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Haha I just watched the replay I was talking about.. and it's pretty awful. OP is right though; you have a huge mineral surplus in that awkward stage between trying to secure your 3rd and actually beginning to use it. I don't find colossus as fun these days so my robo is usually idle unless I'm getting some immortals out or resupplying observers while putting my gas into templar tech and stalkers and a sentry here and there.
Really, there is no reason not to have a warp prism if you are using this style as there is no way you can use all of your gates constantly while not entirely depleting all of your gas, and zealots are pretty garbage mid game vs zerg anyway (though they do serve a purpose in a game broken wide open and you're harassing with them regardless).
So get that warp prism, and put some zealots in his expansions ^^
I find that these tactics are stronger when you are defending rather than when you are pushing aggressively, as if you are pushing you absolutely need those WG cool downs to reinforce since zergs have become so solid in the mid game and don't really hand out timings that you can exploit without being all-in. It works in conjunction with sharking though infestors become a problem if you don't have enough to engage head on, in which case you don't want to be warping zealots remotely o_0
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Great read, thanks for posting this.
I'm definetly going to start using warp prisms more, although i have to stop collossus production for a bit, which sucks.
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I actually use this a lot in PvP. When I engage, I like to warp 3-4 zealots in the mineral line of my enemy. Pretty damn efficient most of the time. You need to be slightly ahead to do this though.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On June 08 2011 08:00 Alejandrisha wrote:
Haha I just watched the replay I was talking about.. and it's pretty awful. OP is right though; you have a huge mineral surplus in that awkward stage between trying to secure your 3rd and actually beginning to use it. I don't find colossus as fun these days so my robo is usually idle unless I'm getting some immortals out or resupplying observers while putting my gas into templar tech and stalkers and a sentry here and there.
Really, there is no reason not to have a warp prism if you are using this style as there is no way you can use all of your gates constantly while not entirely depleting all of your gas, and zealots are pretty garbage mid game vs zerg anyway (though they do serve a purpose in a game broken wide open and you're harassing with them regardless).
So get that warp prism, and put some zealots in his expansions ^^
I find that these tactics are stronger when you are defending rather than when you are pushing aggressively, as if you are pushing you absolutely need those WG cool downs to reinforce since zergs have become so solid in the mid game and don't really hand out timings that you can exploit without being all-in. It works in conjunction with sharking though infestors become a problem if you don't have enough to engage head on, in which case you don't want to be warping zealots remotely o_0
I've noticed that a few of the top protoss at the moment are making excellent use of pylons to reinforce. Suppose you also had a prism on the field, then you'd have the choice I was discussing in the OP whether to warp in by your proxy pylon (to reinforce your army) or harass his main (via the prism). Again, hard as balls to execute but sounds promising.
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I just wish Zealots were better at destroying mineral lines, although I guess this would be pretty epic if it's a chargelot vs mmm situation and they need to kite continuously.
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On June 08 2011 09:09 youngminii wrote:
I just wish Zealots were better at destroying mineral lines, although I guess this would be pretty epic if it's a chargelot vs mmm situation and they need to kite continuously.
4 chargelots can kill a ton of workers.
Considering that you have more than 6 gateways, you can have more than 4 chargelots. That is painful to the mineral line especially since you CAN'T escape the chargelots.
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omg this is so good late game...
how about hiding transporting over 6 sentries away from the heat of battle after the initial splash of FFs into the prism... then yea drop them in the main and perma FF the ramp...
with perma FF and if he has say half of his unit producing structures outside his main...there's no way his effective halved production can effectively compete with your full production of warp units
after the zealots cleaned all the detection up...you can drop some DTs and severely cripple the entire base with good DT spread...6 DTs would basically stop all infantry production
this is beyond awesome...
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On June 07 2011 07:36 elitesniper420 wrote:Forget the whole "I need a new way to play Protoss", you've already found the perfect way.
It' s really weird that you'd make this claim based on PvZ at MLG, given that match results for MLG PvZ were something like 35/65% in favor of the Zerg. This corresponds with recent trends in Korea, where PvZ was 30/70% in favor of the Zerg according to the most recent April SC2Statistics. This matchup has been gradually tilting in Zerg's favor for a while, and anyone can see that it's because Zerg are playing differently than 2 months ago and Protoss are not.
In terms of micro potential vs. utilization the Warp Prism is one of the least exploited units in the game, I think.
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On June 08 2011 08:36 iNbluE wrote:
I actually use this a lot in PvP. When I engage, I like to warp 3-4 zealots in the mineral line of my enemy. Pretty damn efficient most of the time. You need to be slightly ahead to do this though.
I find that it's a bit risky because in PvP, the food count of the armies REALLY matter.
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On June 08 2011 10:11 iChau wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 09:09 youngminii wrote:
I just wish Zealots were better at destroying mineral lines, although I guess this would be pretty epic if it's a chargelot vs mmm situation and they need to kite continuously. 4 chargelots can kill a ton of workers. Considering that you have more than 6 gateways, you can have more than 4 chargelots. That is painful to the mineral line especially since you CAN'T escape the chargelots.
It sure kills a few workers, just not a lot.
I've played two games today where 4 Hellions killed two entire mineral lines during an engagement. It just makes me wish that Protoss had something better to harass mineral lines with than Zealots that are guaranteed a SINGLE hit, while you need 3 hits to kill an SCV. I guess I'll make do with DTs.
Oh well, I love Warp Prisms though.
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Reavers in BW in a shuttle were decent at clearing mineral lines in games with my friends, then they would roll me cause i sucked at Brood war.
EDIT: and i agree with the OP here that the potential use for the warp prism has not been used effectively in competitive play yet, especially in non robo based compositions. Assuming julyzergs 818 APM, having 3 warprisms harassing bases seems like a really potent way to cripple your opponent late game, as zealots are pretty efficient at cleaning up static defense in larger numbers.
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On June 08 2011 08:46 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 08:00 Alejandrisha wrote:
Haha I just watched the replay I was talking about.. and it's pretty awful. OP is right though; you have a huge mineral surplus in that awkward stage between trying to secure your 3rd and actually beginning to use it. I don't find colossus as fun these days so my robo is usually idle unless I'm getting some immortals out or resupplying observers while putting my gas into templar tech and stalkers and a sentry here and there.
Really, there is no reason not to have a warp prism if you are using this style as there is no way you can use all of your gates constantly while not entirely depleting all of your gas, and zealots are pretty garbage mid game vs zerg anyway (though they do serve a purpose in a game broken wide open and you're harassing with them regardless).
So get that warp prism, and put some zealots in his expansions ^^
I find that these tactics are stronger when you are defending rather than when you are pushing aggressively, as if you are pushing you absolutely need those WG cool downs to reinforce since zergs have become so solid in the mid game and don't really hand out timings that you can exploit without being all-in. It works in conjunction with sharking though infestors become a problem if you don't have enough to engage head on, in which case you don't want to be warping zealots remotely o_0 I've noticed that a few of the top protoss at the moment are making excellent use of pylons to reinforce. Suppose you also had a prism on the field, then you'd have the choice I was discussing in the OP whether to warp in by your proxy pylon (to reinforce your army) or harass his main (via the prism). Again, hard as balls to execute but sounds promising.
If your attacking, it seems like it might be a good time to warp in DT's into someones main. Usually the detector static D (cept cannons) cannot fend for itself. So the DT's can roam free and snipe things (including the detection). It would probably be hard to focus too much on the DT's if you aren't already winning the engagement or doing a fairly good job in the engagement. Its probably been said, but I think it would be worth mentioning again, cause who looks in their base for DT's when they are engaged in the middle of the map.
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You don't even really need charge to make them effective. Hatchery sniping can be just as good in some circumstances, and you'd be amazed how quickly 4-8 zealots can take down a hatch. You can snag a few drone kills as well, but you force the zerg to pull roaches to deal with the threat and anytime you FORCE your opponent to move, you create an opening somewhere else. What is the zerg going to do? Make 4 spines and 2 spores at every single base? They are too proud to do that, and you know it 
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+ Show Spoiler +While I agree with your basic premise that warp prisms are under-used and have much more potential, I feel you slightly over-estimate the warp-in mechanic. Its not quite as simple as "warp in anywhere you like to fluster your opponent" and its by no means superior to the Terran drops.
You still have to get a warp prism to the location to do it, and if you're going to do that, you may as well fill it up to begin with and just do a normal drop, enabling you to leave with your units intact if possible.
Having played both Protoss extensively, and Terran to some degree, the amount of reliable damage I can inflict with medivac drops when I play Terran far outshines the amount of damage I have ever managed to do with warp prisms, not to mention that you have to specifically go and make a warp prism to do drops, whereas medivacs are always floating around the place in a Terran army because of their utility in battle.
I agree that the warp prism is under-used. But to boil it down and try to say "just make a warp prism and warp some shit in their base, now you can do what Terran does to you!" is quite an exaggeration.
Original post spoilered for history, but I'll point out that I retract what I said above after a more thorough re-read of the overview.
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Where exactly did Plexa say this is superior to Terran drops?
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On June 08 2011 16:10 youngminii wrote:
Where exactly did Plexa say this is superior to Terran drops?
Just the general impression that I got.
Rereading the article more carefully, though, I can see how that wasn't his stated intent at all. I'm going to edit my post.
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have you tried....the colossus drop?! lol
Jokes aside, as a zerg player, I have always wondered why not a lot of protoss use the wrap prism to harass.
zealots are great to kill off zerglings, which are usually the quickest to get there to clean up the drop.
Dark templar needless to say, are super good with razing buildings.
most who uses dark templar just charging them into the front line where spores and overseers are located.
Every zerg player scream if any of their tech building is under heavy fire,
The cooldown on warp gate is seriously so good that it makes me want to change my race sometimes.
This idea really make use of this advantage well.
It is not rare that while my reinforcement are coming from each hatchery, the protoss has his reinforcement already and with forcefield splitting the army even more, it is just depressing.
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On June 08 2011 11:30 iChau wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2011 08:36 iNbluE wrote:
I actually use this a lot in PvP. When I engage, I like to warp 3-4 zealots in the mineral line of my enemy. Pretty damn efficient most of the time. You need to be slightly ahead to do this though. I find that it's a bit risky because in PvP, the food count of the armies REALLY matter.
That's why you need to be slightly ahead
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I always want this to work well and sometimes try it but too many things keep it down from being effective for me:
1. With the exception of the DT there isn't really a good unit to warp in. Zealots are too slow, stalkers don't do enough damage etc. One of the better units to just drop instead of warp in is actually the archon, it can 1 shot drones (assuming 2 upgrades by this point in PvZ), is amazing around mineral lines and the shields can be abused very easily (they regenerate inside the prism).
2. It is too easy to defend against warp prism harass. It is too fragile and robo nearly always causes your opponent to make some anti-air already. Warping in also takes slightly too long usually and terran always has units in near his base (as his rax are there) and zerg has a queen.
3. Warp prism is too costly and takes up valuable build time from the robo.
The only scenario's where I like warp prism use is when you have no intention of getting colossi, robo build time doesn't matter much then and there won't be any AA out or if there is it's useless. Against heavy ling style zerg this somtimes happens as colo aren't really good against pure ling + bane/muta/infestor. The best to abuse this lack of anti-air for zerg is with archon drops imo.
An other scenario i like warp prism is when I play robo against blink stalkers in PvP where air distance is fairly close. The blink stalker player will often camp outside your base with 1 sentry so you can't move out unless you have archons/colossi, both very hard to get if you are forced into alot of immortals. Warp prism can then send some stuff over to their main forcing him to lift the lock on your ramp at which point you can expand or attack their expo.
Best and most usage of warp prism is from white-ra imo, only player i've seen it do alot actually.
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I do this all the time but I use the mothership also. Oh yeah, I like to load up warp prism with Z's, unload zealots at expansion and then warp in at main if they are close enough... usually after they go for one or the other, and I keep going back and forth.
I also drop Immortals right on zerg tech structures for complete destruction.
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EPT
