The HotS Protoss Help Me Thread - Page 140

On July 14 2013 08:34 7mk wrote:


The way you analyse yourself it sounds like your a smart guy who thinks a good amount about the game, on the other hand the main problem with your play is at the core - your macro and your micro.
the standard Terran medivac push comes after 10 minutes.
at 11:30 - so quite a bit after those first pushes might arrive your unit count is:
1MSC, 1 Colossus, 3 Stalkers, 2 Sentries,

.. and 4 observers
you have had those 3 stalkers since before your warpgate finishes, since 6:50
so thats 4 minutes and 40 seconds between 6:50 and 11:30 and your only added gateway units are two sentries!

I really wouldnt recommend those gateway delying builds that you see some progamers use to any player below master league, you need to be amazing at defense and can never miss any warp ins when going for this kind of style that relies so heavily on the MSC Nexus cannon.
Instead I would suggest adding gateways right after your robo facility, and then going for forge / robo bay.
But in those cases as well: use those warp gates, build units!!

And if you wanna go for lots of observers, dont even go for a normal colossus build. Either go for 1 colossus into storm, or skip them completely and go for sth like chargelot archon HT, or go for a proper colossus build. That means not building 4 observers while only having a single colossus out for a long time.

Like you realized yourself, your map awareness is a problem.
Imo PvT is the protoss matchup where map awareness is the most crucial.
If you have many observers, position them properly, optimal is to have one near his base / near his army, one or two to drop for scouts, and, this one is very important and would have helped you a lot - one (or two) near your base at the place that he will be attacking from. Nothing hurts more than losing a nexus for free because you were out of position. Or like in your game taking a really bad engagement because your units werent in a good position.

At one point he just ran into your natural while your army was sitting clumped up between natural and 3rd.
He had all his units nicely spread out, attacking from all angles, yours was all in one clump.
Before all engagements, try to spread out and build a big concave. If you're the one attacking dont use the main screen to attack, use your minimap, do the attack command to a place that is in the direction you wanna attack but is far away enough that your units will not clump up. (If youre defending you dont need to do this, if you have just spread the units before the engagement and then a click behind his army when he runs into yours, your arc will be superior to his, defenders advantage is pretty big in that sense.)
Use force fields. You already listed this as one of your mistakes but you really took particularly unnecessary damage because you just completely neglected your sentries.
At one point you just walk into his 3rd and kill it. For lots of players the very first thing they would have done when walking into that 3rd would be to force field the choke to his natural a)preventing his army to defend and b) preventing the SCVs to escape the slaughter.

Not only did you not do this super easy preemptive measure, but you also just let him walk down and kill your army when you could have taken a good engagement by cutting his army in half with forcefields.

Honestly in general battle micro is way simpler for Protoss than it is for Terran.
Spreading your units to form a concave and then attack using the minimap and then just letting your army do its thing is already good enough to get to master lvl.
Pressing G for guardian shield before the engagement, blinking stalkers to kill vikings (seperate hotkey group!), sending chargelots back to the rest of your army if the MMM force kites too far away from your colossi (hence your chargelots just get owned while your colossi try to chase) and spreading your high templars as well as using single templars on different locations to try to storm whenever you can are additional skills that are important later on.

I don't even feel like answering your questions because they are so unimportant compared to improving your macro and your micro. Which you do by practicing the opening (you can do this vs the computer if you want) and by using the tips i gave you in regards to micro.


But I am gonna try to answer them anyways:

Yes absolutely, always. If you spread your units properly EMPs aren't gonna hit everything, especially since up to a good master lvl people rarely ever go for the mass ghost+vikings style.


Despite EMP archons are a very strong unit in PvT. They are very buff, they dont get slowed by marauders, and they do good splash damage, which isnt just good vs MMM but can also kill vikings super fast, especially when terrans arent that amazing at army control. When to build how many depends on your build.. If you go for storm you only start building archons after you feel that you have enough Templars for storm (and of course you often morph low energy Templars after they casted their spells)
There are some builds, like double forge colossus where you get templar archive but you dont get storm and just get 2-4 archons.
Theres also the Chargelot Archon 7 gate all in, or old school chargelot archon macro style.
But I think youre talking about the late game, in which case there is no definite answer. It often depends on your mineral / gas ratio. When youre low on mins and have lots of gas then obviously building lots of archons is a good choice.
In general just build them when you feel like you can afford them. Do not not (yes two not's) build them only cause youre scared of EMPs, unless you know that he really has a scary amount of ghosts.


There isn't really a max. If your army supply is maxed and you have a good amount of ressources than just build a shitload of gateways, the more the better because of the instant way in which warp gate works. This way you can either instantly resupply your army in a big fight, or you send in chargelots to harass his bases while his army is distracted with your main army. (Recently ive seen most progamers prefer to do the latter, which makes sense as long as youre sure youre not dying in the main fight)
That's actually another battle micro tip kind of: Always fight near a (proxy) pylon.



Unless youre doing some kind of 2x robo all in simply get it after you have sufficient amounts of Templars. Yes it is worth getting a third, personally I even usually add the 2nd and the 3rd at the same time. This is because in late game scenarios after big fights, you want new colossi out asap, being able to build 3 at a time is much better than only being able to build 2 at a time.


Biggest mistake here was that you delayed your MSC way too long. You even scouted the reaper with your probe but you still just started two new probes while cancelling your zealot. If youre relying on the MSC for defense then get it asap, and especially dont keep building probes when youre already saturated (with 16/24 probes at the mineral lines)

Actually that reminds me there's one more important thing to talk about - your probe saturation, you build way too many.
I think at one point you have 23/24 at one base and like 24/24 at your other.
If terran is doing a push then you have to cut probes, just focus on getting units out and defending while being 16/24 at each of your two bases.
If he is just going for macro without a scary push then sure keep building probes, but also take your 3rd, or else the probes are just a waste.


so, key points: solid build order, appropriate probe saturation, macro, micro, observer positioning.
Work on those, starting with getting down a good build order, your macro will naturally improve with that, while seeing an army coming before it attacks due to observer positioning will also help you prepare to have better army positioning +battle micro.