Is void ray overpowered?

[Junjun-1830]

If a void ray fleet at a scale attached your base, here is what happened.
Suppose you have the tier 2 best counters, a bunch of hydras.
They simply bounce between bases over the cliff, hydras can hardly make much damage before they run away with your buildings and drones razed to the ground. Considering the narrow space crowded with structures, it is even worse for the ground unit’s mobility.

Queens and spores?
Suppose you have many queens and some spores for defense, they usually spread over several bases with less mobility and can be easily snipped out by the VRs.

Push them out early?
Especially, in a team game, it is hard to push out the toss completely which needs a team work. So it is common case that the VRs fleet at a scale attack your base in the mid game.

Vipers are good but it is T3 instead of a tier 2 counter. In comparison to other races, the stalker and marine are all versatile units for anti-air.

Choose an open space for the fight?
With the increased speed advantage, it is usually their choice where to have the fight. So it is usually in your base.

Even we happen to fight VR fleet at an open field, some additional colossus will be the nightmare for the hydras army.
Corruptors to counter colossus?
They will be the easy prey for the void rays.
Here are what happened,
Hydra -> VR, a weak counter in favor of zerg.
But
VR -> corruptor
colossus -> hydra
are all strong counters in favor of toss.

Anyway, in most cases, it is not in favor of zerg.
Recent update further enhanced the void ray’s speed and reduce its cost.
Isn’t that too unbalanced for zerg players, especially in a team game.

[Kyrie-6906]

I am assuming that this is more a discussion, rather than just a whine about what Activision should do. Hope I am right about this.

@Junjun-1830

Queens and spores?
Suppose you have many queens and some spores for defense, they usually spread over several bases with less mobility and can be easily snipped out by the VRs.

The reason why you have queens spread around several bases is possibly that you don’t have spare Queens that you keep around (which people usually use for creep spread).

Z is a relatively APM intensive race throughout the game (because of injects and creep spread). This is as opposed to T where the APM spikes during bio splits, or P which is somewhat more muted throughout since they rely more on burst DPS.

For this, I am assuming that you are having problems when on 2-4 bases. Any more and it is well into the mid to late game (you will have T3 - Vipers already).

@Junjun-1830

They simply bounce between bases over the cliff, hydras can hardly make much damage before they run away with your buildings and drones razed to the ground. Considering the narrow space crowded with structures, it is even worse for the ground unit’s mobility.

@Junjun-1830

Vipers are good but it is T3 instead of a tier 2 counter. In comparison to other races, the stalker and marine are all versatile units for anti-air.

What you need to use are actually Infestors. 1 fungal and you can literally clear at least 50% of the VRs. VRs thrive on mobility and against armoured stuff. But the down side is that they are rather paper and drop pretty quickly too.

@Junjun-1830

Push them out early?
Especially, in a team game, it is hard to push out the toss completely which needs a team work. So it is common case that the VRs fleet at a scale attack your base in the mid game.

If you are in a team game, your allies are supposed to handle the VRs since Z does not excel against air in the early game. Your job is to make sure that the ground is covered. So a T can possibly have Widow Mines or Vikings or Thors; while a P can have Blink Stalkers or Nix to counter the VRs.

The strats that you have been mentioning seem to give an impression that you are just 1 person attempting to fight against 2 different composition. And that you can counter 1 set, but in turn are countered by another set. If this is a team match, remember that you have an ally involved. Assuming if it is really a 1v1 match up against VR / Collo (which is not even the meta); you can consider one of these compositions:

• Queen, Ling (your creep spread needs to be decent)
• Hydra, Roach (not as good)

I am also assuming that you know about Z needing to be 1 base ahead of other races always.

[CollegeWings-1825]

@Junjun-1830

If a void ray fleet at a scale attached your base, here is what happened.
Suppose you have the tier 2 best counters, a bunch of hydras.
They simply bounce between bases over the cliff, hydras can hardly make much damage before they run away with your buildings and drones razed to the ground. Considering the narrow space crowded with structures, it is even worse for the ground unit’s mobility.

This is pretty much one of the things that make air units really good. They have the ability to bounce between areas that ground units cannot. The answer is to either position yourself as well as possible or do equal damage to your opponent while minimizing the damage you take at home. If you macro well, you can hold against voidrays with queens and hydras, and eventually get enough to kill Protoss, or at least pressure them enough to get the voidrays off your back.

@Junjun-1830

Queens and spores?
Suppose you have many queens and some spores for defense, they usually spread over several bases with less mobility and can be easily snipped out by the VRs.

Spores, I think, are mostly meant to buy time for your queens to position themselves to protect a spot, rather than having the voidray go straight to zapping your base. You just need as much map vision as possible to see where the voidrays are to position yourself as well as you can.

@Junjun-1830

Push them out early?
Especially, in a team game, it is hard to push out the toss completely which needs a team work. So it is common case that the VRs fleet at a scale attack your base in the mid game.

Team games have a completely dynamic compared to 1v1. When I face noobs that only know the power of massing voidrays, I laugh and kill them all with my phoenixes for example. Only noobs blindly mass voidrays in team games.

@Junjun-1830

Vipers are good but it is T3 instead of a tier 2 counter. In comparison to other races, the stalker and marine are all versatile units for anti-air.

You can also make infestors before hive if you’re that worried

@Junjun-1830

Choose an open space for the fight?
With the increased speed advantage, it is usually their choice where to have the fight. So it is usually in your base.

If you get the concave and space to move in with your ground units, you should win always unless you are very outnumbered

@Junjun-1830

Even we happen to fight VR fleet at an open field, some additional colossus will be the nightmare for the hydras army.
Corruptors to counter colossus?

It takes time for them to make colossus too, especially after massing voidray. You should have enough at this point to make lurkers, vipers, or even scale back down to roach/hydra. Corruptors are also good at sniping colossus, you can back off just as the voidrays charge up and take minimal damage. There’s many ways to go about the voidray/colossus vs hydra/corruptor matchup, it’s hard to say.

@Junjun-1830

Recent update further enhanced the void ray’s speed and reduce its cost.
Isn’t that too unbalanced for zerg players, especially in a team game.

To sum up, there are definitely ways to deal with it, and I think (not 100% sure) that ravager/ling pushes are still very valid against voidrays. That means Zerg still has multiple options on how they want to deal with voidrays. As for team games, I can assure you that they are still a joke. The reason why they appear OP in team games is because at the low level, no one has a single clue about what they are doing. By the way, Zerg can handle voidrays very easily. Queens into hydra or corruptor if you want to fight them directly. But better yet, if they don’t have phoenixes on their side, you can just mass muta and out-maneuver the voidrays. Zerg still has plenty of options to be useful.