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https://drop.sc/replay/8111680 (Edit, corrected file path)
This isn't the only strategy I've tried, I've tried so many, but I've ALWAYS lost to carriers. I'm honestly not sure if in all my years (since the game came out) I've ever won against carriers, and it's really starting to get under my skin. I've tried coruptors, base racing, infestors, etc. I made a lot of mistakes:
-My spending was not on point, especially early on.
-I upgraded to hive but didn't make 3rd tier units.
-After the initial attack on his 4th, I could have droned up more rather than attacking with so many units.
-Creep spread could be better. Queens could be used more in engagements if I get so many.
-I didn't dodge storms well enough and didn't have enough to support my hydras. Better usage of banelings would have helped me deal with HTs.
The thing is, I still don't see how to win even doing these things better. As in, if I had done a better job with most of these things I think the result would have been unchanged. I know I make a lot of mistakes, but I still play at my level (diamond 2 or 3 depending) and have a chance against other strats. I feel like my approach must be wrong.
I understand in theory how to fight against it using massive spore crawlers, vipers, infestors, hydras, corruptors, maybe ultras, etc. when I see the pros use it, but I don't think I'm realistically anywhere able to being able to pull off the required amount of sophistication and unit control that that requires, and I shouldn't have to be able to multitask that much better than the P to win. Can someone help me out?
Also, if I was close to victory at some point, please tell me exactly where.
Thank you to anyone who can give me support.
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i think i'm around your level or slightly above (high diamond). first of all if you're going to make statements like "i shouldn't have to multitask better" and "even if i played better i would lose" then just cut those out of your thread. they're excuses and they don't serve any purpose other than to suggest the game is imbalanced, which is not what we do in the strategy forum
at around 6 minutes you have like 2k minerals which could have been mass queens or drones or really anything. i'm not trying to be one of those people who says "you messed up your macro, just macro better" but 2k minerals at 6 minutes is kind of ridiculous when you're zerg. the game continues after that though and you weren't absurdly far behind so we can ignore that.
where i think your game started to go wrong is the pure hydra composition attacking the 4th. if you're going to walk across the map with mass hydra to kill a 3 base skytoss player you usually want to either bring queens or go for earlier speed banes. storm counters banelings when you both have big ground armies, but banelings + hydra can potentially run into templar when there isn't ground support (you should almost always be selecting 3-4 banes and move commanding them onto templar, it's very hard to micro away for P). this is not just my opinion but what i've seen pros do. banelings would have also cut through more of his zealot reinforcements, which are important for him. if you want my opinion you should do that attack with hydra+bane and i think you would have won, and would have crushed his 4th more easily. queens are also another way you can do it, but on that big macro map with the pocket natural it's faster to use banes
if you're intent on using mass hydra i think you have to be microing them a little more skillfully. when he has carriers and very few other units you want to kite backward and shave off phoenixes and zealots, then micro around storms, then dive the carriers if you have an opportunity. but you can keep kiting and killing interceptors/zealots, it's not bad and you're not wasting time because when he has only 3 carriers it's a much bigger problem to lose interceptors. at that point in the game your production far outpaces protoss, so if you're trying to kill skytoss you want to be trading and rallying simultaneously throughout the midgame and then finishing with a big attack once his defenses start to fall
regardless of that you traded pretty well and still killed his fourth, and from there you were in a good enough position that you theoretically could have played it out. the problem is that you kept making more hydra+bane and then did a really bad attack up a ramp into mass storm and a higher number of carriers. you were probably tilted and trying to do a big all-in timing because you hate playing against carriers, but that attack was horrendous, you basically gave up by throwing a bunch of units up a ramp. if you do that attack you have to do it from a much better angle and with more thought put into it. you were also trying to tech while doing that attack, which left you with not enough army to win and still behind in tech since skytoss is already his endgame tech
what i would have considered in your position is, after you kill the 4th base and while you're attacking the 3rd base wall, immediately start your hive and spire transition, which i think you didn't end up doing until several minutes later. that would have been a better time to tech. you clearly decided that it was too risky to push your army any further, which meant your attack was over, but then you made more attacking units as if he was going to counterattack you. a skytoss player with 3 bases mining out that far into the game is not going to suddenly counterattack you, he needs time to reload his composition. that time allows you to make your lategame transition. instead you tried to transition too late while also attacking with a bad composition
as for the lategame, yes, it's hard, but yes you can win and yes there are lots of things you can do to annoy the protoss. that map is really favorable for his strategy, but on most maps you can get a lot done with army splitting - trying runbys, small groups of hydra/ling backstabbing the third base, dropping the main to trade out hydra supply, etc. it's true that if you let protoss max out with full tech you are required to work hard for a win, but a 3 carrier transition off of 3 base is not that safe or stable. don't underestimate your ability to use that "multitasking" you claim to be better at than your opponent to get damage done.
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alternatively, make a dozen or so ravagers to supplement your hydra push for some AOE, they should be targeting buildings such as pylons and the slower units like carriers
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Brickrd: Thank you for your advice. I'm not saying that my multi-tasking is better, I'm saying that to play the late game properly Zerg requires an extremely high level of multi-tasking to use the strategy that the pros use, and since I am NOT able to play that well (and neither are my level of protoss opponents) I need a different approach. What I was trying to say specifically is that even if I had fixed the mistakes that I listed, I probably still would have lost. I think that, vs. carriers, there is something wrong with my way of thinking about the game, which is the reason I posted it on the strategy forum. It had nothing to do with balance. I'll try what you said with the banes, and yes, you're right, even according to the videos I learned the hydra strat from I should have used my queens as well. Thanks!
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On August 11 2018 08:12 emc wrote:
alternatively, make a dozen or so ravagers to supplement your hydra push for some AOE, they should be targeting buildings such as pylons and the slower units like carriers
Interesting. Do I need infestors to fungal the carriers, or is it just to zone them out? Should I include roaches or transition to ultras to help against the ground army?
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About infestors, I remember some videos from Neuro in which he uses them to stick interceptors in place at release when they are all packed. Some well placed fungals may be really efficient to clean out sky from interceptors at the very beginning of carrier engagement, it needs some practice to catch the interceptor in the right time window tho
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Concur with the hydralisk on fourth comment. You have to think of hydras in ZvP vs carriers as semi-all-in, since they will eat into your corruptor count for the late game a ton. I personally prefer to show hydras but just use them to pick off stray units and defend against phoenixes while banking money and making like ~16 corruptors at once (instead of 30 hydras) and trying to hit the same timing you did with either roach/ling or ling bane on the ground. Since you ultimately want corruptors once the carrier count gets high anyways, it's better imo to start that transition earlier rather than losing a bunch of gas on units that won't scale.
To me, the principle of it is that you dive the carriers, and even if the trade is somewhat inefficient you can keep the carrier count low. You can't really dive carriers w/ hydras, so even if you kill the base you can't kill the carriers and the game gets harder. I'd rather face a 4 base protoss w/ few carriers than a 3 base protoss w/ many carriers, so to speak.
I'm also only D1, but that probably means my strat is a bit easier for you to execute? haha
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if you're still looking for bits of feedback, i ran into this problem once in a blue moon as the zerg portion of ZvP.
it usually happens when playing behind and they can secure base after base and build what they want without incurring too much loss.
on maps like 16-bit you can drop over the 3rd base, or they can secure it with anti air and pretty much anchor down 5 bases from the front of the natural.
although the layout is similar to catalyst and acidplant LE (a map i consider pretty good for zerg), there's the problem of killing both rocks to have the same amount of access and i'd say it's a bit tighter to pull off.
i noticed the way to keep it from happening is to learn to be diligent with scouting, for instance, the timing of the third.
if it's a zealot based attack, they won't take gasses or their third until much later, and you have to build roaches quite early before any real saturation on your 3rd. after defending properly, you can transition to 60+ drones and be quite ahead.
they have to go into templar and produce out of a robo from that position, while you have options.
you can, go into lurker tech, plop a spire if he's just afraid of a roach all-in by massing immortal when he's behind on tech. you have a lot of options and you generally know what they're doing.
so on top of the scouting, you should try and develop a timing to severely injure the protoss before he can rely on storms to defend on these tight-choke maps. i'll list a few tactics you can use:
- speed banelings, tech leftover from dealing with zealot immortal or adept attack. someone mentioned it in this thread and i will +1 the notion.
you use these as early as their 2nd and third bases start to get established. this is the point in time where you can max on roach if you want to purely do that. the general idea is, if you keep their probe count low, they take their gasses even later (or in many cases forget to organically) and the whole lategame swelling of protoss is much easier to manage for the next few minutes.
- constantly poke their walloff with zergling runby. most players at the level do not split their army or fear doing it incorrectly, but this spells disaster when they're afraid of a large runby right as they're move out to attack or take their third. if they're sitting in a neutral position near their walloff, between the dps of hydras and lings, they can't defend the outer angle of their third base and you use this time to poke at their buildings as well. every bit of damage you do this way makes the protoss uncomfortable and less prone to attack. you need only be careful not to bleed units for being eager to do damage.
if you have two armies like this right on the outskirts of vision--one at their walloff entrance, one at their third, you will find an opening with the large amount of units you have as a zerg. you just have to be ready to use one tool or the other.
serral takes this to the next level by droning to the perfect amount around 66 drones, 4th base going up as patches in main are and natural are lessening, and does this style with roach hydra + ling.
so i mentioned that templar are the issue in killing them before carriers are even a problem. well that is because they shouldn't be able to afford both, along with a robust ground army. it should feel very deterring to the protoss to invest in carriers. it's a lot of minerals and gas just to get the stargate and fleetbeacon up.
i feel like practicing a multi-prong style is not actually so difficult once you get used trying it, and you open up opponents more often than not.
so the real issue is the templar transition vs your heavy amount of hydras when you feel pressured to deal damage.
you can only mine so many minerals at one time and being on even footing with a protoss at that stage is hurtful for your regular zerg player. you can't invest in strong units without dumping your gas into a huge collection of cost inefficient units, or into units that immediately get dealt with by energy over time.
this is why the idea of skipping midgame into lategame as zerg occurs because you want to do the cost efficient stuff and have a strong army vs theirs. but doing this you are much more prone to dying and it feels very meticulous.
so what i propose is taking the critique of watching what a better player does in ZvP to secure that midgame advantage and what they do to make it hard to tech any further than a handful of defensive templar.
you'll see one approach where they focus on poking and looking for holes as i mentioned, and another on trying to do just enough damage that it allows them to sneak in late game tech.
and by looking for these things in play, it is an inspiring way to improve your own. you'll know what you did wrong and where you need to go.
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I have also struggled a lot vs carriers, I am masters 3, so not great by any means.
In general I think hydras are just awful against carriers. If you are very far ahead economically sometimes a timing attack before storm will kill them, but I found those kind of attacks more failing than working.
Although not very common anymore, If somebody straight techs to carriers without ground support I like to go heavy upgraded lings into ultra corruptors. (double spire) as those protoss styles are generally very passive you can out expand the toss very easily.
Eventually your late game army would consist of a few ultras and the rest only corruptors. The number of ultras depends on the amount of ground support (archon/ht).
Just make sure that your ultras clean up the ground before you engage, otherwise you army will melt. Also important is to focus fire with corruptors.
Most of the time the toss will build either void rays or immortals against such a composition.
More immortals means you need some brood lords. Against void ray heavy styles, I tend either run away until the charge wears off and add vipers/Queens. Mass infestor with neural can also work, as long as you maintain ground dominance.
What is more common however is a late game transition from ground based (immortal/archon/templar) toss into carriers. If you are on equal economy whether you use ling bane Hydra or Roach Hydra lurker, the key is to get upgraded corruptors (no hydras) as toss will also have low upgrades on the carriers. As long as you don't allow the archon s to splash your corruptors and avoid most storms (I know easier said than done) , you should be fine.
Hope this helps.
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~Hello, this was the most actual topic I found about this, so I am posting into this most new topic.~
I want to write about the new patch (Infestor-New-AA-ability) that I tried in a game... Numbers are ~about~
Via early game I managed to get a 60 drone to 20 probe lead (blingling runbye/counter), both 3 base.
I then tried to keep some counter forces online which I later managed to repeat the process with again.
This is told for being complete, because it cut into army value.
I did this because I scouted him going heavy air, so he wouldn't have much ground.
Just a short summarry of being AHEAD.
Next
I tried to transition into Hydralisks with the new Infestor Microbial Shroud-Ability.
I took the fight in the middle vs almost only carriers with me some queens, while countering with zerglings / banelings (you wouldl think I can do that at such a lead, right).
But I lost the fight in the middle. Looking at the replay I had a worse army value.
He flew on to my main base (over terrain, so I couldn't get there in time with reinforcements)
After fending off his main base assault, he had maintained of carriers.
Via very smart observer usage (that I couldn't spot) and abusing the terrain he managed to catch my army unprepared (unoptimal positions) two times and I couldn't retreat. I had also added corrupters for focus fire (edit: unupgraded).
After now being behind I lost the game in the long run.
GG
Facts I wanted to share from this:
- I attempted to use the microbial shroud at an advantage 2x , and it wasn't helping, but vs pure air (at my main)
- Vs Pure Air and A-Move/Move You could kill almost all interceptors.
- Vs aoe-support (ground units) you are weak @even skill level.
- I have several experiences like this, Just stating one clear game result with clear advantage.
Btw a very smart russian dude. (they love carriers).
Opinion about MBS:
It seems to very effective, but it can't make up for...
- Terrain-Disadvantage
- Strong AoE by protoss which isn't reduced at all by this shroud.
I think those are the strengths of carrier-strategy. I am not experienced with infested marines but those seemed to be less risky more impactful.
- By the way this cloud doesn't buff your buildings. (not making any sense, but that's the tool tip and practice.)
- I also used Fungal Growth against Interceptors (because you have spare energy) it doesn't do much, ultra-fast units slowed still create the usual split damage against the first seconds a-move.
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Opinion:
I am seeking a game play without a mass of corrupters to counter carriers, because Voidrays can hard counter them in the air, and committing to attack the carriers is already losing alot BEFORE voidrays charge.
Also with the new patch (speed), Voidrays can pretty much try to "surround you" and then charge. (and of course everyone knows that carriers can have strong anti air ground support...)
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Reference:
I watched a youtube video of a GM zerg explanining that late game. He basically does many spore crawlers everywhere and vipers/broodlords. Well that's GM!... Let's talk about more basic strategy.
Conclusion:
So carriers are a problem for me. But that should be so, since they are a late game unit.
Not sure why I am writing so much, but after reading these nice articles here at TL, I feel forced to write some good content, too and not just a few words!
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Edit, I HELP:
The critical air-attack-upgrades against carriers are:
2 rounds of fire with air upgrades (both), number of corruptors needed:
0 = 13 corrupters
1 = 12 corrupters
2 = 11 corrupters
3 = 11 corrupters (so this one doesn't do anything, if you focus fire-micro)
Conclusion:
- Maximum upgrades:
2-3 (so I'd say aim for 2-2, if you want to use play the direct counter strategy of alot of corrupters, because the third armor upgrade one won't do anything against any other units than carriers and is also the most expensive!)
- Also move-shotting seems to help the dps, instead of only shift+a-click for focus fire.
- Thus move-shotting really seems really important (Really), as it is not only increasing DPS but also reducing AoE damage, if you pre-split. You can notice your air "stacking up" when you simply focus-fire (and shift).
To repeat the others help, Recommendation was:
16 corrupters (because some die, I suggest)
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I will try to understand some tips here (which doesn't come immediately, because it takes play time, too).
@Ularg, nice tip about the Corrupter Upgrades, those should of course heavily influence direct air fights.. , actually I didn't really have money for upgrading them aswell. Needless to say the motivation isn't that high either, because protoss ground isn't affected by "good zerg air upgrades", just the carriers.
I also stopped to use many vipers (that's of course a good tip vs voidrays), because it is too much micro for their money. (just for hit and run it's okay). In addition I feel it's relative easy to counter Parasitic Bomb with the new Voidrays:
- their speed allows to "surround" and drive into you
- in addition to that.. easier to come from different directions where it's "easy" to click on the parasited voidrays and maneouver them off! So atm I stopped to use alot of vipers all together, but the the mentioned hit and run.
Thanks though!
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^if you're ever up 60 drones to 20 probes on 3 base you can just make units for 2-3 minutes and amove into protoss. he can't make enough carriers on 20 probes to fight anything, it's just math at that point
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EPT
