Simple question... In pvp, what counters 20+ void rays. I played against a guy and we had some minor ground skirmmishs, but I built up cannons and stalkers with blink and I still get slaughtered when 20+ VR's make their way. Help!
It may seem rather odd, but phoenixes counter void rays, even charged ones. You just need to have a decent numerical advantage (and some air weapons upgrades).
Simple anwser is to push before they can mass them. Make two gateways / warpgates, then robotics and observer (or hallucinate phoenix), then 2 more warpgates. If you see stargates and only a little ground army, quickly warp in some stalkers and move out, make proxy pylon near his base and warp in some more stalkers. Focus fire any vr's he's made so far, and that's it (also make some immortals to deal with his stalkers easier). Just today I've won 2 matches that way. Didn't know about that phoenix > vr, i'll have make some unit tests.
Phoenixes are pretty nasty even against tougher air units. Their ability to fire on the move makes them great for chasing down Void Rays. Like RushSecond said, you'll probably want a numerical advantage, unless you've mastered Phoenix micro. A decent number of Stalkers can also be a good counter for Void Rays. As long as your enemy hasn't researched Flux Vanes, Stalkers can actually chase down Void Rays without the use of Blink, and their small bonus against armored units really adds up when you have dozen or two Stalkers.
Well I wouldn't say that phoenixes are good against ALL air... they are actually one of the few air units that get stomped by battlecruisers, because the 3 armor of a BC just ruins the attack of phoenixes.
When charged up stalkers will take extra damage plus they're tougher to manoeuver than phoenixes, so I'd take phoenixes, mostly because it's easier to do this: attack and when they start charging up withdraw most of your phenix force but leave 1-2 behind to draw fire and give the rest of the group a headstart, give some time for void rays charge to cool off and attack again. That seems to work for me when I manage to get enough phoenixes to counter a void ray assault
Void Rays also fire when moving and keep their beam on target, i don't know if it's possible to micro phoenixes properly, haven't seen that matchup yet. Edit: Actually thanks for the tip, i just made the test (10 phoenixes vs 6 vr's, almost even cost wise), and it turns out phoenixes really are good against vr's. Without micro, there were 6 phoenixes left, 2 almost dead, 4 unharmed.
if you let soemone get 20 vr's your doing somthing wrong anyways, if he had a small ground army you should have rushed him when he was still making vr's if you stood back and let him create them all then you were bound to lose with only stalkers/T1 units. My advice is the same as others, go pheonix's/stalkers cheap, effective.
Personally it bugs me when people say things like "you shouldn't let him get that many" Obviously in a perfect world, where you knew what the opponent was thinking, and what they were planning, and what their unit dispositions were you wouldn't allow them to mass. However, no matter how good you are, and no matter what you do, sometimes other players will manage to mass, void rays, bcs, carriers, mutas, thors, collossi, etc. Anyway, the best way to counter mass void rays is phoenix/blink stalker for toss, vikings/marines for terrans, and Mutas/hydras for zerg. infestors dropping ITs underneath the mass while engaging with a screening army is also fun, as are 20+ hallucinations attacking just before your real units, and even bcs while easy meat for a pack of voids can rapidly even things out with well placed yamato blasts (instant kills when fired) Basically the long and the short of it is that VRs are only really powerful once they are fully charged, if you destroy them while charging you win, and if they have massed void rays they probably dont have much else.
When both phoenix and vr numbers are low phoenixes easily get the upper hand, but on greater numbers there are more vrs that have managed to charge up and that could prove a problem to the phoenixes. It seems reasonable ot me that at some point you can withdraw your major phoenix force and leave some of them as fodder for the vrs so your main force can get a distance and then come back after their charges are down. Dunno exactly how this will work, never done it(i'm still a pretty crappy player), but it seems like a reasonable thing to try when facing like 20 void rays with 30 phoenixes or so
i agree somtimes stopping someone massing a certain unit is hard/undoable, but there is no reasno for 20 + i cant see the logic, especially protoss, i mean an obvserver could have shown you all you needed to know about the mass vrs, 150 minerals to counter a player is a massive advantage.
20 void rays cost 5000 min and 3000 gas and take from 4 stargates 5 mins to build. this is alot of time and resources. the key to winning against someone like this is to simply attack sinc ehe is going to have to expand and get 4 stargates all of this costs alot of gas and prevents him from getting anything else, so simply walk in and kill stuff, get some immortals and do a drop and kill a nexus. blink stalkers can also be very effective against void rays. go in a kill one or two then run and blink away before he gets full charge. once he has full charge run (which is why they are so good at bse killing cause you must run away if he is killing you base so don't let him get there) if you want i we could play a game where you try and get 20 voidrays and i can show you how to stop it.
With my exp. nothing, just don't let the enemy get to 20 voidray's. Haras and beat him before he gets them.
What can be done against mass voids or mass carriers as terran? Besides the fact that you shouldn't let them amass them. I'm continuously matched against toss who cannon up hardcore and the mass voids or carriers. And even when I know that and build vikings I still lose - what can be done? The mmm ball - I think - would die to the mass cannons...
cannons are only scary in your mind honestly a stimed marauder force can just rip right though them ( so can a stimed marine force) yes seige tanks can take them out without getting shot at but just charging stuff in and killing the cannons then stargate can be devastating if you can get cybo to thats even better.
