I know I am not by any means a good or knowledgeable player but hear me out on this one:
In Protoss vs Terran, what do you guys think of doing Corsair/Dark Archon to break a tank siege instead of using Arbiters? The Corsairs would use Disruption web on a tank line as soon as it sets up, and a Dark Archon would feedback Science Vessels that tried to EMP the Corsairs.
In the late-late game, the Protoss can eventually build an arbiter for Recall, using the Corsairs to block any missile turrets that may have been set up.
The biggest threat I can forsee in this build are goliaths. Especially with the range upgrade, they can easily snipe several Corsairs each time one flies in to cast Disruption Web, even if the Protoss player casts at an angle. One solution to this would to be to incorporate more High Templar in one's army than is normal, as once the Disruption Webs are cast, the Goliaths may be able to be stormed, and the tanks certainly can.
What do you guys think? I know I've floated a lot of wacky theories around here but I actually think this one, with some work put into it, might have merit.
It's a nice theorycraft scenario. In reality, you can pull that off against very slow Terrans, the ones with timings shrug that off, cause they'll kick your ass before you have a large enough ground army. In late game, it might be worth a try, but again: probably supply for army is missing, as well as the time needed to effecitvely control the sairs.
Hmm. So are timings the only real problem there? Corsairs build as fast as Zealots, and Arbiters comparatively take a while to build and tech to. So wouldn't a good player be able to get at least 1 or 2 Corsairs with D-web out?
The main thing with D-Web I guess is that if you (theoretically) can pull it off, then the Dragoons get mini free-reign for a while. The Zealots can engage vultures, and if they're lucky, mine-drag them. Once the vultures are taken care of, Dragoons have a few precious seconds of free shots at the tanks.
For me the big question is, does all of that add up to being more valuable than stasis at the time of a push?
I do think corsairs are under-estimated in the PvT matchup. Although it really has to be at point where the map is being mined out and you have a huge bank and all upgrades maxed and the game is almost getting into a stalemate situation and you would probably be getting carriers alongside (carriers + corsairs + observers is quite good).
The 125 energy requirement is too long of a wait for a "standard" late game PvT. I think in a standard game you want to be using your stargates and gas for arbiters. I do remember a Proleague game in the late 2000s where Pusan went corsairs. I think he got some nice d-webs off and won a few battles but in the end it wasn't enough
As with all strategies that haven't been explored, there are two limiting factors:
1) Strategic viability
This strategy needs the protoss player to use all three tech-trees of protoss, unless he wishes to forgo going for observers in the terran match-up, a key unit that is not only important for intelligence, but keeping the effectiveness of spider mines to a minimum.
Unless you are talking about extreme late-game situations, where optimizing your economy is less vital, the time needed to build this composition of units will leave the protoss player at the mercy of his enemy.
2) Ease of execution
I've seen professional players play team-melee (three players sharing the responsibilities of a single player), and I've got to say that arbiters, when used at that level of execution (coming from separate angles, and micro-managed individually), are fucking deadly as fuck compared to how mechanically demanding they are.
Even if we had a mechanical god who puts Bisu to shame, he would most likely go for arbiters in the terran match-up, due to their ease of execution.
Now, if we were discussing AI programs who are not limited by human limitations in terms of mechanical abilities, I would be less sceptical of your ideas.
recently I have tried using it in late game, I have not lot of experience with it but the way I did it is make 2-3 corsairs before tech to arbiter, and add beacon and upgrade a bit later, then I used Dwebs + stasis it was great lol
It is possible if you get a nice advantage in the early / mid game to go corsair / DWeb along with goon / zealot heavy army, instead of doing a full on transition to Carriers, the only issue is that it costs 125 energy to cast a Disruption Web, so it takes the Corsair a little bit of time to build up that energy, on top of that you would need about 4-5 for it to be considerably efficient (taking into consideration that you landed nice DWeb's on top of tanks), and each Corsair will have less energy than the one before it obviously, so there is a lot of timing and execution / build order tweaking that would have to go on in the midst of everything else to make this a cost worth investment.
you need the arbs more than the Dwebs, Dwebs is more situational than stasis I think, and also arbs give cloack and its significant power increase for your ground army, so you get more out of it for having just a few arbs than a few corsairs, so if T is any close to 200/200 yeah make sure you have stasis not just disruption I think (but show me wrong, huhu^^). Making DAs on top of it sounds like overcommit to me, except for late game scenarios where you have lots of gas.
On August 13 2017 02:37 blabber wrote: I do think corsairs are under-estimated in the PvT matchup. Although it really has to be at point where the map is being mined out and you have a huge bank and all upgrades maxed and the game is almost getting into a stalemate situation and you would probably be getting carriers alongside (carriers + corsairs + observers is quite good).
The 125 energy requirement is too long of a wait for a "standard" late game PvT. I think in a standard game you want to be using your stargates and gas for arbiters. I do remember a Proleague game in the late 2000s where Pusan went corsairs. I think he got some nice d-webs off and won a few battles but in the end it wasn't enough
It's definitely true that the Corsair is kind of dead-weight except for the D-Web. Save for a crazy scenario in which someone was successful with this strat and the Terran player built Valkries in order to knock down the Corsairs O.O
I feel like they can be worth it, but it's just something that really brings you down to the wire. The way I would do it personally is that I would always keep my Dragoons/Zealots fairly close to the Terran, spying on him with observers, and the second the Siege Tanks began the "Siege-Up" animation, I would send in the Corsairs and engage immediately. Hopefully what would then happen is the vultures would die quickly, and if Disruption web wore off or if the Terran players moved his/her tanks, it would just be tanks vs Dragoons with a very small gap in between. Which would then allow the Protoss to just run the Dragoons right next to the tanks.
Something truly horrifying for a Protoss player would be if the Terran player sieges juuuuust outside the Disruption Web, and Dragoons have no choice but to go around the tanks in order to be out of the Disruption Web's range. Oh man, oh man.
Jangbi built a corsair in two different games vs Fantasy in the Jin Air OSL finals. He didn't do much with them though so I'm not sure what the point was besides scouting.
On August 13 2017 02:37 blabber wrote: I do remember a Proleague game in the late 2000s where Pusan went corsairs. I think he got some nice d-webs off and won a few battles but in the end it wasn't enough
He did it in a tourney game against Flash. The game would not change anything (Flash was already going to advance, Pusan was knocked out) so Pusan went corsairs as a joke and crowd pleaser.
I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy.
The thing that makes the Arbiter the go to unit is that it does many things while the Corsair in this scenario is only good for the one tactic, breaking tank lines.
Arbiters allow you to break tank lines, recall around tank lines and of course provide constant threat of cloaking if the Terran is out of position with his Science Vessels.
The Dark Archons might be a nice trick but again they would pair probably better with Arbiters than with Corsairs.
This is all assuming late game scenarios. Earlier on as Protoss you need a strong ground army and spending resources in support units is very risky due to the timings already mentioned in this thread.
I personally just don't see where Corsairs fit in here.
On August 13 2017 04:04 radley wrote: I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy.
Hmm. If you were REALLY smart with how you placed your D-webs, than maybe you could theoretically place some right on the tank line and some right behind it so you can box in some of them or something but idk.
If you're unsieged then it's also easier to fight you if you have a lot of Zealots, which, depending on the map, you may have if you have a shortage of Corsairs.
On August 13 2017 04:15 Vindicare605 wrote: The thing that makes the Arbiter the go to unit is that it does many things while the Corsair in this scenario is only good for the one tactic, breaking tank lines.
Arbiters allow you to break tank lines, recall around tank lines and of course provide constant threat of cloaking if the Terran is out of position with his Science Vessels.
The Dark Archons might be a nice trick but again they would pair probably better with Arbiters than with Corsairs.
This is all assuming late game scenarios. Earlier on as Protoss you need a strong ground army and spending resources in support units is very risky due to the timings already mentioned in this thread.
I personally just don't see where Corsairs fit in here.
So the theory goes like this: Many, many Dragoons/Zealots + Arbiters are typically needed to fight in PvT. And that's true for StarCraft in general, one of the reasons macro is so important is that, well, you need a lot of units!
If you pull of the Disruption Web tactic effectively, then you can lose a lot less Dragoons/Zealots than normal, allowing you to pool the leftover resources into more buildings, upgrades, or whatever floats your boat.
That's really the main advantage over arbiters, the tank line scenario. You don't have to face Tanks head on as much if you pull it off. That and if you get really good at it, you can do some serious mine-dragging if the Terran incorporates missile turrets into the push.
I use corsairs in PvT occasionally, just to have fun. After many games, I came to the conclusion, that it is a terrible idea. Here is, what I have observed: - I can crush first terran push, but I can never break any of his base afterwards, because I have already spent all mana. Also, his bases are covered with turrets and mines and tanks are spread on cliffs and also come out of factories, so there is really nothing to dweb to. - If terran goes heavy on vultures, than I cast the spell, than spend all the time to kill vultures and mines and when the spell wears off, tanks just kill my goons - Sairs, spell and goons are gas heavy. I end up with too many minerals. If I want to go for zealots and legs too, than I just die to a timing attack, because citadel, legs, fleat beacon, dweb and sairs means, than my army is tiny.
On August 13 2017 04:34 jtkirk wrote: I use corsairs in PvT occasionally, just to have fun. After many games, I came to the conclusion, that it is a terrible idea. Here is, what I have observed: - I can crush first terran push, but I can never break any of his base afterwards, because I have already spent all mana. Also, his bases are covered with turrets and mines and tanks are spread on cliffs and also come out of factories, so there is really nothing to dweb to. - If terran goes heavy on vultures, than I cast the spell, than spend all the time to kill vultures and mines and when the spell wears off, tanks just kill my goons - Sairs, spell and goons are gas heavy. I end up with too many minerals. If I want to go for zealots and legs too, than I just die to a timing attack, because citadel, legs, fleat beacon, dweb and sairs means, than my army is tiny.
Interesting experience. If you don't mind me asking, have you ever tried using High Templar for the later pushes? If you can storm vultures, and still shoot at them with the goons, you can probably kill them quickly.
Honestly for ending the game and destroying the bases, you either have to get the energy upgrade, get arbiters, or even carriers. You'd need a lot of full energy, upgraded corsairs to consistently attack and destroy bases while fending off pushes.
On August 13 2017 04:04 radley wrote: I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy.
Hmm. If you were REALLY smart with how you placed your D-webs, than maybe you could theoretically place some right on the tank line and some right behind it so you can box in some of them or something but idk.
If you're unsieged then it's also easier to fight you if you have a lot of Zealots, which, depending on the map, you may have if you have a shortage of Corsairs.
Yeah mass zealots are really good against siege tanks, but when they are sieged... (-_-; )
On August 13 2017 04:04 radley wrote: I recently discovered thanks to other Polish terran player, that playing siege tanks without sieging can be better during middle to late game in open space fights, but you have to manage your units well. Thus I cannot imagine protoss playing corsairs against unsieged tanks/vultures push, since you lost to much resources on cors and tech to distruption web. I would see cors upgrades in cyber core and dis web costing 100 mana instead of 125, to see this a valuable strategy.
Hmm. If you were REALLY smart with how you placed your D-webs, than maybe you could theoretically place some right on the tank line and some right behind it so you can box in some of them or something but idk.
If you're unsieged then it's also easier to fight you if you have a lot of Zealots, which, depending on the map, you may have if you have a shortage of Corsairs.
Yeah mass zealots are really good against siege tanks, but when they are sieged... (-_-; )
Having Corsairs AND observors AND High Templar is very gas intensive and would likely mean you'd have a small army, but depending on the point of the game, high templar would be effective since they could storm the tanks from behind the dragoons and destroy them while the Zealots are taking the damage.
If a Protoss was successfully pulling this build off, the Terran would probably be better off getting Valkryies instead of Science Vessels. And if they have enough Valkryies, they can seriously reduce the Corsairs to rubble.
Then what? I guess you could try to go for carriers, have the Carriers tank for the Corsairs and kill off the valkyries one by one, though I'm sure they'd kill the interceptors if there were enough of them. Especially if the missle bug is fixed.
I do it from time to time, it's a lot of fun and feels so fresh and different. I always research the energy upgrade first, because it takes more time and then your sairs spawn with more energy. D-web itself takes like no time to research. Corsairs are fast and so are easy to micro away from EMP + if you have lots (6+), one EMP will hardly empty all of your sairs, so may be you don't even need a DA here. And btw you still need zealots anyway. Goliaths aren't a threat, actually. More goliaths = less vultures and they take away gas for tanks. And if they are sniping your sairs, they aren't shooting your ground. There was an awesome game between Horang2 and Piano at Chain Reaction. Although eventually Horang2 came to use like everything — web, stasis, storm...
Snow used dweb in the final game of GTB against Light on Monte Cristo. Instead of trying to add on corsairs early and get dweb to break tank lines, he instead used it defensively to bolster his carrier force.
The strategy he did revolved around going for reaver drops to secure a fast third base and then an immediate tech to ultra fast carriers. When Light began his push across the map, Snow used a combination of his first 3-4 carriers, a small number of gateway units, and his reaver drop to kite the army back and delay the push for as long as possible. Behind this, Snow took a 4th (even a 5th) and slowly built up his tech so that he could crush the Terran army as it pushed into his bases. Once he has zealot legs, archons (sometimes Storm), decent upgrades, and a reasonable number of gateways, he collapses the Terran army at his doorstep (though he trades his 4th base in the process).
Once he manages to survive the first attack and build up a strong number of carriers (6+), then he's comfortable with adding on a 3rd stargate and adding in corsairs for dweb. He then uses the dweb to screw up the mech army as it attempts to push through any chokes for the rest of the game and allow his carriers to trade much more effectively against goliaths (even after 3/3). Interestingly, the corsairs also serve as a soft counter to mass wraith if the Terran decides to be clever.
In some cases, Snow can outright kill his opponent's first push and counterattack with insane efficiency, as seen in his game against PianO in the same GTB series.
Snow has used this strategy almost exclusively in PvT for the last couple of weeks with varying results. The biggest factor I've been able to determine between winning and losing is map choice. On large maps with tons of abuseable air space and winding pathways, Snow has much more success. On the other hand, on maps like Circuit Breaker, Snow is much more likely to get beat down during the very first pre-carrier push (or at least mangled enough so that he can never catch up to the Terran macro).
For the average player, this might be a very difficult strategy. Kiting back a mech army efficiently while taking extra bases and teching up as well as having the patience to wait for the right moment to collapse on the mech army is very difficult. However, we can at least take solace in the fact that Snow has relatively low APM for a Korean progamer (250 or lower), so maybe it's not impossible for our feeble minds to comprehend.
TL;DR Snow uses corsairs with dweb, but he doesn't get it early to break siege tank lines. Instead, he adds it onto an already robust carrier army to boost their efficiency against entrenched mech forces.
On August 13 2017 03:09 CobaltBlu wrote: Jangbi built a corsair in two different games vs Fantasy in the Jin Air OSL finals. He didn't do much with them though so I'm not sure what the point was besides scouting.
Those Snow games sound both really cool and really dumb :D
edit: booo, those games sucked. vs Flash he didn't get corsair at all, vs Light (who has always sucked TvP) the corsairs did hardly anything. I thought I was going to see some crazy cliff action where the only spot goliaths were in range was a place that can be d-webbed. You're just plugging your commentary
I have been using corsairs in pvt since I came back to broodwar, I'm not sure why it just seemed fun at first to make the games more fair.
I will preface with the fact that I have only lost two 1v1s since 1.18 so I'm not sure I'm playing vs opponents who are good enough for any of this to be relevant, I'll let you know after ladder is out for a few days if you want.
I generally at least start my 3rd before getting the stargate, and you never make more than one stargate. You really only want like 3 corsairs. The terran will generally completely overreact when they see the fleet beacon so you get like 12 goliaths pumped for no reason, this is really good. The Dweb also makes it so that the terran cannot really ever quick push, if his tanks are clumped at all you will completely dumpster him. I think it really opens up the map because the best thing the terran can do is just expand again and try to max out, he really can't at all group his units up or you will completely destroy his army and just win. I'm sure there is probably an early timing terran could hit where you have spent 1k minerals on tech that cannot impact the game while you're waiting for sair energy. I haven't seen this happen yet, but I have no doubt you can just straight up lose here.
overall, super lategame when you have many expos I genuinely just dont understand why pro players dont make 3-4 corsairs, i think the dweb impacts the game more than arbiters would. Storm kind of does the same thing but without a shuttle to carry your templars in they are just awkward to control and it takes quite a bit of apm to micro templars out of a shuttle in big pvt fights.
I think its definitely worth exploring and I'd encourage you to try it, I've had a lot of success/fun with sair in pvt.
Back in the KeSPA days, a Protoss going fast carriers would sometimes build a single corsair to scout the Terran base since observer tech would be slow and it's critical to see Terran army composition. See Jangbi vs Fantasy on Pathfinder. That might be the most reasonable usage for corsairs in PvT.
Since web-reaver builds are notoriously dependent on near-perfect execution, it's more of a surprise build than anything else on the usual ladder maps. It would also work well against people who are worse than you.
I do think that it's an interesting idea though. If you already went carriers instead of arbiters, then the opportunity cost of researching web isn't as high since you already have the fleet beacon. But placing individual webs in multiple places during an engagement is so micro intensive and Terran can often stagger the tanks to give time for the forward tanks to unsiege and fall back.
That said, I think that the biggest reason why web would not be used late game versus Terran is the population count. Late game PvT generally seems to involve trying to keep the goon count high through engagements that reduce Terran's tank count and relying on the faster speed at which zealots can be re-macro'd compared to Terran mech units to take advantage after each engagement. The effectiveness of this is reduced if corsairs are taking up precious population count. There's also the issue of gas being a limiting resource.
I dunno maybe the hotkey remapping will free up some Protoss apm to make this viable. No, no, no, why did I mention hotkeys!!! Please don't talk about hotkeys.
Sairs don't seem like a good idea to add during the midgame. It's not like Protoss is powerless to stop a Terran push at this point. But maybe if they are used in the lategame not as a breakthrough unit to break Terran bases open but instead used to take back the cost-efficiency advantage that's always been in favor of Terran.
Also yeah, the last PvT game I can remember where at least a sair was used, it was during JangBi's carrier rush on Pathfinder in the OSL finals.
That said, the last game I remember d-web was used, it was by Horang2 on Neo Chain Reaction. It was glorious game.
- edit - @lemmata again, keeping goon count high as possible - now that's an understated reason. Sairs are less arbiters/HT/sci vessels/defilers and more queen-like regarding this. It can be seen in ZvT where Zerg players sacrifice army population for mass queens. The only question here is how many sairs are practical in a given situation. I feel like this side of the corsair question hasn't been explored enough.
On August 13 2017 06:01 EsportsJohn wrote: Snow used dweb in the final game of GTB against Light on Monte Cristo. Instead of trying to add on corsairs early and get dweb to break tank lines, he instead used it defensively to bolster his carrier force.
The strategy he did revolved around going for reaver drops to secure a fast third base and then an immediate tech to ultra fast carriers. When Light began his push across the map, Snow used a combination of his first 3-4 carriers, a small number of gateway units, and his reaver drop to kite the army back and delay the push for as long as possible. Behind this, Snow took a 4th (even a 5th) and slowly built up his tech so that he could crush the Terran army as it pushed into his bases. Once he has zealot legs, archons (sometimes Storm), decent upgrades, and a reasonable number of gateways, he collapses the Terran army at his doorstep (though he trades his 4th base in the process).
Once he manages to survive the first attack and build up a strong number of carriers (6+), then he's comfortable with adding on a 3rd stargate and adding in corsairs for dweb. He then uses the dweb to screw up the mech army as it attempts to push through any chokes for the rest of the game and allow his carriers to trade much more effectively against goliaths (even after 3/3). Interestingly, the corsairs also serve as a soft counter to mass wraith if the Terran decides to be clever.
In some cases, Snow can outright kill his opponent's first push and counterattack with insane efficiency, as seen in his game against PianO in the same GTB series.
Snow has used this strategy almost exclusively in PvT for the last couple of weeks with varying results. The biggest factor I've been able to determine between winning and losing is map choice. On large maps with tons of abuseable air space and winding pathways, Snow has much more success. On the other hand, on maps like Circuit Breaker, Snow is much more likely to get beat down during the very first pre-carrier push (or at least mangled enough so that he can never catch up to the Terran macro).
For the average player, this might be a very difficult strategy. Kiting back a mech army efficiently while taking extra bases and teching up as well as having the patience to wait for the right moment to collapse on the mech army is very difficult. However, we can at least take solace in the fact that Snow has relatively low APM for a Korean progamer (250 or lower), so maybe it's not impossible for our feeble minds to comprehend.
TL;DR Snow uses corsairs with dweb, but he doesn't get it early to break siege tank lines. Instead, he adds it onto an already robust carrier army to boost their efficiency against entrenched mech forces.
I watched that game and I think the only reason Snow went for Corsairs is cause Light went wraiths and got scouted.
On August 13 2017 10:40 c3rberUs wrote: Sairs don't seem like a good idea to add during the midgame. It's not like Protoss is powerless to stop a Terran push at this point. But maybe if they are used in the late game not as a breakthrough unit to get break Terran bases open but instead as used to take back the cost-efficiency advantage that's always been in favor of Terran.
Also yeah, the last PvT game I can remember where at least a sair was used, it was during JangBi's carrier rush on Pathfinder in the OSL finals.
That said, the last game I remember d-web was used, it was by Horang2 on Neo Chain Reaction. It was glorious game.
- edit - @lemmata again, keeping goon count high as possible - now that's an understated reason. Sairs are less arbiters/HT/sci vessels/defilers and more queen-like regarding this. It can be seen in ZvT where Zerg players sacrifice army population for mass queens. The only question here is how many sairs are practical in a given situation. I feel like this side of the corsair question hasn't been explored enough.
So again this is a theory regarding the use of corsairs, but hear me out:
Theoretically, if you were to break the first Terran push using Disruption Webs then you would have a situation where most of the Terran player's attacking units were killed, while only a few of your Dragoons were. Since you would have been able to get free shots at the tanks and the vultures and/or goliaths while they were D-webbed.
So even though you have a smaller army, you effectively have a bigger one, as less units are killed, and in the moment-to-moment fighting, you have a fair amount of Dragoons just fighting 1 or 2 tanks plus the vultures/goliaths. That's a really good engagement IF the theory actually works out well, which it might not.
In the end, it's not so much about Protoss not being able to break the Terran pushes at all, but in doing so losing far more units than is necessary. By using Corsairs, they can do away with that.
Protoss goes 14 nexus --> Makes Goons --> Stargate --> makes one corsair --> 2 base carrier and catches Flash totally off guard.
Here's the mindgame from Sky: Once Flash saw the corsair scout instead of an observer he thought Sky was going for a typical 2 base carrier like Jangbi's build vs Fantasy, so he canceled his Ebay and went for a faster third CC. Sky uses tank snipes which forced a ton of repair on bunker + the repair on the barracks from the corsair + the failed bunker rush + the switch into 3rd CC + forced armory left Flash really low on army and open to goon dweb attack. It's very weird to only see one stargate and a fleet beacon because you usually build the fleet beacon with your second stargate close by, since their build times line up. Maybe that was a small indication of something weird going on, but by the time he scouted it, he was already dead.
It has been tried over the years several times. We just dropped funky unit compositions in pvt cause they don't work. One reason being vulnerable during the transition, another is for the micro intensive and unpractical way the units have to be played. Even if you put bisu in that scenario he will have an incredibly hard time pulling this strategy off. If it was sc2 with smartcast that would be fine, but not on this game.
On August 13 2017 06:01 EsportsJohn wrote: Snow used dweb in the final game of GTB against Light on Monte Cristo. Instead of trying to add on corsairs early and get dweb to break tank lines, he instead used it defensively to bolster his carrier force.
The strategy he did revolved around going for reaver drops to secure a fast third base and then an immediate tech to ultra fast carriers. When Light began his push across the map, Snow used a combination of his first 3-4 carriers, a small number of gateway units, and his reaver drop to kite the army back and delay the push for as long as possible. Behind this, Snow took a 4th (even a 5th) and slowly built up his tech so that he could crush the Terran army as it pushed into his bases. Once he has zealot legs, archons (sometimes Storm), decent upgrades, and a reasonable number of gateways, he collapses the Terran army at his doorstep (though he trades his 4th base in the process).
Once he manages to survive the first attack and build up a strong number of carriers (6+), then he's comfortable with adding on a 3rd stargate and adding in corsairs for dweb. He then uses the dweb to screw up the mech army as it attempts to push through any chokes for the rest of the game and allow his carriers to trade much more effectively against goliaths (even after 3/3). Interestingly, the corsairs also serve as a soft counter to mass wraith if the Terran decides to be clever.
In some cases, Snow can outright kill his opponent's first push and counterattack with insane efficiency, as seen in his game against PianO in the same GTB series.
Snow has used this strategy almost exclusively in PvT for the last couple of weeks with varying results. The biggest factor I've been able to determine between winning and losing is map choice. On large maps with tons of abuseable air space and winding pathways, Snow has much more success. On the other hand, on maps like Circuit Breaker, Snow is much more likely to get beat down during the very first pre-carrier push (or at least mangled enough so that he can never catch up to the Terran macro).
For the average player, this might be a very difficult strategy. Kiting back a mech army efficiently while taking extra bases and teching up as well as having the patience to wait for the right moment to collapse on the mech army is very difficult. However, we can at least take solace in the fact that Snow has relatively low APM for a Korean progamer (250 or lower), so maybe it's not impossible for our feeble minds to comprehend.
TL;DR Snow uses corsairs with dweb, but he doesn't get it early to break siege tank lines. Instead, he adds it onto an already robust carrier army to boost their efficiency against entrenched mech forces.
I watched that game and I think the only reason Snow went for Corsairs is cause Light went wraiths and got scouted.
I think you can make the argument that he went for corsairs because the ground pressure was lessened and he had enough room to make the risky tech switch to corsairs without immediately dying. Whether that's the effect of Terran trying a hard tech switch to wraiths or Snow annihilating an army for free doesn't really matter; it's because he has a small window of time where he can add on the final piece of the puzzle to his end game.
Snow did it in the last GTB last month. But: 1. he already had fleet beacon for carries. 2. Light (iirc) had made wraiths against the carriers, so corsairs actually could use their attacks.
I know Horang would use corsairs in PvT. Draw the foreigner mentioned trying to use corsairs, but only really figured out how to use them when he saw them in Horang's hands.
On August 13 2017 12:50 aTnClouD wrote: It has been tried over the years several times. We just dropped funky unit compositions in pvt cause they don't work. One reason being vulnerable during the transition, another is for the micro intensive and unpractical way the units have to be played. Even if you put bisu in that scenario he will have an incredibly hard time pulling this strategy off. If it was sc2 with smartcast that would be fine, but not on this game.
You're better off casting those precious webs yourself. It's a rare case when corsairs are viable option, but even then you're not going to have more than few of them. On the higher levels you most certainly want to decide yourself where those webs are spent or it could cost you the game.
Now if you for some reason had like a full group of corsairs then you would just get hard countered by valkyries.
Arbiters can do roughly everything that you claim corsairs can and even more for less money and effort. Therefore, arbiters are used in PvT for a reason. Your corsair strategy is only good as it is entertaining.
In the late-late game, the Protoss can eventually build an arbiter for Recall, using the Corsairs to block any missile turrets that may have been set up.
I feel like if it comes to that, you might as well just get hallucinate instead. You'll likely have high templar on hand anyways, so it's just an additional 150/150, which isn't too bad and certainly cheaper and faster than teching yet another branch in a game. If they EMP, oh well, it didn't cost anything but energy, but if they don't, the hallucinated arbiters tank a lot of shots. Plus, high templar are damage dealers anyways, rather than tying up 2 supply on something that can't really attack anything but science vessels and floating buildings... and corsairs have a death wish.
Plus hallucinated arbiters are easier to pull off- corsairs you need to frantically D-web as fast as you can and then send in your arbiters- but the first D-web is going to warn the enemy. Whereas you can hallucinate in advance and simply click in and recall with ease. The hallucinated/ real arbiters are a little staggered so there really isn't much advance warning.
On August 13 2017 12:50 aTnClouD wrote: It has been tried over the years several times. We just dropped funky unit compositions in pvt cause they don't work. One reason being vulnerable during the transition, another is for the micro intensive and unpractical way the units have to be played. Even if you put bisu in that scenario he will have an incredibly hard time pulling this strategy off. If it was sc2 with smartcast that would be fine, but not on this game.
You're better off casting those precious webs yourself. It's a rare case when corsairs are viable option, but even then you're not going to have more than few of them. On the higher levels you most certainly want to decide yourself where those webs are spent or it could cost you the game.
Now if you for some reason had like a full group of corsairs then you would just get hard countered by valkyries.
He said smart cast, not auto cast. Smart cast makes it so that you don't need to clone. You still get to aim manually.
On August 13 2017 16:48 letian wrote: Arbiters can do roughly everything that you claim corsairs can and even more for less money and effort. Therefore, arbiters are used in PvT for a reason. Your corsair strategy is only good as it is entertaining.
I still love the Arbiter, stasis is a very good spell. The only thing D-Web really has over stasis is that you can essentially nullify the entire tank line for a few seconds, which means less of your dragoons die, and you can accumulate a nice economic edge over time. Stasis can only hit so many tanks, and some Dragoons/Zealots must die to tanks in general if it's a straight engagement.
With regards to the Valkyries that I mentioned earlier, depending on how late in the game the Valkyries pop out, you can try to lure them into Dragoons, or if you're crazy, mind control several Valkryies with Dark Archons!
I think an interesting strategy could be in using dweb to just force the terran to lose ground and have to reposition while you expand; as long as you have sufficient ground army that they cant just walk forward, they *have* to walk backwards, and depending on the layout of the map, that might mean away from their 3rd/4th.
Should be less APM intensive than trying to throw down 15 dwebs in a fight while macroing, as you don't necessarily need to go in with everything after you dweb them, just the threat of it might even be enough to make them have to reposition.
This was a respone to Sasin opting for Ghosts when he scanned that Rain was going carriers. Rain went 2 stargate corsair with Dweb which essentially rendered the ghosts useless. It's not really a good measure on how viable it is against standard play (tank/vulture/few goliaths and a vessle).
Spoilers are irrelevant - hmm, someone's bumped an old thread discussing corsair use vT, I wonder if there's been a pro game this morning with corsair use vT. Nope, couldn't possibly happen ever, no
Not the mention the recently played game rain vs apmple, I believe I saw some pro used corsair in pvt in proleague long ago, may be 2010~2011, and the map is empire of the sun. The protoss sure suprised his opponent, but it was not really effective.
Corsairs are too expensive, disruption web duration is not great either. This is a nice counter strategy that can be executed as an answer to ghost with lockdowns which would be much more effective against arbiters. So, corsairs + dr.web is a counter strategy not the way of PvT. 3-5 arbiters with statis and recall are much more deadly for terran army than any corsair fleet will even be. Dark archon is just a joke in PvT unless you are a poor player.
On August 13 2017 16:48 letian wrote: Arbiters can do roughly everything that you claim corsairs can and even more for less money and effort. Therefore, arbiters are used in PvT for a reason. Your corsair strategy is only good as it is entertaining.
I still love the Arbiter, stasis is a very good spell. The only thing D-Web really has over stasis is that you can essentially nullify the entire tank line for a few seconds, which means less of your dragoons die, and you can accumulate a nice economic edge over time. Stasis can only hit so many tanks, and some Dragoons/Zealots must die to tanks in general if it's a straight engagement.
With regards to the Valkyries that I mentioned earlier, depending on how late in the game the Valkyries pop out, you can try to lure them into Dragoons, or if you're crazy, mind control several Valkryies with Dark Archons!
D-Web does not have anything over statis because it is more expensive in the first place. Its duration is much shorter and it does not stop terran army from unsieging and pushing. Therefore it is only good when you attack terran siege lines. When toss decides to attack sieged terran he is already ahead and just wants to minimize his losses. In such situation d-web is a good supporting spell. However, even here arbiter will be more efficient with cheaper statis spells and auto cloak unless terran has ghosts which can easily lockdown fewer number of arbiters.
One thing I noticed on that game was that when the AI chooses a target to fire, anything under D-web is considered lower threat, so dragoons don't shoot tanks affected unless there's nothing else to shoot. At least got that impression, should check it thoroughly.
Anyway, the issue is, zealots can't kill what's underneath d-web, goons seems to ignore it, and on top of that the spell hinders you if you want to push further into enemy lines or the terran retreats. It has many issues to be a viable strategy, only place I see d-web being worth it it's on zvp vs turtling zergs massing sunkens and lurkers.
tl:dr, its only good on specific maps where tanks will get clustered up for d-webs to be able to consistently catch like 2-3 tanks at a time and only a good one off build rarely used. its not a good standard. dont use sairs.
On September 19 2017 17:42 Plissken_2097 wrote: One thing I noticed on that game was that when the AI chooses a target to fire, anything under D-web is considered lower threat, so dragoons don't shoot tanks affected unless there's nothing else to shoot. At least got that impression, should check it thoroughly.
Anyway, the issue is, zealots can't kill what's underneath d-web, goons seems to ignore it, and on top of that the spell hinders you if you want to push further into enemy lines or the terran retreats. It has many issues to be a viable strategy, only place I see d-web being worth it it's on zvp vs turtling zergs massing sunkens and lurkers.
why wouldnt zelots be able to kill stuff under dweb?
On September 19 2017 18:53 FlaShFTW wrote: tl:dr, its only good on specific maps where tanks will get clustered up for d-webs to be able to consistently catch like 2-3 tanks at a time and only a good one off build rarely used. its not a good standard. dont use sairs.
Tanks always get clustered up, it's why stasis is so good.
A better tl;dr would be.
Dweb is only only really good on maps where there's lots of unbuildable terrain as the Terran can't turret up his tank lines and will unlikely have a lot of goliaths. Also to take into account is can you afford the supply for the corsairs, if you can and you have the APM to pull it off you can use Corsairs as a surprise tactic.
if the terran doesn't kill you before dweb can come into play, i believe that they can just mass expand and run you down with 10 facs. terran can hold a position with tanks and mines, but what kind of opposing army is a protoss going to make? you will have to make so many corsairs that you won't just run dry on energy at the wrong moment.
i don't think it's fun gameplay to have science vessels trying to hunt down dark archons or corsairs while goliaths are sitting behind to protect. it would be such a slow stalemate if it got to that point.
i really think a terran just timing pushes and kills you before any of that can properly take off.
in asl artosis/tastless pretty good explained why corsairs suck so hard in pvt ^^ u can only make 1 web and then u have to wait if u could make 2 it would be fine but with only 1, u have a to huge downtime
saying rain "owned" with web is a wrong standpoint. overall it wasnt rly good, t just went mass ghosts expecting carriers THATS what made it possible and still he lost alot units and had downtimes where arbiter and more zealots could haveb roken trough
On September 19 2017 20:10 Drake wrote: in asl artosis/tastless pretty good explained why corsairs suck so hard in pvt ^^ u can only make 1 web and then u have to wait if u could make 2 it would be fine but with only 1, u have a to huge downtime
saying rain "owned" with web is a wrong standpoint. overall it wasnt rly good, t just went mass ghosts expecting carriers THATS what made it possible and still he lost alot units and had downtimes where arbiter and more zealots could haveb roken trough
With energy upgrade you can have two d-webs on a single corsair tho.
Corsairs are good on specific situations, like in the Rain vs Ample game where Tastosis were talking about the matter (abandon the carrier plan when seeing ghosts produced). In standard game they are usually not the best choice, since they eat up your supply and the the cost of a single web is quite big. Also if they're scouted in time, even valkyries can be used to counter them.
Another underestimated advantage of arbiters over sairs is they can actually attack. Not only forcing goliaths but also inflicting a fair amount of damage when no goliaths are around.