What the hell do you do against phoenix??

[Wankey]

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.

[Norfindel]

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.

[ooZer0]

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...

[evillesh]

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

[JackhammerIV]

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

[Wankey]

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

[JackhammerIV]

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

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

[Twilice]

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

[JackhammerIV]

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

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.

[Todie]

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.