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Ok, so every (decent) protoss players know about walling with their buildings. Whether it be the pylon/gate/pylon wall, the pylon/gate/core or any other combo of protoss buildings, they are very helpful in games. The thing is, some players don't know when to wall off, and where to walloff.
Versus all thre races, walls can help prevent early pushes from making it past your ramp/choke, or they could prevent later game tactics like burrowed/cloaked units from getting to your mineral/gas line.
There are three main types of walls for the protoss. Ramp wall, Mineral wall and Expansion wall.
- Ramp wall is where you use the first pylon and gateway (and possibly another building) to create a choke point/blockage at the entrance to your main. This is a good way to prevent scouting, and it also delays and splits up units trying to enter your main. However, this sometimes can get in the way, and can even block larger units sometimes (Stalkers, immortals). This is the most standard wall in protoss strategy.
- Mineral wall is putting your first buildings very close to your nexus, to make it harder to access the mineral line through ground. This also helps very slightly with your econ, as the probe doesn't have to travel as far to the ramp to build the pylon/whatever. However, this leaves your ramp wide open, and ground units can get into your main easily. They will be able to take out pylons/buildings, but it will be very difficult for them to access your mineral line.
- Expansion wall is a wall created from the bottom of your ramp at the main to the nexus of your expansion. This makes it so ground units need to go all the way around the nexus to access the main. This is very helpful against ling runbys and quick zealot attacks, because it forces them to go through a single entrance to your main, and since you have your natural expansion up, there is going to be even more resistance to units getting past. The only problem is that you need to expand fairly early to complete this wall. Getting that expansion instead of units could make it impossible to fend off attacks.
Now, there are certain situations where each of these walls are viable, and this is where you guys come in. What wall do you use against what races? Each wall does have its advantages and disadvantages
Edit: I removed the polls because this is not about how many people use what wall, this is about discussing the different types of walls, and why we use them in certain situations.
(If enough people have different responses, i will add a VS random poll as well)
To the mods: I did not find a topic exactly on this, and the only topics on protoss wallins are from mid-2010 and are way past the bump limit
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I always wall at ramp vs zerg, never wall vs terran, but against tossI build my first gate at the ramp so that if i scout 2gates I can CB my first lot and throw my core down to wall-in ASAP. If I see gas I plan to drop the core at the edge of the power from the 1st pylon, lay my 2nd pylon nearby but back a ways (making a venn diagram shape at the core site), and save the chrono for probes. I never lose with this opening. Ever. jk
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On January 20 2011 01:37 JERK412 wrote:
I always wall at ramp vs zerg, never wall vs terran, but against tossI build my first gate at the ramp so that if i scout 2gates I can CB my first lot and throw my core down to wall-in ASAP. If I see gas I plan to drop the core at the edge of the power from the 1st pylon, lay my 2nd pylon nearby but back a ways (making a venn diagram shape at the core site), and save the chrono for probes. I never lose with this opening. Ever. jk
Ok, but why do you wall at the ramp vs zerg, and why do you never wall vs terran? I want to know the reasoning behind why people wall and where.
I am going to remove the polls to encourage more discussion on the reasoning behind certain walls.
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I always wall vs zerg, mostly because of lings, whichs is no prob is you have a wall a 1 zealot.
I never wall vs terran, because they only have ranged units, so when they sit at the bottom of your ramp hitting your wall, you cannot defend it with anything but 1 stalker, since the rest of your army will be blocked out by your own wall.
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Always wall against zerg because you need to block out eary ling pressure. If they come with roaches you will probably depend on sentry FF at the ramp anyways and making that area into a cluster fuck seems like a good idea to me. Terran is too dangerous from range to wall-in against-- they can pick off your buildings once stimmed marauders are out, or seige tanks. I guess it would be smart to try building a mineral wall to protect against hellions. Maybe I will. I don't see them enough though, terrans usually use bio against me.
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You'd never want to put any important tech too near the edge of the cliff, because toss and terran players can easily snipe it with observer/medivac spotting.
Against zerg you need it because of speedlings. It's a balanced between either losing all your probes or maybe losing some tech later in the game.
Walling around the minerals is mainly for hellions and speedlings. You want to block them from just running behind, and not just bring the barbecue sauce. Since hellions and speedlings are faster than every protoss ground unit, it's hella important to trap them or block them.
Expansion wall is mainly for speedlings again. Mainly because hellions just swoop round the back through tasteless' secret hallway, perhaps.
It's all anti-harass.
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Never wall in vs terran, not even your mineral line etc. It only makes you way more vulnerable to drops later on. Just be as open as possible vs terran imo.
Vs zerg you want to wall off as much as possible, first the ramp usually and then each expansion as possible leaving a stalker sized hole each time. Vs zerg your lategame consists of mostly blink stalker usually anyway so it doesn't matter if your entrance is choked, it does help alot vs zerglings and roach runby's. Protecting the mineral line is not as important imo as you need your buildings elsewhere usually. If you can avoid it don't use tech structures in your wall ofcourse but that isn't always possible obviously.
Ideally each wall is so that it can be blocked off exactly by 1 forcefield or 1 pylon yet all units (except archon) can still move through it.
In the mirror you don't want to wall off either. It makes a stalker push against you much stronger actually and doesn't allow you to use zealots to defend your ramp as easily. The best way to defend the ramp if needed is just to use the better concave you have on top of the ramp. With a wide ramp like scrap station it isn't really possible to defend the ramp well and you are better off just doing a super aggresive opening.
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The thing with walling in is if you want to hide tech in your base or prevent scouting, walling off at the ramp helps greatly. Not everyone hides tech every game vs a race, but it is something you should consider when making your wall.
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Why do you choose to wall the ramp instead of your mineral lines against zerg? Roach rushes are much harder to stop if your cyber is at your choke, because it is so easy for them to pick off, even if you FF. I actually hope that a zerg will try a ling runby into my mineral line when I'm walled like that. I just box 5 probes and they can hold off a ton of lings for a long time without dying when fighting in the minerals where only one ling can attack at a time. By then I either warped in units or have my army coming back and the zerg just wasted 10 lings for nothing.
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Walling vs zerg is generally a good idea in order to prevent ling run-bys.
I don't agree with walling with your pylon and gateway at all. Walling your ramp vs zerg is much stronger and easier to accomplish using a gateway and cybercore. If you put the two buildings along side each other with one shared hex along the side, there will be a one hex opening on one corner. This type of wall allows every toss unit out aside from an archon (and colossus but they can cliff walk).
Against a roach rush, you need to use forcefields to your advantage. By the time they can 7rr you should know it's coming. If you do not, you will have gates and warpgate research nearly finished. Roach rushes only work against heavy tech builds or poorly executed builds.
Walling vs terran will leave you in a situation where they can pick off buildings and if you want to push down your ramp your units funnel out one at a time. This is obviously less than ideal. The only plus side to walling vs terran would be uhmm...stopping hellion runbys I guess?
Against protoss I see no real reason to wall in either. It again leaves you vulnerable to harassment on your buildings and allows your opponent to have a better arc than you below the ramp while your units get all clusterfucked.
The only advantage I see is against a 2gate proxy, but this again is not worth it to me. Drop a forge or another gate if you scout a two gate proxy.
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As a (quite noobish) protoss i always walloff vs zerg cause of mobility
Versus terran rarely (Siege tanks) and protoss depends on my build.
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I rarely wall off unless I'm playing against zerg, and even then it's only a mineral wall. I find it's easier to defend my buildings if I can pull a few probes to help the zealot(s) out, then send them back to mining. I really do need to work more expo walls into my builds, tho.
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versus zerg on maps like metalop if my play if gateway based i will usually put down the extra gateways that my 3rd pumps in a wall fashion to focus where ling counter attacks might go and to help hold off mass roach when using blink stalkers
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You want to always wall off vs zerg, be it starting with your first gateway or your core. I never start the wall with the initial pylon because I got used to using the gateway when I was a noob and kept losing that pylon to baneling busts :D
You want to be able to seal off your entire base with a warped-in or stationary zealot at the drop of the hat if you are moving out to poke or push
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Whenever i 4-gate vs zerg, I always completely wall-off my ramp, rallying my early units to come out outside on the ramp except for an early sentry. Obviously, I keep a scouting probe alive in a corner somewhere outside my base. I've won quite a few games like this as when a zerg sees my 4 gate, a lot of them just spam lings, and as soon as they get a sizeable force, they just run by my army and try to base trade. Then see my wall off + sentry, and insta-gg.
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Walling against zerg is basically... mandatory. When I play as zerg vs protoss, if I don't see a wall, I will go on 1 base and mass speeding and roaches and win almost every time. This is because first, zerg pushes ARE strong, and ff splits are harder with roach range, it's not as effective. Also, without a wall, speedlings can always slip in, by passing zealots, and letting me wail on your economy. (Hell, I can keep on attacking probes, you set probes to attack, I run away, they go back to mining after valuable time used on approaching lings, and i repeat :D).
Against terran however, they can not literally kill their economy totally for a super all in push QUITE as easily, as they do have to build rax. In this case, force field splits will heavily alter the effectiveness of the attack, thus meaning you do not have to wall.
Protoss it's more or less an equal ball game... no real need to wall, as you always have that defender's advantage (and ff is EVEN more effective).
I hate walling though. So against zerg? I 2 gate. If they mass lings, I win. If they don't cancel expo? I win. They base race? Really? Zealot dps vs ling? Enough said there, and zealots are about 50x more durable anyway. :D but I mean if you aren't prepared to open with 2 gate, into a variety of transitions with zerg every game (aka. be very aggressive with zealots), then just wall against zerg.
EDIT:
The OP's description on the wall made me kind of realize this is more for lower-tier players...
Pylon gate pylon will make you lose to baneling busts every game. Your wall should be only gateway and core, with your first pylon behind it to power.
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Now that I have thought about it, walling vs terran is a bad idea. You can just use zealots/stalkers at the front to prevent scouting, and it lets you get a better conclave on anything coming up the ramp.
On LT, if you are going to fast expand, why wouldn't you make a wall at your natural so you can Expand in general safety even if you are not FEing. This doesn't give the high ground advantage of the ramp, but it does allow you to expand easier. You can always block off the choke with two 3*2 buildings (gate, forge, cyber core) and a pylon, or a few units or something.
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Always wall vs Zerg.
Against Terran, it's stylistic and usually a bad idea, especially because of conc shells and early MM pressure. Basically if you're retreating a unit from a marauder, you want it to be able to get up on the high ground quickly. By having even a partial wall, it can be detrimental to a retreat because the unit can get stuck at the top. This happens with stalkers a lot.
You can also go marine+tank and then shell the ramp with tanks from quite far away.
Against Protoss it's a terrible idea, UNLESS you yourself are two gating or going hard for DTs. However, any good Protoss will see this, two gate you, and destroy you. Even a 4 gate will be hard to hold because the space at the top of the ramp is so small. It makes pushing the ramp simple, and though it's counterintuitive, the standard wall at the top of the ramp will give the attacker the advantage.
I think what's more interesting, though, are the 2 base walls. You can't FE and wall on Xel'Naga for example. I've tried lots of ways to make FE work on Xel'Naga in PvZ but I've realized now that there's no solution on that map. Basically any roach timing attack, and even a lot of speedling attacks will kill you on Xel'Naga. However, oddly enough you CAN FE with good placement on metalopolis. It's strange, but I'm fairly sure it has to do with the fact that you can defend the ramp and nexus simultaneously with the proper cannon placement on meta, even though the naturals are laid out similarly, in a very open layout.
LT is wallable on 2 base, and FE builds are standard PvZ. Scrap Station is easily walled. Shakuras is hard to wall but the distances make up for it.
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To those saying that walling in the ramp vs Zerg is mandatory, go and check out some of Day9's recent dailies on Whitera's PvZ. He pretty clearly has a reason for not walling in, and in the Reddit VOD Day9 says that putting buildings near your Nexus instead of your ramp makes for defending against 6 and 7 pools easier --> http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4648068/
I recommend walling off one side of your minerals with a couple pylons and a gateway//cyber in all matchups. On Jungle Basin you can wall off a side of your vespene geysers with just two pylons and a gateway, and I believe you can on most of the spawns on Delta Quadrant as well. This cuts off mobility within your base, which is a good thing. Someone above said to never do this vs Terran, but you really don't need mobility within your main as you aren't dropping units and needed to run in circles around your Nexus -the Terran needs to do this.
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On January 20 2011 10:35 CecilSunkure wrote:To those saying that walling in the ramp vs Zerg is mandatory, go and check out some of Day9's recent dailies on Whitera's PvZ. He pretty clearly has a reason for not walling in, and in the Reddit VOD Day9 says that putting buildings near your Nexus instead of your ramp makes for defending against 6 and 7 pools easier --> http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4648068/I recommend walling off one side of your minerals with a couple pylons and a gateway//cyber in all matchups. On Jungle Basin you can wall off a side of your vespene geysers with just two pylons and a gateway, and I believe you can on most of the spawns on Delta Quadrant as well. This cuts off mobility within your base, which is a good thing. Someone above said to never do this vs Terran, but you really don't need mobility within your main as you aren't dropping units and needed to run in circles around your Nexus -the Terran needs to do this.
It helps HIM defend 6 and 7 pools. This is not necessarily true for everyone (it certainly isn't true for me.)
Second, he actually does wall anyway later, though it's a 2-base wall. If you're 1-basing and you don't wall, you HAVE to make sentries. If you do wall, you can tech faster because you don't have to spend gas so early on sentries.
Also, although I like Day9 and most of his analysis, some of the things he said in that game are kinda strange. He has some weird biases, like his bias against forge builds.
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EPT
