Protoss Strategy Discussion

You *can* block the choke. But I don't think that 1 gate teching is that great... I rely on atleast 4 gates for sentries/stalkers/HT/DTs throughout the game. I recommend not rushing someone with a forge, they can most definetly get cannon towers up before you can hit. if I see a forge, I go for an expo.. forge + 2 cannon towers = 450minerals.... so you can afford to expo and be even in terms of minerals in your units.
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All this is great stuff, I only have 2 problems.
1. The cannon rush seems incredibly hard to fend off. I have to wall in, or their probe comes in my base and starts the cannon rush close to my workers. But If I do wall in, then they build the cannons right outside my ramp and then im trapped inside and the game is basically over. I dont have to extreme micro skills to follow the enemy probe around and block buildings while simultaneously building up my own base. I seriously need help with this cuz its incredibly annoying.

2. I still cannot figure our for the life of me how to counter BC. Last game, I had an ob in their base, saw the bCs coming, and starting getting stalkers. When They came, I had almost 20 stalkers, with a few sentries for the guardian shields. Even with FF, I still lost to like 4 -5 BCs. I literally see know way to counter them when massed and I haven't seen anybody addressing this issue.

 

VR+stalkers counter BCs, feedback is also a good option to stop yamato gun. If he builds a pylon right outside your base and walls you in, get 4 warpgates, and a warp prism, head on over to his base (he's noob, so he won't have anything) and warp in some zealots... also use the warpgate to get a probe out for an expo. Did you have upgs on your stalkers? because with blink+FF you should be able to take out 5 BCs
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So you have to get Void Rays against BCs?? Also, how does blink on the stalkers help in any way? The stalker range is not better than the BCs.

With the wall in, I cant get all that stuff cuz as soon as he gets the cannons up, they kill my gateway and other stuff, then his army comes in, and im dead or so far behind the game is basically over.

 

cannon rush if he plants a cannon outside your base early in the game. you know he has no base defense yet. a few void rays to pick off his cannons is good. or blink some stalkers another way out of your base or warp prism some troops and attack his expansion/main base.

3 void rays is enough to pick off all his cannons outside your base also.

but your main problem is not countering his cannon rush its knowing its coming.

i mean you need to scout him and u should know if hes building pylons outside or inside your base before he does it dude.

i think phoeniixes also tear apart battlecruisers?

 

Okay, so blink will help with your FF. blink under them, then FF them, see the damage difference. VR are designed to counter BCs, they're the standard counter. Did you get damage upgs for stalkers? if he's getting BCs, you need to spend more time on map control, you should contain a terran and not let him get enough resources/time to get BCs/nukes, because trust me... if you leave a terran alone for too long, you're doomed.
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So the blink actually focuses the fire? I guess getting right under him means the lasers dont have to travel as far. Also, now that I think about it, getting some High Templar with the feedback might work really good. Could do up to 250 damage, which is nearly half the BC's heath.

As for the cannon rush, Im just gonna work on scouting with a probe to see it coming.

 

Something like that.... more just that it's a more effecient way of moving from target to target, and he can't run.
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in regards to whoever said about when they see a forge they go expansion... well i dont think this is viable as in the early game if someone has gone forge and u go expansion then you wont have an army big enough to protect both mineral lines.

 

just wanted to say thanks to all who inputted their thoughts its really helped me out Im new and i do enjoy playing protoss mainly.This kinda made me think of how i play and started looking at my replays and see where i went wrong.

 

so recently i was playing a 3v3 with protoss, and we so trashed them it wasnt even funny 2 guys left, but the third was stubborn, he held out and pushed us back, despite the fact that it was 1 guy controlling 3 groups he was able to destroy every expansion we tried to make and had general map control. from that time on i have been doing much better in not only 3v3 but 1v1 ect. because i realised that expanding is great, but not letting the other team expand works even better. this is what obsevers are for, kep them up and around the map Shift patrol them from a few min sights if you see a building wait till it make something then kill it, good clean fun.

also countering a zerg rush can be done with only 1 zealot and good block, same with a z rush if you can get 1 z to defend the tiny chokepoint you have made they can only attack with 1, a cannon or 2 will take care of the rest.

i believe this match shows some stuff including beating BC's and and controlling the terran and a niceish/risky choke point (first time doing one their), ( no high mins for you) maybe this will help maybe not

 

I agree with High, but disagree regarding void raids. I believe VRs are the kryptonite of Terran.

map control, and constant harass. imo

the only thing i lose to in the whole game: is a fast pro MMM, and letting speedlings into my base.

i get my 10 probes and then i start building pylon and gateway. Cuz thats what whiteRa does

 

Hey guys, I'm curious if anyone is interesting in writing a full out guide? I ask this cause I'm looking for guides to post on my companies site, and I've seen some pretty slick stuff written here (big kudos to high and zangetsu). I run Stratics.com and www.starcraftpedia.com and would be interested in working with you guys.

Cheers

Curtis Pyke
CIO - TGN Stratics
e: curtis@thegamenet.com
skype: curtis.pyke

 

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Okay, I think it's easy enough to defend both mineral lines. if he has to split his already weaker forces you defend one line, pull 1 line off and destroy half his army... soon enough you have enough to defend both reasonably well. if someone gets a forge early they're going to get atleast 2 towers... they really won't have enough forces to hit. keep an eye on them, try to pressure them to build more cannons if possible... etc.

and early you *can* contain the toss. I'd recommend it. I did this a lot in warcraft 3 and it's very effective. and in sc2, so far, so good.

note : if they're towering and you keep them contained keep an eye on them for VR, get obs incase of DTs and you're set.
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One thing that I've seen that works ok sometimes is to build up with a 4 warpgate --> twilight council combo, then build a phase prism and stealthily warp in dark templars behind their wall. You can make that work rather fast, and it works really well against zerg because of their general lack of detector units.

 

Haha wow havn't been to the forums for a bit...

So a couple things I want to add.

1. Everything is situational. Obviously. You need to scout. If you are going 1 gate tech and you see your opponent going 2-3 gate no gas, 3 barracks, or roach warren, you gotta throw down some more gates. If you see your opponent early expo before spawning pool etc... you can throw down 4 gate to warp tech and push, or expo and tech yourself...

The point is if you play in the dark, you loose. Good Z players always sack a few overlords to check out their opponent. P gets the obs, t has the scan.

Although as t or p i think you should always wall. can't see any reason not to.

2. Voids are pretty good I decided. I actually think they are the best against Z if the rush lengh is short. You can block a ramp so well with 1-2 pylon, gate, cyb, a couple zeals and a sentry. Good luck z lings. By the time they get the roach warren up you should have v rays anyway, so if they push on you the vray will melt the roaches and there is no way the z will have anti air unless he throws down spores = huge waste of resouces = you should win.

I feel like marines and viking are very good against voids. Terran have to much easy anti air that is also stardard. I personally love to 3 gate to colosus if they go mmm, or 3 gate 2 robo to immortals. I have an awesome game were I had like 10 immortals and 10 stalkers killed about 15-20 marines and 10 tanks with over half of my army left easy. Immortals are SUCH a hard counter to tanks.

3. Thors man. Wow. Great against all zerg units. the only counter is infester or mass roach? (still 2 shot roaches) With some mmm support jesus they are strong. Against protoss not quite as good due to immortals and voids which counter strong. I watched a couple thors kill like 20 banshees. Awesome splash.

And the thor medivac combo against zerg on maps like LT were you can drop it on a ledge above expo and rape. Amazing. What can a zerg do? Nothing. Just take it. Obviously if the z scout and goes baneling bust you are probably in big trouble...but thats why you always gotta scout. ALso baneling rush + expo...not sure you see a build like that very often anyway.

And I'll add a little list of strategies that people have used that owned me:

1. As Zerg, Hidden pylon/warp prisim in main ---> large protoss army all over my tech builders out of nowhere.
Also, terran fast tech to cloaked banshee; got I hate it when people do it to me but love it when i do it to them.

2. As terran, a fast stalker push while i was trying to tech to factory. Didn't see it coming and it was dirty.

3. As protoss, Mutalists at a 'critiacal mass.' Keep me in my base, give the z total map control. You need to counter with what? stalkers? Obviously mass muta ---> mass speedling. Muta +Speedling = a lot of dead stalkers. Thats why i usually push pretty early against a 2 base zerg, if for no other reason then to force him to build more defensive structure and zlings, to keep him from those damn mutas.


recently I have been playing random and trying new things, and I lose sooo much more than when i just played standard protoss every game, but I find it more fun. I'm in plat 1v1 but I win only about 1/2 of my games right now, so know that I am not one of the great players out there. Just my 2 cents again.

 

Vs Thors your best friend is going to be Immortals. They negate like 90% of the Thors massive damage. Void Rays are good to because the damage has a lot of time to build up on the Thors. Immortals also do bonus damage to Thors (armored), so you have that as well. Shoot even Stalkers can do decent damage to a Thor, but they will fall apart under Thor fire.

As far as Speedlings go Collosus are your best friend. They have enough range that the Zerglings speed is somewhat negated, and Collosus are pretty fast. Zealots will also murder Zerglings in a straight on fight. Psy storm can drop Zerglings in no time flat. Psy storm kills like everything Zerg .

Dark Templars work very well verses Terran. Warp them in, and kill the Command Center before his troops can kill you. Have a couple Phoenixes/Void Rays to do damage once it lifts off, which it will have to if his units can't get to you quick enough. Then your Dark Templars get to kill everything! No Command Center, no Scanner Sweep .

 

I think the ability "feedback" for the protoss high templar is very underused. Feedback is really powerful against the Terrans since it can instantly kill many units with one feedback. Terran has so many energy powered units, banshee, ghost, thors, battlecruisers, ravens, medivac. That is a lot of support units you can take down with that! In addition, the range on the feedback is HUGE!. Sometimes, it might even be better to use a feedback instead of storm on crucial units like the Raven and things. I hope to see more high templar strategies and tactics.

The other unit that is underused as a protoss is the carrier. There is no strategy with the carrier period. They do pitaful damage compared to its size. In addition, their damage is too low which suck against units like ultralisk, battlecruisers and any high armored units. I hope they fix that so they can make carriers and many other starcraft 2 strategies more viable.

 

Carriers are good to switch to from void rays, as they are pretty effective against things vr's are not: marines, mutas, even hydras if you micro right and fight over favourable terrain (beacuse of their range). Problem is with vikings, as they are good against both vr's and carriers, though luck

 

Why so little discussion for the Protoss? The Zerg thread has 17 pages

Wondering if people can help me. Having no problem against zerg at my level, tend to lose to toss (but I'm putting that down to being a fairly new player, maybe when I have more experience with toss I'll be fine) but Terran cause me all kinds of problems.

Games recently tend to devolve into me having map control and the Terran staying in his base. He either builds a huge force (like 20 thors, surrounded by marines. Not pretty) or by ranging out of his base with shees and bc. Often I can contain him, and a fair few times the Terran has quit when he runs out of minerals.

I just can't beat them. I contain, get a whole bunch of resources, and pretty much wait him out until the Terran runs out of patience/minerals. What can I do to actually end the game? They always wall off, put a few siege tanks/marines behind, place a turret for detection and thats the ramp closed to me. Turrets and marines can defend from air attacks so the base pretty feels impregnable. Help!