New Protoss Builds Part 1 of 3 (PvP)

I have found a few new builds I have been utilizing since I have started laddering again (27 Wins, 32 Losses so far). This is what I have discovered in the Matchups. The one thing I have learned this past week, and after all my thinking of Protoss tactics without actually playing, is that Protoss are best when they have 2 bases supporting them. Our units take very long to build and are very expensive but very fast and powerful when we finally get them out. So it only makes sense that we need a very good economy to help run it all.

PvP

This matchup is so weird to me. It always throws me for a loop. Here are a few examples of the games I played. At first, I tried going something other than 4 gate against Toss, trying to find out what they were doing then do the appropriate build, however I soon found out that most other Toss as this level of play was doing the same thing in most cases. In fact, I was always beat when the opponent did a build without reacting to mine, thus my build was slightly behind and I ultimately lost. The PvP matchup seems more and more like a staring contest, seeing who will "Blink" first so someone has an advantage.

2 gate Rush vs Fast Forge

This match I saw him have 2 gates really early. My build always gets a Core first. If I see those 2 gate ways early enough, I have enough time to grab a Forge and place a few Cannons down while also grabbing a Sentry to FF the ramp to trap some of his Zealots as I pick them off. I quickly transitioned into a 4 gate and apply the pressure on him until I finally push into his base and win.

4 gate vs Cannon defense

This game was odd. I held my own against constant pressure only using Cannons and enough units from 3 gates. I was very surprised it worked and the only reason I won was because my opponent didn't expand, which is a common epidemic for lower league Toss. They have this mindset that the 4 gate is a Win all Build, and its not. Its fundamental weakness is your constantly building units and not generating enough to expand.

Colossus will rip through any army of equal size.

Fast 3 Colossus with a Council as a fake out

This guy was very smart. I scouted a Council and a Robotics Facility and immediately thought he was going Immortal/Zealot with Charge as I saw many Zealots already. I began to get an expansion while also going for some Immortals as well with Stalkers to kite the Zealots. Yes You can still effectively kite Zealots even with Charge. However, when he pushed he had 3 Colossus and I had just expanded. It was gg shortly thereafter.

So this is what I have taken out of all this. 4 Gate is still the best way to go in this matchup. The fast 3 Colossus could have been easily taken down if I had gone 4 gate and applied some early pressure. However it is still important to grab a Robotics Facility at some point to grab an Observer in case there are Dark Templars coming out, which happened at some point in another game where it was 4 gate vs 4 gate. Most PvP matches don't last very long as one of the players will quickly gain a disadvantage and the other will take that advantage.

Next will be PvZ. Probably my favorite matchup.

Back to 4 Gating

So I find myself going back to four gating. My three Gate Robo build was not working out as well as I had hoped. After three week of not playing Starcraft 2, going back to four gating just seemed natural. Its an easy build:

4 Warp Gate Build Order


9 Pylon
13 Gateway
14 Assimilator
16 Pylon
17 Cyber Core
19 Gateway
20 Stalker
23 Gateway
24 Pylon
24 Gateway

By the time you hit your 26th supply(provided you only build 1 Gateway unit and are constantly building probes) Warp Gate tech is ready and you will need to produce mass amounts of Pylons. I like to drop 3 more at once to expand my supply to 50. Then start warping in units and gradually be placing Pylons down as 4 gateway units count as 1 Pylon worth of supply. This is also a good time to put a proxy Pylon somewhere.

Chrono Boosts
Chrono Boosts play a big part in any Protoss Build. No matter what opening build you are doing, you should be going for Warp Gate research. It is the cheapest research with the biggest benefits. It cuts training down by five seconds per gateway unit and allows any Gateway unit to be warped in to your Pylon influence in four seconds. Ideally you can use 4 Chrono Boosts on Warp Gate before it finishes. Each one cuts 10 seconds off the time. However, if your timing isn't perfect you can end up wasting half of the 4th one so I tend to stick with 3. By doing this I can also use 3 Chrono Boosts on my Nexus as well.

Poking and Scouting
While you are getting your base setup, send a probe every now and again to poke into the base, yes you will lose a probe but you will be able to tell what his unit comp is or isn't. In my latest match, my opponent went for heavy Stalkers and very little Zealots, I saw this by simply suiciding a probe onto his ramp. So I quickly put down a Twilight Council and started researching Charge. Zealots with just the movement speed increase move almost as fast as a stalker.

What to transition into.
Before transitioning into Colossus or Voidrays or whatever, you need to take an expansion. Having two bases mining is so important in Starcraft 2. You will want to take you small force in and cause some trouble, make him think twice about moving out. This will allow a safe expansion to be warping in. Once you have two bases its time to decide what to do next. Two bases can support up to 8 Warp Gates and a Forge. However this way leaves yourself vulnerable to Cloaked units. You may want to grab a Robotics Facility to grab an Observer. This will also open up a transition into Colossus. You can make one Robotics Facility and get up to 6 Warp gates for faster unit production. Picking up a Twilight Council as well to grab Charge or Blink is also useful as the building alone allows you to research more effective armor and weapons upgrades.

There you have it, the 4gate build order. It is a heavy macro oriented build. To learn more about macro and how to master it check out my post about the subject here.

1v1, 1 v 1, Protoss, Starcraft 2, SC2, Starcraft2, Protoss Build Order, 4gate, 4 Gate, Chrono, Chrono boost, Chronoboost, Nexus, Pylon, Pylons, Supply, Supply Blocked, Stalker, Zealot, Core, Cybernetics Core, Warp Gate, Gateway, Assimilator,Strategy Game, 3 Gate Robo, 3gate robo, 3gaterobo, Probes, Probe, 4 warpgate build order, 4gate build order, Twilight Council, Charge, Blink, Blink Stalkers, Stargate, Star gate, Observer, Macro

When and what to push

In the early game, Zealots are the slowest units,
but make excellent meat shields to Marauder fire.

Immortals are great to use for early pushes in all
match ups. They do 50 damage to Roaches,
Stalkers, and Marauders

Pushing is something I have been having trouble with recently. I am still in the mentality that if I want to win, I should be pushing really early on, something that carried over from all those matches I four gated every time. In fact I rarely had a match that lasted longer than 18 minutes. I would always push when I felt I could do enough damage. What I didn't take into account was things I should wait for to make my push 100% better.

What to wait for
Things like waiting on a Forge upgrade, or a couple of Immortals, or even Charge. Things like that can make that push that much more effective. So now instead of pushing with a large force and surprising your opponent, you know have an upgrade that makes that large force much more powerful, and that upgrade isn't even noticed until after the battle starts. You might see 6 Zealots assembling at your front and think oh all I need is 3-4 roaches and I can kite em around, but what you don't see is 6 Charged Zealots assembling at your front and suddenly kiting is suddenly near impossible to achieve.

You never want to push into your opponents base without scouting what he has or what he was going for. Constant scouting can help you determine what you should be making or if that push you were making was going to work.

Also, don't plan to defeat your opponent early unless you know for 100% you can. In most cases its more beneficial to wait on that upgrade and do small pushes to help you establish that expansion. However waiting to push until you have a higher tech unit is generally Ok. Good units to wait for would be the Immortal, Collossus, Hydralisk, Siege Tanks, Medivacs.

So far we have  two elements that should be considered before pushing, upgrades, and scouting. Going for specific unit counts before you push is only useful if your going for a build where all of your resources are going straight into unit production, like the 4 warp gate build because your objective with pushing is gaining an advantage, not losing it.

Defenders advantage and the proxy Pylon
Another problem with trying to push early on to win the game is something called the defenders advantage. No matter how many units you have, your opponent will be able to reinforce himself faster if he is defending against your push. This is why proxy Pylons are so GOOD! I tend to always build a Pylon near the Watch towers. They are usually the half way marker between our bases and cut my reinforcing time down by half.

Zomg Hyrdras!!!!

So I have been pretty busy this week with work and projects and have had little time to sit down and even play Starcraft. I love writing these blogs, but if I havent played me some Starcraft matches recently, I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about in the blog. So I am going to pose a question out there and see what people do when encountering this unit mix.

Mass Hyrdralisks. How do you handle them? I played a Zerg player who did this to me, and in the past its also happened so lately its been bugging me on how to effectively engage a mass Hydralisk army. My best thought has been to mix some Archons with my unit mix to help absorb some damage while my zealots and Stalkers get into position, maybe even a collossus or 2. Zealots are very good against any unit when they get in range to attack.

What are some ways you have found to hit a MAss Hyrda Army?

Neat tricks you can do that you probably didn’t know about…

There are quite a few casters (including buildings) in the game, and most starting out players tend to ignore them as they take quite a bit of micromanagement skill that they are not comfortable with. They are however, a good way to building your micromanagement skill.  So lets look at the first one. This is for Protoss.

Did you know Chrono Boost can be used on Warp Gates? I am talking about the morphed version of the Gateway, your primary source of building units. It halfs the recharge time of warping in units! So instead of waiting 23 seconds to warp again, you can do it again in 12! Come patch day, it will be 14 seconds, but that is still a fast way to get units out, Zerglings don’t even come out that fast! If you have an expansion and both your Nexi are pretty full in energy with say about 6 Warp Gates, you will still have spare energy remaining and have produced 24 supply worth of troops (1/8 of your max population) in a matter of 12-14 seconds.

Another Protoss unit that has some interesting tricks is the Phoenix. It can move and fire much like the Diamondback from the single player campaign. However it requires some micromanagement as it doesn’t simply move and fire automatically. You can fire, move, fire again and keep moving. It requires very fast hand speed and knowing your hot keys.

This trick is actually something people have rumored it will work but in fact it doesn’t. High Templar cannot Feedback an Orbital Command. It only works on units.

This one I didn’t know about until recently. We have all been trapped or halted by the Protoss Sentry’s Forcefield. It can be a real pain. However, if you have some Colossus, you can use them to break the forcefield! Simply order them to walk through it.

Ghosts are a unit that most people will overlook as there attack isn’t that strong, and they die very easily. However, when you add a Ghost to your unit makeup when going up against a Protoss player, the results can be lethal for the Protoss Player. There Emp Round can take down the shields of any Protoss unit. This is especially useful against the Immortal as their damage reduction only applies to their shield. Once their shield is down, no more damage reduction is applied.

Another way Ghosts are useful is against cloaked units. Most people will think that using EMP against a Banshee reduces its energy to 0, thus it comes out of cloak, or that’s at least what it did in Brood War. However, when it is used against a unit with a permanent cloak, like the Observer or Dark Templar, the EMP will actually knock the unit out of cloak temporarily! The catch is, you have to know where the unit is to use it.

And last but not least is the Zerg Queen. Most people will keep them in their base and puke Larva and poop Creep Tumors. However, their more commonly unused ability is Transfusion. This ability instantly heals 125 health. This is great to use on units like the Ultralisk or Hydralisks. They cost no gas, have a very long ranged anti air, and there is no cooldown for the spell, so you can spam it on targets who are getting focus fired. However the down side is Queens move very slow on ground that isn’t creep. So building a few extra queens and getting some Creeping going is a great way to fix that, as well as giving you excellent vision across the map.