Campaign Creations

Who else here thinks Void Ray massing mania screwed up the game more than Colossi, Marauders and Roaches, please, raise their hands...

Eh... Void Rays aren't as bad as Marauders. You can still kill them pretty easily. Plus they are really, really expensive. May as well be massing Carriers at that rate.

My... my preeeeeciouuusss... you can not has my preciiiiooouuussss...

The issue is that yeah, it's pretty impossible to stop someone who's massing void rays. So you don't let them mass void rays. Problem solved!

Impossible? No. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. There are worse things than Void Rays.

It's annoying but takes a long time to pull off, and you have to have A TON of Void Rays to become close to invincible. Essentially, you need to empty out an entire expansion of resources just to build a fleet you need, and not many games last that long.

A good counter to scout out such an opponent. If you know early on they are massing void rays, then you attack them early because they have to devote all their resources to minimal cannnon defenses, stocking probes for expansions, and massing void rays.

I hate Marauders more as Protoss since they seem to counter both Zealots and Stalkers.

Just one sentry makes zealots eat marauders.

I always mass void rays in 3v3/4v4

RazorclawX wrote:I hate Marauders more as Protoss since they seem to counter both Zealots and Stalkers.

Honestly, I always wondered why Marauders have Stim on top of Punisher Grenades since the combo of both (along with hit-run-hit micro) seems to make the Marauders takes the Marine's place when only ground is concerned.

Or maybe the Zealots really need Charge when it comes to Marauders as well.

Massing Void Rays is pretty much the same thing as massing Carriers, if you see it happening you put a stop to it before it gets that threatening because they probably won't have much else to defend with.

I've run into several people trying to mass Carriers before and all it takes is scouting and dropping their Fleet Bacon to stop/delay it.

I just let them mass Carriers. Because when they invest all that money, come out, and lose it all, they usually just leave because there's few ways they can recover.

But it's pretty easy to stop them earlier if you want to. Pylons are a good target, if you want something a little more permanent.

Void rays are easy to beat, a VR rush is easily beaten, and VR massing is predictable, because they don't attack for a while, it usually means they are building a largish force of air units.

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:

RazorclawX wrote:Or maybe the Zealots really need Charge when it comes to Marauders as well.

Agreed. Zealot Charge and Speedling meat shield really do wonders.

That FFA really brought to light some of the things I wanted to try out in PvT. Ultimately my conclusions are as follows;

- That nerf they did to Stalkers (they don't get upgrade bonus for their bonus to armored) made a terrible unit even worse late-game. Stalkers really are terrible. You need a shitton of them to do any damage and they die in an instant if something looks at them funny.
- 3 Defense Drones will shut down like 20 stalkers. You must have void rays in this instance.
- A lot of people would always say, "lol void rays own vikings" (even when outmatched numerically.) I've always witnessed the exact opposite. Okay, upgraded Void Rays can chase them if they run, but that's about it. Once you have a certain number of vikings in they air they just destroy everything because of that 9 range.
- Thors are terrible vs everything the Protoss have in the air. On the flip side, so are Carriers when it comes to maxed end-game armies. Yeah, Carriers get a nice big spike from interceptors popping out, but both Thors and BC's mitigate this a lot. Oh yeah, and DD's shoot down those too. But the biggest weakness Carriers have in sc2 is the fact that, unlike BW, their interceptors don't return to regen their shields. This means that when the fight starts there's a good chance half of your interceptors are going to die very, very fast. You could argue and say, "Well that's fine, at least that's dps not on your units", but losing even a few interceptors totally cripples the Carrier's damage output.

Also, I'm pretty sure the Interceptor deployment range is either smaller than vikings or about the same. That was really the carrier's strength in bw was its range. Since Carriers didn't get the one-way ticket on the Faster, More Intense Dustin Browder express to buffsville the only advantage they got in sc2 was their dual shot and better AI. This is great - vs small units like marines and hydras, as long as there isn't enough to gun down the interceptors in an instant (see my FFA where I totally obliterate a fleet of interceptors in half a second with EMP and marines)...

Battlecruisers were always stronger than Carriers but now it's worse. Yamato charges faster and their DPS is much more consistent.

Basically, I've always thought that Carriers were decent. And they are. But not vs other t3.5 units. They really need something. I'd say they need health or armor. Probably armor.

- Void Rays. You'll become to depend on them. As the subject of this thread, I felt I should explain my experiences with Void Rays.

I almost always massed Carriers in an FFA, but because this was a big map and I was trying to hold territory against two mobile Terran aggressors, I came to depend almost exclusively on Void Rays as my defense option.

They suck. But they're the only redeeming thing you've got.

- If you can faze their lasers you'll do decent damage. If you can build a charge up, they'll do decent damage. If you get caught without charge you're probably dead unless something else is taking damage for your. Void Rays die in 1 yamato and in seconds to focused BC or Viking fire. They need those seconds to charge up their death ray. Until their charge is maxed they are basically useless.
- Phoenixes, totally useless. Yeah, they can fire while moving. Big whoop. You'll kill, what, a Mutalisk? Mutalisks suck too, but they attack land so you'll probably be making them anyways. Building a Phoenix vs Terran is a waste of money, especially in an end game situation.
- Motherships are almost completely useless except to use for cloaking. Vortex sucks in all your interceptors - anything that didn't get sucked in by it will now proceed to obliterate your Carriers uncontested. The damage is poor, the mobility is unheard of. I don't know why this unit is even in the game still. It baffles me, like Marauders and Roaches.

Both Terran and Zerg have great options for breaking walls. Yamato, Tanks, Nukes, Mustaches, secret worms. Protoss have proxy pylons and Prisms - which die the second something sees them (sensors) and require either a worker or an air unit which a Viking will kill in an instant.

So I decided to try Colossi. It was then I realized how fucked you are on the ground. Immortals would probably be a better choice if not for the fact they can't hit air, so bcs will eat them alive, and they still cost 4 supply. So you have to try to goade them with Colossi and hope there's no tanks. You can't snipe the tanks with Void Rays because turrets kill void rays just as easily as anything else. You can snipe them with carriers, but again you'll probably lose them in the process and gain nothing.

As retarded as Colossi are, there's a reason why I never fear them.

I tried Storm. Okay, so Templar are slow as balls and half the time the Terrans were in the perfect spot to land storms on them they weren't even halfway to the fight and all my stalkers died. The other times their storms went off they did no damage. Seriously, storm sucks. They nerfed the fuck out of the damage and the radius is pathetic. It takes like 4 storms to kill a single thor.

Protoss aren't as screwed as Zerg are, but there's definitely some things that need some reworking.

- Stalkers need some damage. They suck. They've always sucked. You can do cute, predictable blink bullshit with them but nothing changes the fact that they vastly lose effectiveness when upgrades come into play.
- Same thing with Carriers. They need something. A buildspeed reduction isn't going to change a damn thing. If Carriers got buffed then Void Rays would be back where they belong - as tier 2 support units, and not something you have to exclusively depend on to respond to any kind of air force confidently.
- Storm needs a buff. It's needed a buff since beta and it still sucks. Yeah, you can kill some marines and hydras with it. But it doesn't do shit all to all of the units that had their health quadrupled in sc2.
- Defense drones need an internal cooldown.