I've been watching some of high-level games casted by Lowko, which ended up in a kind-of-stalemate between maxed-up zerg versus maxed-up skytoss. Protoss didn't wanted to attack over Zerg's spore crawlers on creep and Zerg didn't wanted to attack over Protoss' shield batteries and static defenses. From what I remember, Zerg army was built from Hydras, Corruptors and Vipers, while Protoss had a Mothership, Carriers, Void rays with aid of bunch of High Templar.
This is a common top-tier situation, which leads to both armies standing over their static defenses, knowing, that attack will most likely lead to defeat.
So my question is, why Protoss at that point does not get advantage of Disruptors to destroy spore crawlers? From what i remember the Novas damage structures as well, so it would be a perfect way of forcing Zerg player to back off with their spore crawlers (if they had enough time to do so). Zerg could respond with Hydras, but then Protoss could back attacking Disruptors with High Templar, who would either use Psionic Storm to force hydras to back off or Feedback on Vipers if they tried to Abduct the Disruptors. Not to mention the whole Skytoss army behind – Zerg would have to go off-creep, because Disruptor's attack is ranged.
Moreover, it would take approximately two, maybe three Disruptors to effectively force Zerg to back off, so that they wouldn't consume too much resources, which could have been otherwise spent on, like, Carriers etc.
All that obviously under assumption of top-tier players being a superhuman beings fully capable of optimally using all 15 of their fingers during a match-up. Being a hardcore Terran player for 10 years still struggling with F2-A's this is obviously a purely theoretical question for me.
Best Answer
Every situation is different so it's hard to generalize, but here's some considerations.
The most important problem with disruptors is that they can't move while shooting and their shot gets canceled if interrupted. In a stalemate situation it would be extremely easy to then abduct the disruptor with a viper.
Secondly, tempests have more range than spores and with tectonic destabilizers they can destroy spore forests very well, while still being able to hit air units, while the disruptors is just dead weight on that front.
Thirdly the disruptors are actually used in PvZ lategame in certain situations, especially if there are lurkers. Against lurkers tempests are not so great, while the disruptors can still deal with them quite well. In the game you mentioned there were no lurkers, so that's why he probably opted not to go into disruptors.
I don't know what game you're referring to and and I don't know how it ended, but the ones you described are not real end-game armies. The zerg should remove the hydras and add either infestors/broodlords for trading or ultralisks for fighting. The protoss should add tempests for trading and archons for dealing with mass corruptors.
Nowadays the ultralisk response is better, since P usually goes hard on carriers and neglects archons and immortals.