EPT"Carrier Has Arrived" Refreshing New PvZ Strategy - Page 16
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
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Hierarch
United States2197 Posts
On March 28 2011 02:51 Whitewing wrote: Phoenix/DT is a very powerful, and standard, late game composition against zerg to defend while building up a power ball to crush the zerg. It has high multitasking/APM requirements, but the gist is that you snipe overseer's very quickly and then send the DT's in, and finish off fliers with the phoenix after the DTs take out the ground troops. It doesn't work on offense very well, but it's a very good delaying tactic. Basically SC2 version of Corsair/DT except more defensive probably. | ||
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cha0
Canada518 Posts
I guess San reads TL  | ||
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Hierarch
United States2197 Posts
lol, too bad it was executed so poorly  instead of mass stalkers if he had had zealots and voidrays he would have crushed that corrupter/ling army | ||
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
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Typhon
United States387 Posts
game 4 | ||
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
Something that did intrigue me a little bit was his Stargate timings. He didn't throw them up one after another (though admittedly, that super fast Nexus meant he needed to spend more in the immediate timeframe on his Gateway infrastructure). It's something that would perhaps need to be tweaked and played with a little bit... But I may experiment a little bit with going single gateway and a fast Twilight Council. Zealot Legs is something that you will want anyway, as well as the ability to get those DTs when the time arises. In the meantime you can still start chronoboosting that void ray and the following phoenix, and add on the second stargate just a tad later. The reason i want to play with this a bit is because once I start pumping out of my Stargates, I feel like everything else gets put on hold and it's one of those "Oh shit I really could use that now instead of later" situations. It could be my poor execution for one (I'm still practicing not only the build, but my mechanics as well)... But my money is USUALLY low unless I'm harassing with Phoenix and I often feel that it's a little to tight at certain spots. The thing is this build techs in a completely different way than the typical Colossus ball... And it throws off certain things... But I do feel they can be worked on, and I do feel that this is not an inherently flawed strategy. Take that San game... Even with a boatload of Corrupters it was very very difficult for him to crack that Carrier fleet. As was pointed out before, those lings would have been shredded by those Zealots... Which would of freed up a LOT of gas to make a lot of Void Rays (if he added a third Stargate this would have been easily doable). I think that game might be a little taste of what is to come. Don't get me wrong, Colossus will often be seen wrecking Zerg armies, but I really do hope that the Carrier gets to see some more action, as it truly is a crazy unit (did you see how quickly that expo was sniped? xD ). | ||
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Whiplash
United States2929 Posts
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
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hitman133
United States1425 Posts
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LesPhoques
Canada782 Posts
On March 29 2011 14:28 CrAzEdMiKe wrote: I disagree that the map needs to be viable for a "fast" expand. I don't think there isn't a map where you can't go for 3-gate Sentry expand unless I'm completely and utterly forgetting something. From my playing thus far, I haven't had any issues with the opening into expand phase... It's after you start getting your Stargate tech up where it starts to get a little more tricky. Its hard to hold off 2base roach+sling push on: 1. Metalopolis 2. Xel'Naga Caverns but its fairly questionably 3. Slag Pits. | ||
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Hierarch
United States2197 Posts
On March 29 2011 14:31 LesPhoques wrote: Its hard to hold off 2base roach+sling push on: 1. Metalopolis 2. Xel'Naga Caverns but its fairly questionably 3. Slag Pits. I have slag pits vetoed since it's probably the worst map blizzard has made for SC2, and no competitive entity would ever feature it in it's map pool. Metal can hold a roach/sling push with 3 canons, good building placement and good ff's. 1-2 voidrays kill roaches quite fast and the buildings, canons, ff's delay the roaches while the gateway army pokes at them and the lings. Xel'naga is a bit harder but I feel like it's still manageable if you scout it properly which shouldn't be a problem due to hallucinated phoenixes and real phoenixes. | ||
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
I'm not saying you're super safe and 100% inpenetrable at any point in time, because lets face it, this is SC2... You're never really "perfectly safe" until the very very end of the game (or you're dead... one of the two xD ). However, 3-gate expand is becoming extremely standard vs. Zerg players and the beauty of it is that it can be used pretty much anywhere (with of course varying degrees of "security" ). But we are arguing semantics and not actually focusing on the build. EDIT: Post replying to LesPhoques... Heirarch beat me to the punch by a minute lol | ||
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TarotFlame
Canada5 Posts
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
Now I know that Carriers get stupid crazy DPS when they have high attack upgrades. However, what I came to realize is that the Carriers tend to mow through most of the Zerg units pretty quickly anyway... And since they aren't doing splash and are focusing one unit at a time, I've been having a much easier time keeping my air army alive by trying to pump the air armor up as quickly as I can after I get +1 attack (because +1 attack is so much better earlier on for the Phoenix harass and for Void Rays). Since Carriers take so long to build and really are the power unit of the build, I think that having a larger emphasis on armor is actually more useful than attack. You have to pay a bit of attention as to how the Zerg is upgrading... But having the fleet in the sky stay alive has been working out very well for me. Again it's food for thought, but it has really been helping my fleet stay alive and it really helps make the Phoenix much more robust (since they really do feel like paper planes sometimes). Again, would like to hear other opinions/experiences if possible. It could be a "stylistic" choice... But again, would like to hear some other opinions/views on the matter. | ||
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SkaPunk
United States471 Posts
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Mojeca
United States46 Posts
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
That and shield upgrades cost more than the armor upgrades... Namely in gas. In such a gas intensive build, it gets super duper expensive to get those shields up to +3 (900 gas vs. 675 if I'm not mistaken). | ||
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Mojeca
United States46 Posts
The fact that shields regenerate quickly and hull damage is permanent is even more reason to prefer shield upgrades because there is less of a chance of taking hull damage if your shields are stronger. Not only that but because shields regenerate you can get more effective health out of shields than hull, meaning shields take more damage by the time the carrier dies, meaning shield upgrades will prevent more damage than hull upgrades. Shield upgrades also help out all the zealots and cannons you will be making as well so Its worth the extra cost, not to mention that unless you made 2 cyber cores, your sacrificing weapon upgrade time for armor. | ||
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CrAzEdMiKe
Canada151 Posts
But that being said, I do try and squeeze in upgrades only when I'm comfortable with how many units I have. So usually I end up focusing on one and adding the other in when I feel comfortable (i.e. I will make a point to getting an upgrade, for instance +1 attack once I start getting Phoenix because I know it makes them more effective at that stage in the game) and go for the other one when I have a little bit of extra money. So basically, I've been experimenting with upgrading the armor in a more dedicated fashion vs. the attack. In regards to taking less damage to hull via shields I'm going to calculate this out on the spot (I don't know what the answer is as I'm writing this). So a carrier has 150 shields and 350 life + 2 base armor. Lets say we are being attacked by a single unupgraded hydra (for simplicities sake, we'll assume you are ahead in upgrades)and you have 0 interceptors so the carrier is not fighting back. The Hydra does 12 damage a shot to your Carrier. Now, without upgrades it will take 13 shots to go through the carriers shields and doing 4 damage to the hull (6 damage -2 base armor of the carrier. Then it will take 35 shots to bring the carrier to death. Now just to make it so that the carrier does not die (1 shot remaining in an upgraded scenario) we will have the Hydralisk make 47 shots on the carrier. If the Carrier has +3 shields, it will take the Hydralisk a total of 17 shots to work it's way through the shields doing an additional 1 damage to the hull, and then our 34 shots to bring the carrier to near death for a total of 51 shots (obviously that is much better than 47 shots). Same scenario, but this time we go with armor. So 13 shots to take out the shields and now it takes (12 - 5 damage = 7 per shot) 49 shots to bring the Carrier to near death for a total of 62 shots. That's an additional 10 shots over going for shield upgrades. Now granted, shield upgrades WILL as you said help absolutely every unit and structure you possess, and that is something to take into consideration... And obviously the opponent SHOULD be getting upgrades of his own to make his units more effective against yours, and how he upgrades should also influence how you upgrade... Since if you are hard to kill but the Zerg units are equally hard to kill for you, they WILL outnumber you and will be getting more shots off... So if they're going heavy armor I might actually go for more attack upgrades depending on the situation (namely if I'm seeing a LOT of Corrupters). I still haven't fully decided on which I prefer, as the whole idea of the army composition is to use the Zealots to hold the Zerg units back from attacking the fleet. And by me thinking this out it actually makes me realize that maybe the correct pattern is for me to drop the second Cyber core and not worry about armor altogether and focus more on Shields and air attack instead of trying to work in all three. You are also correct in that if you're in a situation where Carriers are only taking light to medium fire, shield upgrades are probably more beneficial... In fact now that I'm thinking about it more, if they've got a situation where the Carriers are just out on their own, you're likely to be in trouble anyway... So I don't know, I'm going to have to think about it some more. Like I mentioned previously, I'm a little concerned about the gas requirement for shield upgrades... But admittedly, you can get them rolling a little more easily (at least in my version of the build where after I expand I lay down a single stargate and templar archives up at roughly the same time). I'm definitely going to be doing some experimenting, as I feel that the upgrades are super crucial in this particular build as our units are not "direct counters", more of an all purpose generally good unit. Don't get me wrong, Colossi are great all around units, but they do have some glaring vulnerabilities (no air attack, derrrrrr) wheras carriers are not AS easily countered. Zerg can't kite Carriers like Terrans can with vikings, and corrupters while good are not going to absolutely rape Carriers. So I feel that the choice of what upgrades you go for in this build are absolutely crucial. Off to the ladder to try and test some of this out. =D | ||
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