Still Platinum!

So after a long 70 hour work week, I head over to a clients house to clean her floors. Shes a nice older lady who I frequently talk to about other business ventures and stuff in general. She told me to head home early and enjoy some time to myself, after I told her how long of a week I had. Now, to set things straight, Work is the reason I have not been able to devote any time to the blog, or Starcraft in general. a 60-70 Hour work week is now normal for me. Any Semblance of a Social Life or free time went out the door in favor or paying the bills.

Anyway, I took her up on her offer, headed home and spent an hour playing Starcraft, which involved 1 Ladder game. I lost to a Diamond Player going Roach + Infestor probably because, even though I knew he was going Roaches, I still built a Colossus. I had been producing a few Immortals, but did not keep up with it, so eventually he won out by having more units. It wasn't until after my third base went down that I realized I was not spending all of my resources, or did I have enough unit producing Structures. I still had 3 Gateways after my 2nd base went up. I still have trouble knowing when to build more unit producing structures after an expansion goes down. I am finding I need to find the right time to push, or just push out then to see what he is doing and how much he has to know whether to continue building units and wait till I have enough money too add more buildings on. I am liking this 3 gate Council build though....

But I was placed in Platinum after that match still! Hooray!!!!!

New Builds for Protoss Part 2 (PvZ)

PvZ

This matchup I enjoy the most. I have been using Phoenix play early on too great success. Zerg have no effective Anti air early on, and they must sacrifice their queens(150 minerals Yikes!) or get a Evo Chamber up with some spore crawlers in there Mineral line to effectively Defend against it. I usually go with 4 Phoenix's and begin searching for Overlords. I need to take down at least 6 to make it worth my while. However I am still working out the kinks and I tend to let my Macro slip because I get so excited shooting the big fat floaty things in the sky :)

Queens make prime targets for the Phoenix

They also work well in other situations like when your opponent is going Muta/Roach/Ling. Phoenix's can handle a group of Mutas larger than them. They do extra damage to light and thats just what Muta's are. However Mutas do no extra damage to any unit. They are just very fast and are great at harassing the mineral lines. There is one more thing Phoenix's are good at, defense.

Phoenix's are great removing units from play without killing them.

When being attacked. the Phoenix can lift up some units from the battle to prevent them from participating. Later on in this match, the opponent sent Roaches at me. I let my macro slip and was about 1100 minerals up. So brought my Phoenix's back and had them lift some roaches so as to try and even the playing field. It worked and I repelled the Roaches back. Phoenix's, however, don't do so well in the other Matchups.

The Build
But this is how the build works. You grab your gateway and Core down ASAP. And then grab your 2nd gas while placing your 2nd gaeway and Stargate down. When you have enough minerals, place another Gateway down. Phoenix's only cost 50 more gas and 25 more minerals than a stalker. So you should be able to still utilize 3 gateways, which was the mistake I kept making, I was under the impression that you could only have 2 Gateways and a Stargate.

Also, 4 gating also works very well in this Matchup, but I am looking to break away from the monotony that is 4gating. Sometimes grabbing a Robotics Facility will help fend off the Roaches as well as provide you with access to an Observer and only 1 building away from a Colossus. If Zerg are going only Roaches and Lings, your best bet is to attempt to grab a Colossus, but the only way to know if he is doing this is by applying pressure. Constantly build Stalkers, and if hes still building Roaches to defend, he wont be getting alot of lings, however if he builds more lings and more Roaches, get ready for some tricky play. Either way, a Robotics Facility will be your friend. When you push out, place one down so you can be ready for whatever he decides to throw at you. Staying in a 4 gate build or even into 6-8 gates, will only hinder the effectiveness of the Protoss. Lings are just the bane of a Protoss army early game.

When to.....

Ever wonder when you should be doing ______?

I do. I have a terrible time knowing when to start teching up.

I typically start with 4 gate and get some units up. once 8-12 units are up I begin pushing out. I poke in, see if those initial units are still their, if not I know hes teching up and wont have many units. Thats a clear sign for me to do one of two things. Expand or drop 1 of 4 tech buildings, a Forge, Robotics Facility, Stargate, or Twilight Council. Lets assume I am up against a Terran player. I tend to Expand because it is relatively safe if my army is outside his base and preventing him from moving out. With only  half a dozen marines at his cliffs, that tells me hes either going for some tanks, or Banshees. More than likely its Banshees.

Do I drop a Robotics Facility down instead of expanding?

No, I still will expand, because getting that 2nd base up and going while preventing him from getting his is so important. I'm now in a position to know what hes probably doing, and I have now limited his choices. He can either continue with Banshees and get cloak and probably hold his ramp off if I decide to push in again, or make some more ground forces to push me back. Both are perfectly reasonable. Most players I have faced tend to continue with their Banshees and get cloak. Its important to poke up his ramp to see whats their, as if some Marauders suddenly pop up, I know hes looking to buy time before cloak is ready and hes going to make a push a bit later with not only a force, but also Banshees.. That means I need to have dropped a Robotics Facility sometime after my Nexus gets placed.

See how important Scouting is? I began scouting more frequently and accurately because I primarily play in a reactionary way to my opponent. Because I do this, I need to be knowing what my opponent is doing pretty often. If I see some heavy Marauder play I need to grab an Immortal or a lot of Stalkers ASAP. An observer would also help as well as these provide a way of keeping track of your opponent without having to sacrifice the occasional probe up his ramp.

So what things do you wait for either in your build order, unit count, or what your opponent does to justify teching up?

Starcraft Noob: Idea

I had this idea after reading a few posts about Protoss Shield upgrades. It seems that having 2 separate upgrades for defense(1 for shields 1 for armor) is kinda redundant. What if the Shields upgrade increased the max shield available to the unit instead of reducing the damage the shield takes, perhaps a set amount or a percentage of the units current Shield points. This could make getting the shield upgrade more viable as currently its, "Well I've upgraded my weapons and armor to the max I might as well get the shields upgraded" To top it off, the games which you get that far are few and far between.

The units that would take most advantage of this would be the Immortal and the Archon. Lets say the upgrade would give 10% more shield life. That would give the Immortal the chance to shrug off 1(if fully upgraded up to 3) extra big attack, but still keep it vulnerable from smaller hitting creatures.

The Archon would gain 35 shield per upgrade, or 105 total, which puts its hp at 455(i think right?). Which would increase the viability of this particular unit as I have also read too many threads concerning the uselessness of this unit.

As for buildings well our most important building, the Pylon, would gain 30 shield points, not a big upgrade but still, as the game goes on the importance of this building grows. This could be a great way for us to help protect our key buildings without giving us an huge early game advantage.

But in some cases like the nexus, its shield life would increase by 100 at a time. However, Zerg's Hive have 2500 Health by the time they upgrade it, and Terran's have the ability to not only repair their buildings but also upgrade their Command Center to a Planetary Fortress as well as have separate armor upgrades for their buildings.

Broke a losing streak.

So I have been on a losing streak lately. I played 5 matches the other day and lost all of them, vs 5 Protoss. Today I finally broke that streak. I lost 2 two in a row to just early Zerglings and Zergling/Mutalisk.

My strategy had been to just try to out macro my opponent and use my 3 Gate/Robo build because I believe so strongly that it is economically sound in the early game, and in my tests it is, but when I get into a ladder game, I get so distracted easily that my macro and build fall apart. This build requires near perfect timing to achieve and get 50 food worth of units in about 7 minutes and my expansion at 7min, 20 sec. Else I'm not spending minerals like I should.

My Flaws
My first big flaw was not letting my opponent feel the full wrath of the warriors of Auir! In other words, applying good, constant pressure. For me when I am up against Zerg or Terran, its hard for me to gauge where they are at in the game. I cant look at a unit composition from my scout and tell whether they are going certain tech. I know I should be able too, and I know I should play the other races for a bit to get a better feel for it, but I feel i would do better to work on simple play and macro. Once I can do this and not miss a probe, or building, I'll expand my knowledge beyond Protoss. What good is knowing what my opponent has if I don't have the macro and faster hands to deal with it? My other flaw, which I have already stated is my macro is seriously lacking. I think the only way to fix this is to just play a some games until I can "remember" what I should be doing.

How I finally won.
My macro was bad, my eye was not on the minimap like it should, but I did notice one thing...I only got supply capped once in each game I lost. That told me I mentally rose building pylons constantly as a priority to a point where my probe production was suffering. So decided to just keep my macro from being worse, but trying to apply pressure. This gave me knowledge of what my opponent was doing, he destroyed both my advances, and if he had pushed back I would have lost, but I noticed he was massing Stalkers, probably because he saw I had 2 Immortals on the field. I already had my expansion down, probe count was lower than I wanted, but I at least had decent saturation. So I took a chance, dropped 2 more Gateways down and a Twilight Council and began warping in Zealots. In hindsight I did take my expansions two gases after I did this, I don't know why, I was just going to go Mass Zealots. I kept warping them in as I could and brought in a few more Immortals to help take the Stalkers down. When he pushed, his army was crushed. He outnumbered me by about 18 food. But because I knew Stalkers have a hard time against Zealots, I just massed Zealots.

I'm going to try playing a minimum of 3 matches a night now to help keep my macro up. Playing the AI no longer helps me.

Do what feels right…

So today I’m just going to talk about how you play a match. If your like me, you like to watch matches from pro and amaze at their micro and macro skills. This is a good technique. You can pick up on stuff you may have not think about, after all some of the best strategies are circulated by the pros. I remember watching a Day9 Daily about how he was trying to beat Terrans early on as Protoss. He found that using Immortals was the best way to break the defenses and get an early lead.

 I began trying to incorporate them into my build to give me the extra edge, but it wasn’t working. It felt forced and I never had enough units. My original strategy involved a 2 gate opening but not utilizing it the way I should, I would wait till I get a Robotics Facility and then warp in 4 more, so 6 total, get a warp prism, and hopefully finish the game. I just kept doing this over and over again.

So I was looking for a change. But the build just didn’t feel right. So I abandoned it. If you’re not comfortable with your build, don’t force yourself to use it. In a way you have to feel your way through it. There is that inner voice that is telling you what you should be doing. Listen to it and learn from it.

Right now I have been trying to incorporate my favorite unit, the Dark Templar, into my builds. I don’t see this unit too often in matchups. People say that if your enemy brings detection then they are just zealots without charge. I have been working on using them as a support unit for my bigger army. Most players don’t being detection with their main armies, and a Dark Template can do some serious damage on one swimg.