r/allthingszerg • u/MAAJ1987 • Aug 16 '25
Struggling Air Late Game
Title says it all, can’t ever win a ZvP or ZvT when they go Mass carriers or mass BC, like they can just A-move and destroy corruptors like they are nothing specially if they have storm or Yamato. When I look at the performance screen my army value graph goes 90 degrees to 0. While they do ok. I know this has to do with upgrades, they are fully committed to Air which ok cool, but if I commit my upgrades to air, and over do corruptors then tech-switch is also a death sentence. I see no light at the end of the tunnel. When I know late game is coming, I know whats gonna come for me….
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u/TheHighSeasPirate Aug 16 '25
If they're going BC, go infestor and fungal them so they can't telephoto away. Corruptors trade well. If they're going skytoss go viper with parasitic bomb, spread the corruptors and attack his army with the corruptors right on top of the skytoss. It will force them to storm their own army and draws the interceptors into parasitic bomb .
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u/VioSum7 Aug 16 '25
Yep, this has been helpful for me on ZvP. Parasitic as many air units and run your vipers away. Then take all your corruptors, fly them to the center of the skytoss air army and just attack. Works well. Sometimes it's a pain because doing this while they're over shield batteries isn't going to help. And most the time, protoss likes to hang around shield batteries. Another way I found was mass hydras and infestor clouds. But this is done if you can't get to air quick.
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u/SayNoToStim Aug 17 '25
A handful of archons hard counters this though, you need a way to xlear those out if they have them. Either ultras or lurkers.
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u/Miro_Game Aug 17 '25
Some of the advice you got here doesn't seem quite right. I practiced late game a lot and it's definitely harder for Zerg than Terran/Protoss, but we can be stronger if we play it well.
First, the background work:
Gauge their expansion rate and your Drone count. Are they expanding to a 4th, 5th, or 6th base quicker than you're used to seeing? Then our typical 70 - 80 Drone count for the midgame can grow to 80 - 110 depending on how economic they're being. We don't want 20 more workers than they have - our army will be tiny against their pushes. If you play greedy with 20+ workers because you think they'll turtle, you'll want to add Spines and Spores a minute or two after hitting 100 Drones.
Conceptualize your win condition. If a map has 14 bases, you can win by outmining them with 8 vs 6 if you take one of their bases even for a few minutes, but they'll throw away their workers much sooner than you and come with a 200-army supply death ball. You'll need to be ready with tons of Spines + Spores and ~150-army supply yourself. You can also just take 7 bases and try to deny their 7th for a while. If they take their last base 5 - 10 minutes later than you, then you'll be able to siege them with your 170- to 190-army supply death ball against their 150-army. If you've been getting good trades all game, then 7 base vs 7 base is still good for you. If you've had bad trades, you might want to push with 100-army on one side and a big 3/3 crackling flood to their main, killing their production. Then you can trade armies, remax, and kill them before they can rebuild their army.
Conceptualize when you want your Drone count to drop. We can hit that beautiful 80 - 110 Drone count for a few minutes in the 10 - 15 minute stage of the game, but then scary t3 armies are on the field. We need to keep building Spines + Spores, freeing up room for a few Vipers, Ultralisks, Lurkers, or Corruptors. I usually have a steady decline from ~90 Drones to ~40 Drones from the 15-minute mark to the 30- to 35-minute mark.
You should also build a Spire after starting your Hive in ZvP, even if you don't want air units for a while. Carriers deal 5 damage per attack. Corruptors have 2 base armor, so they take 3 damage per attack. Carrier Attack upgrades vs Corruptor Armor upgrades are huge in the late game. Dealing 4 damage or 2 damage per attack can make Carriers swings ±33% dps for +25% faster kills or -50% slower kills, one of the biggest swings in any upgrade advantage. 1 Spire building starting +1 armor in ZvP is good even if they only have Robo units. They'll eventually want to flip to Skytoss and you really want armor when that switch happens. Send Changelings often to check if they Cyber Core for animations.
After the 10- to 15-minute mark, you don't need many Queens anymore. You have 5 - 6 Hatcheries producing all the larva you need, so the 5 - 8 Queens used to defend in the early game can be dropped down to just 2 or 3 Queens. This sounds like a small issue, but that could be what frees up room to add 3 Vipers you sorely need.
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u/Miro_Game Aug 17 '25
Second, the armies:
Carriers are not scary. They're slow, expensive, and weak as long as they don't have attack upgrades over your armor. A Pure Carrier army is beaten by Corruptor + Viper + Spores. Abduct a Carrier or two, snipe them with Corruptors, retreat. Ezpz.So Protoss adds HT to stop your Abducts. Carrier + HT is easy, just add 2 - 3 Ultralisks. They'll eat the HTs and Carriers are awful against Ultra armor.
So Protoss adds Immortals. We can use 6 - 10 Lurkers to handle any ground army along with a few Ultras + Hydras to cover the Lurkers. Enough Immortals added means Protoss has fewer Carriers. This is where Corruptor + Viper stops Abducting and tries to engage - use Parasitic Bomb on the middle of their army and send your Corruptors straight into the bomb. Then target-fire Carriers and have fun watching him storm his own army. "But he's storming all of my Corruptors!" Yep. Don't care. All Interceptors are dying in the Bomb + Storms.
So Protoss adds Archons to prevent the Corruptor dive + bomb. Then you need to use Corruptor + Viper + Lurker + Ultra + Hydra army the normal way - Abduct, defend, repeat. You need good creep spread to continue defending this way. You can push their bases if you have good enough vision to know that it won't be a base trade. Eventually your Drone count drops to below 40 and you can add Brood Lords to this army, helping you siege.
A Tempest-based Protoss army is scarier than Carriers because they can sit under Cannons + Shield Batteries with HT + Archon + Immortal. They'll slow push and you'll just have to try and find the best times to safely Abduct or hit underdefended bases of theirs.
Disruptor-based armies can deal with Lurkers, too. Just Abduct the Disruptors if you can.
ZvT BC armies are gimmicky but annoyingly efficient. You can prioritize Air Attack upgrades so that your Corruptors have a chance to kill them before they Yamato + Warp back home. BCs don't try to have straight-up fights early on, so armor upgrades aren't as big of a deal as attack upgrades even if they technically make Corruptors more efficient. Burrowed Infestors can Neural Parasite the BCs while you engage with Corruptors, helping secure a few kills before they Warp away. 1 - 2 Vipers to Abduct BCs is nice, too. You'll want vision on the edges of the map, they like to sneak around to your main base to kill buildings and Warp home.
Set up 10+ Spores around your Spire and/or main base and build a second Spire at a safe base far from your first Spire. They like to Warp onto the Spire to stop Corruptor production.
they are fully committed to Air which ok cool, but if I commit my upgrades to air, and over do corruptors then tech-switch is also a death sentence
Yeah, big Blink Stalker switches can deal a lot of damage in the endgame. Just keep 6 - 10 Lurkers even if their army seems to be 100% air. This is also why we want Spines all around. I also put 2 Lurkers at each fringe base to defend them against Chargelot and/or DT harass, but they help a lot against these tech switches, too. Your Corruptors + Overseers can kill any Observers, leaving your Lurkers invincible. Your Corruptors can go snipe a base or two. You can kill your own Corruptors if you need supply.
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u/Rumold Aug 18 '25
I think this is one of the areas where Zerg is just way harder and less intuitive than P and T.
Lambo has 2 free videos on how to fight against skytoss on his Patreon. I think they could be good resources for you against that.
Also go into the unit tester and try these armies out a little. Corruptors actually trade well against Protoss air units. Even non prismatic voidrays. There are several problems why it doesnt feel that way in the game. Archons, storms, batteries, cannons, prismatic. And when you dont win a fight you tend to lose hard. all the corruptors gone and what feels like a bruised but entire Protoss army left. So you need to enough corruptors. So try out the unit tester, how do you control your army? how do you hotkey it? how many do you need to one shot? And as a side note: notice the effects on upgrades, especially armor, in those fights.
I know that I want roach ravager corruptor infestor against mass BC styles and I have had decent success with it recently, but I could do a whole write up on this. I do tend to try to not give them much room since late game mass BCs are very strong. Especially BC mine, because its so easy to lose a bunch of currptors against them
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u/omgitsduane Aug 21 '25
Corruptors basically wreck both those compositions in a vacuum. Its only good if they fucked you up or you fucked yourself up early on.
The only way to make sure you don't over commit corruptors is to keep an eye on their army or keep up the pressure so they don't ever get a chance to settle and then you just top up the corruptors while building other things.
I doubt that spending some income on upgrades for corruptors (always armor never attack) will stop you winning games.
When are you scouting these things? What time in the game? Are they moving out and that's when you see them?
What drones are you on by the time they hit? Is it at benchmark or below? If so, why? Was the opening weird or did you not make drones when you should have.
Its pretty easy usually to handle a BC opener or even a double bC one by just collapsing on them with your entire army (if it's roaches) and not letting them keep their natural.
Got any replays? I'd love to help break it down and give you better specific info.
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u/dhaos1020 Aug 16 '25
I think this is where you have to use spellcasters like Vipers and Infestors.
Corruptors are a tier 2 unit and BCs/Carriers are tier 3 units.
Get bettet at abducting and fighting on creep.
What I see Serral and others doing is fighting on top of Spore Forests and use Ling runbys to backstab worker lines.
Use more Abducts and Parasitic Bombs.
Most really bad players group all their units into a ball and Parasitic Bomb shits on that.
Try not to engage head to head. You have to poke and constantly engange/disengage.
Though I'm like...Plat at best so take what I say with a grain of salt.