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In PvT many people opt to go Colossi against Terran, and only teching to HTs todays the late game. I don't see why HTs cannot be integrated into mid game play, replacing Colossus play altogether. Sure, a Protoss will usually have a Robo to begin with, making the teching to Colossi easier, but is it worth it?
Here are my reasons for going HT over Colossus:
- Colossi are hard countered by Vikings, an easy to get staple unit of a Terran force entering the mid game. Oftentimes, a Terran will pre emptively get four to six vikings in preperation for Colossus, which can shut them down without great micro or extremely stalker heavy (which I find too frail, as your army is inneffective against marauders). Having them sit in the sky (or land and be pathetic), therefore not being useful at all, puts the Terran at a disadvantage.
- I also like to get Zealot speed when approaching the mid game, as it is very effective against bio balls. This means that the mandatory Twilight Council is not a nuisance to have to get, but a necessity (IMO) in the first place.
- High Templar ar only hard countered by ghosts. If you are good with micro, you can space your HTs out to prevent the EMPs for dealing too much damage, and even Feedback them before they have to chance to do so. Therefore, I would hesitate to call them a hard counter in the first place, but an important threat you have to keep in mind the whole time you go HT.
- Having HT with Khaldarin Amulet gives you complete map control if you're good at placing pylons. See an overwhelming advancing army? Warp in a couple of nearby HTs, and storm the ball, often making him turn tail to heal. See a drop in a hard to defend expansion, warp in three HTs and storm the small force, and feedback the medivac.
- Sure, storm has a much closer range than range-upgraded colossi, but this doesn't matter as they are much less likely to be sniped, and only have to stay alive long enough to launch a couple of storms to pay for themselves.
- I feel very vulnerable with a colossus-heavy build, as it is very immobile and slow to respond to harass, whereas, as I have stated, a few Khaldarined HTs will deal with most harass perfectly.
FYI, I one gate expand vs T on most maps, and take an early-ish third to fund what is usually a primarily Chargelot-HT force, with the stalkers and sentries I aquired early game for defense.
Your opinion please 
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A Few early ghosts own early HT plus all the time it takes to tech.. if you miss storms your kinda screwed..
Also... if your opponent has 6 - 7 Vikings by the time you have your 1st collosus.. Warp more units and go friggen kill him
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The only thing that counters templar is ghosts? Really? Do you not know what a banshee is? Even without cloak u lose.
Also takes about 20 years to get templar up.
The only way templar will be viable is if protoss gets some buffs to deal with AA, cloak, or DT's from archives.
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Often, you need colossi for a smooth transition into templar tech.
I'm a protoss player that has tried playing around 300 games of terran to understand the game from T's perspective. If you go straight to templar tech, there will be a time where you will be extremely vulnerable (before amulet upgrade and when he uses all his gas for mass medivacs).
Colossi means he needs to spend his gas and starport production on a reasonable amount of vikings, which is less medivacs so he can't go on the offensive too quickly.
While HT are definitely awesome, not going colossi is doing T a big favor. I learned this over a long period of time as my T practice partner would constantly ask me why I would rarely build colossi, as they are a huge pain in for T.
If T knows you're skipping colossi altogether, he can expand more freely as your offensive options are limited by fast HT tech. With mules, it's easy for T to play a straightup macro game vs noncolossi build by dumping all gas on ghosts and medivacs. Mass medivacs are also a pain for HT centered armies since if you haven't actually killed much, you will take terrible, terrible dmg during your WG cooldown.
So, in summary, yes it's viable to choose one of the two paths but try transitioning into HT from colossi. It is a lot more stable and smoother. Better yet, try TvPing and it becomes much clearer from a T's perspective.
Also, on shit positions like close positions on metalopolis, HT tech is too dangerous.
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As a 2k Diamond toss (500 games played) My favorite and best matchup is PvT. (if you go the chargelot route PvT plays out similar to SC1/BW PvT of throwing zealots(unit trade since protoss recovers faster) at terran to keep them from reaching critical mass as you tech)
Like yourself I always do the kcdc style 1 gate FE, into quick chargelots / then into templars / then throw in colossus late game. (keep on eye on barracks count and make sure your always ahead in warpgates) Certain games / maps i go colossus because of cliffs / like LT or if i feel that it might work better for some reason but 85% of the time i go chargelots. *edit i always get a robo and 1 observer to scout, then i basically never use it again until late game prism drops or adding in immortals if terran incorporates mech units)
I much prefer going chargelots vs colossus because i like the playstyle it encourages. It gives me map control / mobility. I get forge upgrades going without feeling in danger of getting my first 1/2 colossus sniped.
When going colossus I(personally) feel I am too dependent on the colossus so if terran is proactive with scans / vikings they can eat away at them then engage me and i die.
When i go charge lots I am very macro oriented / pump out ALOT of zealots mix in some stalkers/ and sentries. I enjoy the way this game plays out vs going colossus then adding in high templars which sometimes works okay, and sometimes doesnt for myself.
The problem of going chargelots is right around mid game when terran reaches that critical mass of MM zealots /stalker sentry simply cannot handle a large MM ball.
When i go chargelots I lose if the terran conserves their units well, doesnt try dropping, doesnt push out prematurely but wait until he gets a large ball then moves out, just before my templars kick in. You really have to be careful of teching to high templars too fast, then you will lose to terrans 2nd push. And if you tech too slow you wont have templars out when you need them.
With colossus its more of focusing on keeping colossus alive as you push terran back while they get 4-5+ vikings then they will begin to push out. Before terrans pushes back out you need to expand, and get more colossus or tech to templars to mix them in.
Also going the templar route allows for devastating templar drops. Drop them on you can take out the entire mineral line. Forcing terran to get more turrets / keep units back.
As for ghost countering templars, they are more of a soft counter especially once you research the amulet. You are 5 seconds away from templars with storm. You just have to be careful to not be passive and sit their and let the terran / scan/scout then que emp up on your templars as they push. You keep pushing storming, pulling back, drop, push storm pull back.
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You usually have a robo up anyway for detection against Banshee
Bay (+ range) vs C, T, Storm and Amulet?
Just compare the time and resources.
Also, HTs get screwd by ghosts since EMP out-ranges Storm. Ruins FFs and takes away the shield.
Even if they have vikings u can deal with then using stalkers or getting pheonixes. Which can also lift up siege tanks.
Its simply better. Or at the very least safer.
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On December 03 2010 09:20 Heen wrote:
I'm a protoss player that has tried playing around 300 games of terran to understand the game from T's perspective. If you go straight to templar tech, there will be a time where you will be extremely vulnerable (before amulet upgrade and when he uses all his gas for mass medivacs).
If you just got HTs out and storm/amulet hasn't finished, you should be feedbacking those medivacs as much as possible.
I definitely prefer HT tech over collosi in PvT. You still need a robo for obs (notice how more PvTs involve P getting tons of obs nowadays) but in terms of damage, HTs are king. Watch any of the Mana games in Dreamhack + Show Spoiler +Yes, he lost, not the point. Naama's contain/slow push strat was too much for him, all of his best plays were aggressive HT pushes.
You still get wrecked with proper ghost use. Most players on the ladder aren't good enough to do that though.
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Medivacs will outnumber your HTs. Usually you make HTs before storm research so they gather 75 energy by the time storm upgrade finishes. feedback is a waste compared to storm's ability to survive delay the attack.
These choices are dependent on style of both players, maps, and positions. Using HT tech just because it's easier and T can't handle it is not good reason to use it.
The way I see it. Colossi are better for 2 bases since you have much less ground to cover and you want HT upgrades in progress or almost done by the time you take your 3rd.
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Lots of people go HT first instead of colossus in PvT, I personally never get colossus until 4 bases unless the terran has already rushed for ghosts blind.
If you're planning on playing this style though, you have to realize that storm will not be ready for most terrans' first pushes. You need to defend with zealots (hopefully with charge) and good force fields. It takes some practice, but once you can comfortably defend against early bio pushes without having to rely on colossi it opens up the midgame a lot.
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That's a lot of assumptions though. None of which are necessarily always true.
- HTs aren't any easier to use then collosi. Quite the opposite IMO.
- A two-base HT army can be significantly larger/techier because HTs cost far less then collosi, especially in terns of minerals (making it easier to spam zealots and/or take a third). HT army vs collo army would have significant differences in the number of lower tier units.
- If the attack comes before storm is done, you can feedback a bunch of times and then make archons. Really, what else would you do there?
The only problem I have with HTs is how hard they're shut down by ghosts. For the average ladder player, encountering blind vikings is far more common then blind ghosts. To be honest, I think that's a mistake, but I'll capitalize on it for all it's worth.
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Colossus is there to keep the army from being kited, you will not be able to do this with psi storm, you will run out of energy.
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I think a little TOO much pessimism.. Chargelots can help defend those slightly early-mid game pushes, slightly b4 you finish getting storm and a decent amount of hts.. They're pretty underused, mainly just because the twilight council is not contributing to colossus tech. My only problem is that marauders in general don't get damaged enough for hts to be viable. Not a neccesarily bad idea, but I feel a lot of people think "waste" when forced to get observer (spotting a 1/1/1 build for instance), to make sure banshees won't own your ass.
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Also it forces the terran to micro a shit load more. Unless you're facing some dude with 150 apm, when you get 3 spread storms on his army, moving them around is a serious problem, and well if they don't move, insta lose? Still, marauders + kiting is still a bit problematic, kind of need to get sentries, which eats away at gas, never good when ur massing hts.
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What do you mean if they don't move? When have I ever seen a marauder marine ball stop moving? If a storm comes down he just doesn't attack move at my units until it runs out; they're always running away! Unless the psi storm lagged out his computer so his move command was laggy or something.
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I feel like colossus is the easier / faster / safer tech path for the early to mid game. You can get immortals if he is marauder heavy and then you can scout with obs which works well against banshees and polt pushes.
However, most games that begin to transition into the late mid game I throw down twilight council for either charge or if he is really medivac heavy I will get blink to take them out and from there you can easily tech into HT. The combo is basically unstoppable and can actually be gotten relatively quickly as you push terran back and attain a 3rd base with colossus as he scrambles to get a ton of vikings which will basically be useless as you are tech switching to temp.
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as a protoss player primarily, I have found that colossi are just annoying to have. I just straight up don't make them, the only time I might even consider it is if zerg has gotten way to scary and I just need the anti hydra aspect and storms would be too far away.
My suggestion would to be keep finding ways to play without the colossus and you will become a stronger player.
Too many times have I seen a toss lose cause their gateway army gets melted and they're left with 4-6 naked colossi that just fail at life. We must not let this continue!
I am NerVFourOTwo, and I hate colossi.
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On December 03 2010 10:24 N3rV[Green] wrote:
as a protoss player primarily, I have found that colossi are just annoying to have. I just straight up don't make them, the only time I might even consider it is if zerg has gotten way to scary and I just need the anti hydra aspect and storms would be too far away.
My suggestion would to be keep finding ways to play without the colossus and you will become a stronger player.
Too many times have I seen a toss lose cause their gateway army gets melted and they're left with 4-6 naked colossi that just fail at life. We must not let this continue!
I am NerVFourOTwo, and I hate colossi.
The same thing would happen if your ground army dies and you are left with 4-6 naked HT
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Your logic is somewhat faulty, because vikings are not a staple unit of the terran force UNLESS you get colossi. Colossi do great damage and you force them to go vikings. This makes switching to templar tech easier because they will have a bunch of useless vikings. If you don't go colossi, any decent terran would omit vikings and just get medivacs.
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After you get your third you'll have the econ to pump both (more collosi than HT) Force the Terran to make Vikings and then if there is a battle that doesn't end the game, warp in a Stalker/HT/Chargelot army as he will almost always overreact and get too many vikings expecting you to re-macro more Collosi which will make his ground army very weak
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On December 03 2010 09:13 blitzkrieger wrote:
The only thing that counters templar is ghosts? Really? Do you not know what a banshee is? Even without cloak u lose.
Also takes about 20 years to get templar up.
The only way templar will be viable is if protoss gets some buffs to deal with AA, cloak, or DT's from archives.
Do you know what Feedback is?
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On December 03 2010 10:29 Reborn58 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 03 2010 10:24 N3rV[Green] wrote:
as a protoss player primarily, I have found that colossi are just annoying to have. I just straight up don't make them, the only time I might even consider it is if zerg has gotten way to scary and I just need the anti hydra aspect and storms would be too far away.
My suggestion would to be keep finding ways to play without the colossus and you will become a stronger player.
Too many times have I seen a toss lose cause their gateway army gets melted and they're left with 4-6 naked colossi that just fail at life. We must not let this continue!
I am NerVFourOTwo, and I hate colossi. The same thing would happen if your ground army dies and you are left with 4-6 naked HT
No, believe me, you will not. Having 6 templars call dawn the thunder is scary. Especially considering how fast you can reinforce if you've gone templar route (the joy of warping in 10 templars...).
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EPT
