This makes me suddenly wish Blizzard would add a late game upgrade for queens where they can morph to a more powerful version or something along those lines. Or at least give them a tier 3 movement upgrade.
Usually protosses don't make so many carriers as shown in this video. Often they make 6-8 carriers (maximum) some hight templars with storm and adepts - it destroys hydra-queens immediately. And then, if you make corruptors, protoss turns some templars into archons and produces voidrays (sometime with mothership). The bad point of this balance is that you exchange expensive limit of hydra-queens-corruptors on cheap interceptors.
All you need to do is take out enough carriers before your army gets wiped out, then make a second army, or a third. Carriers take a long time to rebuild, Zerg has a production speed advantage that always wins in wars of attrition. By the time protoss maxes out on carriers, Zerg can be floating enough larva and resources to max out hydralisks 2 or three times.
What I could learn, as a new player playing against Elite A.I., is the fact that I need to build a ground army, and also a fleet before 9 minutes of gameplay, since the computer will attack me in less than 10 minutes, and I can't rely just on my fleet to defend myself, and counter-attack. I managed to educate myself to macro properly, also multi-task in order to slow down the A.I. economy, while building my own army. Even though I understand A.I. is pretty much dumb, and always behave the same way, trying to follow up the computer's macro, army build and then counter-attack, helped me a lot to develop my own skills. Watching videos like this one, where we actually see people playing, and the best players to say the least, improve the strategies that I can implement and enriches my understanding about the game itself. So I wish to say thank you for the videos, since it's helping me a lot. I'm indeed not one of the bests, but just knowing that in a week I managed to play properly against the Elite A.I. is very motivating to me to aim higher goals!
AI can be defeated by harassing workers rather easily. Playing vs players is completely diffirent. Start doing it sooner than later or you'll be vary disappointed when you beat the best AI and loose to the avarage humans because of non AI actions from them.
Set Dark The point isn't a matter of winning or losing against AI. It's a matter of practicing build order and improving the multi-task abilities before face real players. I was aware I couldn't just join a match with people if i didn't know even the basics.
Ain Soph macro practice yes, but builds no. You can practice first 40 seconds using AI, all the rest is different against humans. Basicaly to beat the AI you just must mine resources and build units one by one in avarage amount. And wait the computer attack. Defend against it and counterattack immidiatly. You win. And it never works with humans from silver league and higher. Computer just does not do dozens of things which humans do. Which really alters the flow of the match. So it's better to start playing agains humans. There are people of your level anyway, you're not unique :)
Set Dark Ok, thanks for clarifying. I thought would be enough to practice against AI for now, but since it seems my macro is good enough, also my understanding, practicing with people seems to be the logical thing to do.
The elite AI is at a low silver league level IF THAT. Practicing against a terrible player who doesn't know what they're doing is still going to do more for you than practicing against the AI.
Railgan did a similar video using queens to tank and hydras to kill interceptors. I like how you include transition tips. Toss could move away from carriers, but investing so heavily into stargate really limits their options.
I've been a big fan of starcraft for 12 years now or so, i've never been really "good", i got my hans ons tarcraft II recently and your videos have been my guide, i can "proudly" say i'm the top score of my team on the 4v4 games i lose. This, the damn carriers, are some of the few strats i haven't ben able to overcome yet, now i see this video, we'll see what happens. Keep up the good job man!.
Dude, i love your channel because of these. I can watch the pro's play anywhere, but almost no one does these. And if they do, they don't do it well like this
Lowko, im a new player and still learning. currently at harder ai. havnt had the balls to play a real person. Thank you for your videos! I have been learning a lot from them. I really enjoy when you cast too. Thanks Lowko!
Not only zergs hate play against carriers. Even toss and terrans hate carriers. Vikings are just melting against storms, Thores cant shoot the carriers becouse of some ground meat and immortals.
as terran you can easily beat carriers with battlecruisers, i tried in the unit tester and 3 bc vs 3 carriers the bcs with yamato win without losing one of them, and if necessary you can also warp them back to base.
He just add some static defense and void rays. May be some HT. A+click + T T T T ur dead. But may be BC can work, i dont sure. Carriers outrange BC very hard. And BC just have no speed .
I cannot find an epic 1v1v1 between pro players of all three races and you're the only one I can think of to make that happen. I bet it could get really crazy, especially if it was twin Archon mode or something. You'd have to cover it in slow motion to get everything. Please do it. XD
I have played this carrier strategy for a few years and you were playing against a newb. The average Protoss player (like your opponent) will be defensive. But the good ones ( once they get 3 carriers) actually go on offense repeatedly against the opponents bases, using recall once the opponent army shows up. You are right that mass hydras can be effective. For Terran, the best defense against carriers is mines.
as a protoss player who uses the mass carrier quite frequently (though not anymore because it's boring), I can tell you how I counter lowko's strategy. I open with a ton of oracles, snipe bases/drones until hydras are out, which limits the zerg eco substantially. Then, as I add carriers, I also add chargelots, which are absolutely fantastic versus hydras. You can try to shoot the interceptors, but combined chargelot/carrier armies are really really good against hydras. This strategy isn't in the meta but you might want to think about how to counter it based on the growing popularity of chargelots in general.
I found my way here after getting sick and tired of losing to skytoss. There were maybe 2 cases where I didn't lose because of massing hydra's with as many upgrades as possible and barely won. I have had better results on my end by just focus targeting the carriers down as fast as possible because if you don't; they'll just pull back, build more and wipe you out some more. You could see that kinda happening in the video. But hell, if it woks, it works.
This trick works well only if you are ahead in supply and does not work on some space map. The ideal way to counter carrier with mother ship is spore spine queen defence matrix and corruptor + viper combo. pull and snipe. if you have same army size you own him with just shift click click click.
I think, since the newiest patch has been released, that burrow infestors are the only way to deal with carriers, if they really are able to reach a significant amount of them. Then It's just about taking out the oberservers although that can get very hard, if he just keeps them with his carriers and does not make any crucial micro mistake. But i really think that the Burrowed Neuralparasite and the burrowed Fungal are a great tool that zerg now has, to deal with air based armies. I also recommend to use a 2nd Hotkey for the action button, based on what your hotkey for infested terrans is. That just allows you to spam 50 infested terrans in one Second. I've done this couple of times against Battle Cruisers and Carriers and imo it's the only way to really stop a massive army thats based on heavy t3 Units. Maybe i'll try to mix in vipers.
as protoss u can counter this zerg strategy with charged zealot + archon and templars supporting your carriers.. also , archon are great counters to corroptors and templars are counters to vipers
What about a hydra + corruptors counter? I'm low gold, but I play a lot against higher level players and I usually do this build mid-late and works really fine. Its kinda expensive but, Its really efficient. Good to know Lowko. Nice video!
I've played a couple matches against Toss that managed to basically max out carriers (with a mummy-ship). I've ended up beating it with infestors mindcontrolling in background. Carrier armies lose a lot in that case, the fighter drones do a lot to get in the way of the Toss players army
Actually, target firing carriers is exactly what you DON'T want to do with hydras. Corrupters, sure, but doing that with hydras is a good way to lose your entire army. It's usually just better to wear them down by killing the interceptors and then target firing the carriers only when the interceptor numbers have been thinned out to the single digits. If you have enough of an economy (around 80 drones), you can pretty much produce hydra ling nonstop with 2-3 macro hatches and just overwhelm them by constantly reinforcing along a creep highway.
The reason corruptors don't work is because you would have to focus fire the carriers down. Now you can do that as long as there are like a hand full of them. But as soon as it gets to certain numbers your 40 corruptors will be dead after having focus fired down 4 carriers...
still a hard win, with queen and hydralisk, but indeed it work. I am gonna try that, I am always losing against carrier strat. but you definitely right after 10 min game is over if the protoss have still 3 bases.
Nice guide Lowko. Only thing that I am wondering is how well does this work when the Protoss player actually harasses like in that Stats vs Byul game. In this game Protoss really didn't do anything but sat.
If they go for glaive adepts, hide your banelings just out of vision of the shade as it goes in, then charge in with the banelings and finish them off with your lings. A wasted investment for them. If they go phoenix put a few (2-4) spores in each mineral line, unless you are playing against a top tier grandmaster player they will lose a phoenix almost every time they try to pick something up. Phoenix are not cheap as they are equal to the cost of a mutalisk, so it is a wasted investment for them. If they go for an oracle or two, a couple queens per hatchery will shut it down. Oracles cost an insane amount of gas and are not worth it unless they kill 5+ workers and are kept alive for revelations the rest of the game. dt/archon drop costs 500 of each resource for the 4 dts/2 archons, 200 minerals for the warp prism, and 150 of each for the dark shrine. That is 850 minerals and 650 gas invested + (150,100) for the twilight council if they don't already have it, unless they kill a hatchery, 25+ workers, or your entire army, it is not worth it if the goal is to get to carriers. Basically unless you let them do severe damage with their harassing units, it is a wasted investment for them. I think that is about it, let me know if there is anything else you run into.
I feel like the way to fight mass carrier is to finish toss before HTs come out. I never saw any pro match that zerg won against carriers when bunch of HTs were out with carriers. (I guess it's because feedback and AoE rapes practically all zerg anti-air)
Yes please. Maybe make them initially weak but throw in a Greater Spire carapace upgrade and I honestly think they would seriously help balance things for Zerg in late game air defense. Being that Lurkers have returned though, my guess is Blizzard doesn't want to resort to having to use yet another old unit to balance SC2.
And be forced to deal with lurkers all the time w/o our currently only winnable build vs all races. No thank you. 8 carriers would melt instanty to 30 supply scourges.
You once made a video about making a lot of Mutas and simply avoid his army and taking his bases when the Protoss player moves out. Would this still work, even when there's a ton of cannons? It's easy to see and hear that you enjoy what you are doing! Keep up the great spirit! Cheers from Denmark! (I know 1 Dutch sentence though... Kurnein sind liff!) ;-)
if there's mothership with teleport - you'll loose all the mutas instantly. Also 1-2 high templars can help canons to stop them. Not enough range for mutas.
Yea you're right, but I'm currently playing WoL (poor me...), so you cannot teleport Mothership + army to a base, but other units can be teleported under the Mothership. The storms can be microed if you use magic box, and I'm high gold/low plat, so players aren't really that good. :-)
Hello, great video but I play terran could you make the same video for terran please? I don't know what to do between vikings, liberators, batllecruisers, ghost? What is the best mix? BC seems the best option because they can one shoot canon but vs void ray it's useless.
heya, what do you think about vipers + hydras to counter? Maybe 3 vipers + hydras you can focus a bit better your attack on carriers. Thanks for your vid.
I drop a nudys at the base of the opponent with a small army just to cancel production for a shortwhile and continuing the aggression on the front with non stop support
I'm thinking of a quick change in to mutas? Since the protoss is focusing on building the army of dreams and is so heavily in to the meta game he wont be (as) ready for harass and eventual carrier snipes would be devastating. Toughts?
Иван Мальцев and then you just sit on by a couple of adoption of zealot holding the wall. And if you do manage to build up a maxed out Army you still get s*** on by AOE defense of abilities
I don't know...I have not seen a Pro Zerg ever beaten skytoss+high Templars+archons. I have seen Curious once build 20 spores to turtle at one single base and mass corrupter+vipers at end game trying to force a draw, still the tempests gradually pick off the spores one by one and eventually force curious to move in even with a few abduct and neural parasites, they mass zerg units just stand no chance against storm. At the end of the fight (I forgot who was the Toss, I think it was Trap), he had about 3 carriers left and warp in some zealots and that was just it. Zerg had nothing left.
So = practically all Protoss needs to defend the push at 9 mins is practically a couple of Oracles with Stasis Wards well placed, and then Zerg should probably get a few Vipers as well I guess it can be a nice matchup from there onward but yeah = probably more frustrating for the swarm I guess
It does not work that well when your opponent goes for a mix of Carriers and Clossus or Carriers with hight-templars with psionic storm. Is pretty difficult outsmart those inbalances in the game.
The toss can easily win with sentries (for the sheild) and high templar. I've done this before and a zerg player talked about this strat and said,I cheated
A question: If you somehow end up in an end game versus a lot of carriers do Viper's Parasitic Bomb shred them easily? Im not playing actively yet cause I need new PC for adequate FPS without lag spikes, but Im watching videos and play once in a while. However I havent played a game vs mass carriers yet and Parasitic bomb looks beast versus all these uncontrollable interceptors.
I don't understand why not use ravagers for the siege against the Photon Cannons, because Ravagers are labeled siege units, 4 ravagers skill hits destroy a Cannon, Ravagers are also decente against grouped Carriers.
yeah but for example, in a 6 player ffa, i wiped 3 players quickly and maxed my economy, but this one protoss was left unchecked by the other players and managed to turtle enough and had that carrier strategy completed, how do i counter that as zergs?
310/5000 excellent game and had several similar ones, they attack with fans at first to stop the expansion, they immediately get locked up and after that carry attack they complement it with a mothership, the truth is I have not managed to win a game so will you have any similar? I will appreciate the master classes. : D regards.
Hey Lowko I need help woth this: Im a zerg player and when i play vs a terran that goes Helion and cyclon i cant defend against tath power and the are continously coming and the just have a stupid dmg vs structures so i cant defent with spike crawler and roaches WHAT SHOUL I DO??? T.T
Why don't you include a Nydus Worm? You have a ton of Queens anyway for the Tranfusions. Also you can avoid the static Defence. Since the Protos Players tend to put all Stargates in one Place you can just focus them down. You might have to attack earlier in Order to keep the Nydus alive long enough but simply killing the Stargates and cancelling the Construction of 2 or 3 Carriers is allready huge.
pls make a vid showing how to defend a 1 base protoss all in , I died a lot of times on lader to this strategy . the protoss attacks when 2 imortals are ready and u cant stop em maybe just defend
banes agains imortals and mothership core doesn't help a lot; they kill the stalkers but zealots can tank em pretty well ; idk maybe I cant defent bc I don't have a good micro
The expansion timings are a huge give away, if your opponent doesn't expand within the first 3 minutes (2 minutes if against zerg) you should be preparing for something. just start making units blindly until you get a scout in to see what you are really up against. A ling surround with banelings should take down any 1 base attack as long as you make sure to scout it early enough to be ready for it. If they bring air units your queens can take them down. Until platinum league, you can generally just attack move and still win, so don't worry too much about micro yet.
What about infestors and vipers? I haven't tried it in 1v1, but playing with friends, seeming to pull in the mothership and nuke it down, then control the carriers and let themselves nuke each other worked really well.
The vipers abducting the mothership works really well, fungals on the interceptors to paralyze them for a minute helps. The problem is that both of those units can be feedbacked by the high templar to guarantee anything
True, but chances are that the toss have invested heavily into carriers. Also, they have to turtle up rather than scout, which means they may not even see it coming.
That is also true, but most games i have seen the Protoss gets carriers plus psi-storm. The same high templar used to storm could also feedback your units. Also, have you tried it in 1v1 yet? I am curious to see how that has worked out for you, because this strategy is not unbeatable, its just Zergs haven't worked it out yet. (the three rax reaper was going to be nerfed because it was too OP way back when, what happened? Zerg adapted, mutated, and figured out how to counter it.) One player finding any leads would help us all.
this is like the exact strat by flash, used upgraded goliath to deal with carriers/air strat and mutalisk harrass back in brood war. with how squishy hydras are, why didn't the protoss used storms to deal with them?
Ok, with zerg we understand...but how about the other 2 races? I play protosss as my main race and terran as my secondary. What should i do with them vs mass carriers?
i think high templars will do good storming interceptors and archons even better. Thet phoenixes or void rays vs carriers themselves. And terrain should probably start using ghosts. Vikings are just not quick enough. so ghosts, marines, thors and ravens.
I have a question about a build ive been using recently. I go 2 base fast expand, muta. At 5min i begin making mutas and at 6min i attack with a +1air attack. what ive been wondering is what i should spend my extra minerals on. I end up having 13muta's because of gas limits so i spend the rest of my minerals on zerglings, but i end up having way to many minerals left over. Even if i have 3 bases with queens injecting i cant get enough to spend all my minerals. What should i do? P.s I suck so my micro isnt that great. The game says i have 92apm but i dont believe im that great at it.
I’m having the same problem in PvP. The other player often rushes for Carriers. Does the strategy here apply to Protoss as well? Macro up, get a fourth base, and then build a ton of stalkers (the protoss version of hydras)?
1. Toss didn't support his sky army with mass glaivedepts in early stage (helps to hold early hydra aggression) 2. Carriers didn't kite the position and died 3. Toss didn't make triple upgrades (forge shields+double cybernetics core) 4. Robo+prism+2 immortals looks better for harassment than free loosing adepts (Robobay+prizm speed if carriers maxed out successfully) 5. Where 4th base? Is you want max out carriers, you should control map (1 voidray/2 phoenixes removes overlords) and use Mothercore to teleport carriers across the map. 6. Tactically late sentry warp on 3rd base fight. If you decide spending gas to sentry, do it in time. 7. Slow down creep spreading with #4 advice. Sorry, @Lowko, this strategy counters mass carriers only if toss makes such mistakes as in this video. Pure lazy carriers is bad strategy against zerg continuous aggression. BTW, thanks for this video. Nice job! GG WP
You can try mass marines(minimum 10 barracks with reactor + 2 with lab) and 6-7 ghosts with EMP(throw to interceptors). But this is theory, I haven't yet tried ^ _ ^
So, I'm the scum of the Earth, and I am a mass carrier toss player, and all I can really say is no one has ever beat me once I've maxed. There's a chance battlecruisers could do it with yamatos and good target firing, but for the most part an early game hard push or even all in seems to be the best way to go about it. Vikings won't really do the trick as the carriers just melt them. Smaller early drops to bait out the mothership core's energy are also helpful before you really go in. Mass marines with stim are also a solid plan, but seem to fall off late game.
Justinious Irby I had maxed out my carriers and Mothership and I had let Terran to max out his army of the battlecruisers and fortify him self with missile turrets. No-help for him. Battlecruisers fought well, but they felt from sky really easy. Turrets were easy to destroy with couple of +1 attack immortals 😕 + marines are really not the best counters of carriers from +2 attack upgrade for carriers. No terran was yet able to defeat me once the carriers were maxed out.
Justinious Irby - That is what lowko is saying. He says that once the protoss maxes carriers they are unstoppable, the goal is to stop them before they max.
This makes me suddenly wish Blizzard would add a late game upgrade for queens where they can morph to a more powerful version or something along those lines. Or at least give them a tier 3 movement upgrade.
I've been wanting this forever, but honestly... It would make Queens incredibly overpowered. They are already one of the strongest units in the game.
Usually protosses don't make so many carriers as shown in this video. Often they make 6-8 carriers (maximum) some hight templars with storm and adepts - it destroys hydra-queens immediately. And then, if you make corruptors, protoss turns some templars into archons and produces voidrays (sometime with mothership).
The bad point of this balance is that you exchange expensive limit of hydra-queens-corruptors on cheap interceptors.
Plus the longer a game goes on the farther you can spread creep so movement speed is less of an issue if your not slacking off!
Morph to Broodmother ?
Onyxia This is true unless its a larger map or if your opponent just brings an observer along to clean up all your hard earned creep.
All you need to do is take out enough carriers before your army gets wiped out, then make a second army, or a third. Carriers take a long time to rebuild, Zerg has a production speed advantage that always wins in wars of attrition. By the time protoss maxes out on carriers, Zerg can be floating enough larva and resources to max out hydralisks 2 or three times.
in late game he has 7 stargates
Scourge. You counter Carriers with Scourge.. Oops - wrong millennium :/
spoiler alert ||||||||||||| wins
FluffyZergling NOOO!!! I WANTED IIIIIIIIIIIII TO WIN!
What I could learn, as a new player playing against Elite A.I., is the fact that I need to build a ground army, and also a fleet before 9 minutes of gameplay, since the computer will attack me in less than 10 minutes, and I can't rely just on my fleet to defend myself, and counter-attack. I managed to educate myself to macro properly, also multi-task in order to slow down the A.I. economy, while building my own army. Even though I understand A.I. is pretty much dumb, and always behave the same way, trying to follow up the computer's macro, army build and then counter-attack, helped me a lot to develop my own skills. Watching videos like this one, where we actually see people playing, and the best players to say the least, improve the strategies that I can implement and enriches my understanding about the game itself. So I wish to say thank you for the videos, since it's helping me a lot. I'm indeed not one of the bests, but just knowing that in a week I managed to play properly against the Elite A.I. is very motivating to me to aim higher goals!
AI can be defeated by harassing workers rather easily.
Playing vs players is completely diffirent. Start doing it sooner than later or you'll be vary disappointed when you beat the best AI and loose to the avarage humans because of non AI actions from them.
Set Dark The point isn't a matter of winning or losing against AI. It's a matter of practicing build order and improving the multi-task abilities before face real players. I was aware I couldn't just join a match with people if i didn't know even the basics.
Ain Soph macro practice yes, but builds no. You can practice first 40 seconds using AI, all the rest is different against humans.
Basicaly to beat the AI you just must mine resources and build units one by one in avarage amount. And wait the computer attack. Defend against it and counterattack immidiatly. You win.
And it never works with humans from silver league and higher.
Computer just does not do dozens of things which humans do. Which really alters the flow of the match.
So it's better to start playing agains humans. There are people of your level anyway, you're not unique :)
Set Dark Ok, thanks for clarifying. I thought would be enough to practice against AI for now, but since it seems my macro is good enough, also my understanding, practicing with people seems to be the logical thing to do.
The elite AI is at a low silver league level IF THAT. Practicing against a terrible player who doesn't know what they're doing is still going to do more for you than practicing against the AI.
Railgan did a similar video using queens to tank and hydras to kill interceptors. I like how you include transition tips. Toss could move away from carriers, but investing so heavily into stargate really limits their options.
Very nice tips in this one Lowko. Thanks. 70 worker, 177 supply, 2-2 upgd, 177 supply hydra/queen push at 9min
I've been a big fan of starcraft for 12 years now or so, i've never been really "good", i got my hans ons tarcraft II recently and your videos have been my guide, i can "proudly" say i'm the top score of my team on the 4v4 games i lose.
This, the damn carriers, are some of the few strats i haven't ben able to overcome yet, now i see this video, we'll see what happens.
Keep up the good job man!.
Thanks for the video! It's great to see a mass air counter that doesn't involve air units. Will be giving this a try!
I miss Lowko screaming bye like a little girl at the end of his vids
and the hello
it sounds like "boing!" when he said that.
Dude, i love your channel because of these. I can watch the pro's play anywhere, but almost no one does these. And if they do, they don't do it well like this
Thanks for this one. I know everyone hates playing against mass Carrier so it's cool to see a good demo on how to crack it!
Lowko, im a new player and still learning. currently at harder ai. havnt had the balls to play a real person. Thank you for your videos! I have been learning a lot from them. I really enjoy when you cast too. Thanks Lowko!
Lowko please do a video as terran player trying to beat mass carriers and high templars
Not only zergs hate play against carriers. Even toss and terrans hate carriers.
Vikings are just melting against storms, Thores cant shoot the carriers becouse of some ground meat and immortals.
Maximum997 and what about a lot of bc?
as terran you can easily beat carriers with battlecruisers, i tried in the unit tester and 3 bc vs 3 carriers the bcs with yamato win without losing one of them, and if necessary you can also warp them back to base.
....
Maximum997 tp out of the vipers blinding cloud/ the ht storm
He just add some static defense and void rays. May be some HT. A+click + T T T T ur dead. But may be BC can work, i dont sure.
Carriers outrange BC very hard. And BC just have no speed .
I cannot find an epic 1v1v1 between pro players of all three races and you're the only one I can think of to make that happen.
I bet it could get really crazy, especially if it was twin Archon mode or something. You'd have to cover it in slow motion to get everything. Please do it. XD
This would be very very neat indeed.
Good video lowko. I appreciate your regular and quality content
Literally; have not had a problem vs Protoss since watching this....XOXO
I have played this carrier strategy for a few years and you were playing against a newb. The average Protoss player (like your opponent) will be defensive. But the good ones ( once they get 3 carriers) actually go on offense repeatedly against the opponents bases, using recall once the opponent army shows up. You are right that mass hydras can be effective. For Terran, the best defense against carriers is mines.
as a protoss player who uses the mass carrier quite frequently (though not anymore because it's boring), I can tell you how I counter lowko's strategy. I open with a ton of oracles, snipe bases/drones until hydras are out, which limits the zerg eco substantially. Then, as I add carriers, I also add chargelots, which are absolutely fantastic versus hydras. You can try to shoot the interceptors, but combined chargelot/carrier armies are really really good against hydras. This strategy isn't in the meta but you might want to think about how to counter it based on the growing popularity of chargelots in general.
I found my way here after getting sick and tired of losing to skytoss. There were maybe 2 cases where I didn't lose because of massing hydra's with as many upgrades as possible and barely won. I have had better results on my end by just focus targeting the carriers down as fast as possible because if you don't; they'll just pull back, build more and wipe you out some more. You could see that kinda happening in the video. But hell, if it woks, it works.
This trick works well only if you are ahead in supply and does not work on some space map. The ideal way to counter carrier with mother ship is spore spine queen defence matrix and corruptor + viper combo. pull and snipe. if you have same army size you own him with just shift click click click.
been updated with the starcraft meta looks difficult, great videos man =)
I think, since the newiest patch has been released, that burrow infestors are the only way to deal with carriers, if they really are able to reach a significant amount of them. Then It's just about taking out the oberservers although that can get very hard, if he just keeps them with his carriers and does not make any crucial micro mistake. But i really think that the Burrowed Neuralparasite and the burrowed Fungal are a great tool that zerg now has, to deal with air based armies. I also recommend to use a 2nd Hotkey for the action button, based on what your hotkey for infested terrans is. That just allows you to spam 50 infested terrans in one Second. I've done this couple of times against Battle Cruisers and Carriers and imo it's the only way to really stop a massive army thats based on heavy t3 Units. Maybe i'll try to mix in vipers.
Lowko I love u so much!!! Thank u thank u thank uuuuuu!!!! I hate those carriers so bad when I'm playing Zerg!
as protoss u can counter this zerg strategy with charged zealot + archon and templars supporting your carriers.. also , archon are great counters to corroptors and templars are counters to vipers
Fully upgraded ultras are a pretty good counter, they can just ignore the carriers and melt through the opponents base
nooooooooooooooooo
What about a hydra + corruptors counter? I'm low gold, but I play a lot against higher level players and I usually do this build mid-late and works really fine. Its kinda expensive but, Its really efficient. Good to know Lowko. Nice video!
Well played man
I've played a couple matches against Toss that managed to basically max out carriers (with a mummy-ship). I've ended up beating it with infestors mindcontrolling in background.
Carrier armies lose a lot in that case, the fighter drones do a lot to get in the way of the Toss players army
my favorite channel
This fulla is entertains big time
Actually, target firing carriers is exactly what you DON'T want to do with hydras. Corrupters, sure, but doing that with hydras is a good way to lose your entire army. It's usually just better to wear them down by killing the interceptors and then target firing the carriers only when the interceptor numbers have been thinned out to the single digits. If you have enough of an economy (around 80 drones), you can pretty much produce hydra ling nonstop with 2-3 macro hatches and just overwhelm them by constantly reinforcing along a creep highway.
good tip! love playing zerg and i use infestors/hydras to counter but will try the queens next ;)
Lowko 4k content is best 4k content ^.^
LowkoTV, why you no longer "BUYEEE!! us....? I kind of miss it... :(
Boi!
He did explain it in one of his old videos. Go find it.
quandoanzombie any keyword on the video's title? Really want to know why
MikeTheGreat same
because it sounds like if he was having an orgasm
Great video ..Thanks!
Would love to see this video with terran aswell
AWSOME THX
The reason corruptors don't work is because you would have to focus fire the carriers down. Now you can do that as long as there are like a hand full of them. But as soon as it gets to certain numbers your 40 corruptors will be dead after having focus fired down 4 carriers...
This is super useful! Hope its still relevant. I'm struggling vs carriers. Last time I played starcraft not even the noobs built carriers XD
Noobs spam carriers like braindead idiots and auto win the game
3:09 Queen going creep skating.
This is a great tutorial!
I think ive played you before :) Xerxes is my screen name, nice video ty for the good tips.
Easy make carriers as zerg
deathwind gaming-xbox thinking outside the box!
still a hard win, with queen and hydralisk, but indeed it work. I am gonna try that, I am always losing against carrier strat. but you definitely right after 10 min game is over if the protoss have still 3 bases.
Looks great, will check it asap! THX
Nice guide Lowko. Only thing that I am wondering is how well does this work when the Protoss player actually harasses like in that Stats vs Byul game. In this game Protoss really didn't do anything but sat.
If they go for glaive adepts, hide your banelings just out of vision of the shade as it goes in, then charge in with the banelings and finish them off with your lings. A wasted investment for them.
If they go phoenix put a few (2-4) spores in each mineral line, unless you are playing against a top tier grandmaster player they will lose a phoenix almost every time they try to pick something up. Phoenix are not cheap as they are equal to the cost of a mutalisk, so it is a wasted investment for them.
If they go for an oracle or two, a couple queens per hatchery will shut it down. Oracles cost an insane amount of gas and are not worth it unless they kill 5+ workers and are kept alive for revelations the rest of the game. dt/archon drop costs 500 of each resource for the 4 dts/2 archons, 200 minerals for the warp prism, and 150 of each for the dark shrine. That is 850 minerals and 650 gas invested + (150,100) for the twilight council if they don't already have it, unless they kill a hatchery, 25+ workers, or your entire army, it is not worth it if the goal is to get to carriers.
Basically unless you let them do severe damage with their harassing units, it is a wasted investment for them.
I think that is about it, let me know if there is anything else you run into.
+1 Thumbs up for "the flying things!" :D
Haven’t seen any pro player use carriers in a long time. Wanted to watch a video on some counter play though.
Aw yeah. Great vid!
Thx for video, i am new to sc, and mostly look at your guids.
I thought answer for how to beat flytoss will be, dont let that max :D
200k subs incoming!! Yahoo!!
The protoss should've had an upgraded mothership core that wouldve cloaked the cannons and the carriers by that point in time.
I think carriers are already too broken
Cool answer! Thanks a lot!!!
Great advice thank you!
Great video, thanks. There is hope again haha!
I feel like the way to fight mass carrier is to finish toss before HTs come out.
I never saw any pro match that zerg won against carriers when bunch of HTs were out with carriers. (I guess it's because feedback and AoE rapes practically all zerg anti-air)
Imagine having scourges from campaign
Yes please. Maybe make them initially weak but throw in a Greater Spire carapace upgrade and I honestly think they would seriously help balance things for Zerg in late game air defense. Being that Lurkers have returned though, my guess is Blizzard doesn't want to resort to having to use yet another old unit to balance SC2.
they had those back in brood
need to free the scourge
reck thouse stupid skytoss players
And be forced to deal with lurkers all the time w/o our currently only winnable build vs all races. No thank you. 8 carriers would melt instanty to 30 supply scourges.
You once made a video about making a lot of Mutas and simply avoid his army and taking his bases when the Protoss player moves out. Would this still work, even when there's a ton of cannons?
It's easy to see and hear that you enjoy what you are doing! Keep up the great spirit! Cheers from Denmark! (I know 1 Dutch sentence though... Kurnein sind liff!) ;-)
if there's mothership with teleport - you'll loose all the mutas instantly. Also 1-2 high templars can help canons to stop them.
Not enough range for mutas.
Yea you're right, but I'm currently playing WoL (poor me...), so you cannot teleport Mothership + army to a base, but other units can be teleported under the Mothership.
The storms can be microed if you use magic box, and I'm high gold/low plat, so players aren't really that good. :-)
Hello, great video but I play terran could you make the same video for terran please? I don't know what to do between vikings, liberators, batllecruisers, ghost? What is the best mix? BC seems the best option because they can one shoot canon but vs void ray it's useless.
heya, what do you think about vipers + hydras to counter? Maybe 3 vipers + hydras you can focus a bit better your attack on carriers.
Thanks for your vid.
I drop a nudys at the base of the opponent with a small army just to cancel production for a shortwhile and continuing the aggression on the front with non stop support
How does Terran set up to counter carriers? What unit trades well with them? I'm playing on a high diamond low master level.
I'm thinking of a quick change in to mutas? Since the protoss is focusing on building the army of dreams and is so heavily in to the meta game he wont be (as) ready for harass and eventual carrier snipes would be devastating. Toughts?
Mutalisks are so expensive and would die so quickly to interceptors that I don't think you would get your moneys worth.
U forgot to mention that there is WAY easier way to counter mass-carrier play. U just rush him immediately and thats it...
Иван Мальцев and then you just sit on by a couple of adoption of zealot holding the wall. And if you do manage to build up a maxed out Army you still get s*** on by AOE defense of abilities
I don't know...I have not seen a Pro Zerg ever beaten skytoss+high Templars+archons. I have seen Curious once build 20 spores to turtle at one single base and mass corrupter+vipers at end game trying to force a draw, still the tempests gradually pick off the spores one by one and eventually force curious to move in even with a few abduct and neural parasites, they mass zerg units just stand no chance against storm. At the end of the fight (I forgot who was the Toss, I think it was Trap), he had about 3 carriers left and warp in some zealots and that was just it. Zerg had nothing left.
Brilliant! I would like to do the same but with terran
thank you so much for this
So = practically all Protoss needs to defend the push at 9 mins is practically a couple of Oracles with Stasis Wards well placed, and then Zerg should probably get a few Vipers as well
I guess it can be a nice matchup from there onward but yeah = probably more frustrating for the swarm I guess
If there's Oracles, just bring an Overseer and you'll be fine. Hydras can snipe Stasis Wards.
Nice video
It does not work that well when your opponent goes for a mix of Carriers and Clossus or Carriers with hight-templars with psionic storm. Is pretty difficult outsmart those inbalances in the game.
Fortunatly those braindead idiots just spam carriers unless it's high elo
The toss can easily win with sentries (for the sheild) and high templar. I've done this before and a zerg player talked about this strat and said,I cheated
A question: If you somehow end up in an end game versus a lot of carriers do Viper's Parasitic Bomb shred them easily? Im not playing actively yet cause I need new PC for adequate FPS without lag spikes, but Im watching videos and play once in a while. However I havent played a game vs mass carriers yet and Parasitic bomb looks beast versus all these uncontrollable interceptors.
Carrier is just a expensive unit that can make a very cost effective smaller and cheaper unit. :)
Mass Hydra arms terrans too
I don't understand why not use ravagers for the siege against the Photon Cannons, because Ravagers are labeled siege units, 4 ravagers skill hits destroy a Cannon, Ravagers are also decente against grouped Carriers.
yeah but for example, in a 6 player ffa, i wiped 3 players quickly and maxed my economy, but this one protoss was left unchecked by the other players and managed to turtle enough and had that carrier strategy completed, how do i counter that as zergs?
310/5000
excellent game and had several similar ones, they attack with fans at first to stop the expansion, they immediately get locked up and after that carry attack they complement it with a mothership, the truth is I have not managed to win a game so will you have any similar? I will appreciate the master classes. : D regards.
hi Lowko
i bought the game 3 days ago. (So i'm prettybad) and i wanted to ask if there are some tips to get better in SC2.
Hey Lowko I need help woth this: Im a zerg player and when i play vs a terran that goes Helion and cyclon i cant defend against tath power and the are continously coming and the just have a stupid dmg vs structures so i cant defent with spike crawler and roaches
WHAT SHOUL I DO??? T.T
Why don't you include a Nydus Worm? You have a ton of Queens anyway for the Tranfusions. Also you can avoid the static Defence. Since the Protos Players tend to put all Stargates in one Place you can just focus them down.
You might have to attack earlier in Order to keep the Nydus alive long enough but simply killing the Stargates and cancelling the Construction of 2 or 3 Carriers is allready huge.
pls make a vid showing how to defend a 1 base protoss all in , I died a lot of times on lader to this strategy . the protoss attacks when 2 imortals are ready and u cant stop em maybe just defend
Tudor Mihai as zerg just scout it and make a lot of banes and lings
banes agains imortals and mothership core doesn't help a lot; they kill the stalkers but zealots can tank em pretty well ; idk maybe I cant defent bc I don't have a good micro
The expansion timings are a huge give away, if your opponent doesn't expand within the first 3 minutes (2 minutes if against zerg) you should be preparing for something. just start making units blindly until you get a scout in to see what you are really up against. A ling surround with banelings should take down any 1 base attack as long as you make sure to scout it early enough to be ready for it. If they bring air units your queens can take them down. Until platinum league, you can generally just attack move and still win, so don't worry too much about micro yet.
The One Minecraft-eer ty ill remind it
Useful info)
What about infestors and vipers? I haven't tried it in 1v1, but playing with friends, seeming to pull in the mothership and nuke it down, then control the carriers and let themselves nuke each other worked really well.
The vipers abducting the mothership works really well, fungals on the interceptors to paralyze them for a minute helps. The problem is that both of those units can be feedbacked by the high templar to guarantee anything
True, but chances are that the toss have invested heavily into carriers. Also, they have to turtle up rather than scout, which means they may not even see it coming.
That is also true, but most games i have seen the Protoss gets carriers plus psi-storm. The same high templar used to storm could also feedback your units. Also, have you tried it in 1v1 yet? I am curious to see how that has worked out for you, because this strategy is not unbeatable, its just Zergs haven't worked it out yet. (the three rax reaper was going to be nerfed because it was too OP way back when, what happened? Zerg adapted, mutated, and figured out how to counter it.) One player finding any leads would help us all.
this is like the exact strat by flash, used upgraded goliath to deal with carriers/air strat and mutalisk harrass back in brood war.
with how squishy hydras are, why didn't the protoss used storms to deal with them?
Sorry, but what if they defend a 4th with colossi and ground army and start making carriers at that point?
Ok, with zerg we understand...but how about the other 2 races?
I play protosss as my main race and terran as my secondary. What should i do with them vs mass carriers?
Mass voids vs Mass carriers and as terran marine balls kinda work I guess.
i think high templars will do good storming interceptors and archons even better. Thet phoenixes or void rays vs carriers themselves.
And terrain should probably start using ghosts. Vikings are just not quick enough. so ghosts, marines, thors and ravens.
I have a question about a build ive been using recently. I go 2 base fast expand, muta. At 5min i begin making mutas and at 6min i attack with a +1air attack. what ive been wondering is what i should spend my extra minerals on. I end up having 13muta's because of gas limits so i spend the rest of my minerals on zerglings, but i end up having way to many minerals left over. Even if i have 3 bases with queens injecting i cant get enough to spend all my minerals. What should i do? P.s I suck so my micro isnt that great. The game says i have 92apm but i dont believe im that great at it.
What do you do if they support the carriers with hi temp storms?
I’m having the same problem in PvP. The other player often rushes for Carriers. Does the strategy here apply to Protoss as well? Macro up, get a fourth base, and then build a ton of stalkers (the protoss version of hydras)?
what if you play with a 20 minute peace treaty so you can max out your armies
1. Toss didn't support his sky army with mass glaivedepts in early stage (helps to hold early hydra aggression)
2. Carriers didn't kite the position and died
3. Toss didn't make triple upgrades (forge shields+double cybernetics core)
4. Robo+prism+2 immortals looks better for harassment than free loosing adepts (Robobay+prizm speed if carriers maxed out successfully)
5. Where 4th base? Is you want max out carriers, you should control map (1 voidray/2 phoenixes removes overlords) and use Mothercore to teleport carriers across the map.
6. Tactically late sentry warp on 3rd base fight. If you decide spending gas to sentry, do it in time.
7. Slow down creep spreading with #4 advice.
Sorry, @Lowko, this strategy counters mass carriers only if toss makes such mistakes as in this video.
Pure lazy carriers is bad strategy against zerg continuous aggression.
BTW, thanks for this video. Nice job! GG WP
Hi Loco!Do you move and hold when you attack with the hydras?? or is it move and stop? how do you do that one step move to attack and retreat?
attack click, right click back, repeat to one step attack/retreat. When he's attacking he's probably just attack/clicking.
I thought it was right click on map and hold really quick many times
Mate, how do you beat that protoss army as terrain? :(
@lowkowtv please watch scarlett vs noregret match from nation wars 4. it was a pretty fun ZvZ game. would like to hear your thoughts.
pls a how to counter carriers as terran.
You can try mass marines(minimum 10 barracks with reactor + 2 with lab) and 6-7 ghosts with EMP(throw to interceptors). But this is theory, I haven't yet tried ^ _ ^
Tickere Try mass Ravens.
So, I'm the scum of the Earth, and I am a mass carrier toss player, and all I can really say is no one has ever beat me once I've maxed. There's a chance battlecruisers could do it with yamatos and good target firing, but for the most part an early game hard push or even all in seems to be the best way to go about it. Vikings won't really do the trick as the carriers just melt them. Smaller early drops to bait out the mothership core's energy are also helpful before you really go in. Mass marines with stim are also a solid plan, but seem to fall off late game.
Justinious Irby I had maxed out my carriers and Mothership and I had let Terran to max out his army of the battlecruisers and fortify him self with missile turrets. No-help for him. Battlecruisers fought well, but they felt from sky really easy. Turrets were easy to destroy with couple of +1 attack immortals 😕
+ marines are really not the best counters of carriers from +2 attack upgrade for carriers.
No terran was yet able to defeat me once the carriers were maxed out.
Justinious Irby - That is what lowko is saying. He says that once the protoss maxes carriers they are unstoppable, the goal is to stop them before they max.
how do you switch so fast to the bases?
Hotkey Base Cam
Has this video been updated for patch 4.0 or does this strat still apply? I am a plat 2.
Nicee explain :)
how to properly deal with carriers in 3v3 or 4v4?