This is ALL I see in free-for-all - every time. At least one or two players do this in each match. I'm a pretty average player. Not great. Not terrible. But this kills me every time. Other than rushing Protoss before they can make them, are there ANY counters to 10-20 void rays coming at you?
free for all isn't balanced, (tbh blizzard only balances 1v1), but no, 20 void rays charged will kill everything
General strategy: the more void rays there are, the harder it becomes to get those void rays charged on just units. Once they have 30+ void rays, the only thing that survives long enough to charge up their attacks are buildings. So you should be fine as long as you don't let the void rays just waltz into your base and charge on your buildings. Also, a huge void ray fleet tends to clump together, so splash damage becomes very effective. Protoss: stalkers and phoenixes beat non-charged void rays. But if they get charged in your base then you are pretty much SOL unless you have a mothership to vortex them (which removes their charge because they can't attack) or if you have tons of high templar to storm. Terran: marines and vikings beat non-charged void rays. If there's only a few charged void rays, you still can beat them with tons of marines. If there's 30+ charged void rays in your base, your only hope is raven's seeker missile to splash them down. I've heard thors also help if you have like 10 or more. Zerg: Queens, hydralisks, infested terrans (and fungal growth so they can't just fly away), and mutalisks beat non-charged void rays OR a small number of charged void rays. If there's 30+ charged void rays in your base, you might be able to remove their charge by using fungal growth to keep them out of range of things to attack.
I have a hard time seeing a problem with a strategy that you know is coming and is just to mass 1 kind of air unit that is very vulnerable to aa. Anyway, I play zerg, and a combination of infestors and hydras will roflstomp that pretty good, especially if you engage in any sort of flanking/ambush tactic on them using burrow and fungal growth. I don't play the other races enough to give you detailed feedback, but psi storm and emp seem to be the obvious choices. Flanking with a seeker missle would probably also give them hell (forcing them to either take the missle hit or "run" into the units in front of them). I'm kinda curious at how VRs would deal with carriers kiting them too.
Hydras kill voids pretty well. Marines kill voids as well. But seriously, its FFA. FFA is all just fun and games and should not be considered serious gameplay. In FFA, sometimes the strangest strategy wins. I massed Banelings while everyone killed each other... then when only 2 were left I, sent in about 150 supply worth of banelings and won. (Team Liquid FFA. Commentated by Husky). It's funny seeing pro players cheese each other and messing around, lol. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txn0KC14rM0
Doesn't work at all if void ray speed is upgraded. Believe me, you don't want to try beating void rays with carriers or battlecruisers. You would get stomped.
I wouldn't try with just flagships. The idea is to force them into a situation where they have to chase further and faster than they would like. Psi storms and stalkers to follow up. If you don't have any range to draw them in then you have no real power to prevent them from chewing you up from the outside. It's the same principle as using broodlords as zerg.
A guy won a FFA I played recently by making ONLY mass ravens! No other unit, nothing. And it was awsome, lol. Btw, FFA is only meant for fun, don't get frustrated over it. If you wanna win FFA matches a lot, turtle a lot and keep a low profile till other players take each other out and then you move in to finish them off after they'll be recovering from a big fight. But that doesn't really teach you much game-wise and is not good training, but it's fun and you can try out any kind of weird/strange/funny tactic or unit composition or cheese or whatever and see how it goes and in the end have some fun, it's ffa Btw, yeah, the game was weird. It's funny how people find it hard to react to quite basic stuff like spore crawlers(even if it's so many of them).. Where are the ****ing carriers?!?
Did you watch the whole thing? I couldn't make it to the VRs as I was vomiting in my mouth before then. Anyway, I've heard a lot about mass ravens, but I haven't actually watched any games with it. How does it deal with ground units? Turrets don't seem like they'd be that effective and I was under the impression seeker missles could only target air units. Something like a basic stalker build seems like it would stomp all over it, simply running them out of energy by hit-and-run.
No, I don't usually talk that much. Usually the guy that might sometimes respond to the GL HF but other than that I don't say anything and just ping things my partner might need to know. I just get in rare moods where I feel the need to sh*t talk or just babble. And I don't claim this replay was good. xD Or the gameplay. It was just a crap strat that worked vs a noob. As I stated in the thread I made to post it a few days b ack. Needed someone to watch it. >_>
If you're Terran, Ghost's EMP is insanely useful against a large amount of void rays, especially since they will all be grouped close together.
