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I know this has been talked about before, but it's been a while and a patch is coming out.
I'm a 700+ masters zerg player. First, let me describe the deathball I'm talking about. It's the one with lots of voidrays and only 4 colossi and the rest blink stalkers (and maybe some sentries). And I mean lots of voidrays, like 10-18 of them. The play style is to harass with the voidrays while playing very turtley behind wall-offs and cannons on 3 bases and then attack at around 180-200 food. Basically what cruncher did to idra in game 1 of the TSL.
My first question is how exactly are you supposed to beat this? I never really figured it out because protosses stopped doing it after the infestor buff. I've heard that fungal growth somehow counters the build, but I don't see how. If he has 16 voidray, they probably won't all be able to be fungal'd at once, so we'll say it will take 2 fungals to get them all, and it takes 6 full fungals to kill a voidray, so you would need a minimum of 12 fungals to kill them all. I don't see this happening with voidrays, colossi and blink stalkers all trying their hardest to kill your infestors. And what exactly is your army composition supposed to be? Roach/infestor, roach/infestor/corruptor, and if so, how many infestors and how many corruptors? I've never had success with roach/infestor unless the protoss moves out way too early like 110-150 food and/or keeps their army in compact ball that can be fungal'd with two fungals. If they play turtley and move out at 180-200, all my infestors die before they can get off the required 6 fungals.
My second question is, if infestors are the answer to the voidray/colossus deathball, how will this new infestor nerf affect that? The nerf is fungal damage is decreased from 36 (49 armored) to 30 (40 armored). This brings the number of fungals to kill a voidray up to 7 or 28 in-game seconds, which is a life-time! How will zerg deal with this strat after the patch?
My third question is how do you deal with the voidray harass once they start getting 3, 4 and 5 voidrays. I don't think you can defend them with just queens and spore crawlers any more. Do I have to go hydras? This seems like such a waste because they're so terrible against this composition. Do I have to go fast corruptors? This would significantly cut in to my economy, because I would have to get them out very quickly to meet the 4th voidray timing.
I'm not too sure the colossus/voidray deathball strat ever stopped being strong; I think protosses stopped doing it prematurely. And if I wasn't right before the patch, I think I definitely am after the patch.
Please help (especially Grandmasters and pros and people better than me)!
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I play protoss and although maybe I shouldnt share this with you, I will anyways out of sheer giggles.
When I field voidrays (I often do in PvZ) what wrecks me is that the voidrays are slow. They will often be slacking up behind the main ground army which will be much faster. You should normally be able to restrain and even wreck this kind of play by using fast muta harass to kill the probes on gas (High gas income is needed for this deathball composition).
The other thing that often happens is that when i am trying to engage and ramp up my void damage, the zergs often move faster than I do on creep and several small skimirshes with fungals will often wreck the main ground army, leaving my voids vulnerable for a decent amount of hydras combined with maybe a fungal and infested marines.
Another trick is to send excess overlords with your main army. it will make it difficult to target the infestors and might allow you to neural and fungal more safely.
Basically, you need to abuse your mobility over such a deathball and expanding your creep is key to doing so.
Thats my opinion anyways! 
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Ive seen some masters describe the exact same problem on offical SC2 forum many months ago. It whas concluded that about 30 corrupters and the rest roaches are able to deal enough damage so you can deal with it after the remax.
Personally I think hydras are a must if protoss goes heavy Void Rays because the harassment can be so annoying if you are trying to play passive and macro up. Perhaps a roach/hydra timing attack can thin out their army giving you some time to get what you need to counter the deathball.
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last time i tried this deathball i lost vs mass infest/bl w/ fungal + infested to stop my vr, even with some spliting
Edit : infest not corru lol :/
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^Why didn't you blink and attack bls??
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A mix of roach/corruptors and infestors is the way to deal with this, you'll lose the fight but if you remax with roach/hydra you'll be fine. As long as the corruptors kill the colo in the first fight your hydra remassing should do fine.
Infestors just provide quite solid damage against an all armored army that stacks so much as void/colo/stalker.
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Fungal should not be your only DPS... If you have other units attack, (Roaches, brood lords, ultras, lings, hydras, corruptors whatever you happen to have...) to aid the infestors then you should be ok
engage correctly and you should be fine assuming your army is of equal or greater value then his
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On August 27 2011 02:48 Jaxtyk wrote:
^Why didn't you blink and attack bls??
edited lol ;;
i think corru is not the good counter unless you have a way better macro to remax after the fight
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dood voidray colossus is old news. just dig up old replays of people trying that against zergs about 2 months ago and you'll find plenty of info there
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Just infestors. You own it HARD. All his units are armored and very high gas cost; no reason you cant match it with equal gas-numbers with infestors. And then you roll it.
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i played a pvz yesterday and had a similiar deathball, maybe lacking a few vr, in addition for some ht in the mix, but my opponent went ling,infestor few blings and ultras....and i must say, those infestors do a lot of damage to a "deathball" lol(just scout his army, and try fungal-ing before u actually engage wif ur main army)....and then the rest just steam-rolled my army, so i tried warp in archon,zlot+vr, but i was simply out number despite being on 4base, so i believe if u can just even trade armies against a toss, it would be an advantage for you
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I play that style pretty often and there's something that's very different now compared to a few months ago, it's a unit called the archon.
When I'm approaching the max limit, I mix 3-4 archons to my army. This means my army compo is actually made of voidrays, colossus, stalkers and archons. Corruptors tend to clump, so they get slash-damaged by the archons while the voidrays focus them. It's really really tough for the Zerg to counter that compo, so far what has given me the most trouble is BL + queens + infestors + hydras with equal or better upgrades.
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There was an interview with a Code S Zerg a while back (can't remember who) but he said the reason why "Laser Toss" had fallen out of favor was Banelings; fungal on a mass of blink stalkers + Colossi leaves them sitting ducks for blings and bling drops.
While that still leaves 10 Voids, with virtually no ground forces left, it's not a huge difficulty to clean up. in addition, P will not have much if any defense left back at home if you go for a runby.
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Currently, the void rays stack up (on top of the rest of his army, no less) and will usually all be caught in a single fungal, unless the protoss is microing them.
However, there's a change in 1.4 currently on the PTR which will cause the void rays to automatically unclump relatively quickly, so if you don't get the first fungal immediately, it'll be harder to get them all.
The void rays are easier to deal with when you can make as much of the ground army as possible disappear using banelings.
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Roach/Bane Drop/ Infestor.
Remax on Hydras, Corruptors, w/e.
GG
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I encountered it a few times in master league ladder. If you scout it early, go muta or roach / ling drop in the main, it will always work. Protoss will have nothing but a few void rays and 1 or 2 collossi, maybe 5 stalkers or so.
But I agree, once Protoss sits long enough on 3 bases and is getting near maxed, its almost impossible to beat.
After a void ray opening, always check if he is going for a greedy collossus follow up and if so, kill him asap but not by attacking the front door, it probably wont work.
Usually this is played on maps where p can easily hold a third with void ray and col and cannons, like shakuras or backwater (third close to the cliff of the main).
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+ Show Spoiler [(copypaste my post from another thread…] +Infestors with fungal growth do massive damage vs both colossi and voidrays. Try to engage on creep as infestors are slow offcreep. You can also use neural parasite on the colossi and overwhelm the rest of the army with ling-corruptor/roach-hydra, just make sure to keep his units fungal growthed as much as possible so he can't target down the infestors that are casting neural parasite. Another thing you can do is abuse zerg mobility and send in a zergling counterattack whenever he pushes out. a Colossi and VR are the 2 highest DPS dealers for protoss and you basically NEED good infestor usage to play vs this strat. Corruptors are not a bad choice but void rays are pretty good against them so you really need to overwhelm him in numbers if you want to make this work, and follow up with some ground army to kill him after you've dealt with his vr and colossi. Skip to 13:46 and you'll see how a GM league zerg player deals with colossi-voidray. (the video contains some BM flaming but you can turn it on mute if you're worried about that) Do note that the zerg still ends up losing but that was because he was very far behind from early game harassment and was even unable to get up his 3rd base, but the initial engagement and army composition is still something exactly that you can learn a LOT from.
Also, voidray harassment can be hard to deal with, but they're also expensive units and if just using infestors isn't enough to deal with it, then you probably will have to get at least some corruptors (not hydras), killing off even just a few void rays will definitely make up for what you lost.
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Broodlord/Corrupter/Infestor work when I go the traditional deathball with like 10 Void Rays.
I think I seen Sen doing baneling drops with hydra ling mixed in too, not sure how well that'll work with 10+ Void Rays though.
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roach+hydra timing is only solution. Or hydra nydus play
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Infestor play shuts down deathball oh so badly. If i see someone going coruptor/hydra against like 15 void rays and 5 colosai + stalker/sentry support i laugh
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EPT
