Warp Gates vs. Regular Gateways

Everyone keeps saying how warp gates produce units more quickly, but I'm wondering if that is actually true. I understand that they can bring a unit into a fight right away when you need it, but I'm wondering about the time it takes for the cooldown and the time it time it takes to actually warp/teleport in. So, for example, if I wanted to produce five zealots from just one gateway, how long would it take to produce them from a warp gate (generously assuming perfect and attentive micromanagement) as opposed to a regular gateway if you just had it queued up?

I'd also point out that I do that that assuming perfect micromanagement is a bit much to expect and you could arguably factor in the time it takes to research and transform the gateways. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of instantly bringing in a unit near any pylon, but that doesn't necessarily mean that several will be produced faster assuming you can fill up a queue for them.

ALSO... it seems like the units warping in are temporarily weaker for the second or two before they solidify... if this is actually the case, I could see that as a huge negative. But I'm mostly concerned about the timing and the efficiency of warp gates vs. regular gateways. Can anybody provide me with some hard numbers or break it down to me? Statistics and or theory would be appreciated.

 

From what I've heard, the cooldown for the warp gate is faster than the training time for a zealot, and the cooldown is the same for all gate way units. So, with good micro, they are faster than normal gateways. Also, if you have a phase prism with your army, you can deploy its pylon power near battles to be able to warp in units close to the fight instead of having them run across the map.

Yes they are temporarily weaker while warping in, but that can be countered by having them warp in slightly away from fights so they arent targeted until after being done.

Using the warp gate also allows for a lot for variety in strategy, and let the protoss be more effective at proxys. In sc1, you had to have a pylon and gateways near an enemy base to proxy zealots. Now, you can build up in your own base and just build a pylon near the enemy in a location you dont think they will see. This will allow you to instantly make a small army near that pylon when you know the enemy is out of position to intercept.

 

Warping in units is much faster. There is a 10 second time discount for using the Warp Gate.

Zealot:
Warp Gate cooldown: 23 seconds
Gateway build time: 33 seconds

You don't need perfect macro to gain a time-profit with the Warp Gate. You just need start a new unit within 10s of the cooldown ending to gain time. You also gain time if you are warping the units to a forward location- units don't have to trek across the map to be ready to fight. You also gain flexibility- you can build the units you need right now instead of the ones you think you'll need in half a minute.

As for the units being weaker as they warp in- they are. They build more or less exactly like buildings, starting with a small amount of HP and building it up as the animation completes. This should never be a problem because you should never be warping units onto the middle of a battlefield.

 

And it's also a viable strategy for a Terran player to produce a few vikings to take out phase prisms on the battlefield. Sucks awful bad when not only are your reinforcements not coming in, but they're dying because they lost power why warping in.

 

That's real nice and all, but don't forget that the research on warp gates has been made longer. It's still quite an advantage, but you had better use it real good after putting all that time and resources into it.

 

so do warp gates speed up the build time across the board? build speed alone is a pretty strong advantage. this might be a pretty odd role-switch, as zerg were the mass+speed race, but it looks like the protoss are going to be getting the mobility advantage this time around.

 

Yes, The cooldown on WarpGates = to the build time of unit that was warped in minus 10 seconds. Making it quite fast, but there is an interesting thing to take note of. Chrono Boost speeds up production of a unit by 50%(I am not sure if it can affect cooldowns, but im going to assume not). So a Zealot can pop out of a Gateway in 16.5 seconds rather than the normal 33 seconds. Production would indeed be faster(as long as you have the energy to keep Chrono Boosting the GateWay every 20 seconds), but the unit would then have to travel to where the rest of your army is.

 

You can Chrono Boost WarpGates as well, the cd on WG's is 23 seconds, or so. Chrono makes it like 16 or something maybe 13

overall its a natural evolution of protoss playstyle, as far as changing mechanics, i think they way it works will stay as is, they will just tweak the timings of research, right now it seems like 140 is a tad bit too long

 

I agree with Windblade, if they reduce the research time, then it'll be easier for the Protoss to be more mobile and counter threats much quicker. 140 seconds is just way too long.

 

Regardless of training time and cool down time, the main point of a warp gate is to warp in and devastate the enemy opposition. They point of warping in is to take by surprise, so if you've alerted the enemy by coming into their base with a warp prism, I suggest calling off the attack or going for an all out rush.

 

Personally, I find WarpGates immensely useful. If you just lost a skirmish they provide the utility to not get facerolled by the counter attack. On top of this I personally am pumping all of my chrono-boosts either into faster probes at expansions or for teching. Chrono boosting the WarpGate research passes the time quicker and if you are going ground the Cybernetics Core doesn't really offer any other option to tech aside from Hallucination which is underused at the moment. Hotkeying 7 WarpGates and spamming 7 zealots/warps/sentries late game allows you to counter a counter attack. It provides you the ability to quickly satisfy counter-unit (IE: a small mass of aa against an air harass, or speedlots against some excess marines/cracklings etc.) That being said. I firmly stand behind WarpGates. I personally have at least 3 a game. Check some Pro's nearly all of them are working out of some 4 WG strats or 2 WG and Robo facto etc.

 

warpgates + prism + zealots + charge = win

 

Plus you can always transform the warp gates back into gateways and visa versa depending on the way the battle is going.

 

I've been thinking that it'd be interesting if you could create Immortals at gateways but not warp gates but only once you build a cybernetics.

It might throw off the balance a bit but Immortals come out so late which makes fending off 10 billion marauders tough.

 

Actually I think Warp Prism are considerably underrated and underused right now.

By the way, its a fact that Gateways are completely 100% useless once you have Warp Gate researched. I believe the cooldown is the same.

 

I find the warp prisms are fun to use in the 3v3 map since people dont get a lot of detection and often forget to take the towers on the sides. Won a game yesterday by having 3 DTs slip in that way and taking out 20+ units each.

 

I think everyone is missing a critical point here.
queuing up units IS BAD. Any time you have queued units you have basically stored money and are not receiving any interest on that money, instead of queuing you should build another unit producer . Warp gates are amazingly better than gate ways and by warping all of your gates an easy hot key (W) is created making queuing useless as at any point you can hit w and make those units that would be queued up.
This is not a question the only time its even close is at start game when you obviously dont have it upgraded.
I truly enjoy coming over a protoss base and seeing gateways.

 

I think warpgates are defiantly better. In the long term they're much faster, but i think its also very important to consider that warpgates have a cooldown not a build time. 33 seconds before the unit is out vs. 23 until the next one. Seems like a no brainer.
Also, I've always felt that its a very, very bad idea to queue every if you can avoid it. Warpgates are supportive of that and helped me learn to use it with terran.

 

Personally I love ( as a few other people posted ) Wargate + Prism + DT. It even works in Diamond. ( Not always to win the game but always get a bunch of worker kills)

 

Is the cool-down time for warp gates consistently less than the production rate for all units? I keep reading the 33/23 stat for zealots--how does it work for stalkers and the other units?

I am pretty good at toss and I don't use warp gates--bottom line, it's an extra click to make every unit. I would rather rally my gateways to where I want my units, and then just hit the hotkeys for the units. 0 is my nexuses (chrono), 9 my gateways, 8 my robotics, 7 my stargates. I rally them all to the same place. That way i can make more units while I am in battle--you can't do that with the warp gates because you have to physically place each unit. Some argue that the warp gates make it easier to raise up a new army to guard against a counter, but with gateways you can be making these reinforcements while the battle is going on.

I see the "a unit now is better than a unit later" argument, but for me 5 key strokes for 5 units instead of 5 keystrokes+5 mouse clicks for 5 units trumps that. But, if the units really do come out faster with warp gates, I may have to reconsider.