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On March 18 2011 20:53 Alpina wrote:
I don't get why mass upgraded hydras don't counter this.. Add roaches to tank zealots.
I think it will be easier for zerg to deal with this combo than with collosus cause your overall army dps isn't that insane and your hydras won't melt in seconds.
Hydra / corruptor and few roach is best way to fight this build.
The TS should put the responses that are not correct in the OP so people can stop asking the same questions.
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the thing is when zerg sees carrier he attacks asap, letting protoss build 10+ carriers with mothership is suicide.
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Alright, before you read this know i'm only a high gold player so take this with a grain of salt (Hope this is the right figure of speech!).
I love this build, i've been looking for a way to incoorporate pheonix and carrier into my play (zzz deathball) and believe this build is the way to go about doing so. Even if it turns out to be sub-optimal i'll still be using this for the sheer ammount of awesome.
On to the critique, first off i only watched the first game so maybe this completely injustified however, i feel you produce a lot of pheonix for very little gain. Sure you have some mapcontroll but i feel you could easily achieve this with 3-5 pheonix. They will still have to react in the same fashion or you can continuesly snipe 5 probes every 30 second you fly by.
I feel a strong asset of this build, besides the obvious, would be the abillity to keep creepspread to a minimum, is there a way to do this style while have just a single observer + a void ray picking off creeptumors ?
Another thing i notice, is that you research both air and ground armor, even delaying the essential attack upgrades (especially air attack increases void ray and carrier damage by a metric fucktonne.). Wouldn't it be more benificial to drop down a second forge and get 3/3 protoss shields? The upgrade works for both ground and air units, aswell as all those canons you plant down at every expansion. If you later on get to a point where you have 3 attack and the buildings isn't in use, the armor upgrades will buff your units up even more.
Dark Templars seem to be a huge dumb of money if you already see sporecrawlers up, do you really think it's worth getting the tech and trying to harass a player that is already fully sporecrawled up in his mineral lines?
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I've seen this build or something close to it a few times on ladder. Carriers are kinda like collosus in that they're weak in low numbers, but a pain to deal with later on. Thing with this build is you won't have an actual army presence for quite some time so its up to Zerg to get like 4 bases and a huge economy going before the carrier ball moves out.
Whenever I've beaten this build its cause I scouted it in time and realized toss wouldn't be pushing any time soon, allowing me to get a 2 base lead.
Whenever I've lost its because toss was diligent with harassing and used the early air units to deny my early 3rd. Its surprisingly hard to expand to a 3rd vs phoenix / void ray openings on most maps because they can be everywhere and you're often spread thin protecting your overlords, drones, queen in natural and main, and your 3rd.
Good creep spread helps a lot. Just my 2 cents
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United Kingdom36156 Posts
This sounds really interesting :>
Like the poster above, the key has to be denying Zerg's 3rd for as long as possible.
I still worry about some early roach/hydra busts where zealots + cannons just aren't enough to hold them off.
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Italy12246 Posts
Interesting, i will definitely try this out. Something i would change is skipping the dt's until a bit later, and get a robo for observers instead to snipe a few creep tumors. I feel like some of the harassment dt's do can be accomplished by phoenixes and a couple void rays to snipe the odd hatch and overlord, but this is just from looking at the replay. Will definitely test this out ^^
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OP, thank you so much for posting this, I started thinking air vs. zerg again after doing deathball for so long and there you go with this beautiful post.
A few tips and tricks I came up with, augmenting your strategy a touch:
+1 air upgrade means your phoenix are doing 11x2 damage vs light. Larva has 25 hp and 10 armor. See where im going with this? 2 damage per phoenix equals dead larva very very quickly. 13-14 phoenix killing one larva in ~1.1 seconds? 5 - 6 seconds and all that hard work the zerg put in to injecting/macro is gone. Why protoss don't do this already I don't know. I know I am going to do this every game now...
It takes 20 volleys to kill an overlord, ~23 volleys to kill a queen, and about 25 to kill an overseer.
I'm thinking going heavy heavy phoenix (like 25 to 30) to one shot the above mentioned units.
-One shotting overlords that might be all bundled together in the main is brutal.
-One shotting queens completely shuts down Zerg's macro. If there is no other AA around, why not pick up the larva and kill that off too, two at a time?
-One shotting overseers not only lowers pop cap but if you have DTs on the field it makes them that much stronger.
25-30 phoenix will completely prevent muta's. This isn't even debatable, it'd be pure suicide. 120hp, light, takes longer to build than a chrono'd phoenix?
Which brings me to a good point, a chronoboosted phoenix comes out in 25 seconds. Thats marine build time. That is insane. to get 30 of them out of two stargates would take a little over 6 minutes, so probably right around the 12-13 minute mark. 30 graviton beams? That shuts down any push the zerg will throw at you. You cannoned your third and they attacked? Lift EVERYTHING in range of cannons and laugh.
Hydra's are light and have 80 hp. lift one, and 4 phoenix each do 20 damage to it. So something like 30 phoenix could instantly snipe 6 hydra's if your micro can handle that.
One last point, OP, instead of getting +1 ground attack right away, get shields +1. Phoenix are all about dat harass and you usually fly off when shields get depleted. +1 to that will increase the potency of harass and applies to both ground and air AND cannons. get +1 attack after that.
I know some of this might be common sense and already known and whatnot, but I want you all to think about how awesome Phoenix really are, especially at that magic number of 25+
I just realized this is sounding like zerg's muta/ling strat. Awesome.
edit: holy shit just realized hallucination can be useful as well. Hallucinate yourself 6-7 extra phoenix, collossi, archons... With no detection, awesome meat shields. With those 6 sentries sitting at 200/200 energy, this is excellent.
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I used to play with this style a lot back in the earlier days of SCII... however a very strong 2 base roach hydra push WILL kill you. You'll have 1-2 carriers out at most by this point, and not enough voids to hold on. Carriers simply build too slowly, you can't get them out in time to really make the difference.
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In the first replay was really good. Might want to stop more expos thou considering he expanded like 5 times. He had every expo on his side of the map and creeped the place up. Also, i noticed when you were starting the carriers, your gas income was half his and you had idle gases at your gold. With this being a gas heavy build every assimilator is needed.
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This looks interesting, I'll play with it a bit
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I played against this style on shakuras plateau once, it was a very long game and the map was almost mined out. I eventually beat his air fleet with an army of pure 3-3 corrupters. Micro was absolutely required or else I'd get chewed up. If I didn't think on my feet and throw up double spire to catch up and hit 3-3 asap, I feel it would have been impossible to stop. Hydras really don't stand up to an upgraded carrier voidray phoenix fleet, they don't have the luxury of stacking all their dps into one space like an air fleet can, and they're too immobile to defend everywhere at once. If the hydra ball splits it will be chewed up.
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On March 19 2011 01:23 mamuto wrote:
OP, thank you so much for posting this, I started thinking air vs. zerg again after doing deathball for so long and there you go with this beautiful post.
A few tips and tricks I came up with, augmenting your strategy a touch:
+1 air upgrade means your phoenix are doing 11x2 damage vs light. Larva has 25 hp and 10 armor. See where im going with this? 2 damage per phoenix equals dead larva very very quickly. 13-14 phoenix killing one larva in ~1.1 seconds? 5 - 6 seconds and all that hard work the zerg put in to injecting/macro is gone. Why protoss don't do this already I don't know. I know I am going to do this every game now...
It takes 20 volleys to kill an overlord, ~23 volleys to kill a queen, and about 25 to kill an overseer.
I'm thinking going heavy heavy phoenix (like 25 to 30) to one shot the above mentioned units.
-One shotting overlords that might be all bundled together in the main is brutal.
-One shotting queens completely shuts down Zerg's macro. If there is no other AA around, why not pick up the larva and kill that off too, two at a time?
-One shotting overseers not only lowers pop cap but if you have DTs on the field it makes them that much stronger.
25-30 phoenix will completely prevent muta's. This isn't even debatable, it'd be pure suicide. 120hp, light, takes longer to build than a chrono'd phoenix?
Which brings me to a good point, a chronoboosted phoenix comes out in 25 seconds. Thats marine build time. That is insane. to get 30 of them out of two stargates would take a little over 6 minutes, so probably right around the 12-13 minute mark. 30 graviton beams? That shuts down any push the zerg will throw at you. You cannoned your third and they attacked? Lift EVERYTHING in range of cannons and laugh.
Hydra's are light and have 80 hp. lift one, and 4 phoenix each do 20 damage to it. So something like 30 phoenix could instantly snipe 6 hydra's if your micro can handle that.
One last point, OP, instead of getting +1 ground attack right away, get shields +1. Phoenix are all about dat harass and you usually fly off when shields get depleted. +1 to that will increase the potency of harass and applies to both ground and air AND cannons. get +1 attack after that.
I know some of this might be common sense and already known and whatnot, but I want you all to think about how awesome Phoenix really are, especially at that magic number of 25+
I just realized this is sounding like zerg's muta/ling strat. Awesome.
edit: holy shit just realized hallucination can be useful as well. Hallucinate yourself 6-7 extra phoenix, collossi, archons... With no detection, awesome meat shields. With those 6 sentries sitting at 200/200 energy, this is excellent.
Why kill larva when there are drones right next to the hatchery collecting minerals?
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Hmmm... zerg doesn't have to go hydras. Corruptors are very good against 2 out of the 3 stargate units that you'll be producing. Phoenix and carrier both take double penalties for their attack and thus can never really scale into late game. Coupled with the fact that corruptors have a base of two armor, both units are doing pitiful damage to corruptors.
Also, sling/bling would do well versus whatever your ground unit composition since there wouldn't be many sentries or stalkers, and the only unit that could kill them at a reasonable rate would be carriers.
Hydras is NOT the correct response nor is it forced.
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I tried a build very similar to this a few times at around 3000Masters level. It doesnt work very often because if Zerg gets a lot of Hydras, they shoot down the interceptors too quickly.
You could go for HTs with Carriers but than you lose your mobility. Warpprism dont work because they die as soon as a corruptor gets into its vision 
Anyways, if you play at lower levels were Zergs dont scout your base at proper timings, you can get a lot of wins with builds like that.
GL HF experimenting with it 
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I've been tinkering with Phoenix vs Z in my PvZ for a couple weeks now - but the difference is since I force Hydras, I take my third, saturate it and make collosi. Carriers (with a mothership) I make after because those units are unstoppable in big numbers - once you get there. What I'm saying is that this strategy works - it just needs some tweaking.
I didn't know carriers did so well vs Hydras, that I will have to try!
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On March 18 2011 18:29 darkscream wrote:
I think the entire point of this thread is trying to argue that phoenix harass can carry you into carrier play vs Zerg. I'm just not sure that's true unless your opponent was one who doesn't know how to react to/is caught completely off guard by Phoenix harass. A korean zerg would just roll you over with ling/roach while you were trying to tech.
A korean zerg also doesn't have to worry about LSATS and Law school, it's a poor example to compare a 3000 point diamond player who is just trying to expand the protoss build horizons to a Korean who plays this game for a living.
Also to address the 1st part of your post, the point of this thread is to point out that carriers are a viable end game unit, and that phoenix allow for the passive play of a colossus strategy while giving you something to hamper the zerg with.
On March 18 2011 18:13 Nemara wrote:Made me lol :D. Great post though defenetly gonna try this. I feel like corruptor might be abit too strong vs carriers for this strat to be effective trough a whole game. I'd imagine you need to transistion pure ground after your carriers get steamrolled. Also, if you dont get any aoe damage, hydras are going to become very powerful against ya aswell. When I do this build, I'll tech to tempelar, blink and charge, get out alot of gateways, and push out after so that i can reinforce quick and take out any corruptor heavy army should my first army lose.
Hydras are not good vs Carrier/gateway compositions, also corrupters against voidray/carrier actually don't fare that well (you have to test it to see what I mean). I do get charge as fast as I can since it makes my zealots actually be able to do something before evaporating. I do also get blink eventually.
On March 18 2011 18:25 pyth0n wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 18:01 Hierarch wrote:On March 18 2011 17:52 DeCiBle wrote:On March 18 2011 17:40 Hierarch wrote:On March 18 2011 17:28 DeCiBle wrote:
In theorycrafting the strengths of this build and it's weaknesses, IMO the people in this thread have to stop theorycrafting unit compositions, and remember that there's timings involved.
Sure, mass voidray/carrier is strong... If I could get 3/3 hydra queen infester corrupter ultralisk, baneling I'd probably roll you too.
It's the getting there that bothers me.
The "deny his third and take your own" line killed it for me. If toss takes a 3rd, it's basically gg anyways, esp if you let toss tech and get a third.
My question is how yo plan on teching to carriers and DTs while having a substantial ground army to hold off a zerg who throws just as much money at killing you as you do in saturating your expansion and teching to tier 3 in two completely perpendicular tech paths. The answer is that you don't rush for it, but you already have ended up in a comfortable enough position where you can get to it; but by no means is getting to it a means to an end.
If the zerg never attacks, or is just held down so much by the phoenix play that you basically won with phoenix, how does that let the carrier even enter the picture? Basically if you pull off the prerequisites for this build, you've already won, and carrier's just a spice to the mix.
If the zerg doesn't scout, and lets you get to tier 3 AND get even bases, why do we even need to speculate on a unit composition; you've already won.
Same thing for Zerg, if they get to tier 3 And get an economy lead... I'd say it's safe to say they're in a pretty good position.
There's SO much money being thrown at tech here, I'd say that you're very fragile, as much as you'd like to tote the cannons that keep you alive, you're short on forcefield, and a well-timed baneling/roach/queen all-in or drop would probably kill you. Not that that's popular right now, but it's something I've been working on, and I've found decent success with it. (also frustrated how much you under-estimated well-controlled queens throughout your post)
What would you do to react to a roach/queen drop in your main, with re-enforcements of roach/ling at your front? Phoenix don't do didley squat to roaches; they can lift them, but it takes forever to kill one. Voidrays will definitely help you defend, but you'll still lose the ground war most-likely; also queens and voidrays are about on-par in terms of combat efficiency against eachother. (exception being that queens build faster and are substantially cheaper)
The phoenix opening's strong, no matter what you tech to; logically if you stick to 1 tech path and you have good synergy with what you invest in, coming from a position of strength, is it any wonder that you win games?
It's not a fast tech to carriers, you get your fleet beacon and dark shrine when your 3rd is saturated, and DT's are easily accessible since you get a twilight council to further your upgrades. Also, it's not like it's easy for zerg to scout with phoenix controlling the map, which is one of the strengths of this build. Well controlled queens are good and all but against 6-10 phoenix it doesn't matter how well you can control them if i just pick them up. I do feel like this build is weak to all in type of plays since you cut some of the sentrys, and I guess I'd just have to experience those all-ins to see how I would react. Against the all in you described, wouldn't it be obvious what your intention is if i see a clump of overlords crossing the map? Giving my phoenix ample time to kill a couple of those overlords. Voidrays would clean that push up, phoenix can pick up the queens and then there's no anti air. You'd do some good damage probably but it sounds like a super all in strategy so the counter push would win the game I believe. But I'm not 100% sure. What's frustrating is the over-confidence and single-mindedness of this. Queens don't instantly die when you pick them up; for every ling you clean off of a xel naga tower or pluck from out front your base, you just lost a graviton beam (i.e. - I just saved a drone's life); and how do you plan on having a sufficient ground army, cannon coverage, 5-6 phoenix, and a void ray by the time I have overlord speed and drop, along with a handful of roaches? There's no counter push when I snipe all the tech in your main. Also: I bring ALL my overlords and have them spread creep. Your phoenix might pick off 1, maybe 2, but that just brings an element of chance: Some are empty decoys. The point isn't to end the game there; it's to reset your tech while I maintain an economic equilibrium with you; potentially crippling you if I clean up your ground forces without too many losses. (1 voidray may very well be able to kill ...mmm let's say 12 roaches?... but they'll do their fair share of damage and supply blockage before they die.) My approach to ZvP's really aggressive though, so if you hit tier 3 at all vs me, it was gg a LONG time ago. 5-6 Phoenix kill a queen pretty fast, and I don't go for lings on towers 1st, maybe when i leave your base the 1st time i'll grab em. If you're having overlord speed and drops then I should have atleast 3 voidrays out, also it seems like you're just leaving your base undefended doing that start which means i get free pickings at your drones. I'm not saying this strategy would beat what you are sugggesting, but in theory it could. Plus if you have 12 roaches my smaller ground army of like 6 zealots, 2-3 stalkers and 4-5 sentrys an 1-3 voidrays can win if i just use my phoenix to pick up 6 of your 12 roaches and negate them from combat. i agree with decible man, while you have 5-6 phoenix a GOOD zerg will have 4 queens 2 on the way and possibly hydras. also with 2 of those guys in the replays they take their 2nd even 3rd REALLY late, a lot of good zergs will go 15 hatch the gas then pool even. If im playing a toss and im not getting 4 gated, im teching to lair and putting a overseer at every base and 1 over my army plus a hydra den and usually a extra queen per base, i dont think ull be sneaking into any bases with a dt that way. on top of that when i dont see a giant army when i poke with my lings, im throwing up a nydus instant. I feel like it would work better then the usual death ball which is beat with just corruptors, roach and hydra but far from good enough for top level game play
With 5-6 Phoenix i can lift 2 queens at the same time, 4 phoenix shooting a queen will kill it quite fast, and I can just rinse and repeat. Also every spore/spine/extra queen just adds to the harass. I agree some nydus play would be interesting, but it's not an easy build to figure out since it opens exactly like the standard colossus 3 gate expand.
Also I will always pylon block the natural of a zerg if i can, which happens decently on most maps, sometimes it's obviously not going to happen. The DT's are not meant for anything other than to cause panic, i don't usually make more than 4-5 per game.
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On March 18 2011 14:45 P00RKID wrote:
You just completely ignore the fact that zerg has mutalisks. Also, while it is common for zerg to neglect air upgrades, it is also highly important that they don't. As zerg, you should be getting flyer carapace upgrades. It is so much more important than air damage.
I can see a player going muta corruptor queen and hydra. The hydra will be the initial defense for the air, along with queens, but as you scout the + air upgrades and more air coming out, pumping out mutalisks and corruptors and getting armor upgrades, you can defend and have some actual map control, unlike if you made just queens and hydra, which are terrible for map control. Defensive mutas seem counter-intuitive but that is what I'm getting at.
Also, against carriers, mutalisks and corruptors do so much better when they have upgraded armor. One of the best targets when protoss is going air is to take out their cyber core so you can stay ahead in upgrades. With enough queens you can keep more of your units alive with transfuse as well, so it all works well together. Hydra just don't feel good enough, although you will want a handful of them as they help the composition and early defense, but massing them might be a bad idea.
You completely ignore the fact that protoss has phoenixes.
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GAAAAAA
I love carriers but I've never been able to use them much! I don't care what anyone thinks, I'm doing this ALWAYS!
Thanks for the amazing build
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On March 18 2011 21:06 iChau wrote:Show nested quote +On March 18 2011 20:53 Alpina wrote:
I don't get why mass upgraded hydras don't counter this.. Add roaches to tank zealots.
I think it will be easier for zerg to deal with this combo than with collosus cause your overall army dps isn't that insane and your hydras won't melt in seconds.
Hydra / corruptor and few roach is best way to fight this build. The TS should put the responses that are not correct in the OP so people can stop asking the same questions.
I just did, thank you for the suggestion.
On March 18 2011 21:01 Falcon_NL wrote:
I dont think you can defeat a zergling/baneling/muta composition with this effectively :/
Phoenix and voidrays? What are you going to have that can stop a phoenix/voidray push? After I defend the 1st major attack I just keep warping zealots and sentrys at my base and push with my phoenix and voidrays. In theory that's how I'd defeat that strategy lol
On March 18 2011 19:27 Markwerf wrote:
I still don't see the point of carriers being better then colossi..
Colossi are cheaper, do way more DPS (if they hit at least 2 units which they will 95% of the time) share upgrades with your ground units and are about as mobile as carriers (i'd rather have more speed and cliffwalking then flying).
Importantly colossi demolish hydra's and die to corruptors while carriers die to corruptors and are only decent against hydra's.
Overall there is just no point in making carriers instead of colossi, you need ground units anyway so focussing entirely on ground with a little air support just makes more sense. The composition still gets countered by mass corruptors...
What entirely makes colossi better then carriers is that you easy into them more easily as well. You can just go 1 robo + 1 bay colossi and be fine vs any hydra pushes, this build however will crumble to a good hydra push (on the third or in the main by drop) because 1 carrier doesn't do as well as 1 colossus vs hydra...
1 stargate into 1 robo colossi > 2 stargate into carriers all the time..
This build is not meant to be a direct linear comparison to a colossus build, it is meant to offer a different path to go down when using the 3 gate expand.
For all the people saying this build gets countered by this or it loses to that, just try it out. It's not hard to deviate from the normal 3 gate expand. Try it for 15-20 games and you'll see it actually does decently well against all those things that people said it doesn't do well against.
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On March 19 2011 05:17 Hierarch wrote:
A korean zerg also doesn't have to worry about LSATS and Law school, it's a poor example to compare a 3000 point diamond player who is just trying to expand the protoss build horizons to a Korean who plays this game for a living.
So this strategy is only for lower level play and can only be discussed by lower levels?
And your handful of replays where you simply outplay your opponent are proof that it's uncounterable by hydras? The unit that... is supposed to destroy gateway and air compositions?
Well... I guess your strategy is unstoppable then, good job.
Edit: Carrier strats are simply not viable in the current game/meta-game. I'm not even entirely sure they're broken, if mech ever becomes mainstream I could see carriers coming back or something, I just find it silly to claim that carrier/gateway isn't hard countered by hydra/roach/ling corrupter/roach, infestors, etc. And I open stargate in about 50% of the games I play...
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EPT
