Well...here it goes. First of all 4 essential things: 1. Movement Use hot keys for everything (making units, making buildings, etc.) Hot key your army, Nexus, and scout. These are the 3 most essential things to hot key. I use 3 for Nexus, 2 for army, and 5 for scout. There is no right way to do hot keys. Figure out what works for you and stick to it. Slowly increase your mouse sensitivity. I started at 50 and moved it to 60. After a few games I increased it to 70. Eventually make it up to 100. Faster mouse movement let's you do actions faster and with less energy spent. Just make sure you're comfortable every step of the way. 2. Economy Make sure you get enough probes. Before you expand you should have at least 30 probes. 33-35 is good. Basically just don't stop making probes. In my games I build probes basically non-stop the entire game. Once you get around 50~60 you can stop depending on the situation. You want a good 22~26 probes at each base. Another thing that is essential is to keep your resources low. Try to stay under 500 minerals early in the game and under 1000 minerals later on. Get more buildings, units, or expansions to spend the cash. Another great way to spend cash is to simply grab some upgrades. 3. Micromanagement Always keep your army together in battles against the opponent. If half of your army engages in a battle, and the other half joins the battle 2 seconds later, then the effectiveness of your army is severely weakened. You want all units to engage in battle, and all at once. Do not enter into suicidal battles. Retreat when your opponent's army is bigger. You'll learn what battles are losing and winning as you play. 4. Learn When you lose a game try to figure out what went wrong. If you don't know why you lost then watch the replay and see if you can find out that way. Download pro gamer replays and watch them to learn how to play. The Blizzcon 2010 pack is this current patch and has excellent games and players. Now for basic build orders. The way I type out build orders is a bit involved and would probably be very confusing to someone who didn't already know how builds went. So here I'm going to type out very simplified build orders that don't explain specific timings and when to chrono boost etc. Basic Build: Pylon Gateway Gas Pylon Cycore 4 Gate Rush: Pylon Gateway Gas Pylon Cycore Keep probes coming and get 3 more gateways and turn them into warp gates. Just make lots of units and attack. 2 Gate Robo: Pylon Gateway Gas Pylon Cycore Gas Pylon Robo Gateway Then work on getting colossus while getting a third gateway. Try to learn specific timings from replays as that will help your game play a great deal. PvT Most Terran players you face will get marauders and marines. The way to handle this is to get lots of Colossus, stalkers, zealots, and sentries. Try to stay equal to the Terran in expansions and do your best to make the most of your units. Against mech get immortals. Against thors just mass gateway units and get templars. PvZ Colossus are also great here. They do good against hydralisks and zerglings, and roaches aren't too scary in the long term. You'll eventually want templars for storm. Immortals are good against roaches and ultralisks. Stalkers, sentries, and archons are good against mutas. PvP Colossus are good here too. Your basic goal is just to make a balanced army with lots of colossus. Yeah...super basic guide. Just didn't see too much basic stuff about Protoss so I decided to put this up. Any questions just ask. The main thing is to take the advice and watch some good replays to see things in action.
This helps me out. I got the game a few days ago but have been doing research for about 3 weeks, and some of this still helps keep important points fresh in my mind. It's easy to "know" what needs to be done and then forgetting the basics once I get in-game. Would you be willing to play a co-op game with me sometime to maybe go over strats as we play? I think that'd be extremely beneficial for me. Like I said I got the game a couple days ago but I played SC a lot and as I said I've been reading up on SC2 for weeks. I know the ideas, it's just my execution that's lacking and maybe you could help me refine it. User: Riven Player: 435 Either way, good guide for beginners.
Other notable mentions. Observers: 2-3 should be out by 15 minutes into the game, usually stationed with your army and at primary exit points or passage ways. Charge and Blink are critical upgrades that should always be gotten (For most games). zealots should have charge by 15 minutes into the game and by 10 minutes vs Terrain. Phoenixs annoy the piss out of zerg.
What are they used for? I can think of harassing overlords, but other than that? Which units should I gravity lift or whatever?
Early game I lift queens up and drones if enough energy, as the game goes on I use the phoenixs to lift up as many units in their army as I can when they attack (Decreasing their armies Damage per second) During all this time you should be scouting with them and killing as many overlords as you can. Murdering overseers if they have any. The idea here is to force them to go hydras or curruptors, if they go hydras you can get chargelots and DT's or chargelots and colusi, if they go curruptors you can make more stalkers than zealots, curruptors are kinda expensive so early game they may not be able to defend thier expos as well. I can post a game if u want.
