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I'm a 2500 master zerg, so I'm not great but im by no means completely helpless. I don't just copy paste pro builds and not understand why im losing when a game ends, but I see no way to kill protoss mass air other than just going for some goofy all in.
I just played a game on scrap station where the protoss sacked 3 pylons and a number of cannons on a completely failed cannon rush that i took no damage from(no cannons got up), so I felt good. I then spotted a cannon/gateway wall-in at his front and just decided that it was fine, i'd just pump drones and macro up for awhile.
I get a very fast spire from that point on, and when it's about 1/4th the way done he arrives at my base with 2 void rays and 2 phoenixes. Now I won't harp on that for long, but it's fucking ridiculous how fast other races can tech to units compared to zerg. Why does it take me 20 minutes to get ultras, and it takes terran like 6 to get to thors?
Anyways, so he gets to my base and harrasses me a little bit, i sustain pretty minor damage. I think everythings fine and I just spend literally every bit of gas I have off of 4 geysers on corruptors, and get corruptor upgrades. This is because everytime I've attempted to play hydras vs protoss air i've lost horribly.
I lost so bad it was fucking embarrassing, +2 attack corruptors can't kill ANYTHING. They lose in even money fights against voidrays, they can't catch phoenixes, and they get massacred by carriers(even though they're supposed to counter them).
What the fuck else can I do? Hydras don't work, corruptors don't work, i have no reason to believe any mix of the two will work, should I just do a roach/speedling all in every game? Is that what starcraft has come to, forcing me to do all-ins because that's the only counter I know of to 2stargate openings?
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Your balance whining almost made me not bother writing a response but I'm in a helpful mood.
When I try and go air in PvZ early extra queens followed roach hydra crush me unless my tech switch to colossus is perfectly timed. I'm only a few hundred points higher than you so were at a similar level.
If they try to go colossus/void mass muta is your best bet. If they commit to void/pheonix + gateway units roach hydra will absolutely crush.
Do you have a rep of your roach hydra losing to anything besides colossi because that really shouldn't be possible unless you're doing something wrong.
Voids and pheonix are both made of paper and 12 hydras backed by mass roach should just roll through any toss going gateway + air.
Also fungal + hydra obviously absolutely crushes any kind of air play but that is a bit further down the tech try.
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Hey, so I'm a 3.6k masterleague protoss and can tell my experience that one base air is not really effective vs zerg. But anyways I'm not really sure if your enemy was still one base or two base, but usually you scout with an overlord after a cannonrush fails and then you see what is happening.
If you see a stargate you can add 1-2 queens and you'll be fine. Just tech to hydras and roaches afterwards. When he intends to throw down an expansion, you can easily push him till death, because protoss units are on t1 - t2 very bad vs hydras. Only Storm / Carrier / Colossi are fairly effective and on one base you cannot really pull those off - at least you would end dying vs 3-4 base macro game by zerg.
To your complain about corrupters being so weak - it's not true. Phoenixes can't kill corrupters and it's kinda the other way around as well, but if you got a good amount of curropters, protoss cannot really catch up. Keep in mind that zerg usually has a better economic backup.
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If they go straight voids then muta switch is best because they'll likely follow it up with Colossus support with very few stalkers. If they go mass air corruptors do win so I'm not sure where you get that from? Once he has like 15 voids then it get really bad for you but he needs serious bases to pull that off. You can just mass corruptors vs his mass void army and then just camp them outside his base, using corruption helps a bunch too (also using focus fire helps a lot too but that's a given..). Mostly you can't let him get anymore than 4 gases, force him to sit on 2 bases and mass up then take the bad trade and remake your army and crush him. If you let him get a cannon'ed up third/fourth your dead though since zerg doesn't have a cost effective counter to epic voidray mass.
Also corruptors in mass beat mass carriers assuming you actually focus fire the carriers down.
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I really don't understand this, if a zerg mass mutas toss has the hardest time stopping this... everyone says OH JUST GO PHOENIX DUH, but even as a toss player if we get phoenix even right at the start it wont helps us, u can always out number my phoenix, even if i go phoenix we have no AOE to deal with roach or hydra or zerglings.. there is a window zerg has , after getting mutas righw when we see muta a toss has to get templar we have to ... that is the window to do so much dmg to a Protoss, and it takes forever to get HT up with both upgrades. Now as far as u saying things about voidrays how was his ground army small i am sure.. because going 2 voids / 2 phoenix is just to harass as much as we can. lets say u made 5 queens, and then just pumped roach hydra , wat AOE dmg did he have at at that time? i really don't think zergs give hydras enough credit vs toss, if we see even just 12 hydras we have to have AOE in order to kill that zerg colossi or templar. HAVE TO! by all means im not saying this match up is easy, it has to do with map position and blah blah infact its really hard as a zerg player i can relate i used to play zerg. so if ur not happy going roach hydra try muta ling...
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Hydras with the assistance of transfusions if you're running low on them, and you could always get static AA.
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Your post is wrong because corrupters counter every Protoss air unit costwise. Maybe the Protoss just committed way more resource to air than you did or had better upgrades. And against Phoenix/Carrier you'll want to get armour upgrades first.
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A replay would be helpful. My experience has been that corruptors is good vs air, and that hydras off superior amount of bases, own air unless he combines it with quite a few sentries for forcefields.
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Build a couple queens and connect creep to hold off early air, keep sac'ing plenty of lings into their bases and ridiculously out macro them, and then mass the crap out of muta or corruptor. I prefer muta because corruptors can't hit ground and you are left with a worthless flock of them.
I destroyed a 200/200 void colossus stalker army with around 47 +2 mutas in one game.
Use roach and lings to attack where his army isn't, snipe probes, snipe pylons, snipe nexus, voids take a while to kill roachs and your ground units are just fodder anyways.
One of the more important things obviously is to deny the protoss vision of your armies and tech, don't let him leave an observer over your army the whole game.
Anyways void colossus pheonix is a p. dumb and OP build.
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On February 19 2011 20:37 Sicky wrote:
Hydras with the assistance of transfusions if you're running low on them, and you could always get static AA.
Hydras will only work for so long...
Anyway, you need to take him out or damage him before his air deathball is done. Against phoenix/void/carrier you can't win in cost efficiency, not even close. Hydras are paper, corruptors have terrible dps, mutas are paper too.
Best bet is to macro hard and mass muta and inflict as much damage as you can, or exploit his weak ground army by pushing with roach/hdyra early on.
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getting a MINIMUM of 3queens off two bases are a must for me in ZvP... even before I scout air. If I see air, I add a fourth queen asap. Usually queens do well until protoss has a SERIOUS force in the air which he cannot have before hydras are out.
Also you should note that voidrays eat corruptors alive and not vice versa! Depending on the phoenix count, hydras are necessary or mutas would even do much better than corruptors! Apart from that ling counter attacks are huge against heavy air.
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On February 19 2011 21:00 Google. wrote:
getting a MINIMUM of 3queens off two bases is a must for me in ZvP... even before I scout air. If I see air, I add a fourth queen asap. Usually queens do well until protoss has a SERIOUS force in the air which he cannot have before hydras are out.
Also you should note that voidrays eat corruptors alive and not vice versa! Depending on the phoenix count, hydras are necessary or mutas would even do much better than corruptors! Apart from that ling counter attacks are huge against heavy air.
sry, meant to edit instead of quote
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On February 19 2011 20:56 KaiserJohan wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2011 20:37 Sicky wrote:
Hydras with the assistance of transfusions if you're running low on them, and you could always get static AA. Hydras will only work for so long... Anyway, you need to take him out or damage him before his air deathball is done. Against phoenix/void/carrier you can't win in cost efficiency, not even close. Hydras are paper, corruptors have terrible dps, mutas are paper too. Best bet is to macro hard and mass muta and inflict as much damage as you can, or exploit his weak ground army by pushing with roach/hdyra early on.
This. Getting an Air-deathball is even harder than to get a Colossus/VR ball, at least in my opinion.
I don't prefer All-Ining, but my slight experience with Terran(1,5k Diamond when the highest was ~2,6k) tells me that there are times when you must All-In, period.
When you play Zerg(Or any other race), you can't just be "I can't All-In, I need to macro, regardless what the opponent does because I'm Zerg". That is just horribly wrong and bad in every degree.
20 minutes to get Ultralisks wth?
This is pure theory so proceed with extreme caution
I'm experimenting with Ling/Infestor openers and 3base Hive vs. Protoss and while I only have played some games, it seems to be a bit control heavy, but certainly doable. Then again, this can of course change during practice.
I don't have replays because I'm not on my main computer but I don't see any clearly visible weaknesses in Ling/Infestor into fast Hive plan, except for 6gate and maybe a Zealot/Sentry composition before I have enough Infestors or Banelings out, but they are answered by adding Roaches and/or Hydralisks if needed.
Fast Ultralisks are very good against a Colossus/Stalker/Zealot ball when combined with Zerglings and Infestors and possibly Roaches too. If you had some Corruptors in the fight, morph Brood Lords and stomp him. If he is having more Air, don't morph that many BL.
Pure Air Protoss is pretty weak in Mid-game vs. Infestor/Queen/Hydralisk before he gets 3+ Carriers. You can just kick his ass before that happens, be it with Roaches, Hydras, Lings, Infestors etc. He has a weak ground force and if he has FF, get a fast Hive, a couple Ultralisks and smash him.
For the record, I'm only a bad 2k Diamond player(ZvZ probably keeping me back) but I think my ZvP is pretty good considering that I don't just get stomped over and over again by Masters, but that I actually have a chance, maybe.
Feel free to correct me if need be. Again, pure theory so I don't know it fares with timings and execution.
TL:DR: Air deathball is intended to punish Zergs that just want to macro and I think Infestor/Ling into fast Hive would somehow deal with that.
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It's hard for those who's able to point out what went wrong if you don't post a replay of the game.
And, for what it's worth, all I've got to say on a general note is that I usually see hydras first (while teching to lair, get the third queen), and then spire when getting the third base...
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Hydras, infestors, queens, mutas, corruptors
All of the above and good against air.
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Skip your queen and meta, as you're already contained..
place a couple of crawlers to stop the advance.
Send your lords over to the edge of his base.
Go fast lair, get first gas right after pool and 2nd gas right after lair starts.
Make queen then nydus as soon as lair finishes,
start your roach warren later than usual so you can get your queen and nydus going on time, and make sure to have enough lords for your roaches when you first inject and start roaches,
make nydus exit as soon as it is ready and send your queen and 3 drones with a couple of roaches to get things set up for the arrival of the rest of the roaches..
place a creep conlony into the nydus creep and make crawlers and spore with your drones (whatever counter you need), with the intention to advance them into his nexus.
Rally your hatch into the nydus and hotkey it up so you can unload reinforcements quickly.
make spore/crawlers with the 3 drones, and attack his pylon/sentry and zealot (if he has made them)
pump units into the nydus and add 2 more drones later to reinforce against whatever resistance you run into.
You should have about 7+ roaches, 3 to 5 crawlers and a queen with advancing creep in his base by 7:30 and can start this counter as quick as 6:15.. just keep advancing the crawlers with your roaches and take over his base.
Keep in mind that each time he adds a cannon he delays his voids/air by about 10 to 12 seconds. and thats at least 1 less unit that your roaches will have to fight in his main. At best with probe sacrificing and saving crono for the starports he will have air ready at 6 minutes, but add 5 cannons and he's delayed to 7 minutes
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On February 19 2011 20:37 Sicky wrote:
Hydras with the assistance of transfusions if you're running low on them, and you could always get static AA. Transfusing hydras is a complete waste, they have 80 hp, and to be save, you have to transfuse them when they are 15 or something. That's such a waste, I'd rather put that 50 energy in a creep tumour.
Queens have almost as strong an AA as a hydralisk, and a lot more hp, they can also transfuse themselves, they also don't cost gas or larvae. It's just the creep thing, though hydras are pretty bad off creep themselves.
Queens also have superio range.
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Post a replay if you want help, otherwise this thread is just you whining that protoss is imbalanced.
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Replay and stop whining; your post is like 90% QQ and 10% anecdotal evidence.
I guess if hydra's, queens and corrupters aren't enough to counter air you're better off quitting the game, just stop and never look back man.
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You posted a thread called "Zerg counters for air?" without a replay, so the most anyone can answer for you is "hydralisk/mutalisk/queens/corruptors" as those are all anti-air units.
You simply saying "hydralisks don't work and neither do corruptors" isn't really convincing either =/
Oh, sorry, almost forgot: spore crawlers.
But to address your little scenario: If you stop a cannon rush, and you're economically much more superior than your protoss opponent. And you have the larvae access to roaches, and you currently have roaches, yeah dude: go and all-in that. That's not cheesy at all, it's 100% tactical. You killed his stuff, he needs to catch up economically, now makes perfect sense to attack. You'd probably win right there.
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Post a replay if you want to see where you went wrong. Early game on 2 base you should have 3 queens. These can usually hold fairly well vs early air pressure in time to get spire/hydras or static defense.
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It's pretty lame what protoss can get away with but the situation you were in was not that bad. As soon as the cannon rush failrd and he walled off, you should have taken every precaution possible. That's spire up, pump a few roaches, get two extra queens, morph an overseer and spread your creep.
If you get hit with void rays and don't have enough queens thhe damagee is brutal even if you manage to hold it off in the end. You'll end up building more queens than if you had just built a couple more before hand, you'll miss injects and you'll lose drones. You absolutely CANNOT cry imba about protoss air if he caught you offhuard, raped your economy and then you couldn't macro up and fight it off.
If you had had 4 queens when those voids showed up like you should have then it would have been completely different. If you could have got a few more corruptors up and then been able to transfuse them. Imagine how different the results would have been if you had been able to kill off more void rays before they charged up.
I'll use this moment to plug how awesome queens are against protoss as well. They aren't armored so they tank better than roaches against stalkers, immortals(19 damage instead of 49, holy shit) and void rays. They hit air and colossi at range 7 and they transfuse and spread creep faster. If you get ahead in the early game or you spawned in close positions, lots of queens are a great way to not die.
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I dont get what the complaint is...this isnt a balance issue, its just that you made a mistake.
You should have sacced an ovie to scout what hes doing on 1 base....obviously the fact that he turtled up instead of expanding meant that he was doing some sort of a push...
If you had seen the stargate with your ovie you could have had 4 queens by the time 2 voids and 2 phoenixes show up, and 4 queens > 2 void 2 phoenix
Also, phoenixes do almost no damage to corruptors and have the same range, so its irrelevant that they can outrun you.
Corruptors > Phoenix
Corruptors > Carriers
Mutalisks > Void Ray
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I have the same problem, i played like 5 zvps today and the same shit happens. Corruptors are complete garbage and u need like 20 of them to do anything vs decent vr/pheonix numbers. Its fucking stupid how easy it is for protoss to make themselves unkillable for a while because of forcefields and cannons. I put like 2-3 spore crawlers at each base but they have like no range and are lucky to hit a pheonix twice before u lose half ur drones.
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Early game get afew queens(more then 2 so he cant just lift both and destroy them), then hydras and go fucking kill him before he gets a deathball. Also if he goes mass air you can try to do ling runbys to nom afew probes, wont work against a 1basing toss tho.
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IMO blizzard did a lot more mistakes in alfa version than what they believe - it wasnt just black hole, planet cracker and banshees with splash killing 20 marines in 3 seconds.
VR are much stronger than they should be - remember BW? We had scouts and wraiths, and it was ok - good anti air units totally useless against ground. Just like Vikings are.
And we had capital ships. Just like we have now in SC2.
However in SC2 we also have this "small capital ship" called Void Ray. And its problem, because no flying unit before BC or Carrier should be so versatile to deal same dmg to ground as to air. I dont think that before Blizzard realize this, remove VR and replace them with Banshee-like-VR and Viking-like-VR it cant be balanced.
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Ya its retarded, toss got all upgrades from BW while zerg gets shit units. Like basically we get slower hydras that cost more, a dumb replacement for the devour and mutas are the same. Makes total sense.
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On February 20 2011 11:33 Sek-Kuar wrote:
IMO blizzard did a lot more mistakes in alfa version than what they believe - it wasnt just black hole, planet cracker and banshees with splash killing 20 marines in 3 seconds.
VR are much stronger than they should be - remember BW? We had scouts and wraiths, and it was ok - good anti air units totally useless against ground. Just like Vikings are.
And we had capital ships. Just like we have now in SC2.
However in SC2 we also have this "small capital ship" called Void Ray. And its problem, because no flying unit before BC or Carrier should be so versatile to deal same dmg to ground as to air. I dont think that before Blizzard realize this, remove VR and replace them with Banshee-like-VR and Viking-like-VR it cant be balanced.
The trade-off for the void ray's versatility and damage is its speed: that's why flux vanes was removed. There's a reason phoenix has graviton beam instead of AtG and a relatively low damage (twice, as well) unless fighting against light units such as the mutalisk. Mutalisks can kill a mineral line faster than phoenixes can (human limit).
This makes phoenixes have to basically constantly micro the phoenixes to do "something" because of the energy bar. However, the "savior" property of the phoenix's general weakness is its speed, which allows it to kill mutalisks.
This zerg, however, just FAILED to follow-up with the "counter". Now, he's raging for his loss simply because he did not respond/scout correctly, even though he had a huge lead.
On February 20 2011 11:39 tmzu wrote:
Ya its retarded, toss got all upgrades from BW while zerg gets shit units. Like basically we get slower hydras that cost more, a dumb replacement for the devour and mutas are the same. Makes total sense.
Colossi or die?
Forcefield or die?
We are the tech/spell race, and therefore, the best tier 3 race and that's why we're also the worst tier 1 race (excluding sentries, but many people consider sentries the "tech" unit since they allow defensive tactics, which means free to tech and are always one of the mid/end-game unit (which includes stalkers, colossi, and voids now).
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Queens actually have a nice AA attack, and they can transfuse.. :o.
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On February 20 2011 11:48 iChau wrote:
Colossi or die?
Forcefield or die?
We are the tech/spell race, and therefore, the best tier 3 race and that's why we're also the worst tier 1 race (excluding sentries, but many people consider sentries the "tech" unit since they allow defensive tactics, which means free to tech and are always one of the mid/end-game unit (which includes stalkers, colossi, and voids now).
4 gate and win? cannon rush and win? +1 timing push and win? your analogies are just as bogus
you are the timing/timing push race which is why you have chronoboost. i doubt blizzard made protoss with the notion that they will always have superior t3 to either race no matter what
if you can find me something from blizzard that says they are the t3 race and will always have superior t3 throughout the expansions i will eat your hat
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mutas counter voids, corruptors counter everything else. you should get at least 2 queens per hatch while getting your tech. hydras are also an option, but imo they kinda lock you into your base and make it hard to expand and counter. i would think you can also go infestor which could at least stall if you catch his army out of position.
basically the situation you posted sounds like you didn't scout effectively though, a single changeling probably would have helped you a lot.
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On February 20 2011 12:09 Feb wrote:
mutas counter voids, corruptors counter everything else. you should get at least 2 queens per hatch while getting your tech. hydras are also an option, but imo they kinda lock you into your base and make it hard to expand and counter. i would think you can also go infestor which could at least stall if you catch his army out of position.
basically the situation you posted sounds like you didn't scout effectively though, a single changeling probably would have helped you a lot.
you got your units backwards queens keep you in your base
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On February 19 2011 21:43 Allscorpion wrote:
Hydras, infestors, queens, mutas, corruptors
All of the above and good against air.
This is true. If you're getting one based with air, just pump queens.
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People keep saying mutas counter voidrays and corruptors for everything else but that just never works. Mutas and corruptors only fair well in large numbers and having both isnt viable.
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I think you should work on your play, we always do mistakes, don't blame the game, it's still young. Why don't you take a look at day9 library?
Hope it helped 
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If they are going MASS air, go Corrupter/Hydra. If they are going Colli/Air (no gateway units) get only Corrupters, wipe our their army and replenish with Roaches and push. If they are going Air/Gateway/Colli, go Roach/Hydra/Corrupter/Queen
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EPT
