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Hi TL,
I've recently returned to 1v1 and have been having a few issues with PvT. I used to play quite a heavy gateway style supported with high templar to great effect and good times was had by all.
However, in this game [ http://sc2r.me/45yo ], I felt like my composition was largely ineffectual in dealing with the Terran bio army. In terms of my own analysis, I'm wondering if this loss can put down to a bad composition and engagement at 15.50?
I'm thinking that I may have gone too Zealot heavy, with not enough Stalkers and Archons to support? My forcefields were a bit, ahem, dubious as to their utility as although I was able to trap a portion of the Terran army they ended up working in his favour given my (perhaps overboard) Zealot numbers.
I was able to feedback a couple of ghosts in that engagement but still got slammed by some EMPs.
So, how do I go about making this gateway style work again? I've always loved Zealots for their ability to tank and deal damage, but I'm not sure if it was composition or control that lost it for me in this game? Probably a mixture of both?
Should I be mixing in Immortals to this gateway composition? I think I may have become too dependent on high templar in the past given my opponents weren't of the greatest calibre and would often refuse to use the ghost 
Also, I'm a Diamond Protoss and my opponent is a Masters Terran.
Cheers,
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I watched the replay.You were winning all game. The engagement was awful your right.
You had a lot of storms, and got 1 off. Basically your HT were useless. 1 emp got them all. Please spread them at least a little.
Also your FF actually worked really hard against you, you FF infromt of your zealots lol.
Your macro was solid, you got lucky he didnt put on and early pressure as he should have, but i think youdve been fine easy.
Pretty much your micro sucked. You had a serioulsy awesome spread by the tower before you pushed but didnt keep it.
Also why didnt you wapr in any more templar while retreating? There were no units at all on the productivity tab most of the time and you had huge money. Youdve still been ahead if youdve made some archons, or some templar.
Basically youve been away for a while so cant micro any more. It will come back quickly with practice.
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I'm gonna post my thoughts while watching the replay. I'm around your level (diamond, playing against masters from time to time) so take my advice with a grain of salt.
You were doing very well until the first engagement. You had a nice composition, were about even in upgrades and 20 food ahead in army supply.
Things started to go badly with your first attack. You had a nice unit and, most importantly, HT spread before engaging but after that you've let your templars and sentries clump up which allowed for two EMPs to rid them useless, should have morphed them into archons instantly at that point. Also your angle of engagement and forcefields were far from perfect, you want your zealots to have a lot of surface area on his bio ball. If you are going zealot heavy you don't necessarily need to cut his army in half, you should rather try to stop him from retreating and/or stutter-micro kiting your zealots. Don't be afraid to pull back if your own forcefields start getting in your way.
After the initial engagement you could have pulled back to you nearest proxy pylon, which would allow you to keep fighting. Instead you ran all the way back to your base, donating quite a few units in the process. If you are gonna pull all the way back - leave a couple of zealots or an archon behind so that he doesn't chase you.
Initially you had a really nice composition, but after loosing your first fight you didn't really attempt to recreate it. You want mostly zealots, archons and HT, with a few sentries and stalkers mixed in. Don't warp in a bunch of stalkers in PvT. They're just terrible in a straight up combat against marauder heavy MMM.
You didn't really have enough gateways. On 3 bases, one being gold, you can easily go 10+ gates. You had 7 (plus two warped in during, not morphed into wg's).
Basically you should work on the way you engage, it seems to be your biggest issue. Also try to keep a good composition.
Some general thoughts on gateway PvT style:
-The reason why it is so great is because it frees up your robo. You can make observers to always have perfect information and immortals if he's going very marauder heavy. You did neither. You had like one obs for duration of the entire game. Personally i like a minimum of 3. One leading my army, one keeping tabs on his army and unit composition, another one scouting his base and expansions.
-Composition wise - you want zealot, archon, sentry if the terran is aggressive before you can get storm up, or if you want to be aggressive early on. This unit mix works great in small-medium'ish army sizes. Once army sizes start to get bigger you want to have quite a few HTs with storm, pure zealot/archon won't cut it anymore, unless terran doesn't micro at all. After your big blobs collide (i.e. get small again) you can go back to zealot/archon with some stalkers mixed in for sniping medivacs.
You should also consider role of each unit in you composition. Zealots and archons are both tanking and dealing dmg, but mostly tanking. High templars are your biggest dmg dealers once army sizes get bigger. You should also consider feedbacking ghosts before engagements (never during, storm is better imo) and medivacs if you have some energy left over after the engagement and the terran is retreating. Stalkers are there mostly for sniping medivacs and mispositioned ghosts.
-Stylistically you could consider doing a colossai tech switch after taking your third. I think it's quite strong, it forces the terran to make vikings, cutting into his medivac production. After establishing your infrastructure you can keep switching it up, making one engagement HT heavy, the next one Colossai heavy. It may even get you some free wins if your opponent stops scouting actively at some point.
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One of the reasons gateway heavy works are terrans who forget about their upgrades. I like to get a fast +1 armor as you did, after that you can chrono 2 forges to reach 2-2 upgrades fast. Sometimes you catch terrans with 2-2 chargelot archon vs his 1-0 bioball. That's pretty much a win or at least map control to get a third. The terran you fought took care of his upgrades. You should try to scout that (double engi bay + armory). I like to get hallu when playing gateway heavy.
The moment you scout that, you either have to rely on your templar vs ghost micro or you can try to find a timing window to switch to colossi, which really benefit from attack upgrades.
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Hey all,
Thanks for the help, makes a lot of sense. I agree that my forcefields were terrible; I think I was trying to split them in half but, as Spender said, that doesn't really make the most sense against a largely zealot composition. Sometimes I feel that unless I get the FF's down fast then I'll just be kited further and further away from my sentries, so I don't always get the ideal spread. I did try to retreat behind a FF wall but it was a botched job and I think I went into panic mode - I should've definitely tried to turn around at the pylon by the tower, I donated so many units on that retreat...
I feel like it's pretty easy to split up stationary units but the minute you order a command it's like they go into herd mode and instantaneously blob up. I guess the only way to address this would be with more hotkey groups and manual control whilst on the move?
I will try to feedback before engaging in future, I guess if there is the opportunity you can send a sacrificial HT first to do the job?
I think I delayed my robo tech as I didn't sense the threat of any cloaked banshees, but agree I should get more obs out quicker, I usually do to be honest. I think this mix would definitely benefit from 4-5 Immortals against that many marauders (especially if the 1.4 patch goes through!)
Also, I did start lining up a Collossi tech switch but it was far too late to be of use I think
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For resplitting, issue a command and then quickly split important groups again. Having some templar in a warp prism or seperate control group is so good.
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On August 29 2011 06:29 Spender wrote:
-The reason why it is so great is because it frees up your robo. You can make observers to always have perfect information and immortals if he's going very marauder heavy. You did neither. You had like one obs for duration of the entire game.
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This is not the main reason. The main reason is that it through the early and early midgame allows you to have a higher unit count and a pretty mobile army. This means you can take a 3rd quicker.
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On August 29 2011 21:04 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On August 29 2011 06:29 Spender wrote:
-The reason why it is so great is because it frees up your robo. You can make observers to always have perfect information and immortals if he's going very marauder heavy. You did neither. You had like one obs for duration of the entire game.
. This is not the main reason. The main reason is that it through the early and early midgame allows you to have a higher unit count and a pretty mobile army. This means you can take a 3rd quicker.
perhaps it's not the main reason but it's definitely something to keep in mind, when you have 3+ obs you get a crucial vision/information advantage. aside from spotting tech and expansion timings, it can help you get battle-winning flanks, spot ghosts advancing for EMPs and respond accordingly, spot drops incoming, etc.
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Having a good archon/ht combo is the way that zealots work.
As both your armies grow, zealots will be come less powerful, as only a portion of them will be able to attack at once and EMPs will be hitting more and more zealots. The key to dealing with the ghost/heavy marine comp that terrans should respond with is having an appropriate templar archives timing. A few archons spread out so that they can't get hit by the same EMP (like 4 or 5) combined with 2 templars for feedback and maybe 4 more for storm should prevent terran from planting carpet EMP's on your army without some serious payback when the storms start landing.
I was talking earlier about how the army size with zealots is really important to pay attention to.
The easiest way to exploit that is just by constantly trading whilst taking more bases, if you can keep both your armies around the same size, or hit terran when your army is the perfect size and your +2+2 finish or something is a really effective way to prevent terran from getting their ugprades and fourth base up too quickly. Can keep the medivac count low as well and prevent them from stockpiling energy.
Look at pro reps of some zealot archon timing attacks and look at their army size, zealot count, and expansion timing, shuold give you a good baseline for this style of play.
800+masters terran speaking, have a decent toss offrace.
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EPT
