EPTHere's some relevant stats from the whole season, my strengths and weaknesses are quite pronounced.
![[image loading]](http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/8871/stz.png)
TLDR stuff about protoss strategy and what builds I plan on using next season.
1. PvT is hard. Unfortunately I didn't really figure out what builds I was going to stick with and practice until like a week ago. A lot of my losses come from bad build order+bad micro early on. I think I figured out a sweet variation of the 1gate FE which will minimize any damage from a 2 rax reactor+techlab opening while staying okay against gasless 1 rax FE. Basically, start off like the 1 gate MC fe guide but get 1 extra stalker out of your gateway instead of building 2 probes right before your nexus. Essentially, that means you get 1 zealot and 3 stalkers off of 1 gate before you start the nexus. Should be enough units to fend off 2 rax openers without pulling probes, but put you in a position to take a 6:00 third against 1 rax gasless FE. I tried the Feast build and hated it. I eventually went back to 3 gate sentry expand, and while this build crushes 2 rax with the 9 minute stim push follow-up all the terrans do, it gets facetrolled by any banshee openers. I would definitely like to experiment with 2 warpgate expands because nobody ever does them.
2. The other "standard" play I discovered watching White-Ra's stream. It's deceptively simply and makes for a really straightforward and easy to play game. Basically, he did a standard gate robo gate nexus expand with 2 gas. Any terran is going to be shitting his pants assuming you're going to immortal/sentry bust at this point. Instead, you just immediately throw up a robo bay right after starting the nexus when resources become available. From there, you stay on 2 warpgates+1 robo+bay and take a 3rd at around 9:00-9:30 once you have 2 ranged colossus. The terran will predictably react with fast starport and drops. What White-Ra did in this situation was simply use 1 of his colossi + a handful of stalkers as drop defense and turtled up to 200/200 3/3 storm+colossi on 3 bases. You have such a huge colossus lead that you can pretty much spare one and your main is going to be defended for life. This strat is really good and gets you an almost guaranteed 3rd base. The downside is that it keeps you on the defensive the majority of the game and a good terran could easily go 4 orbitals and outplay you in a very long game. Fortunately most won't do this as they have this idea that lategame vs toss is an auto-loss.
3. I settled on 3 different standard pvz builds. The first is the ZenEX_Avenge build. This one can be seen against Idra and in the latest Zenex GSTL match. It works against everything and is still very strong when scouted. To summarize it, he ffes and does not do any type of 4 wg zealot pressure. Instead, he takes both natural gases around 6:45 and throws down a robotics around the same time. While he's waiting for WG research to finish, he builds 3 sentries and researches +1 attack. From the robo he builds 2 immortals+1 warp prism (the warp prism can be skipped in favor of an extra immortal). While all this is going on, he builds 6 more warpgates and researches +1 armor. He heads out around 10:15 with 2-3 immortals, 8-10 sentries, and 0-1 prisms with 1/1. Perfect, just as mutas are coming out. From here you push with your 7 warpgates and crush. The build works great against 2 base muta play because zerg has to rely on so many spinecrawlers, which is why the immortals are so much better than having blink. Even if a zerg knew this push was coming, the only way to blindly counter it would be hydras; which toss could react to by simply delaying the push a few minutes and throwing up a bay. Infestors might work, but I don't know anything about infestor play/what timings would happen, and even then I think just playing the same way as vs hydras would work. Against any standard 3 base roach+ling this build performs really well and usually comes down to forcefield micro. This is definitely my go-to build though.
My 2nd build is a pretty boring stargate double voidray into 7 wg 2 base allin. Pretty boring, I saw kiwikaki do it and it seemed good. It works.
3rd build is more interesting and sort of old school sage/Kiwikaki. 2 gate +1 zealot pressure after ffe into double stargate phx followed up with a chargelot, high templar, immortal army without stalkers or sentries. This style is really fun and fast paced and reminds me of broodwar pvz a bit. This is the only build where I try to get a 3rd with any regularity. After much trial and error and viewing pro games, I have decided there is just no point in taking a 3rd against zerg if you're not going 2 stargate phoenixes. Mutas are simply too prevalent and too powerful. What usually happens is toss is forced to turtle on 3 base with blink stalker+storm then finally moves out and is greeted with a 4 base zerg economy and 2109348709 spine crawlers and he GGs and leaves while the mutas are still in his base. That's another thing making this build so strong. Zergs in the current metagame fucking LOVE going mutas, so you often get to just blind counter with a ton of phoenixes. any sort of 2 gate +1 pressure is really bad if scouted though, so this is basically a ladder build and a build to use in BoX in tourneys. One thing I do love about it is that it's totally cheese proof as far as proxy hatch/roaches/nydus worms go.
4. I thought I had pvp figured out with the dt->chargelot archon style. I seemed to crush all of the immortal fast expands really easily. Then my opponents simply started using better building placement at their nats and it became impossible for me to end the game with my first archon+chargelot push at their nat. Defender's advantage actually becomes a huge factor when you're playing chargelot+archon because of building placement and terrain features, not because of reinforcement speed. Your chargelot archon army is a ton stronger than anything a robotics tech player can produce until around the ~130 food mark. I experimented with my own immortal expand style for a while, but it's been so long since I've played robotics 2 base style pvp that I lost a lot of games trying to get the hang of it. If I'd just stuck with chargelot+archon I'd probably still be around 60% winrate. I think I'm going to go back to the chargelot+archon style. I think the way I can deal with an immortal expand+good building placement will be to take 2 nexuses and transition into a voidray+immortal+chargelot based army. This is going to require some experimentation. The style is still sound as a standard play though, as robo-teching player can't beat archon+chargelot in a 1 base vs 1 base fight and must expand eventually. If he didn't start his nexus by the time my first archon push comes, I just start my own nexus, contain at his main, and usually win. If he expoed with bad placement, I usually just win right away.
5. I need to veto Antiga next season -_-. Pvt is next to impossible on that map. I'll probably use my other veto on TDA just because I can't stand pvp on that map. I do love TDA pvt and pvz though. I seem to be doing really hot on Entombed. Protosses always do robo expands here because they feel safe with the ramp+sentries and don't wall it off with buildings that often. My archon stomps over their forcefields and I win.
6. There's a lot of zergs at this level. I'm guessing a lot of mid-high masters players are former C- to C+ ICCUP Bw players who thought their good mechanics would carry-over to zerg the most. As you go lower down masters, there's more protoss because it easiest in low level games, then as you go to high masters/gm, there's more terrans because it's the best race with the highest skillcap. My crackpot theory anyway. Also, when pvt in tlpd was like 44/56 in favor of terran, I was kicking ass in pvt. When pvz is 40/60 and protoss is slightly ahead of terran in tlpd, I'm kicking ass in pvz and getting dominated in pvt.
7. My high for the season was 1100, GM cutoff is 1500 according to blizz if I remember correctly. I won't be as active next season with other obligations and all, but I think if I focus on improving a lot this season I can definitely make GM in season 7 or 8. My PvT held me back big time this season, need to practice it hardcore in customs.
