So basically I am a new D player and I was wondering what the proper counter for mass sunkens is for P. Of course it is probably labeled a noob strat, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work against a noob like me.
Basically the concept is he just sunkens up multiple expos (with a good 10 + sunkens) so he can kick back and come at you later with a strong 200/200 or some other high supply army that would counter you well.
My immediate, albeit noob analysis:
1. Reavers seem like a good counter, but iirc it takes 3 scarabs to kill 1 sunken (maybe 2 with upgrades? not sure). That's 45 minerals and while cheaper than a sunken, it would be better to avoid this cost. Plus he can just pull units out and target the reaver, forcing it back. If there is a safe place to reaver drop in behind his mineral patch, then you can just bypass the sunkens, but then he will just defend that spot so you can't do it again.
2. Carriers counter sunkens and spore colonies, but are they a viable option? Devourer/scourge would seem to give them a problem.
3. When you see him sunkening up his expo, try to take a third and latter expansions asap, and scout any further expansion attempts from him. <--- This is the best I can come up with. Your opponent just shouldn't be able to get away with expanding and wasting money on sunkens.
Random thought: What if you mass range dragoon, put some shield batteries just outside the range of the sunkens (to prevent dragoons from dragon while still allowing their shields to tank) and just try to take the sunkens out that way? IDK, might be a stupid idea :D
Reavers man, they eat up sunkens without any damage to themselves. Expand, get ahead economically, then break it down with reavers regardless of the 45 mins it costs... thats nothing.
On November 28 2009 02:25 nuke_rush wrote: i would go with range dragoons, corsairs with disruption web. insta-win.
This is the ticket. Dragoons deal full damage to structures, also if he has no mobile army, go macro-nuts yourself.
A 4 base protoss cranking goons the whole time? You'll be a nightmare. Just keep your scouting up with the sairs to make sure you dont get an anti-goon attack from Muta-Ling
Yes, of course disruption web the thought crossed my mind but I wasn't sure it it stopped ground v ground attacks or not as I rarely see it in the replays that I have seen. That and dragoons to seal the deal. TY
I would rather get reavers. As more often than not in this situation, the zerg will be teching towards ultraling. So after expanding, reavers would be a more useful and cost efficient choice than corsairs.
I agree with aggressive expansion to counter a zerg turtle style of play, if you opponent is sinking tons of cash into a huge defense my recommendation is to expand yourself thats the consensus after all. Here are some tips on beating a Turtle zerg from a D+ turtle zerg...
While Turtle zerg has a strong defense there are a number of options available to you to slow his progress while you expand. 1) Keep an eye on all the expansions, once the zerg is going nuts on D try to prevent his attempts to expand. I don't commit an entire army to destroy a single hatch but make sure that if the wants to expand that he has to work for it. A scouting/harassment zealot at the most likely expansion places punishes the zerg for going in blind or without units to defend new expansions. 2) Try to inflict economic damage on the zerg player, when going up againt a turle zerg you can really start to practice with some more powerful midgame economic damage, I mean of course try storm dropping, it take alot of practice but it really hurts the zerg player. You may have issues at first if you are unfamiliar with storm drops but that are very powerful against a zerg with static defense. If the zerg gets Spore colonies and sunkens near the back of his mineral line don't fret jsut keep loking for soft targets, the more the zerg player commits to a static defense the more tim you have to expand and out perform his macro. 3) If you lose to turtle zerg go back and watch the replay and try to identify times in the game when the zerg has very limited mobility and try to expand during these periods during future games.
I think these two games should be shared to display how pro Protoss players dismantle Zerg turtling. One thing to notice is that sunkens cost drones, so you don't even need to worry about cost effectiveness with reavers because the cost of scarabs pales in comparison to what the Zerg invested. If they are sunkening a natural, drops are killer. Corsairs can be a good harass. Take your own extra bases. Dragoons do really well.
the reavers potentially kill a lot more than just sunkens after you placed them in range of sunkens or before, it's totally worth it, it's a slower offensive move against sunks than making a round or two of goons with range which are good vs sunken especially accompanied by few zeal (shielding the goons from glings or sunken/hydra hits if you can attack forward) then rly good when you add storms or reavs or archons.. but sunks are rly strong, for sure you will have problems attacking if you let him make a good amount of sunk while in a nice economic situation, when they add lurk/spore then you will rly need the reav or storms to stand a chance there (preferably reav) carriers you cant commit that much money only to counter sunks I guess in almost any case, but I mean sometimes they are good endgame against other things when your economy is already big too so yeah let's say first enough zeals, then good amount of goons, then reavers are your counters to [z makes sunks] but yeah for sure sometimes depends how game builds up cant attack these sunks better expo and scout and/or pressure him to make more sunks at other locations too..
(reaver is a rly great tool for area control in defense and offense so if you make reavers, they gonna be useful unless you let them bug the *ù^^$*$ out ^^ or just die ; and the cost efficiency looking weird when you just kill some sunks with them, you gotta account for the difference it makes in the game that the sunks just disappeared while you still have your army there ready to attack a non-sunked location, the follow up could be gg)
During mid game you want to be DROPPING the hell out of Zerg, you want to get DT's into his non sunkened bases (main and 4th usually in FS for example), you want to stormdrop his expos, all of this while you expand. Since he won't have a sizeable army it is important for you to focus on defending your expos, you don't want 12 lings to pass by and deny your cannons+nexus before they are up, you don't need your army in the middle of the map running late at every counter attack the Z does.
If you manage to exp and harrass, then the game is yours, reavers are a must to counter Z drops and runbys, so you can just incorporate them naturally into your army to destroy Z's defenses. The most important thing is not to let Z do their thing, it is true that they can do a heavy investment in D their bases, but if you don't harrass they recover quickly and can macro the shit out of you.
I feel like people who are suggesting Disruption Web have never actually played the scenario out above the D level. Despite that being the context of the question at hand, we should be suggesting the "proper" responses, not the things that only work at the lowest levels. How many progamers have you seen use D-Web to bust Zerg? I'll wait.
The proper answers have already been mentioned briefly:
1. Expand yourself, multiple times. Gear up for a favorable position in the lategame. If he is burning money and Drones on Sunken defense, then you can leap ahead economically with Nexii and Probes.
2. Harass in areas he is less defended (main bases, tech structures, mineral lines) to keep him spending money and larva on Drones, defensive structures, replacing tech. Snipe Evo chambers to stay ahead in the upgrade game.
3. Try to prevent him from expanding and turtling up new bases.
4. Don't attack where he is best defended. There simply isn't a point until you are so tremendously ahead that you can re-max without pause and without taking a major hit to your bank. This is a strategy game; attacking where your opponent is strongest is foolish.
5. The main issue with Carriers is that they are slow, need Corsair support, heavily detract from your ground army, are countered by Dark Swarm + Plague. If you're looking for low level alternatives, just recall in his base with Arbiter.
On July 26 2017 23:37 Jealous wrote: I feel like people who are suggesting Disruption Web have never actually played the scenario out above the D level. Despite that being the context of the question at hand, we should be suggesting the "proper" responses, not the things that only work at the lowest levels. How many progamers have you seen use D-Web to bust Zerg? I'll wait.
The proper answers have already been mentioned briefly:
1. Expand yourself, multiple times. Gear up for a favorable position in the lategame. If he is burning money and Drones on Sunken defense, then you can leap ahead economically with Nexii and Probes.
2. Harass in areas he is less defended (main bases, tech structures, mineral lines) to keep him spending money and larva on Drones, defensive structures, replacing tech. Snipe Evo chambers to stay ahead in the upgrade game.
3. Try to prevent him from expanding and turtling up new bases.
4. Don't attack where he is best defended. There simply isn't a point until you are so tremendously ahead that you can re-max without pause and without taking a major hit to your bank. This is a strategy game; attacking where your opponent is strongest is foolish.
5. The main issue with Carriers is that they are slow, need Corsair support, heavily detract from your ground army, are countered by Dark Swarm + Plague. If you're looking for low level alternatives, just recall in his base with Arbiter.
While it's true you don't see pro gamers use Dweb vs Zerg, we also don't see pros go mass sunken or 10+. Usually they only have a few with a few lurkers and proper sim city. Therefore if they do actually make 10+ sunken Dweb is a reasonable response. You should already have 5 or more corsair in modern PvZ so adding dweb isn't a huge investment. Although I agree dropping their mains is more useful I still think I would add dweb vs a late game camping Zerg after I've taken a few extra expansions myself.
it doesn't sound as effective as making reavers at all, unless you're talking about late game, D-web stuff takes a while to become available and particularly hard to rely on (its effectiveness), also it's not cheap cause fleet beacon is Expensive too (and takes long to build) so, for busting many sunks it's hard to tell that you will be able to lay them Dwebs where you want early enough while also having enough units to kill the sunks in time and bust it.. I think Dweb is the kind of investment thats nice to make kind of on top of what you have when your economy is good for late game, going to 200/200 and banking or smtg, access to enough gas for the rest Also if you don't need to make 5 corsairs, because of what you scouted with first 1 or 2 for example, well what if he is fast teching lair + lurk (+sunk?), its much better to get a faster robo and potentialy quick >reaver (or smtg else!)
On July 26 2017 23:37 Jealous wrote: I feel like people who are suggesting Disruption Web have never actually played the scenario out above the D level. Despite that being the context of the question at hand, we should be suggesting the "proper" responses, not the things that only work at the lowest levels. How many progamers have you seen use D-Web to bust Zerg? I'll wait.
The proper answers have already been mentioned briefly:
1. Expand yourself, multiple times. Gear up for a favorable position in the lategame. If he is burning money and Drones on Sunken defense, then you can leap ahead economically with Nexii and Probes.
2. Harass in areas he is less defended (main bases, tech structures, mineral lines) to keep him spending money and larva on Drones, defensive structures, replacing tech. Snipe Evo chambers to stay ahead in the upgrade game.
3. Try to prevent him from expanding and turtling up new bases.
4. Don't attack where he is best defended. There simply isn't a point until you are so tremendously ahead that you can re-max without pause and without taking a major hit to your bank. This is a strategy game; attacking where your opponent is strongest is foolish.
5. The main issue with Carriers is that they are slow, need Corsair support, heavily detract from your ground army, are countered by Dark Swarm + Plague. If you're looking for low level alternatives, just recall in his base with Arbiter.
While it's true you don't see pro gamers use Dweb vs Zerg, we also don't see pros go mass sunken or 10+. Usually they only have a few with a few lurkers and proper sim city. Therefore if they do actually make 10+ sunken Dweb is a reasonable response. You should already have 5 or more corsair in modern PvZ so adding dweb isn't a huge investment. Although I agree dropping their mains is more useful I still think I would add dweb vs a late game camping Zerg after I've taken a few extra expansions myself.
You make a decent point in saying that pros don't make 10 Sunks (although they come close - look at that one recent Larva vs. Bisu game, here). However, the reason for them not making that is not because it is hard-countered by Corsairs with D-web, but because it puts them too far behind their competition and therefore the above answers I provided (minus the Arbiter) are the real answer. They are what make the mass-Sunken strat unviable in the first place. In the game I link, Larva was already incredibly behind and his anti-air coverage was insane, while Bisu consistently had subpar engages and poor composition without a sufficient number of Reavers (or lost them too fast). Either way, Bisu didn't opt for D-web even though as a progamer he would have been able to pull it off much better than any of us, and is certainly more familiar with their strategic value than we might be.
The problem with D-web is that it costs 125 energy and doesn't last very long. I'd imagine you need at least 10 webs to reliably take out 10 Sunkens, properly timed, with a strong army knocking on the door with perfect surface area of attack and no excessive distractions (Zerglings running out from behind the Sunks, for example_ or flanks. It's the time cost, as much if not more than the actual resource cost that matters, not to mention the APM and multitask tax, and the aforementioned fragility of the tactic.