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A Reaver in the Air is Worth 4 on the Ground

by Zileas
Well known reaver experts: Zileas, 1_COOL_GUY, Og, Kain-The-Feared

Reavers truly suck.  Unless of course you have a reaver and a shuttle. Reavers die all to easily to any number of attacks.  They have low hitpoints, a piss-poor rate of fire, and tend to missfire a lot.  Not to mention they cant outrun an ensnared larva.  Suppose however, you had an airial reaver -- that is to say, a unit that only took damage (for the most part) from air attacks, but that shot scarabs, and that moved as fast as a scourge..  Truly scary.  If you have good enough unit control (and the speed upgrade... but non speed upgraded shuttles do this techinque almost as well) you can nearly accomplish this too.

Fundamentals of Reaver Control

Optimally you want a reaver on the ground only long enough for it to shoot.. then you want it back in the shuttle.  Repeat as necessary.  Ill briefly give some examples here of killing certain unit types/groups.

Against Dragoons:
Drop a scarab, then pop back into the shuttle ASAP.  If you do this fast enough, the dragoon AI wont even kick in and chase you in time.  You don't want to get the shuttle chased by dragoons if you can help it.  By the time even the best players notice you can take out at least one dragoon this way. After this just keep retreating, and dropping scarabs.  If dragoons seem to be chasing your shuttle and not your reaver, just drop the reaver and retreat like mad.. hopefully theyll eat a scarab or two before switching target.  Repeat as needed.  Dragoons in large enough numbers can and will kill your shuttle because they can chase it down.  Unless of course you have speed upgrade...

Against Hydralisks:
Same as dragoons, except dragoons can chase down a shuttle.  Hydras are only just as fast as a shuttle.  Get speed upgrade and the zerg will be forced to use mutalisks.  Suppose you also had an archon in the shuttle... You could also use zealots for a delaying action...

Against Marines:
Same as hydras.  Realize that reaver scarabs do a ton of damage to marines from splash.  Should be far easier to deal with than hydras. Again, a delaying action works too.

Against Zealots/Firebats/Zerglings/Ultralisks
Just drop and run.  These troops can only do melee damage.  You should NOT allow your reaver to be damaged.  Also you can easily use obstructions to seperate your shuttle from these troops.

Against Another Reaver
Use obsticles, and range to allow you to drop a scarab and pop back up before their scarab hits you.  This can be interesting if they have a shuttle too.  I don't need obstructions to do this right, but it certainly is less risky to have obsticles in the way of the path of the scarab...

Against Sunken Colonies in a Situation Where You Can't Outrange:
Funny how this works.. you can easily dodge the tentacles if you click fast :)

Dealing With the #1 Reaver-Killer: Tanks

Tanks will threaten your reavers more than any other unit.  3 tanks can stop even the best reaver drop cold.  However, if you know what to do, you can often kill many tanks with one reaver, and in some cases, take out a seemingly impossibly good tank network (assuming their anti air is light).

Two simple things to keep in mind when killing siege tanks (I won't give painful detail about this.. it should be intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer)
1)Siege tanks have a minimum range.  Make sure you always drop in their minimum range if you can.
2)Use other units to eat the first wave of siege shots.  Siege tanks take a while to reload.  Its very possible to drop a zealot or a probe THEN a reaver, and pick the reaver up after it shoots before the tanks hit it...
3)Just because there are siege tanks, doesnt mean you cant hit edges of buildings and scvs...

My Ultra-Secret, Now Public Technique for Nullifying MASSIVE sunkens.

Since sunkens can be dodged by reaver/shuttle popping.  And since sunkens target units with the highest attack... Its very possible to pop a reaver up and down to reduce the ammount sunkens are hitting your troops by a MASSIVE ammount.  Archons and zealots and other troops all have lower priority than reavers since reavers have an attack of 125.   You can get sunkens massively misfiring in this manner.

Well thats about it for reavers.  Always remember that reavers are SIEGE weapons and outrange most things...Also remember that a reaver's damage output vs a single target is piss slow, and that buildings are best razed with zealots, dragoons and archons....Reavers deal out insane ammounts of damage to groups of units however...Finally, remember that although, overall, reavers are slow to destroy buildings, you can field an enormous ammount of damage in one salvo from several reavers. For instance, 5 damage upgraded reavers can kill a spire in one salvo. That is very very powerful in terms of quick attack ability (Although I can say I've used this bit a lot myself, as have many toss, fallenangel reminded me of this.  He uses a heavier version of the doom drop on temple a lot).