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EDIT: Comments on blizz's 1.4 Situation report/patch explanation:
1) I'm glad they buffed mothership instead of carrier. Carrier does NOT need to be buffed imo, they are extremely strong in PvZ, and in PvT they are great against mech. Currently there is already no way for Z to effectively deal with mass carriers supported by HT/archon/etc.
2) The mothership acceleration buff actually is a huge buff. Why is it a big deal? In order for mothership to cast spells such as vortex, it can't be moving. So if it's moving and sees an infestor or ghost, it takes a LONG time for it to finish decelerating to cast the spell after you actually issue the command, and by then you've been EMP'ed or NP'ed. Post-patch this is no longer an issue and the mothership is much more reactive, and NP/EMP, 2 of the biggest counters to mothership, are much easier to deal with.
Here's a small replay pack of 14 games containing late game PvZ mothership and/or carrier usage. All of these games are from within the past month or so and are taken from a combination of ladder, practice, and tournament games. I know lots of people think carriers and motherships are underused and useless, but I've found the opposite to be true - carrier/mothership is an awesome counter to the zerg "deathball" of infestor/corruptor/bl.
Not all of these games showcase the best of play from either side (especially some of the earlier ones as I'm just starting to experiment with them), and I know some of them have long boring stretches of turtling and non-action. But there are some gems in there, including plenty of archon toilets and zerg tears 
Enjoy!
[url blocked]
(Also as a strategical note, I never rush to carrier/mothership. I think this is the mistake people make, they try to rush to carrier on 2-3 bases and complain that they take too long to make and are too weak. I often max out before getting a single carrier, but gradually transition into a carrier/mothership fleet and phase out supply-inefficient gateway units).
EDIT: I hate labeling threads with "I'm rank 8 masters" but as requested below, FYI I'm currently ranked #7 in GM.
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Nice, thanks! I think vortex can be quite strong.
It might be good to write your league/rank or whatever for people who don't know you.
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for a sec, i was thinking WTF ANIHC ISN"T A BLUE ANYMORE but then realised this was the general forum.
thanks for the replays, will go study your play more
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:D cant wait to see these
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destiny complains all the time of your mothership usage, will take a look....
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Yeah, I love going air in PvZ late game
Although I dont generally use carriers, its pretty standard to see 3 or more sg's from me late game pumping void rays
guess i'll try out carriers next time ^_^
(masters)
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Hell, It's about time!! For another of your great protoss threads!! :D
Thx rsvp, gonna check those reps 
Edit.: Man...you don't need to label your posts with ladder rank, i mean, not you, lol.
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not that its a huge deal or anything, but the rep. labeled "Jecho" is actually a PvT vs. zenexhack and does not feature any carriers or mothership :x
Still a very fun and entertaining game to watch however
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On September 20 2011 12:17 JerKy wrote:
Yeah, I love going air in PvZ late game
Although I dont generally use carriers, its pretty standard to see 3 or more sg's from me late game pumping void rays
guess i'll try out carriers next time ^_^
(masters)
Fungal owns voids, even if you spread them out (ok so it takes 5 fungals to hit all your voids instead of just 1... but that doesn't matter when the zerg has 10+ infestors). That's why I go for carrier instead of voids.
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On September 20 2011 08:06 Anihc wrote:Here's a small replay pack of 14 games containing late game PvZ mothership and/or carrier usage. All of these games are from within the past month or so and are taken from a combination of ladder, practice, and tournament games. I know lots of people think carriers and motherships are underused and useless, but I've found the opposite to be true - carrier/mothership is an awesome counter to the zerg "deathball" of infestor/corruptor/bl. Not all of these games showcase the best of play from either side (especially some of the earlier ones as I'm just starting to experiment with them), and I know some of them have long boring stretches of turtling and non-action. But there are some gems in there, including plenty of archon toilets and zerg tears Enjoy! [url blocked] (Also as a strategical note, I never rush to carrier/mothership. I think this is the mistake people make, they try to rush to carrier on 2-3 bases and complain that they take too long to make and are too weak. I often max out before getting a single carrier, but gradually transition into a carrier/mothership fleet and phase out supply-inefficient gateway units). EDIT: I hate labeling threads with "I'm rank 8 masters" but as requested below, FYI I'm currently ranked #7 in GM.
yo rsvp i know im much lower ranked than you but i swear mass voidray armies are also pretty sick in PvZ
voidrays actually beat corrupters cost effectively and cant get neural parasited and against mass hydra carriers get alot weaker (it has something to do with interceptors being blown apart so quickly as masses increase) but the voidrays seem to get stronger as food levels increase vs hydras. 30 voidrays vs 45 hydras is like lol hydras just melt
in lategame pvz i like to get maybe 3 carriers and the rest of the sky army is voidrays. try it sometimes im sure you will be amazed
so many tosses are massing stalkers in PvZ...
stalkers are food for zerglings. but voidrays are only 50 more gas than 2 stalkers, have similar health, can fly, and deal similar dps.
so many tosses will see huge improvement imo if they replace stalkers with voidrays
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On September 20 2011 12:47 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 12:17 JerKy wrote:
Yeah, I love going air in PvZ late game
Although I dont generally use carriers, its pretty standard to see 3 or more sg's from me late game pumping void rays
guess i'll try out carriers next time ^_^
(masters) Fungal owns voids, even if you spread them out (ok so it takes 5 fungals to hit all your voids instead of just 1... but that doesn't matter when the zerg has 10+ infestors). That's why I go for carrier instead of voids.
ahhh yes... fungal does own voids... but lately ive practiced methods of magic-boxing the voids and doing heavy void-splitting in lategame armies.
i think if you magic box and split properly, the voids do not get owned too much by fungal growth
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On September 20 2011 12:46 AGIANTSMURF wrote:
not that its a huge deal or anything, but the rep. labeled "Jecho" is actually a PvT vs. zenexhack and does not feature any carriers or mothership :x
Still a very fun and entertaining game to watch however
Ahh oops. That game was actually pretty entertaining/close. Here's the correct replay:
![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-232510.jpg)
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well i shouldnt talk until i start facing grandmaster zergs more often
i think infestors will absolutely stomp the voids if the infestors can recharge energy
if a infestor can only use 2 fungals, lets say each fungal hits 5 voidrays. that is 225 damage for a single fungal, so a single infestor can deal 450 damage if it gets off 2 good fungals
in my lategane games vs zerg normally i have like 30 voidrays and i magic box the hell out of them and as im attaacking im splitting them. if the zerg has 30 infestors (equal gas cost) it gets a little ugly as he can fungal all the voids but normally he has to use 6 perfectly placed fungals to get all my voids then if he does 6 more perfect ones i will recall with the mothership. thats 12 fungals down the drain then you can attack when shields recharge and force another 12 fungals and normally you can attack before he has an extra fungal.
this looks ugly because the zerg has 60 available fungals. but normally they dont mass pure infestor if i notice there IS pure infestor i will split my voids so much that he will normally hit maybe 2-3 voids per fungal.
but yeah i think using mass recall is required to combat the fungals so you can recharge shields and attack again before he regenerates enough energy for more fungals. if you can somehow kill the infestors or deal damage before they can use a third fungal, should be golden i think but it requires lots of nonstop aggression
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I love mother ships late game PvZ the cloak is really useful and is cool if you snipe their overseers. Vortex is game changing as well.
omg, I just thought of something, Keep a warp prism on follow of your mother ship, it will be cloaked so it wont die and you will always be able to warp in
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i didnt know you were rsvp haha oops. i will definitely check these out!
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On September 20 2011 12:50 roymarthyup wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 08:06 Anihc wrote:Here's a small replay pack of 14 games containing late game PvZ mothership and/or carrier usage. All of these games are from within the past month or so and are taken from a combination of ladder, practice, and tournament games. I know lots of people think carriers and motherships are underused and useless, but I've found the opposite to be true - carrier/mothership is an awesome counter to the zerg "deathball" of infestor/corruptor/bl. Not all of these games showcase the best of play from either side (especially some of the earlier ones as I'm just starting to experiment with them), and I know some of them have long boring stretches of turtling and non-action. But there are some gems in there, including plenty of archon toilets and zerg tears Enjoy! [url blocked] (Also as a strategical note, I never rush to carrier/mothership. I think this is the mistake people make, they try to rush to carrier on 2-3 bases and complain that they take too long to make and are too weak. I often max out before getting a single carrier, but gradually transition into a carrier/mothership fleet and phase out supply-inefficient gateway units). EDIT: I hate labeling threads with "I'm rank 8 masters" but as requested below, FYI I'm currently ranked #7 in GM. yo rsvp i know im much lower ranked than you but i swear mass voidray armies are also pretty sick in PvZ voidrays actually beat corrupters cost effectively and cant get neural parasited and against mass hydra carriers get alot weaker (it has something to do with interceptors being blown apart so quickly as masses increase) but the voidrays seem to get stronger as food levels increase vs hydras. 30 voidrays vs 45 hydras is like lol hydras just melt in lategame pvz i like to get maybe 3 carriers and the rest of the sky army is voidrays. try it sometimes im sure you will be amazed so many tosses are massing stalkers in PvZ... stalkers are food for zerglings. but voidrays are only 50 more gas than 2 stalkers, have similar health, can fly, and deal similar dps. so many tosses will see huge improvement imo if they replace stalkers with voidrays
I agree with you that
1) Void ray are good against corruptor, or at least much better than carriers fare against corruptors.
2) I'd rather have void rays than stalkers in my army.
However, the problem with magic boxing and spreading out void rays is that it's not like muta vs thor where the mutas (and rest of zerg army) are going to be surrounding the thors (mutas have much less range than thors). Zerg anti air has the same range or greater than void rays (corruptor, infested terrans, hydras, etc.) such that if you magic box your void rays, more than half your void rays are not going to be attacking - and you don't want your void rays to be picked off by zerg anti air 1 or 2 at a time. And then when you do spread them out and then a-move, they clump up again.
Also hydras are a complete non-issue. Hydras are probably the worst unit a zerg can make against this type of deathball - if you watch a lot of those replays, any battle that has zerg going hydras end up with me losing about 10 supply and the zerg losing his entire army. Remember that I have supporting units - colossus, archons, ht - and hydras just simply die too easily to any protoss unit.
Trust me, I've experimented a shitload with pure void ray, void ray/carrier mix, and pure carriers. Pure void ray is no good, I gave that up after my game 3 vs darkforce on metal in the IPL2 quals :p Void ray/carrier mix is pretty good and oftentimes while teching to carriers I'll get a few void ray. But I've found that they still die rather easily, and I prefer making units that don't die (aka deathball). A lot of times I'll even storm my own army on purpose when he has a bunch of corruptors trying to dodge my archons and kill my air. So basically a mostly carrier army is much more versatile than a composition with more void rays.
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On September 20 2011 08:06 Anihc wrote:Here's a small replay pack of 14 games containing late game PvZ mothership and/or carrier usage. All of these games are from within the past month or so and are taken from a combination of ladder, practice, and tournament games. I know lots of people think carriers and motherships are underused and useless, but I've found the opposite to be true - carrier/mothership is an awesome counter to the zerg "deathball" of infestor/corruptor/bl. Not all of these games showcase the best of play from either side (especially some of the earlier ones as I'm just starting to experiment with them), and I know some of them have long boring stretches of turtling and non-action. But there are some gems in there, including plenty of archon toilets and zerg tears Enjoy! [url blocked] (Also as a strategical note, I never rush to carrier/mothership. I think this is the mistake people make, they try to rush to carrier on 2-3 bases and complain that they take too long to make and are too weak. I often max out before getting a single carrier, but gradually transition into a carrier/mothership fleet and phase out supply-inefficient gateway units). EDIT: I hate labeling threads with "I'm rank 8 masters" but as requested below, FYI I'm currently ranked #7 in GM.
Nice, glad to see other top level players using Carriers/mo.ship. Saw Kiwi pop out a mo.ship in a clutch moment at raleigh vs ret to save a game he should've lost, inspired me to start using them since then. Carrier/mo.ship with colo or HT support to deal with neurals is insanely strong, and as long as i have enough gas (generally minimum of 6), it's my go-to lategame comp vs zergs, as it obviously completely stomps all hive tech.
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On September 20 2011 13:07 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 12:50 roymarthyup wrote:On September 20 2011 08:06 Anihc wrote:Here's a small replay pack of 14 games containing late game PvZ mothership and/or carrier usage. All of these games are from within the past month or so and are taken from a combination of ladder, practice, and tournament games. I know lots of people think carriers and motherships are underused and useless, but I've found the opposite to be true - carrier/mothership is an awesome counter to the zerg "deathball" of infestor/corruptor/bl. Not all of these games showcase the best of play from either side (especially some of the earlier ones as I'm just starting to experiment with them), and I know some of them have long boring stretches of turtling and non-action. But there are some gems in there, including plenty of archon toilets and zerg tears Enjoy! [url blocked] (Also as a strategical note, I never rush to carrier/mothership. I think this is the mistake people make, they try to rush to carrier on 2-3 bases and complain that they take too long to make and are too weak. I often max out before getting a single carrier, but gradually transition into a carrier/mothership fleet and phase out supply-inefficient gateway units). EDIT: I hate labeling threads with "I'm rank 8 masters" but as requested below, FYI I'm currently ranked #7 in GM. yo rsvp i know im much lower ranked than you but i swear mass voidray armies are also pretty sick in PvZ voidrays actually beat corrupters cost effectively and cant get neural parasited and against mass hydra carriers get alot weaker (it has something to do with interceptors being blown apart so quickly as masses increase) but the voidrays seem to get stronger as food levels increase vs hydras. 30 voidrays vs 45 hydras is like lol hydras just melt in lategame pvz i like to get maybe 3 carriers and the rest of the sky army is voidrays. try it sometimes im sure you will be amazed so many tosses are massing stalkers in PvZ... stalkers are food for zerglings. but voidrays are only 50 more gas than 2 stalkers, have similar health, can fly, and deal similar dps. so many tosses will see huge improvement imo if they replace stalkers with voidrays I agree with you that 1) Void ray are good against corruptor, or at least much better than carriers fare against corruptors. 2) I'd rather have void rays than stalkers in my army. However, the problem with magic boxing and spreading out void rays is that it's not like muta vs thor where the mutas (and rest of zerg army) are going to be surrounding the thors (mutas have much less range than thors). Zerg anti air has the same range or greater than void rays (corruptor, infested terrans, hydras, etc.) such that if you magic box your void rays, more than half your void rays are not going to be attacking - and you don't want your void rays to be picked off by zerg anti air 1 or 2 at a time. And then when you do spread them out and then a-move, they clump up again. Also hydras are a complete non-issue. Hydras are probably the worst unit a zerg can make against this type of deathball - if you watch a lot of those replays, any battle that has zerg going hydras end up with me losing about 10 supply and the zerg losing his entire army. Remember that I have supporting units - colossus, archons, ht - and hydras just simply die too easily to any protoss unit. Trust me, I've experimented a shitload with pure void ray, void ray/carrier mix, and pure carriers. Pure void ray is no good, I gave that up after my game 3 vs darkforce on metal in the IPL2 quals :p Void ray/carrier mix is pretty good and oftentimes while teching to carriers I'll get a few void ray. But I've found that they still die rather easily, and I prefer making units that don't die (aka deathball). A lot of times I'll even storm my own army on purpose when he has a bunch of corruptors trying to dodge my archons and kill my air. So basically a mostly carrier army is much more versatile than a composition with more void rays.
i think the main problem is of course fungal
if theres was no fungal growth voidrays would be the obvious choice ... but your right if you magic box the voidrays they are worse against the hydras
hmmm i guess getting carriers + storm + archons is probably stronger because storm is sex, archons are only 4food and do splash to corrupters and archons do pretty huge damage when the zerg starts getting lots of air. in fact a archon attack is almost like a free fungal in terms of damage if it hits 3 units
and then this army composition uses lots of gas and could also spend its minerals on plenty charge zealots to force lots of lings which evaporate to the storms anyway, then the zerg has to make roaches to beat the zealots and roaches arent great to storm+carrier+archon
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C'mon why not use one of the many dedicated replay upload sites. -_-
Anyway, I do, deep down inside, I am a closet carrier lover. I know that they have some issues, but once they are out they are pretty imba. It's really a matter of good timing and a good build and I don't think I have that. Only in my nub diamond league play can I get away with it because my opponents don't expect it and let me freely get them.
Still, just like the warp prism, I have my doubts of their usefulness. It's really just the enormous build time... 120s seriously why? And that FG will probably destroy any such "death ball".
Looks like my DLs done.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Motherships are the most underused unit in PvZ  at least kiwi knows their worth lol
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Thanks for the reps! I like going air late game if I manage to get there but I, like others have said, usually go for void rays instead. I just never seem to have gas for carriers or a mothership. Also, I am always worried a mothership will get neural parasited. When the patch hits NA I might get in on the mothership fun more often.
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On September 20 2011 14:37 Ownos wrote:
C'mon why not use one of the many dedicated replay upload sites. -_-
Anyway, I do, deep down inside, I am a closet carrier lover. I know that they have some issues, but once they are out they are pretty imba. It's really a matter of good timing and a good build and I don't think I have that. Only in my nub diamond league play can I get away with it because my opponents don't expect it and let me freely get them.
Still, just like the warp prism, I have my doubts of their usefulness. It's really just the enormous build time... 120s seriously why? And that FG will probably destroy any such "death ball".
Looks like my DLs done.
Because I'm uploading 14 replays and not 2 or 3?
Anyway hopefully after you watch those reps you will see that it's NOT a matter of good timing and a good build, most of those games I don't start the carriers/mothership until 20 minutes into the game. And I just laugh at FG, FG does nothing to a deathball that consists of 350-450 hp units.
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On September 20 2011 14:53 AirbladeOrange wrote:
Thanks for the reps! I like going air late game if I manage to get there but I, like others have said, usually go for void rays instead. I just never seem to have gas for carriers or a mothership. Also, I am always worried a mothership will get neural parasited. When the patch hits NA I might get in on the mothership fun more often.
It's really hard to neural a mothership when it's surrounded by invisible carriers and colossi. Not too hard to prevent if you're spacing things well.
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I have Always said that carriers/motherships were good ^^
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On September 20 2011 12:47 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 12:17 JerKy wrote:
Yeah, I love going air in PvZ late game
Although I dont generally use carriers, its pretty standard to see 3 or more sg's from me late game pumping void rays
guess i'll try out carriers next time ^_^
(masters) Fungal owns voids, even if you spread them out (ok so it takes 5 fungals to hit all your voids instead of just 1... but that doesn't matter when the zerg has 10+ infestors). That's why I go for carrier instead of voids.
I can certainly see carriers laughing at infested terrans in the same relatively small numbers that are lethal to voids. If the Z goes for the overwhelming infested terran numbers, I assume that limits fungals quite a bit and you can just back up. I also imagine carrier range makes it a lot tougher to NP them without getting the same infestor sniped by nearby carrier or colossus?
Since you're apparently rsvp iin the GSPA, I'll have to go watch those now that I have a "face" for the name ^^
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hes going mech and hes gonna stay gateway units..
edit wrong thread lol sry.
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On September 20 2011 14:53 AirbladeOrange wrote:
Thanks for the reps! I like going air late game if I manage to get there but I, like others have said, usually go for void rays instead. I just never seem to have gas for carriers or a mothership. Also, I am always worried a mothership will get neural parasited. When the patch hits NA I might get in on the mothership fun more often.
Another thing you'll notice from those replays is that I never stop at 3 bases, I always try to get as many bases as possible. You always have extra minerals, so use it on mass cannons + expansions. Resources are not an issue when you're on 10 geysers.
Regarding NP, yes that is dangerous, you just have to have good mothership control. One thing that took me a while to figure out (and many painful losses) is that in order for your mothership to cast a spell, it can't be moving. So with it's ridiculously slow acceleration and consequent slow decceleration, it can oftentimes be an issue, especially when the common train of thought is to always keep the mothership moving as to avoid having to accelerate/decelerate. Fortunately the upcoming patch will help immensely with this. The good thing about NP vs vortex is that both are 9 range, but vortex has a nice radius to it (kinda like fungal or EMP vs feedback) so as long as your mothership isn't moving and you target a bit in front of the infestor, you'll get the vortex off before the NP hits.
The other thing is that mothership isn't actually a requirement for this deathball, although it helps immensely. Most of my earlier games focused on getting mothership + archons for an archon toilet, but then I realized that that is way too risky because of how easy it is to lose the entire game because you can't pull off the archon toilet (i.e. losing the mothership). My later games focused more so on building up the carrier fleet, and I found that to be much more safer. Carrier + colossus + HT/archon can deal with infestor/corruptor/BL by itself - carriers outrange everything, and if corruptors try to come in you can storm/use archons. This is another reason why carriers are preferable over void rays (range advantage) even though on their own void rays are better vs corruptors than carriers.
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Oh man, I'm going to devour this replay pack when I get home. A quick question in the meantime - do you get air upgrades with this? And if so, do you also get ground upgrades?
Thanks for posting, I love Stargate, it gives me the Brood War feeling of Protoss back a little bit. xD
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On September 20 2011 15:15 Talin wrote:
Oh man, I'm going to devour this replay pack when I get home. A quick question in the meantime - do you get air upgrades with this? And if so, do you also get ground upgrades?
Thanks for posting, I love Stargate, it gives me the Brood War feeling of Protoss back a little bit. xD
Air weapons are absolutely critical. I'm starting to get them earlier and earlier now - basically I start air weapons whenever I make the conscious decision to transition to air (such as when I get my stargate/fleet beacon or even before). Air armor is not as important though since your main worry is corruptors and armor won't help too much against their slow attack. Ground weapons are of course important as well, but since I don't make the air transition into fairly late into the game by the time I start air upgrades my ground weapons are already level 2-3.
I've also begun getting shield upgrades, which in theory is extremely good for my strategy - mass cannons, combination of air + ground including archons, and units with lots of shields that won't die and will have time to recharge shields.
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After watching some of the replays I can definitely see the strength of Mothership in late game. Although some games I felt you probably could've won without the Mothership while others you were ahead early, screwed up and the Mothership saved you. The Mothership really helps because zerg tend to have a lack of prevalent mobile detection. I wonder how the patch will change that since it makes overseers much easier to mass.
Thanks for the upload! I've been having issues with my PvZ lately and I think this replay pack definitely helped!
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On September 20 2011 15:00 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 14:37 Ownos wrote:
C'mon why not use one of the many dedicated replay upload sites. -_-
Anyway, I do, deep down inside, I am a closet carrier lover. I know that they have some issues, but once they are out they are pretty imba. It's really a matter of good timing and a good build and I don't think I have that. Only in my nub diamond league play can I get away with it because my opponents don't expect it and let me freely get them.
Still, just like the warp prism, I have my doubts of their usefulness. It's really just the enormous build time... 120s seriously why? And that FG will probably destroy any such "death ball".
Looks like my DLs done. Because I'm uploading 14 replays and not 2 or 3? Anyway hopefully after you watch those reps you will see that it's NOT a matter of good timing and a good build, most of those games I don't start the carriers/mothership until 20 minutes into the game. And I just laugh at FG, FG does nothing to a deathball that consists of 350-450 hp units.
Haha I just have nightmares of all my void rays dying to FG spam. Air unit clumping ahhhh.
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Havent watched the reps but i'm a top protoss on the na ladder (or i was, don't ladder too much in the last month or so) and i'd been going lategame mothership + standard deathball (ht arch colossus stalk) and it has ridiculously good success. My favorite part about it is how well it deals with any baneling based builds. Keep and observer with your mothership ctrl group and keep yourself ready to target down any infestors that get too close; if he takes YOUR mothership and vortex's you, it sucks pretty hard.
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Also the new patch reducing NP range to 7 will help this and other lategame strategies immensily.
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I've been waiting for Protoss to start going Carrier-Voidray in lategame PvZ. It's just so good against anything if you manage to get to that stage be it via mass cannon creeping to your fourth and fifth base or transitioning into it. Muta's will get torn by the Carriers and corruptors are lol against voidrays. The only thing you can achieve is mass fungal and pray or possibly go mass sporecrawler queen. It's the most powerful Protoss composition I have faced that's for sure.
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Will definitely check this out soon, thanks rsvp.
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Thank you for this contribution I feel at least in PvT now lategame nothing beats the ghost/mmm/marine+medivac/viking combination, I mean you need superior HT count for ghosts alone and good spread/concave and engagement. However I have tried all but stargate units so this replay is indeed needed, will be fun to watch Thank you very much
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On September 20 2011 22:35 eYeball wrote:Thank you for this contribution I feel at least in PvT now lategame nothing beats the ghost/mmm/marine+medivac/viking combination, I mean you need superior HT count for ghosts alone and good spread/concave and engagement. However I have tried all but stargate units so this replay is indeed needed, will be fun to watch Thank you very much
Wait what? This is a PvZ rep pack :p Carriers don't work as well in PvT except vs mech...
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Just finished watching some of the replays. Didn't know the archon toilet still lives lol! It's not as potent as before but it's still there. I think some of your games on hinging on this alone since you're about to die and then... toilet!
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Nice contribution. I really feel that Carrier / Mothership is sill the most underdeveloped portion of the game at the moment. Most Protoss don't even seem to consider using Carriers as an actual unit, and have yet to take into the idea of utilizing Recall in Mid to Late game scenarios as a harass leading into escape option. There needs to be more innovation at the moment for Protoss and i really feel that these units are so overlooked when weighing the options of how to transition into the mid to late game.
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Carrier/MotherShip/Void is something White-Ra has been playing around with on his stream lately too -- it seems, well, really pretty strong. He uses DTs to harrass various expansions later on too.
Downloading the replays now :D
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As SC2 progresses we will see more of this in vs Z, its like PvT in starcraft 1 carriers, some good counters but with enough carriers it becomes brutal.
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I want to bump this post in lieu of blizz's 1.4 situation report. It seems like a lot of people are upset over the mothership buff and the lack of carrier buff, but I agree with blizzard 100%. See comments in OP.
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Carriers are (and have been) fine for quite a while. With upgrades they are stupidly strong against Zerg. I agree that they don't need a buff and when I random PvZ I almost always transition into carriers late game.
I haven't toyed with the mothership much though, I didn't like it due to NP/slow accel before, but since those are gone now I guess I'll have to try it out some more.
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I knew it'd be you when I saw Carrier/Mothership in the sidebar ^_^. Nice rep pack!
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On September 22 2011 17:16 Skipton wrote:
Nice contribution. I really feel that Carrier / Mothership is sill the most underdeveloped portion of the game at the moment. Most Protoss don't even seem to consider using Carriers as an actual unit, and have yet to take into the idea of utilizing Recall in Mid to Late game scenarios as a harass leading into escape option. There needs to be more innovation at the moment for Protoss and i really feel that these units are so overlooked when weighing the options of how to transition into the mid to late game.
I've done recall based harass before. It's much safer than putting your MS out there on the field. I've yet to see any pro do this though. You could snipe zerg expansions and if they counterattack, recall and defend. If they try to fight you, recall away and reinforce.
Regarding the Situation Report, I sort of do agree... whenever I've personally used carriers vs zerg I've always thought to myself "wow, if this ever gets popular it's going to get nerfed." Nothing short of mass 200/200 corruptors would work after a certain point and I've had that happen and still beat it. Still, my personal successes don't mean shit and seeing no pros using them in tournaments is discouraging.
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Grubby uses MS quite frequently against Zerg, so you guys might want to check out some of his VODS too if you are interested in this
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Thanks Anihc! Will check out for sure.
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Will try. I actually had a nightmare about infestor/brood lord last night, scary shit. :p
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Hopefully Mothership is a last-ditch attempt to not have to replace the unit, since Carriers will stay.
And zerg can get scourge in HotS to combat carriers. Problem solved.
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Anihc, great replay pack. Thanks for the upload. I'm totally gonna copy your PvZ. Couple questions.
Your general build seems to go something like:
FE (usually FFE), scout for Z's 3rd at 5-6 min, if he's expanded, tech straight to colossi (or 6 gate), take quick third around the time that the first colossus pops, add second robo, then transition to carrier+archon while trying to cannon+nexus the map.
I couldn't get all of the replays to load, but that seemed to be the outline from what I saw.
What are your thoughts on the order for twilight council/templar archives/stargate/fleet beacon? Twilight council is needed for +2 weapons, but the archons seem to be the last addition to your deathball when you've finally got the 10 gas geysers to make the perfect all-gas composition. In the games I watched, those 4 tech structures along with +2 weapons seemed to be kind of jumbled in all at the same time. Do you worry about spending too much of your income on tech at this window?
Why 2 robo's? They came in handy when you got caught in bad positions and lost your core, but for the most part, you rarely used both at the same time, and often, they both sat idle as you tended to stop at ~6 colossi anyway. Do you feel like you need 2 robo's to boost your colossus count fast enough to defend your aggressive expansions? Or do you want the extra production capacity should you need to rebuild your colossus core quickly?
Do you think about applying pressure beyond the occasional zealot or DT drop, or is your plan more about grabbing bases and crafting the perfect 200/200 composition? Do you see any timings where you could apply direct pressure?
Blink and storm--are they worth it? Assuming you're going with the expand+defend strategy, when would you research them? I assume you'd only want at most 2 HT kept for storm, and the rest made into archons before engaging.
How thrilled are you about the infestor nerfs? NP seemed to be the only thing that gave you problems in the mid-game.
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On September 24 2011 02:28 Ownos wrote:
I've done recall based harass before. It's much safer than putting your MS out there on the field. I've yet to see any pro do this though.
You need to watch Kiwikaki games from a few months ago, he's been doing it off and on for a while.
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the best thing i got out of this is that the archon toilet is still effective... after the nerf i just assumed it wouldnt work anymore but as can be seen in the replays, its a deadly tool indeed.
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Motherships are really good IMO. My standard PvZ build is a mothership rush into 3 base zealot/archon. Basically you do a 1gate expo and get a void ray out to defend against any early roach/ling all-ins, then you get a mothership around 9 minutes which allows you to take your 3rd base extremely easy (8-9 minutes, right before the mothership pops). With all the defensive potential you can chrono probes and your forge like crazy and get maxed at 13ish minutes on zealot/archon.
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1) Can Vortex be interrupted? e.g. You start casting Vortex and then your MS gets NP'ed.
2) What's the best way to position your units after you vortex their army? It seems from the replays it is still beneficial to throw your archons into the vortex, but then you should just make a circle around the vortex with all your other units?
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Looks very interesting. As many have said, lategame protoss air seems like one of the more underdeveloped parts of protoss still. I'm sure that later on we'll see much more use of carriers/mothership. There was like a 2-month period or something where Kiwikaki "invented" the archon toilet and people played around with that, but then it got nerfed down to the ground and people just gave up, I suppose 
I think last time I saw a protoss use Mothership in competitive play was, uh, ro64 of super tournament? Trickster/anypro/somebody i'm not remembering finished off jookto/revival/somebody i'm not remembering with what was basically a "manner-ship"
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Hey rsvp, what about a 1.4 replay update?? I'm sure the protoss will love the update in this mothership times
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Great to see new strategies like these developing, as a Zerg player I only request it not become popularised in late game PvZ. Pretty please. Carriers are fucking strong.
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i saw rsvp in a game casted recently think it was TL open where he lost to a zerg in a 200food battle because the corrupters just toasted all his carriers
i think the carriers are good but honestly i think it might be really smart to try to get way more archons, like half carriers half archons.
the archons aoe takes out the corrupters fast and vortex counters broodlords pretty well and broodlords move so slow they can be dealt with. the big problem is dealing with the corrupters
also archons move so fast you could probably run around the map with them doing damage then recalling them. the archons force MASS amounts of roaches which really arent that great but without MASS ROACHES the zerg cant really deal with 15 archons running around the map rolling over everything
however it would be so hard getting that many archons. but i think the really is ideally the ultimate PvZ lategame army. half carriers half archons + mothership + a few templars for storm
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this is so scary.
the archons and the vortex just demolish the corruptors. and the carriers handle the rest.
its so easy to just snipe overseers and let your cloaking field take over.
few zergs actually get the crucial air upgrades for their corruptors to handle the carrier/interceptor.
after protoss air switch, every brood lord they morph is honestly helping the protoss.
i think to beat it you need
ultralisk/roach/infestor to control the ground.
16-24 (tons) of corruptors with 5 armor and max damage to shrug off interceptor hits and snipe massive air units quickly.
a few overseers, 1 isnt enough.
good unit control to avoid vortex,storms, archon splash.
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On September 27 2011 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Anihc, great replay pack. Thanks for the upload. I'm totally gonna copy your PvZ. Couple questions.
Your general build seems to go something like:
FE (usually FFE), scout for Z's 3rd at 5-6 min, if he's expanded, tech straight to colossi (or 6 gate), take quick third around the time that the first colossus pops, add second robo, then transition to carrier+archon while trying to cannon+nexus the map.
I couldn't get all of the replays to load, but that seemed to be the outline from what I saw.
What are your thoughts on the order for twilight council/templar archives/stargate/fleet beacon? Twilight council is needed for +2 weapons, but the archons seem to be the last addition to your deathball when you've finally got the 10 gas geysers to make the perfect all-gas composition. In the games I watched, those 4 tech structures along with +2 weapons seemed to be kind of jumbled in all at the same time. Do you worry about spending too much of your income on tech at this window?
Why 2 robo's? They came in handy when you got caught in bad positions and lost your core, but for the most part, you rarely used both at the same time, and often, they both sat idle as you tended to stop at ~6 colossi anyway. Do you feel like you need 2 robo's to boost your colossus count fast enough to defend your aggressive expansions? Or do you want the extra production capacity should you need to rebuild your colossus core quickly?
Do you think about applying pressure beyond the occasional zealot or DT drop, or is your plan more about grabbing bases and crafting the perfect 200/200 composition? Do you see any timings where you could apply direct pressure?
Blink and storm--are they worth it? Assuming you're going with the expand+defend strategy, when would you research them? I assume you'd only want at most 2 HT kept for storm, and the rest made into archons before engaging.
How thrilled are you about the infestor nerfs? NP seemed to be the only thing that gave you problems in the mid-game.
Order for twilight/archives/stargate/fleet beacon - yea I see that you could tell I was just randomly throwing up tech buildings in a lot of my games :p I'm glad that you mentioned worrying about spending too much of my income on tech at the same time, since actually this has become an issue for me recently - I've lost to several zergs who just quickly max on roach/infestor and then attack. For some reason in the past most zergs just wait for hive tech, which gives me enough time to get out carrier/mothership/etc. So now I think an important thing is to keep an eye on when they start their hive (i.e. obs in their main), because if they don't get hive there's no need to tech to fleet beacon. Stargate is still good though, since mixing in voids is always great. I guess order should be twilight (for +2), stargate, and then fleet beacon when you see hive, and finally templar archives when you're about to complete your death ball.
I originally went double robo because one of my other favorite openings is a fast +1 6 gate, and I'd follow that up with double robo colo since your robo comes late and I feel the need to catch up on colo count. But I guess if you go fast robo/colo, there's really no need for the double robo. I'd recommend a faster stargate instead and adding in voids earlier rather than a 2nd robo. Once you get to 4+ bases though a 2nd robo is always good.
There's really no way to apply pressure other than zealot/dt/drops. I've tried just maxing on gateway/colo and attacking, but if you tech/expand at the same time then your attack is too slow, and if you don't tech at all then you'll lose to hive tech.
Blink is always great to have. That's actually a weakness of my play, I know I often don't really utilize blink well. The question of storm vs archon - I've actually been leaning more towards storm recently. When I face good zergs who spread out their units and don't throw everything into vortex, then archons actually get killed by broodlords who are outside the vortex. Thus storm becomes much better for you to defend your carriers against corruptors.
Yea infestor nerfs + mothership buff makes this deathball style extremely strong now. Now really the only thing I'm scared of is mass corruptor/BL + fast remax.
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On October 04 2011 09:30 Belha wrote:Hey rsvp, what about a 1.4 replay update?? I'm sure the protoss will love the update in this mothership times
Heh sorry I don't have any new 1.4 replays since I've actually been working on other PvZ strats. But of course, this is much much stronger now than pre-1.4.
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On October 04 2011 14:58 Anihc wrote:Show nested quote +On September 27 2011 23:12 kcdc wrote:
Anihc, great replay pack. Thanks for the upload. I'm totally gonna copy your PvZ. Couple questions.
Your general build seems to go something like:
FE (usually FFE), scout for Z's 3rd at 5-6 min, if he's expanded, tech straight to colossi (or 6 gate), take quick third around the time that the first colossus pops, add second robo, then transition to carrier+archon while trying to cannon+nexus the map.
I couldn't get all of the replays to load, but that seemed to be the outline from what I saw.
What are your thoughts on the order for twilight council/templar archives/stargate/fleet beacon? Twilight council is needed for +2 weapons, but the archons seem to be the last addition to your deathball when you've finally got the 10 gas geysers to make the perfect all-gas composition. In the games I watched, those 4 tech structures along with +2 weapons seemed to be kind of jumbled in all at the same time. Do you worry about spending too much of your income on tech at this window?
Why 2 robo's? They came in handy when you got caught in bad positions and lost your core, but for the most part, you rarely used both at the same time, and often, they both sat idle as you tended to stop at ~6 colossi anyway. Do you feel like you need 2 robo's to boost your colossus count fast enough to defend your aggressive expansions? Or do you want the extra production capacity should you need to rebuild your colossus core quickly?
Do you think about applying pressure beyond the occasional zealot or DT drop, or is your plan more about grabbing bases and crafting the perfect 200/200 composition? Do you see any timings where you could apply direct pressure?
Blink and storm--are they worth it? Assuming you're going with the expand+defend strategy, when would you research them? I assume you'd only want at most 2 HT kept for storm, and the rest made into archons before engaging.
How thrilled are you about the infestor nerfs? NP seemed to be the only thing that gave you problems in the mid-game. Order for twilight/archives/stargate/fleet beacon - yea I see that you could tell I was just randomly throwing up tech buildings in a lot of my games :p I'm glad that you mentioned worrying about spending too much of my income on tech at the same time, since actually this has become an issue for me recently - I've lost to several zergs who just quickly max on roach/infestor and then attack. For some reason in the past most zergs just wait for hive tech, which gives me enough time to get out carrier/mothership/etc. So now I think an important thing is to keep an eye on when they start their hive (i.e. obs in their main), because if they don't get hive there's no need to tech to fleet beacon. Stargate is still good though, since mixing in voids is always great. I guess order should be twilight (for +2), stargate, and then fleet beacon when you see hive, and finally templar archives when you're about to complete your death ball. I originally went double robo because one of my other favorite openings is a fast +1 6 gate, and I'd follow that up with double robo colo since your robo comes late and I feel the need to catch up on colo count. But I guess if you go fast robo/colo, there's really no need for the double robo. I'd recommend a faster stargate instead and adding in voids earlier rather than a 2nd robo. Once you get to 4+ bases though a 2nd robo is always good. There's really no way to apply pressure other than zealot/dt/drops. I've tried just maxing on gateway/colo and attacking, but if you tech/expand at the same time then your attack is too slow, and if you don't tech at all then you'll lose to hive tech. Blink is always great to have. That's actually a weakness of my play, I know I often don't really utilize blink well. The question of storm vs archon - I've actually been leaning more towards storm recently. When I face good zergs who spread out their units and don't throw everything into vortex, then archons actually get killed by broodlords who are outside the vortex. Thus storm becomes much better for you to defend your carriers against corruptors. Yea infestor nerfs + mothership buff makes this deathball style extremely strong now. Now really the only thing I'm scared of is mass corruptor/BL + fast remax.
I initially tried your double robo style and had a lot of trouble defending my 3rd or 4th bases. I think sticking to 1 robo would help, but I also think that in the replays I watched, you got away with some exploitable expos. Sticking on just 1 robo and cutting out the fleet beacon tech would help with having enough mid-game units to defend, but p00n's style where you go straight for mothership+archon seems so much easier to execute than colossus->third->archon->mothership/carrier. Colossi come out faster, but the mothership seems better for defending the third.
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So glad to see this recent explosion (well maybe explosion is a bit too strong of a word) of mothership and carrier play. While I don't think Protoss was imbalanced or at an unfair disadvantage in comparison to the other races, it did feel like you were always pushed into a fairly narrow set of strategic options as a 'Toss player because they were so much more effective than other strategies. Doing anything else felt like putting yourself behind the proverbial eight ball. Beyond Protoss players, the emergence of new strategies is good for everyone. It just makes each matchup more interesting when you have to take into consideration new strategic options.
Plus the mothership is just freaking awesome so I'm glad people are finding ways to use it more effectively :p
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EPT
