Help for Low level PvT

I had a little time on my hands today and I thought I'd take this time and offer a little help to my fellow protoss players.Please, before you comment realize that this is not intended towards high level players. I'm a very low diamond player. I struggled in pvt for a very long time, now that I am winning in pvt a lot more, I just want give a little guidance to platinum and lower level players who find themselves in a similar situation. This is not a place for balance discussion. If you have good suggestions on this match up as a Terran or protoss player, please comment.

My main focus in this blog is early aggression and decision making. So many Terran rely on early aggression this that it is essential for any protoss player to learn to handle it well. I typically open 2 or 3 gate. I almost never 4 gate vs Terran for this reason, 4 gates is all you can support from 1 base. MM eats gateway units. 4 gate will only keep you alive for a little while and then you will have problems vs banshees, ghosts, and I feel mid/late game is much harder after a 4 gate. You also will not be able to utilize 4 gates and make constant probes for an expansion. Which really means you won't be able to reap the full benefit from an expansion or the 4 gates if you do both.

3 gate is nice because you can hold off the early marauder/marine pressure and then you can choose to counter attack/expand/tech. I usually choose to add a robo and make 1 obs before I commit to expanding, attacking or going colossus. Many times however I have found it beneficial to start a nexus while my obs is nearing completion. That way if my obs see's the Terran expanding I can let the nexus finish, or if I see him adding rax or tech (like tanks,med evacs,ghosts,vikings) I can cancel the nexus, use the warp gates to spend the money, and tech to colossus.

The obs is crucial, so be VERY careful where you send him. He is your buddy, he will help you make game winning choices, he will keep you safe from banshees. If you make more than 1 obs they will work together to give you early warning of drops. He will tell you when pushes are coming.So cherish your obs and give them the attention they require and you will be greatly rewarded with wins!

The key to holding off these early pushes is force fields. 1 of your first 3 units from your first gateway should always be a sentry. This is why sentries are so important, there is a wide variety of viable mm timing pushes. In order to combat any of them, force field allows you to make the following decision. Do I want to trap his army on my side of the ramp with a force field so they can't micro and I can kill them? or Do I want to keep them out of my base all together because their army will destroy mine?

The first choice. "Do I want to trap his army on my side of the ramp with a force field?" You want to do this if you have an army advantage and if you have a couple of zealots. Zealots are excellent against mm when there isn't room for micro. They are useless against mm when they have room to micro. It is also very important that your stalkers target fire marauders. You really want to keep their marauder count as low as possible early game. Pulling probes to fight is important against early pushes as well, because they can help the kiting situation and absorb damage. Allowing your units to stay alive, which is very important early game.

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Right click image and select view image to see full image
Watch the unit tab and clock in this sequence

First sentry is building

Sentry comes out

First wave dies, 2nd wave attacks

I regroup while they kill my pylon and shoot my gateway

Attack

Retreat

stalkers out

Feeling good now

replay included below

The second choice "Do I want to keep them out of my base all together because their army will destroy mine? If you have a lot of stalkers and few zealots and they have lots of marauders, this is probably a good idea. Use a force field to keep them out of your base and do damage to them with stalkers while they retreat from your ramp. Marauder crush stalkers with or without micro. In early battles it is very important to run them away as soon as their shield is low. This is because of concussive, they will take more damage while they slowly retreat and you want to give your units every chance to charge
shields that you can.

Now I am going to briefly comment on transitioning and 2 base play. I prefer colossus over HT's. Colossus damage cant be dodged, they give you view of the high ground, they help negate kiting, and they are always ready to fight. Compare these points to HT. The main idea with colossus is don't let them die! Your goal with them is to reach a critical mass of 3+, because they multiply their effectiveness. 3 colossus seems 5x better than 1. I like to do a little skirmishing with my first 1 or 2 but I almost always prefer to wait till I have a 3+ before I commit to a battle with them. I usually make an obs as soon as my robo finishes,(if you've lost a lot of gateway units early and are under pressure at this point it might make sense to get an immortal out first) than decide to go straight to colossus or expand and get colossus.

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No colossus vs MM

colossus vs MM

If I get the expo up I know in about 2 minutes I can support more than just 3 gate colossus. I usually do one of these three things. 2nd robo for double colossus, add 2 gateways and a forge, get blink and add gateways. If your opponent commits to ground with mm and tanks double robo is a good choice, if they are marine heavy 2 gateways and a forge is good (1 robo colossus will handle marines and if they are spending all their gas on vikings instead of marauders colossus won't be so godly), and if they are getting vikings then blink will be crucial to keeping your colossus alive (you will need blink to snipe vikings!) If your going to be fighting a Terran who has plenty of vikings it is a great idea also to get hallucination and make a bunch of fake colossus before an engagement.(just select a sentry and press "CC" once the research for it is done at the cyber core) You'll also see that around the time of my 3rd base. I like to place cannons and obs in locations that block drop routes or at least give me early warning.

I will sometimes go to 10 or more gateways if I get 3 base early. Or if my macro slips and I need to spend money. Also, a quick thing to note about the forge, if they are marine heavy get +1 armor first, before +1 attack. If you use guardian shields and have +1 armor, you units take -4 damage from marines (zealots and stalkers start with 1 armor)Just keep an eye on your sentries and make sure they are covering your units with the shield. This helps a ton vs any Terran army with 40% or more marines. Because the stimmed marine dps gets cut by around 33% by this. Charge is very good vs mm as well, but I usually save it for mid/late game. It really depends on my gas situation. If I am low on gas I get charge before blink because I know I will be making Zealots. If I have plenty of gas I get blink 1st because I will probably have more stalkers and colossus need protection from vikings.

At the bottom are a bunch of replays.
Some of these are better examples of the points I've made then others. But all demonstrate something I've discussed above. As I've stated, this isn't about a specific build order. It's about early aggression and decision making. You'll also notice that in many of these games all roads lead to colossus even if I do take slightly different paths to getting them out. (Unless I use air play. If I go phoenix or voids early, I will usually transition into carriers/mothership on 3 base rather than colossus) They also show a good variety of Terran play, including tanks, banshees, drops, vikings and ghosts. All used in conjunction with mm.

I hope this helps, because believe me I've felt your pain! I've been known to go on tilt, bitch about balance and make shitty posts on TL. I hope this will help people avoid that. I also HIGHLY recommend you watch Day 9's daily show because he does focus so much on fundamentals of play, that help you in any situation.

I also recommend you play your games out. Don't be quick to surrender, fight to the death. You don't have to wait for them to clear every building or anything. But play until you've eliminated all options. Crisis management will help you in so many situations, every losing game is a chance to improve this aspect of your play. It's also nice to know you benefited from playing the game even though you lost. You'll quickly find yourself saying "omg I can't believe I held that!" Remember, it will take practice to utilize these techniques in pvt. It's not all going to fall into place your first game, it will probably take at least 20 games to get the feel for. Also, I have pretty low apm (about 60). So anyone should be able to perform these tactics. I'm sure if you look closely you'll see me and my opponents making plenty of noob mistakes. Like getting supply blocked and slipping on macro. Again, this is not directed at high level players. It is really for low level protoss players who are sick of facing garbage Terran who only know how to mm rush, no matter how many times it happens you can't stop it, and each time a little piece of your soul dies.

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Things to pay attention to in them include:
Making good use of Probes
sentries (force fields,guardian shields and hallucination
obs
colossus.
Expanding whenever you have the lead.
Getting +1 armor
**My opponents make some funny comments

Hope you find these replays entertaining as well as informative

Please forgive and help me if I've made any stupid mistakes in this post. It got a lot bigger than I intended and I'm pretty sleepy.

Anyone care to share their thoughts on the post or the replays??

Help for Low level PvT

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