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I recently decided to learn protoss in beta, and wow is it fun. After playing 500 or so games as Zerg, just having units with abilities and being able to make use of multiple tech trees is super refreshing. Forcefield is pretty much a constant orgasm, and feedback/psi storm are amazing. Zerg is honestly the most boring race to play by far, and I'm slowly learning the tricks of the trade as protoss.
I wanted to make an informal blog type post instead of something in the strategy forums, because id like to discuss protoss strategy in general without asking specific questions and doing thorough analysis.
What I've gathered so far:
PvP:
An interesting mix of zealot/sentry/stalker/immortal, colossi being the mainstay of the midgame army. Lots of different options as far as opening builds go. Void rays seem to be viable for harassment purposes and cheesy wins. Using phase prisms to drop immortals also seems to be very effective harassment. Nothing in this matchup is perplexing or overly difficult for me to grasp, and its alot of fun.
PvT:
All I have to say about this matchup, is that high templar give me wet dreams. I find that speed zealots and high templar easily make short work of any infantry force terran can throw. Provided you are careful to not get EMP'ed in the face, I've found that feedback + storm is insanely good. Colossi seem quite difficult to keep alive, and don't seem to pay for themselves quite as much as high templar. I've had some issues with terran who go mass banshee before I can get HT's out, but I figure you can just grab some pheonix or a void ray or stalker/obs to deal with it. I'm not really sure about the proper response to mass banshee cloak, but thats one of the reasons I'm making this post 
PvZ:
Ok... if anything in SC2 is frustrating, its playing PvZ vs speedling expand into mutas. Other than making a sentry/zealot/immortal timing push and inflicting serious damage, I really don't see how to deal with this. Pheonix, sentry, and mass stalkers all do great against mutas, but I still have major issues due to the low mobility of protoss ground forces. I don't ever die to the mutalisks as much as I die to being outmacroed due to my inability to take map control. Some cannons and stalker/sentry seem to do the trick to fend off the harassment, but as far as getting a 3rd base or doing some kind of damage short of cheesy DT harass or getting a huge 200/200 army and attacking him I don't see what you are supposed to do here. Phoenixes seem to do quite well against mutas per cost, but its difficult to secure an expo. I'm more concerned about how to regain some shred of map control and be able to defend several expos. Killing the mutas head on isn't as much of an issue. Other than the mutalisk issue it seems like PvZ is alot of fun, and a very interesting matchup.
What do you guys think? Any feedback is appreciated, I'm just hoping to get some interesting discussion that will open my mind up to some of the possibilities for protoss gameplay, please don't replay with "PvZ is broken" or anything like that. I'm just trying to get some constructive suggestions/ideas to play around with in any of the matchups.
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By far right now I find as a Zerg the hardest thing to deal with in that matchup is when the Protoss goes for a stalker/immortal/sentry timing push you need to have a few zealots with it to engage the zerglings or they'll surround and destroy your more fragile units but if you can do a good job of keeping the zerglings off your stalker/immortals with forcefields and zealots you can literally rally point to their base and force him to cut drones to keep defending. At this point you can keep making probes and maybe even expand then he's down drones and kind of screwed.
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On April 06 2010 14:18 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
By far right now I find as a Zerg the hardest thing to deal with in that matchup is when the Protoss goes for a stalker/immortal/sentry timing push you need to have a few zealots with it to engage the zerglings or they'll surround and destroy your more fragile units but if you can do a good job of keeping the zerglings off your stalker/immortals with forcefields and zealots you can literally rally point to their base and force him to cut drones to keep defending. At this point you can keep making probes and maybe even expand then he's down drones and kind of screwed.
Yeah, I've had mixed success with exactly what you mention, I'm just not sure what to do in the event that you have to pull back or for whatever reason cannot do some damage with the timing push. Are there other viable ways to prevent getting trapped in your base with mutas? I haven't had much luck with phoenix builds, but then again I haven't tried them much, I'm still in the sandbox stage of my protoss play
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PvP - I had a guy go colossus a bit against me just so I would go colossus then do a quick switch to air and massacre me. I'm going to mess around with it tomorrow probably.
PvT - I haven't tried to many templar stuff, but I've been losing so I'll try it tomorrow as well. I agree with the colossus part. They seem to get destroyed versus terran.
PvZ - I go for a timing push. Just get observer then immortal and the minute Zerg puts down Spire I move out or sometimes before. It works well if you push at the right time, if you go too late though, you get screwed. I messed it up twice today and got destroyed. Void rays also seem decent on hatcheries. Haven't tried anything yet though only seen a few games with them. :/
I'm personally trying to figure out more Protoss air uses. Hopefully I can figure out better ways to void ray harass and get decent with phoenixes. :/ Protoss is fun to mess with and the abilities make it interesting. 
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Cannons are much stronger against mutas because of the no stacking now so even a few cannons can hold off a lot more mutas than before and if you can keep him from putting up a third base so that you're both on main/natural then you're way ahead since he had to cut drones. So the goal of that build is to force him to cut drones to defend it and if he doesn't you'll win.
So then you take that economy advantage into the midgame and defend what will most likely be some sort of an all-in by the zerg the transition can be difficult but once you get the hang of it it's so hard to beat :/
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On April 06 2010 14:23 Alou wrote:PvP - I had a guy go colossus a bit against me just so I would go colossus then do a quick switch to air and massacre me. I'm going to mess around with it tomorrow probably. PvT - I haven't tried to many templar stuff, but I've been losing so I'll try it tomorrow as well. I agree with the colossus part. They seem to get destroyed versus terran. PvZ - I go for a timing push. Just get observer then immortal and the minute Zerg puts down Spire I move out or sometimes before. It works well if you push at the right time, if you go too late though, you get screwed. I messed it up twice today and got destroyed. I'm personally trying to figure out more Protoss air uses. Hopefully I can figure out better ways to void ray harass and get decent with phoenixes. :/ Protoss is fun to mess with and the abilities make it interesting.
Yeah, its so nice having abilities on so many units. You actually get rewarded with crazy micro. When playing zerg I feel like I'm just making strategic choices and then throwing units at them (minus some baneling/muta/infestor micro). With protoss there are those situations where you micro well and just come out so far ahead its crazy. THOSE are the moments that really make playing SC2 a blast.
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Just did Dark Templar 3 times against terran (really lucky to have 3 in a row?) and won 2 of them. The one I lost was because he had a decent wall and it set me back a bit. Probably review that one and see what I failed at tomorrow. But they have been doing great. If I can get in the base, I'm pretty much able to win or atleast cripple their economy so much I get a great advantage. Also found that it's pretty hard to get past a few zealots with a decent wall in. I really like that build versus Terran. I'll probably mess around with it some tomorrow. Still need to work on my PvP though, it is by far my weakest match up. Protoss is just fun. I never saw any appeal in Zerg and Protoss jumped out as a fun race as their massive amount of abilities can be so much fun once I get the hang of them. I've barely started figuring out forcefields (I am the definition of fail in SC2), but they still make for very interesting play.
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EPT
