What the hell do you do against phoenix??

I find this unit a bit overkill. They need to change their speed to a speed upgrade.

I can't seem to be able to do anything against his unit as Zerg. He comes in, lifts my queen and GG, I now cannot do anything. He goes and obliterates my overlord population.

I think the main issue with this unit is the lift ability. They should either make it a researchable ability or make it so that it costs a hell of a lot more.

It's also incredibly frustrating that the only counters to this unit are the units it's good against, light. Hydralisks, once lifted simply melt to this unit, and with good enough micro, mutalisks just melt.

I've tried corruptors against this unit and it's pretty unusable they can't catch up at all.

It's really frustrating to see 1-2 early phoenix killing your entire overlord group without much effort.

Not only does he come in and obliterate my overlords, each pheonix is pretty sure way of scouting my entire base.

I think the best solution is simply to make graviton beam a research ability of 100/100.

Spore Crawlers and Hydralisks should do the trick. The Phoenix is incredibly frail, and should go down really fast against them. Phoenix are crap vs Corruptors, also.

Same thing you do against Voids.

If you see a stargate go down before anything else, throw down 2 queens at each base and your fine. He won't have enough Phoenix early enough to lift AND kill both queens, that kind of numbers doesn't come till the 10-11 minute mark of the game if he is constantly producing. By then you should easily have lair tech and either have Hydras or Infesters.

Hydras are okay, but Infesters are the perfect counter to Phoenix. Fungal Growth plus 1-2 Infested Terran = lots of dead Phoenix. If you are going that route it requires good mini map awareness so you get the fungal off before they lift your Infester. And even if you REALLY didn't want Infesters, 1-2 Spore Crawler + 2 Queens will easily push back large Phoenix numbers. Even if he does commit because he wants your queens dead, he will lose several Phoenix to the crawler(s). And if you look at it cost for cost wise, 1 Crawler and 2 Queens per base is a pretty cost effective deterrent against Phoenix...

extra queens, hydras. If you cant beat something, it doesn't mean that it deserve a nerf :)

Of all the things......you suggest ANOTHER TOSS NERF. To Toss air which is not all that great. Making phoenix graviton beam an upgrade will make a unit that is heavily micro intensive and forces toss to have a smaller ground army useless to get early. Just do a ramp scout. Every so often pop up the ramp and check the unit count guarding the ramp. If it's lower than what you expect then he's going phoenix/void ray. But really just get mass queens. They can always help creep spread. 3 queens then train up 2 more once you do a ramp scout that reveals a low number of ground units. If he goes air then you are ready for him. You spread out some creep. Have 2-3 with enough energy for tranfusion then if he pushes you, you can transfuse and hold off even against a ground push. Or you can just make an evo chamber. Spore at each mineral line. One extra spore near your main mineral line and put your overlords there.

You should watch game 1 GSL Season 3 Ro64 LiquidRet vs Cyrano. Cyrano fast expos and double stargate in close air positions. At the time when Cyrano has only 2 phoenixes Ret just sacrifices one overlord to scout it. Forces cyrano to push with 2 phoenixes or else zerg will be ready by the time he has 4. After that Toss keeps 6 phoenixes alive for minutes. Killing off overlords. Graviton beaming drones. Zerg puts 1 spore crawler at each mineral line and toss gives up graviton beaming workers. Phoenixes die quite fast to spores. Then while toss is doing this zerg just makes a bunch of roaches and pressures toss. Zerg expands to 3rd. Gets hydras but can't quite catch the phoenixes but it stops the harass a bit. Gets to ard 180 food roach hydra with a spire already done and just pushes toss as the phoenixes and colossus come out. Makes a ton of corruptors and kills off phoenix and colossus. Phoenix harass stops there for the game.

And consider if you nerf the speed for it then the one role it is slightly good at: mutalisk killing will be seriously nerfed. You can theoretically kill off an unlimited number of mutalisks with phoenixes but it requires so much micro it's almost impossible. And without that speed vikings would be more effective against phoenixes. But basically corruptors is what you want to counter phoenixes which is what you said you tried. You don't need to catch them. Just stop them from harassing you. Only phoenixes can catch up to phoenixes. And another thing 1-2 phoenixes isn't that scary. Just use your queens and kill them. 4 phoenixes is the minimum amount to graviton one queen and kill it before the beam runs out.

Lastly if you're losing all your overlords to 1-2 early phoenixes then stop doing Day[9]'s funday monday no queen strategy.:P

I'll try to get infestors into my play style. Extra queens maybe. Queens seriously need to start with 50 mana.

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Originally Posted by Wankey

I'll try to get infestors into my play style.

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Be sure to get the energy upgrade before spawning infestors if the harass is pretty strong. Or else BEAM!!! then dead infestor.

I hate phoenix when i got my thors..... Imo they should do the same with phoenix as they do with medivacs.

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I hate phoenix when i got my thors..... Imo they should do the same with phoenix as they do with medivacs.

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But the phoenix can't lift thors or shoot at them and they're light air units. To the thor they're like mutalisks but without ever having to worry about taking damage.

Phoenix need to wreak some havoc to be worth the tech investment for the P; if you see phoenix you can be somewhat relaxed about the timing of any colossi / HT tech; get some more queens, protect the overlords you can and prepare to replace those you cant, relax production of ground units for a bit in favour of dones, tech/ugprades and expand sooner than you otehrwise would.

... phoenix arnt a problem unless you are already at a disadvantage from earlier, or if your caught wtf-offguard, but really, if you dont have a tell on what the p is doing, you should ahve more than one queen per base, to be safe. and that realyl makes you quite safe.

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Originally Posted by JackhammerIV

But the phoenix can't lift thors or shoot at them and they're light air units. To the thor they're like mutalisks but without ever having to worry about taking damage.

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What Twilice is referring to is the Thor's attack priority. The most recent patched fixed it so that Thors wouldn't fixate on Medivacs and wouldn't attack ground targets, even though Thors do next to no damage to Medivacs.

However, since Phoenix have an attack the patch changed nothing in this match up. Meaning that Thors will always take shooting air targets as a priority over attacking ground targets. So if you lead with some non cluster Phoenix, you can buy enough time to get ground forces into a Thor armies face, without having to worry about their long range and powerful ground attack. Its not so much that Phoenix sit there are take the damage from Thors well, its just that Thors are stupid and can be fooled to not attack the real threat which would be the high gateway count.

Phoenix aren't really a threat until they're at least 4 in count. I keep macroing, defend my front, and run the guy over. My goal is to out mass him in ground forces, all the while keeping him from expanding, and maximizing map control since phoenix does cut on ground forces to be too early and deadly like that.

When it's late game phoenix, and he invested much instead of colossi, it's a done deal.

I just keep ovies close, get speed, and prioritize on smashing his front. I don't know, but a toss going phoenix without harassing early looks like a dead protoss or a really good player.

Making phoenix does slow down protoss quite a bit. Make some spore crawlers or hydras and possibly some extra queens so they can transfuse each other.

Definitely dont overcommit to hydras and especially spore crawlers though. Two crawlers per base is fine. Before you make any more hydras, make sure you scout what your opponent is doing. If you see them going for colossi, tech immediately to corrupters to mix with your hydra/roach. If all you see are gateways/stargates, you can make more a lot hydras.

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Originally Posted by Wankey

They need to change their speed to a speed upgrade.

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Your approach towards balance is very... biased. And I'm just being polite here...

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Originally Posted by Thumper

Making phoenix does slow down protoss quite a bit. Make some spore crawlers or hydras and possibly some extra queens so they can transfuse each other.

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I disagree with this completly
if whatever it does (at least with me) it makes Protoss more secure against Zerg and dynamic in micro/macro
lot's of people underrate the unit, alot of people noticed that it's very helpful against not only Zerg but against Protoss and Terran, from my point of view stargate tech is needed at least in mid game, more earlier even better

against phoenix there are only Hydras and corruptors, mass ammounts of queens

I don't think they need a nerf, more a small rework to make them more as standard fighters, you know what you use mutas for. You know what you use vikings for you know what you use corruptors for etc. etc.

But what do you use void rays and phoenix(I guess harras) for?

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Originally Posted by Twilice

I don't think they need a nerf, more a small rework to make them more as standard fighters, you know what you use mutas for. You know what you use vikings for you know what you use corruptors for etc. etc.

But what do you use void rays and phoenix(I guess harras) for?

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I use Vikings to Fight Banshees and colossi and capital ships, Mutas to harass, Corruptors to fight mutalisks and Colossus, I use Phoenix to harass and fight off banshees and mutalisks. We're half way there

Well a zerg going mass roach is a good reason to get void rays. Or a terran going marauder, tank heavy. With enough void rays you obviously know what to use it for: TOTAL BASE DESTRUCTION. Phoenixes to kill off drops, hunt overlords and fend off mutalisks. I've been trying to think of a way to use Toss air in PvP. Considering most Toss go robo tech i want to try to exploit the fact they can't shoot up. But colossus of course melt ground units so so fast.:P If i figure out a way to get it to work nicely for me then I guess that'll be one choice in PvP.

Move all your overloads to either next to your army or deep in your base, use sporecrawlers since they cant hit them, remember to transfuse and constantly produce queens/hydras, you could also put some pressure with zergling or hydras forcing him to make at least some zealots or stalkers.

Jojo, men det är inte så att "ops a barracks with techlab, better get a starport" or "roach warren better get me some starports".

Twilice has clearly been drinking, speaking swedish on teh forum, unprovoked!

Lol, wtf... actaully I have not been drinking. But maybe someone put something in my glass of water.....

Err I guess I was just waaay more tired that I even knew. But I actually don't know why I am this tired, I have only slept a bit less then the recommended hours. (this does not look good for the showmatch, what if I do these kind of mistakes but in the game instead like countering banelings and infestors with more marines)

To the OP, seriously, getting some queens and spore crawlers would shut down phoenix harass totally.... after that, all the protoss is left with is some pretty paper planes.

Phoenix's are already so sad, nerfing them anymore is just gonna make us scream for the corsair to come back. I wish they still had the overload ability so that they could at least counter mutas in a straight up fight instead of needing to fly them around like sissies... and time spent micro'ing phoenixs = time not spent on the rest of your army which is probably dying.

I used to use phoenix play vs zerg.... worked all the way to low diamond simply because the zerg didn't know what to do. However, if you play a rank 50 diamond and above, almost all know how to handle it. The 7 roach rush is one such counter. Bring the fight to the protoss doorstep. If he went phoenix's, his ground units will be woefully inadequate. I changed my build to start off with a void ray because of that.... but even then, the 1 void takes quite awhile to polish off the roaches.... time spent killing off all my probes! Once the initial defence is broken.... streams of zerglings just start coming in behind the roaches, and its pretty much gg from there. Having climbed to where I am, I've given up on the stargate opening and now use straight 3 warpgate tech to defend/harass/expand. If I scout a spire, 2 stargates at mid game help me stay alive... until the hydras come and I realize I spent so much on phoenix's I haven't got enough gas to tech up to templer storm yet. Now all I need is for the lurker to show up in HotS then I'll be really screwed coz then I must make robo first for the obs... same as what all toss face now vs terran and the potential of banshee harass.