but this assumes that the enemy moves away in the first place (I'm still not sure why he did) and doesn't have his own counter-Observers.
Cannons: I don't know that any reasonable amount of static defense is effective against large numbers Void Rays, especially abusing the cliffs behind your main.
Air Superiority: As a Terran in this situation, I could just Reactor up a few Vikings and poke at the Void Rays, forcing them to either come and fight in range of my ground army or go away. I don't know if Protoss has any unit with similar capabilities. It seems like he would have to retake the air by brute force, and Protoss doesn't have anything cost-effective enough against Void Rays to make up for the opponent having a head start in the air and a probable macro advantage due to the contain.
Thanks for your time.
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Build 8 reapers and attach them to an ultralisk and shoot it at the void rays.
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are we talking about PvP or PvT here, im quite confused ~_~
PvT dealling with vr is get stim on marines + ebay if you going bio. get 1 viking if you going mech, get more depend on scouting is stargate active or not.
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I can't watch the replay because I am at work, but how many void rays are we talking about? Void rays are expensive, if your friend were to counter his opponents main after getting his first immortal or colossus, then he would be able to do a lot of damage unless those void rays came back to defend. As long as you don't let void rays charge up, they are very weak to stalkers. If I was in that situation, I would have my three gateways and my robotics, and I would wait until I had an immortal or preferably colossus and then I would move out to my opponents base. You can leave a few stalkers behind and just warp in reinforcements if he tries to attack.
As far as your other questions go, Protoss has no good air against void rays except more void rays, so there isn't much you can do, but for a Protoss to make them, they have to skip a lot. They won't have a robotics any time soon, and they will be skimping on other units so you should have no trouble putting the pressure on him. I'll watch it when I get home though.
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I ran into a guy that did this in diamond ladder and had the same problem. I couldn't move out because his void rays were constantly patrolling my base's perimeter. It's pretty tough to attack even when you know they have no units because the void rays can just come snipe your nexus. Looking at the replay (mine), though, the best option IMO is to just get blink stalkers, attack, and expand. He can either try to base trade with his 4-5 void rays or send them back, in which case you should win the battle with a superior force.
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The only other solution I've been able to come up with is to accept the base trade and bring a probe with your ground army to make a new building where the Void Rays would have to fight your Stalkers to get it.
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This should not be a problem at all for your friend and here is why.
If he only parks 2 void rays behind your main, lets say for arguments sake u have 4 stalkers and this is sufficient for defence.
The only way he can secure a macro advantage is if he does not reinforce those voids, meaning your friend doesnt need to reinforce his defence force.
So you just leave the 4 stalkers or however many u need to defend, and use the rest to deny expansions/push into his base as you secure the macro advantage
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Splitting your army is the answer. Leave enough stalkers at home to defend the void rays (keeping in mind you can warp in more to assist in defense) and use the rest of your army offensively. Blink is very useful for defending multiple bases. If he's invested a ton of money in mass void ray, your ground army should be able to walk over his even if it's split.
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Here is a hint: there are two reasons a toss player goes early void ray.... 1) secure an expansion 2) to force you into building a response (which luckily for you is the very useful blink stalker).
The tricky part is if he proxies the stargate because you can make the opener look an awful lot like a 2+ gate pressure, at least against an average opponent. Just know that Void Rays are expensive and that hes probably expanded in the meantime. You could probably push out and leave a couple stalkers at home, and maybe your warpgates offcooldown and just warp in and chase them out before he can charge. If you get your ground force out of your base and are able to defend against the VRs... (it really doesnt take much as a toss unless hes got 3 or 4, which again, means he has nothing on the ground). Honestly you could probably expo right in front of him with stalkers defending.
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Put citadel, upgradde blink (its the counter if he keeps massing voids anyways), and hide a dark shrine somewhere. Turtle up until shrine is done while harassing a bit and keep a few stalks in base so his voids can't just take out ur nexus.
Darktemplars is the way to go imo, since if he stargates, he will be going 3+ voidrays and no robo. U just have to time it right and have dts before he expects it
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On August 14 2010 00:46 altairian wrote:
Splitting your army is the answer. Leave enough stalkers at home to defend the void rays (keeping in mind you can warp in more to assist in defense) and use the rest of your army offensively. Blink is very useful for defending multiple bases. If he's invested a ton of money in mass void ray, your ground army should be able to walk over his even if it's split.
This seems like the ideal response, but I'm dubious about its success.
In this case, it wasn't cheese Void Rays. They came out at a fairly reasonable time after the opponent had a decent early ground army. It was probably bigger than it needed to be, frankly, but for the sake of the discussion lets assume the enemy is not completely undefended back home.
After that, he started parking Void Rays behind my buddy's main. He immediately started transitioning into Stalkers, but he didn't have enough to both defend his base and punish the enemy main, especially since he'd need Stalkers to protect his ground forces from any Void Rays that were made during the attack. From there on, he keeps on making more and more Rays without committing to an engagement, such that you're still stuck with most of your army sitting in your base.
Unless Stalkers are a lot more cost-effective against Void Rays than I'm realizing, I'm not sure how he's supposed to have enough production to both defend against the Void Ray army and break through Cannons, some ground units, and more Void Rays at the enemy base.
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EPT
