Hello again! I listened to the tips I received and pretty much stopped rushing early with zergs. I now try to get to Mutas asap and honestly, i havent seen anythin that counters mutas very well. I'm only in gold, but it seems that if i get mutas it's pretty much over for the opponent. I now win at a good percentage. When I lose it's mostly from not seeing an attack coming with my overlord outside his base due to not looking at the map enough and not putting up spine crawlers in time. So what can the 3 races do to counter Mutas? Any type of defense buildings are practically useless against 15 or more mutas with a defense upgrade. So are hydras from what I saw, unless they're present in a ridiculous number. Same things for stalkers. So what can people do to counter mutas from a zerg with a better economy? I'm interested in knowing so I won't be caught unaware if it happens. Thanks
Combat Shield/Stim marines combined with Vikings do a great job for Terran, and Protoss don't really have any exceptional hard counter for them, being that I find Phoenixes to pretty much suck. Blink Stalkers would probbaly be their best bet
Any kind of static defense will do, Photon cannons, Spore crawlers (yeah, sure), and turrets (especially the turrets). But if they do throw down some of these don't cry! Attack their unit producing buildings! People often will just put their static defense only by their mineral line. Now for the units. Marines, especially w/ stim and shields. Vikings also do relatively well, especially if micro'd. They can kite mutas pretty easily. Thors with their splash damage can be really difficult to deal with. But, if you split your mutas into groups and spread them out, the splash can be mitigated. Battle Cruisers also do moderately well against them. Stalkers do well. Especially with Sentry backup, the sentries do good damage and their guardian shield cuts muta's damage by 1/3 (6 instead of 9, unsure how the bounce is affected). Pheonix's do well, as mutas are light units. Void rays can be difficult (especially if charged) but they can't kite the mutas easily as mutas have a faster speed (but low acceleration) Hydras do well against mutas. As do queens, if you have lots of them. Corrupters do okay, I think, but I've never tried. Think that's it...
As a protoss player when early scouting if you're rushing Mutas I'll know by how many extractors you have and how much your units are in ratio to your tech that you're building. (Spire) Generally what I do is I rush warpgates, since I have chronoboost it cuts my time in half while making stalkers. If you rush Mutas I'd have two pylons near my nexus and start rushing in stalkers, or I'd build cannons, (three or four) around my nexus so if you do decide to bomb my base I'd have protection plus Stalkers to counter the blow. that's just me this is all in a span of about 6-10 mins in the game, that would be around the time you'd rush with Mutas. I would then probably counter with Zealot Stalker rush while securing my base with a cannon here and there. Believe it or not, Cannons are useful.
I'm surprised all of you think anti-air buildings are any good at all... they're the first things i take out with my mutas... ill go to the enemy's base from behind, find the towers and decide how to pop them one by one without more than 2 shooting at my mutas at a time just to get enough room to attack his economy. With 15 mutas it takes less than 5 seconds to destroy an anti-air building.. not much loss to the mutas in that timeframe. As for the stalkers.. they're ground units, if you have expansions, wont you have an hard time protecting them? I havent been in a game where the Terrans could bring enough Vikings to be a threat yet. Maybe i've just been lucky until now.
Usually when I attack a zerg base, I leave 2 or 3 missile turrets over my minerals for any possible muta counter attacks. As for my army itself, stimmed marines, possibly backed by a few vikings later in the game, do just fine. It's true that for 15 mutas, static defense isn't so good. But if you get 15 mutas against me (and it's not exceptionally late game), then I've already lost. At that point it wouldn't be the mutas that kill me, it would be my apparently abysmal macro or lack of harassment that allowed you to get 15 mutas against me unchecked. So far that hasn't happened.
Yea if they haven't found that your going mutas and have just been sitting around with their thumb up their bum letting you sit back and also tech the armor then Idk how you could lose. Mutas are good vs toss because lower level players will go Phoenixes and not know what to do with a unit that can't attack ground very well at all.
Would anyone like to practice these things with me someday? Random matches are fun but they're not really great for practicing stuff and I don't know anyone who bought SC2 yet. Used to be more the FPS type.
I think there is a share your name thread. Sadly my new computer is being ordered as we speak (my old one died when my sister hit the tower) but if you PM someone and ask them I'm sure they'd agree. just be careful when someone already knows your going to mutas they will probably go straight to the hard counter.
As other people have mentioned, static defense depends on how many mutas you have. I've found that even with 15 mutas, I'll normally lose one or two if I take a missle turret on if it has a partner shooting too. That is NOT a good trade as each turret costs 100 min. It would only be worth it if you could then hit them hard afterwards, but most players will have their army back there before you can do anything. If their army is out of place...then gj. If you go to the teamliquid website they also have a huge looking for player thread. Also, various people here (such as me) have a sort of wanted ad in their sigs looking for peeps. You can always ask them (me) if they could help you out.
Those must be some terrible opponents you are facing, at least from what I can tell based on your op. Mutalisks do not stand up to Hydralisks. I'm not sure what you consider "ridiculous numbers", but Hydralisks both dominate and are considerably cheaper to make than Mutalisks. If your opponent is losing with anything like 2/3 the number of Hydras as you have Mutas (still leaving THEM plenty more disposable income) then they are doing something terribly wrong, e.g. attack-moving and not microing while you focus fire and recycle fired upon Mutas to the rear. The only disadvantage the Hydras have there is mobility, which the opponent should be countering by a combination of taking adavantage of the lower cost (more Hydras, allowing him to cover multiple spots), getting Infestors (to fungal growth your Mutas long enough to pick them off), and cutting them off or unburrowing from underneath. Spore colonies.....well, yeah. It would be better to have Hydralisks. The main advantage of Spore colonies are: 1) They are tough to kill and cost you way too many Mutas to go through. If your able to ff these down at your leisure then again, something is wrong with the opponent. 2) They are relatively cheap and provide a form of anti-harassment while you launch an attack (i.e. so your Mutas can't freely gang rape workers while the opponent sends his units to attack you). 3) They are tier 1....so they can be used to buy time. I actually use them this way the most in zerg vs zerg. Since I primarily use a 2x hatch baneling/speedling strategy I am vulnerable to early tech such as Mutas. I get around that by 1) timing my first attack to do a lot of damage just before/as you get mutas; 2) Playing hit and run with my speedlings after that (i.e. if you try to *** for tat with your first Mutas I'll swarm you with speedlings....and when you try to defend I just run the much faster speedlings away); 3) Using Queens/spore crawlers both for early defense as I get Hydras to finish you and to help defend against harassment while I move my Hydras/speed/banelings in for the kill.
I'd wager Carriers (with some Phoenixes to support) to be the best counter - their attack range is almost three times that of a Mutalisk, and even if the enemy focus fires they still have to fly through a storm of Interceptors to get to you.
True. Two problems though: 1) Carriers are tier three, so you'll have to hold the mutas off for a while. If you can though, it should work, but leads into problem three. 2) After you kill the mutas, you have carriers. The only thing worse would be to have archons.
