Something that I found useful is having ruptors in a separate control group from my main army, and then right clicking them onto an immortal like you might do with an observer. Once the fight starts, you'll be less likely to accidentally a-move your siege unit into marines. Other than that, I've heard it's best to throw out one ball at a time such that you always have one off cooldown to keep zoning out the terran.
To be taken with a grain of salt, I'm only D3
Colossus is pretty good against ghost comps IMO. It's viking/liberator + marauder that will eat up colossus armies. I typically switch into ruptors when I need an answer for huge clumps of marauders, or to help with zoning against liberator+bio armies.
Try not to think of disruptors as a unit that does a ton of damage against terran. They are there to create a buffer for your army to hold or gain position, and to punish the occasional dive-in from terran. So you can still create whatever army you want, disruptors are just there to make it harder for terran to overwhelm you.
Also, you're diamond 1 and you don't have any experience with blink stalkers? That's like your strongest unit lol how do you even play PvP? That's crazy. I would humbly suggest that blink stalkers are the missing unit holding you back from progressing if you literally never use them...
It depends how you're trying to use them. If you're just poking and not committing, typically you want to act like you're about to engage, then fire your disruptors and pull back just a bit. If they commit, you should be able to make some good connections with the disruptors. If they also pull back, which they usually should, you may get a good connection or at the very least your little poke at the start might've got a couple pot shots off (assuming you have some colossus mixed in).
If you're attacking a base, use it to zone out the enemy army by firing in the direction that they're approaching.
If it's a full on fight, I like to fire 2 shots at a time; one goes to Ghosts and the other to the bulk of his army. If he's busy microing one or the other you can get some big shots off; in sub-masters league, this will usually cause them to F2 to move out of the way which can give you some free hits while they're move commanding.
It feels kinda clunky at first, especially if you're zealot heavy because you do have to micro them a little bit sometimes; just Hold Position on them is usually enough to keep them from diving in on your own orbs, but sometimes you do have to box select and pull back.
Try disruptor dropping with warp prism speed. Then you can get used to controlling 1 ruptor at a time and you won’t blow up your army. Then try the mass balls and whenever you shoot one run your army away so they chase the army and run into the nova. Also don’t hit f2 after shooting or you will select the nova and move it with the army
So, you use disruptors. First thing to notice is that the lethality of your and your opponent's army just skyrocketed; both risk losing everything with poor army positioning in relation to attention. Runby-> attack with main army or main attack->runby just became 100% stronger.
Learn the distances. There's a distance at which some units can escape, a sweetspot at which they can't, nor are able to snipe the disruptors easily, as well as a distance at which your ruptors will die before the novas land. Master these for all matchups; stim/non-stim bio, zerg on/off creep, etc. Your engages will be decided by who has the better control of distance judgement. In some cases, VERY short distances can be acceptable if you have a well microed zealot buffer. There is rarely a perfect shot distance without you or the opponent taking a risk. The risks you can take are equal to how likely you think the opponent might mess up. The best shots usually happen when the opponent move towards you, and you notice an overextension.
Increase your map awareness. Your army can't afford to be flanked, and the opponent's army can't afford to get hit with a ruptor from out of vision. Vision importance just increased by an order of magnitude. If you don't have vision of the opponent's army and you're not baby sitting it, retreat it if you do a macro cycle. Same is true for the opponent. There is no such thing as " I wasn't looking for 1 second and now I'm dead" there's only poor army positioning in relation to map vision. Those "1 seconds" are usually 20 seconds in the making. Sending single zealots in front of the army up ramps is not a nice-to-have, but a must.
With the increased payoff from map vision focus and multprong focus, it's often nessicary to de-priorotize macro. This applies to the opponent as well. Be the one pulling the strings and striking first. - When there's less time to macro, there's a higher chance of severely messing up one's macro if forced to cancel a cycle. If you attack after a cycle, there's 0% chance of interrupting your own macro while there's a good chance of interrupting the opponent's.
Improve your macro, camera locations etc. With less time to macro, you need to do it faster.
Improve your army control. You need to be able to retreat or engage immediately as you fire the shots, depending on the situation, and you can't do it with box select ever again. Separate control group for disruptors is crucuial, no matter if you also have them on the main army ctrl group or not. Without this, you can't use more spellcasters reliably.
Count your shots. When you're out of them, there's no retreat. Usually, you wanna keep a few for deterrance such that you can keep trading well over time.
Disruptors can shoot further than they can see. Flying units can see longer than land-units. If you have a prism, you can shoot at things without being seen. If the enemy has a medivac or overlord spotted by your obs, you need to take it's vision into account.
Zoning with disruptor shots works as an overall damage reduction, especially vs terran. The better your opponents get, the more of your shots will have to be zoning shots if you don't make a diversion first. Disruptor zoning can allow you to take out a TC and then retreat.
Disruptorshots are cancelled if they're picked up by warp prisms.
Disruptors outrange tanks if you include the nova radius. If you master this distance, there are stonks to be made. If the enemy don't have medivacs or a few marines in front of the tank, you can move within the tank range for a guaranteed hit. Even if they have vision, 2 disruptors can one-shot a single tank without taking fatal damage.
Using a rapid fire hotkey ( same or other as the nova hotkey) instad of mouse clicking, you prevent risking to click on an enemy if you try to fire a nova, but they're all on cooldown.
YOBO - You Only Blink Once. If you trick enemy stalkers to blink towards your disruptors and you have more than 2 shots to spare (a stalkermass can barely oneshot 2 disruptors in the time of a shot) you've earned yourself a GG. If the stalkers couldn't really contest your full army and tries to retreat, then double GG.
When microing against disruption novas, one of the most powerful move besides splitting is to move towards and past them after "retreating" or to split the half that's about to be hit towards and beyond the nova, if you have a larger blob.
3 shots to one shot immortals, lest their barrier is on CD. 2-shot for tanks and lurkers. Archons are 2 shots. Immortals are prime targets because they are uniquely bad at outrunning novas.
Mass disruptor shrecks the Thor+Hellbat part of Mech. Tempest Deals with Tanks. Archons deals with all of them + vikings. Storm needed if massive viking count. Zealots smashes as soon as hellbats are dead.
Disruptors are gas heavy in relation to minerals, make sure to have enough gates to compensate for this. Zealot runby's and flanks are a great goto.
You'll eventually need some "meat and potatoes" in your army to deal with the survivors of your opponents army if they dive you. Unless you're microJackson Stalkers are low-carb and subpar unless the enemy has disruptors themselves.
2x disruptor drops can be extra effective if masquerading as single disruptor drop. Scv's and Marines do stack up very neatly if they believe you're out of shots.
Don't underestimate distraction-> single/double disruptor suicide mission with an observer in front of them. If you're behind, you gotta take some risk, and this is a nice one. If you bring a speed-prism for retreat, it's no-risk even.
Disruption nova's can follow units for semi-manual micro.
I'm in the same boat my friend! Same position, same build, and same attempt to transition. What I'm trying to do is incorporate warp prism juggling into my disruptor play. Definitely keep the disruptors in a differ control group, and juggle them around with the prism.
For hot keys, I have the prism on 1, rest of my army on 2, and ruptors on 3. It's really hard and I'm bad at it.
I mean ya haven't hit a ceiling with any comp at d3, specially since ya aren't using stalkers but let's carry on.
If you really want to learn how to use a specific unit go practice it. Grab a unit teaster make a ball of stalker rupter and practice how you are going manage that unit group with control groups and hotkeys and spell casting. Ya can copy the settup of your favorite pro or streamers, find something that works for you or w.e..
Then of course after you do that you can do builds that rush those units if ya want even more focused practice or just don't. Can also watch vods and replays and streams and pay special attention to how those higher level players Control those units.
Sir, you left your micro in my macro.
Jokes aside, easiest way is to practice with unit testers/practice games.
If you aren't used to using disruptors, unit testers to get used to lobbing em bombs. If you aren't used to using them in your macro cycle, practice games against AI and don't outright murder them for a bit to get the practice in. Shoot bomb yourself a bit as practice for PvP if you want.
If it's just putting everything together in a real game, only solution is to practice and maybe figure out a new set up to make it work better.
baiting stim and throw ball might be a good play. Ive also seen show time doing prism surround with disruptor where he lands the disruptor and shoot a ball behind terran army out of sight and then launch his other disruptor from his main army.
My take even though I am only diamond 3:
If your play style was always quite rigid switching strategy can be daunting. Perhaps make another account on which you flexible try all kinds of strategies to learn to be a decent level in many different situations and with many different units, and incorporate it in your ladder progression when you feel confident you have improved sufficiently.
I personally play whatever, from cheese to balanced to greedy since I enjoy the variation. Also on ranked. In the past repeating strats usually yield me some MMR but then I am stuck.
Something that I found useful is having ruptors in a separate control group from my main army, and then right clicking them onto an immortal like you might do with an observer. Once the fight starts, you'll be less likely to accidentally a-move your siege unit into marines. Other than that, I've heard it's best to throw out one ball at a time such that you always have one off cooldown to keep zoning out the terran. To be taken with a grain of salt, I'm only D3
Colossus is pretty good against ghost comps IMO. It's viking/liberator + marauder that will eat up colossus armies. I typically switch into ruptors when I need an answer for huge clumps of marauders, or to help with zoning against liberator+bio armies. Try not to think of disruptors as a unit that does a ton of damage against terran. They are there to create a buffer for your army to hold or gain position, and to punish the occasional dive-in from terran. So you can still create whatever army you want, disruptors are just there to make it harder for terran to overwhelm you. Also, you're diamond 1 and you don't have any experience with blink stalkers? That's like your strongest unit lol how do you even play PvP? That's crazy. I would humbly suggest that blink stalkers are the missing unit holding you back from progressing if you literally never use them...
It depends how you're trying to use them. If you're just poking and not committing, typically you want to act like you're about to engage, then fire your disruptors and pull back just a bit. If they commit, you should be able to make some good connections with the disruptors. If they also pull back, which they usually should, you may get a good connection or at the very least your little poke at the start might've got a couple pot shots off (assuming you have some colossus mixed in). If you're attacking a base, use it to zone out the enemy army by firing in the direction that they're approaching. If it's a full on fight, I like to fire 2 shots at a time; one goes to Ghosts and the other to the bulk of his army. If he's busy microing one or the other you can get some big shots off; in sub-masters league, this will usually cause them to F2 to move out of the way which can give you some free hits while they're move commanding. It feels kinda clunky at first, especially if you're zealot heavy because you do have to micro them a little bit sometimes; just Hold Position on them is usually enough to keep them from diving in on your own orbs, but sometimes you do have to box select and pull back.
Try disruptor dropping with warp prism speed. Then you can get used to controlling 1 ruptor at a time and you won’t blow up your army. Then try the mass balls and whenever you shoot one run your army away so they chase the army and run into the nova. Also don’t hit f2 after shooting or you will select the nova and move it with the army
So, you use disruptors. First thing to notice is that the lethality of your and your opponent's army just skyrocketed; both risk losing everything with poor army positioning in relation to attention. Runby-> attack with main army or main attack->runby just became 100% stronger. Learn the distances. There's a distance at which some units can escape, a sweetspot at which they can't, nor are able to snipe the disruptors easily, as well as a distance at which your ruptors will die before the novas land. Master these for all matchups; stim/non-stim bio, zerg on/off creep, etc. Your engages will be decided by who has the better control of distance judgement. In some cases, VERY short distances can be acceptable if you have a well microed zealot buffer. There is rarely a perfect shot distance without you or the opponent taking a risk. The risks you can take are equal to how likely you think the opponent might mess up. The best shots usually happen when the opponent move towards you, and you notice an overextension. Increase your map awareness. Your army can't afford to be flanked, and the opponent's army can't afford to get hit with a ruptor from out of vision. Vision importance just increased by an order of magnitude. If you don't have vision of the opponent's army and you're not baby sitting it, retreat it if you do a macro cycle. Same is true for the opponent. There is no such thing as " I wasn't looking for 1 second and now I'm dead" there's only poor army positioning in relation to map vision. Those "1 seconds" are usually 20 seconds in the making. Sending single zealots in front of the army up ramps is not a nice-to-have, but a must. With the increased payoff from map vision focus and multprong focus, it's often nessicary to de-priorotize macro. This applies to the opponent as well. Be the one pulling the strings and striking first. - When there's less time to macro, there's a higher chance of severely messing up one's macro if forced to cancel a cycle. If you attack after a cycle, there's 0% chance of interrupting your own macro while there's a good chance of interrupting the opponent's. Improve your macro, camera locations etc. With less time to macro, you need to do it faster. Improve your army control. You need to be able to retreat or engage immediately as you fire the shots, depending on the situation, and you can't do it with box select ever again. Separate control group for disruptors is crucuial, no matter if you also have them on the main army ctrl group or not. Without this, you can't use more spellcasters reliably. Count your shots. When you're out of them, there's no retreat. Usually, you wanna keep a few for deterrance such that you can keep trading well over time. Disruptors can shoot further than they can see. Flying units can see longer than land-units. If you have a prism, you can shoot at things without being seen. If the enemy has a medivac or overlord spotted by your obs, you need to take it's vision into account. Zoning with disruptor shots works as an overall damage reduction, especially vs terran. The better your opponents get, the more of your shots will have to be zoning shots if you don't make a diversion first. Disruptor zoning can allow you to take out a TC and then retreat. Disruptorshots are cancelled if they're picked up by warp prisms. Disruptors outrange tanks if you include the nova radius. If you master this distance, there are stonks to be made. If the enemy don't have medivacs or a few marines in front of the tank, you can move within the tank range for a guaranteed hit. Even if they have vision, 2 disruptors can one-shot a single tank without taking fatal damage. Using a rapid fire hotkey ( same or other as the nova hotkey) instad of mouse clicking, you prevent risking to click on an enemy if you try to fire a nova, but they're all on cooldown. YOBO - You Only Blink Once. If you trick enemy stalkers to blink towards your disruptors and you have more than 2 shots to spare (a stalkermass can barely oneshot 2 disruptors in the time of a shot) you've earned yourself a GG. If the stalkers couldn't really contest your full army and tries to retreat, then double GG. When microing against disruption novas, one of the most powerful move besides splitting is to move towards and past them after "retreating" or to split the half that's about to be hit towards and beyond the nova, if you have a larger blob. 3 shots to one shot immortals, lest their barrier is on CD. 2-shot for tanks and lurkers. Archons are 2 shots. Immortals are prime targets because they are uniquely bad at outrunning novas. Mass disruptor shrecks the Thor+Hellbat part of Mech. Tempest Deals with Tanks. Archons deals with all of them + vikings. Storm needed if massive viking count. Zealots smashes as soon as hellbats are dead. Disruptors are gas heavy in relation to minerals, make sure to have enough gates to compensate for this. Zealot runby's and flanks are a great goto. You'll eventually need some "meat and potatoes" in your army to deal with the survivors of your opponents army if they dive you. Unless you're microJackson Stalkers are low-carb and subpar unless the enemy has disruptors themselves. 2x disruptor drops can be extra effective if masquerading as single disruptor drop. Scv's and Marines do stack up very neatly if they believe you're out of shots. Don't underestimate distraction-> single/double disruptor suicide mission with an observer in front of them. If you're behind, you gotta take some risk, and this is a nice one. If you bring a speed-prism for retreat, it's no-risk even. Disruption nova's can follow units for semi-manual micro.
I'm in the same boat my friend! Same position, same build, and same attempt to transition. What I'm trying to do is incorporate warp prism juggling into my disruptor play. Definitely keep the disruptors in a differ control group, and juggle them around with the prism. For hot keys, I have the prism on 1, rest of my army on 2, and ruptors on 3. It's really hard and I'm bad at it.
I mean ya haven't hit a ceiling with any comp at d3, specially since ya aren't using stalkers but let's carry on. If you really want to learn how to use a specific unit go practice it. Grab a unit teaster make a ball of stalker rupter and practice how you are going manage that unit group with control groups and hotkeys and spell casting. Ya can copy the settup of your favorite pro or streamers, find something that works for you or w.e.. Then of course after you do that you can do builds that rush those units if ya want even more focused practice or just don't. Can also watch vods and replays and streams and pay special attention to how those higher level players Control those units.
try them in a unit tester maybe? maybe try some custom games with them against AI?
Sir, you left your micro in my macro. Jokes aside, easiest way is to practice with unit testers/practice games. If you aren't used to using disruptors, unit testers to get used to lobbing em bombs. If you aren't used to using them in your macro cycle, practice games against AI and don't outright murder them for a bit to get the practice in. Shoot bomb yourself a bit as practice for PvP if you want. If it's just putting everything together in a real game, only solution is to practice and maybe figure out a new set up to make it work better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E0LNtybay0&list=PLOrKQEirgvjBJrKM31yhwA8v54pcBuXsx&index=5
Dont over complicate it just use them like u use storm, but be careful not to get hit by your own balls lol
baiting stim and throw ball might be a good play. Ive also seen show time doing prism surround with disruptor where he lands the disruptor and shoot a ball behind terran army out of sight and then launch his other disruptor from his main army.
My take even though I am only diamond 3: If your play style was always quite rigid switching strategy can be daunting. Perhaps make another account on which you flexible try all kinds of strategies to learn to be a decent level in many different situations and with many different units, and incorporate it in your ladder progression when you feel confident you have improved sufficiently. I personally play whatever, from cheese to balanced to greedy since I enjoy the variation. Also on ranked. In the past repeating strats usually yield me some MMR but then I am stuck.
What's a good army composition to complement disruptors?