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The ZvZ meta game has recently been shifting more and more towards two base mutalisk play, and it's not hard to see why; you gain map control and can lock your opponent down on two/three bases while expanding aggressively yourself. There are a few ways to deal with this, the most common of course being Hydralisks and/or Infestors. However, both of these units are extremely immobile when compared to the Mutalisk; a unit that can easily run circles around Hydras and is fairly good at dodging fungal growths. However, in high-level play the roach/hydra/infestor composition is the overwhelming response to muta play, and I was curious as to why. Though my favorite and a very stable compostion, it would seem that corruptors would always be a much better response to mutas than roach/hydra/infestor, and here's why:
1) Corruptors own mutas pretty hard. I'm not exactly sure of the ratio, but I believe you need 1 corruptor for every 1.5 mutalisks, or a 2:3 ratio. That adds up to 300/200 spent on corruptors for every 300/300 spent on mutas, a price deficit that will add up incredibly quickly.
2) Unlike hydra/infestor, corruptors will give you complete map control, rendering their muta switch much less effective.
3) Corruptors are much more mobile than either hydralisks or infestors, thus making muta harass easier to deal with.
4) Corruptors can eventually be morphed into broodlords, and since you took away map control your opponent will have an even harder time dealing with them.
5) As long as you are on top of your scouting you will never have a worse ground army than your opponent (until you go into broodlords).
Yet, other than morphing into broods, we hardly ever see corruptors come into play in ZvZ, and I just want to know why.
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Blazinghand
United States25559 Posts
I don't think corruptors will actually give you map control. Although they are more mobile than infestors or hydralisks, and they can fly, they're still substantially slower than mutalisks. You won't be able to easily move out on the map regardless. Also, unlike Hydralisks and Infestors, they can't be effective against ground units before Hive tech.
The Mutalisking player remains free to take a third base without worrying about a vicious Corruptor timing push from you, and still maintains the ability to counter-attack if you try to move out. Corruptors are just too one-dimensional to be effective at that stage of the game against mutalisks.
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United States15275 Posts
Corruptors are a very poor gas investment in ZvZ. They can fend off muta harass and do very little else, making them the most expensive observers ever seen in a mirror matchup. They cannot give you map control because they cannot punish an enemy player for doing anything. You cannot have a better ground army than your opponent when you are going corruptors; you will not have the gas to get a viable infestor or hydra count.
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As muta numbers increase, they get more and more effective due to the bounce damage.
Corrupters become an unviable counter, not to mention they have no use besides anti-muta, since they are only air-air.
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corrupters are a nice addition in muta versus muta fights, even if you lost the muta count fight, corrupters won't be far away to ensure the opponent can't engage you. That was used before it was know how good infestors are against mutas. (was when fungal had the 8 seconds still). But if you don't have mutas, corrupters aren't a good idea, as the opponent will just ignore them and scoot around them. And hydras are more mobile then corrupters unless you don't spread creep, which you can do without hesitation against muta play. Especially with nydus hydras are everywhere, even before mutas.
Also if the opponent transitions away from mutas with corrupters you are a babystep away from broodlords with muta support. And hydras don't do to well against melee units that land right in them.
Anyway mutas are something that works in zvz, but really just as an tech forcing unit, while you already transition. This mass muta thing currently only works because of no creep spreading and because nydus play to add extra mobility is seen as a gas waste. Basically 14 mutas of the opponent is a wildcard to go 4 base.
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The "metagame" is shifting away from 2 base muta. That statement may have been true 2 months ago, but then people started taking super early thirds and 2 base muta lost some of its steam. There are still games where people go 3 base muta, but that's a lot rarer than 3 base roach/hydra or roach/infestor (at least in the games I've played/seen) because the real strength of 2 base muta was to get some map control while the the non muta player pooled some gas to get a decent sized roach/hydra force to secure his base and push out on the map. With the fast third, he can just slam out a ton of roaches with some hydras then what are you really going to do?
As to adding corrupters versus mutalisks; it really depends. Most people don't go mass muta unless you're going muta as well (it's very precarious to try to switch from mutas to infestors or hydras versus mutas). Adding a spire and then building more gas heavy units to combat mutas when your army is ground based versus only a handful of mutas absolutely doesn't make sense unless you were trying to go fast BL's for some reason (which is probably never going to work). If he's going for a lot of mutas, you're going to need a lot of anti air capablity. It could be feasable to use corrupters in this scenario, but you have to think what the corrupters are going to do for you. They can fight the mutas, but then what? Are they going to help you versus his ling/bane or ultras? No. In the case that he's going heavy muta, often times it's better to favor infestors with a small number of hydras because both units are very good versus other zerg units, whereas corrupters are only good versus mutalisks, then are dead weight.
If you yourself are going for mutalisk versus mutalisk, it can make sense to pepper in some corrupters for muta/muta battles.
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No.
Corruptors lack map control, don't do anything to deny bases. They don't solve any problem. They are just super expensive spores, and there's a reason why people don't go macro game pure roach vs muta play. It's because you need AA, and mutas are really the best 'counter' to mutas.
If you are behind in a muta vs muta game, just spore it up, and use your mutas super defensively until you can get about 20ish mutas out. Once both players have 20+ mutas, you can't really go attack eachother because it's too risky to lose them all by fighting the opponent's smaller muta army + spores. Once you get about 20 mutas out, you need to get infestors asap, so you can quickly end the muta vs muta stage of the game and move it toward ultra/infestor vs ultra/infestor. If you don't have muta when going muta style, you lose, because mass roach will own you. You need the mutas to deal with roaches. Corruptors dont' do anything to roaches.
If you are talking about like roach/corruptor vs muta play, it's too gas heavy. It's better put into infestors, if anything. And corruptors actually aren't that great against mutas - sure, 1v1 they are, but once the mutas get about 15+, corruptors get owned by them. Kind of like phoenixes I suppose? It's just way too cost inefficient to use corruptors to counter mutas, you are just better off getting mutas, turtling behind spores with them, and getting infestors asap with the mutas holding his mutas off so you don't die while teching (which you 99% of the time will, that's what so brutal about muta vs muta).
And broodlords aren't good against zerglings or banelings or mutas, which is what a muta player is going anyways.
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Maybe the Corruptors have more use than killing muta, you can kill overlords and if they stop going muta you potentially have a chance to kill a lot more overlords.
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No, they don't.
Once mutas get to about 15+, corruptors don't work anymore. Mutas are also pretty quick, if you wander anywhere out of your base for a second, the mutas will tear everything apart. The worst of it, is that the mutas will deny your third.
Feel free to try it, I used to add corruptors to my muta balls, and then I realized it's just horrible. If they stop going mutas, like go into roach/infestor, they are just way ahead of you.
You are talking in a vacuum. You aren't regarding the fact that mutas are more cost effective, faster, that the muta player will gain map control and have a much higher econ, and that at a certain point mutas own corruptors. You are just going to be too far behind if you go corruptors, you have no ability to get a third (or fourth, if you both go fast third).
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Well, the muta player will probably have one of two responses to seeing corruptors.
1. He continues making more and more mutas, making a ZvT or ZvP esque ~20 muta deathball where corruptors don't do nearly enough damage because of the bounce.
2. He switches back to roach-hydra-infestor mix. Because of the corruptors, you won't have enough gas, because you have no idea if he's continuing to build mutas.
The broodlord idea is kind of silly IMO, there aren't many ZvZs (as far as what I've seen) that last until the Hive stages, and unless you tech straight to Hive (lol...) you won't need the corruptors for another ten, fifteen minutes.
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BAD IDEA 
Because as your opponnent makes more mutas, you have to make more corrupters. however, like everyone said, they dont actually give map control, and you cant deny' their bases, so they will have a gas lead over you.
Finnally, corrupters dont actually add to an army, so if he has around 30 mutas, and have 20 corruptesr, then he starts to make a ground army, you have 40 supply that does nothing
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i think the problem with this is most Zerg dont fully commit to muta. Muta user often find themselves vulnerable against some certain roaches timing. Therefore most people just use 6 initial muta as a map control tool to expand and deny overlord. In a very rare situation you could find muta vs muta and mostly you could always fall back on infestors play. Corruptor is simply a waste of gas. In all match up the only thing they are good at is to kill massive air units, unless you see colossi/mothership/carriers, NEVER get corruptors.
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The whole idea of 'corruptors don't work anymore' is the same as say phoenixes 'not working anymore vs mutas'. It's true in both cases, but only because the numbers are increasingly likely to get disproportionate. The bouncing damage doesn't increase in large numbers, it just makes sure that there are things for the bounces to hit, but it's still only 7+1+0.5(0.5 = minimum damage) per hit. With upgrades, the mutalisk attacks will become worse against carapace-upgraded corruptors, seeing as the attack upgrade only adds +1/3 and +1/9 to the first and second bounces. Corruptors can give you air control if you kill enough utalisks, it would be ideal to have gotten probably less corruptors initially and added some infestors to fungal and then kill the seriously weakened stack of mutalisks (and possibly increase corruptor) numbers. You could then fly about picking off (many many) overlords.
It's extremely likely though, that this is not going to be worth it at all. I'd really like to see people try it, but corruptors are actually absolute crap for their cost anyway, they're not even actually good for dealing with colossi (but that's another argument, so don't argue with me about it here >.>), so trying to put them into a larger scale use in any match up seems like a very bad choice to me with the way they currently are.
The reason they would be bad is far from some nonsense about bounce getting better in really large numbers, as you only need enough targets to bounce Glaive Wurms against two units at a time. If there are plenty (and similar amounts) of each unit type, most of the mutalisks will be dead by the time there are only few target corruptors for them to hit.
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If you find yourself with a Spire against another player going Mutalisks, mass mutas and drop spores and Queens, and target down stray mutalisks while fighting over those defensive structures and units. You don't need a counter unit, you need to do what he's doing BETTER. You won't hit a transitional period with Infestors without sacing muta count and Corruptors aren't good enough to give up all that Air to Ground damage. Just get better at controlling Mutalisks and save your ovies.
It's like Roach vs Roach -- fight on spines, it makes a gigantic difference.
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Corruptors vs mutas is like corruptors vs phoenixes, only there's no possibility of colossi to shoot at with them
What CapnAmerica said is right - faster attack upgrades, better targeting and so on will win you a muta war. If you're mirror-matching and mirror-teching (feel free to use that one, guys) it's not about trying to get a cheeky hard counter.
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Corruptors only have 1 utility. Hydra/infestor supporting your roach army has multiple utilities. Similarly, corruptors are a response. You're not gonna (relatively) blindly build 15 corruptors and then just show up in his base to kill overlords.... I mean he needs to have committed to spire tech and you have to have also committed, however, in response to his strategy. If you want to play a futile, incredibly fragile composition that isn't actually going to be a good way to spend your gas, sure, go for it. However, hydras and infestors have more options associated with their utilization.
When you're thinking of how a unit can be used, don't think of how it can be countered. Think of how it may be used in conjunction with extant units to further everything's utility. :D
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What happens after you fend off his mutalisks? nothing. You just wasted your minerals on corruptors. They can't attack ground. Whereas going hydralisk infestor transition to roach is much more better than corruptors because they are safe against any attacks during the containtment. e.g. roach muta push, ling runby, and roach hydra, given that your opponent transitions to any of those. Now, if you have corruptors, what would you use against that army when you invested so much on corruptors? (corruptors + spire, That's a lot of gas!!)
Cheers
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i like the idea of going corruptors so i gave it a try, and I end up with the same conclusion as most of the people here. if someone just goes mutas for map control and switches to a ground based army you just cant keep up, and it is VERY hard to keep them from expanding everywhere. His mutas can protect his distant expansions, while your corruptors dont do much.
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Corruptors vs Mutalisks is like Corruptors vs Phoenix.... except that eventually Mutalisks just overwhelm them completely.
Corruptors are too slow and lack the burst damage to really protect expansions from worker snipes.
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Lol. People are so stubborn in their ways. I bet most of the people who replied here have no actual experience with it.
Imo, Curroptors are actually brilliant vs mutas...
I faced this guy some time ago, I scouted around and it appeared that we were both going for a spire so I was ready to get some huge muta battles rolling...
Then when his lair was done he made an overseer to scout my base which really confused me cause I thought he was going mutas too.
He scouts my spire being done and then for a little while nothing happens but when I'm ready to go out with my mutas he shows up with a bunch of curroptors.
My mutas became completely useless and when I finally tried to fight him I just lost every muta. From that point on he just went around killing every overlord I had. Only to do a roach timing afterwards..
I got absolutely smashed, I think it's a sick good metagame kinda strategy.
I don't like to go spire but if I did I would go curroptor every game if I scouted spire. It was not even close.
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EPT
