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.