The HotS Protoss Help Me Thread - Page 151

In this game I'm asking about, we both open with standard FE builds (I flopped my gas a little bit, but nothing too major), I notice when scouting with my MSc he's getting 3rax with stim so I add on a couple of gateways and a robo to defend against the push - I wasn't sure if he was expanding at this time. He pushed my front which I held off fairly uneventfully, we both lost some units and photon overcharge and my second immortal kept him out. I probably could have controlled a bit better, my reaction time was a bit slow and guardian shield probably would have helped before my sentries got killed.

I tech up to collosus, he doesn't have to tech up past starport because he's terran so he just keeps pumping marine marauder with his increased barrack count, both of us get upgrades so we're 1-1. He makes a push to my front hoping to hit some kind of pre-collosus timing I guess but he was a bit late, my first collosus was already out. he scanned it and ran back to his base.

At this point I knew:
- He had taken a third and I hadn't, If i didn't get an advantage now I would be significantly behind in economy.
- He has only tier one units and medivacs (nothing unusual there, but no vikings.)
- I have 2 collosus
- supply should be around even.

So I went for the push, we engaged and he just completely destroyed me. So I know that MMM shits on gateway units, I've known that since 2010, but I had 2 collosus shooting completely unhindered and they made no difference whatsoever. I noticed he had a better concave but I didn't deem it super significant, until I just had to box my shit and run away. At that point the game was already over and I just had a slow death animation. He dropped my main while pushing the front, I warped in zealots to kill the drop, he just stimmed and right clicked the nexus, when it was dead he picked up his stuff and flew away. I didn't have any stalkers because imo they're trash units vs MMM except when I get like 6-10 to kill vikings. I made some fail attempts to expand but they were really irrelevant because my two base timing had flopped, it was more hoping for a miracle like he didnt attack for 10 mins - but he wasn't braindead so he just pushed. I love watching pro PvT like when Rain plays because he just abuses these terrans, and when they try to drop him he's already 5 steps ahead and just crushes it. Unfortunately i'm not Rain, or even remotely close to being as good as I was, or good at all.

My questions are as follows relating to the replay (http://drop.sc/351598)
- If i see the terran taking a third, is it better to go for a two base timing to kill him, or accept being behind in econ and take a third anyways
- I feel like my macro was pretty good during the game, I kept my money low and tried to stick to warp cycles, was I trying to do too much with 6 gates, double forge and 1 robo collosus? If I remember that should be ok from 2 base fully saturated.
- Main question: Why did I lose that engagement? I know MMM is pretty retarded but seriously? I must be missing something
- If it was a decision based thing rather than a specific engagement based thing for the above question, should I just always try to play macro rather than hit timings? I just didn't see any reason why I couldn't kill him with equal supply and upgrades when I had 2 friggin collosus and all he has is T1.

More general questions:
- Should I change race to zerg? naw j/k lol
- I normally have trouble with drops, i'm trying to emulate the pros and how they defend them but are things like phoenix viable? I kinda feel pretty shit when he just shift click drops some marauders at my thirds, stims and right clicks the nexus and because my army is fairly immobile I won't get to it anywhere near close enough to save it. If i have a few stalkers there, I might kill the medivacs but his units are dirt cheap, and he doesn't really care if he loses them because it's so friggin worth if he just snipes the nexus (which he would.) On the other hand, if I put too many units there my main army will be shit so when I get around to fighting his mmm(v/g) ball will just tear through my army.
- in WoL my PvT was like 35%, everything else around 60%. Now I assume it's around the same, I just have no clue vs terran. I feel like many months of playing vs them has got me into bad habits, i'm always so scared to attack them or do anything really because i'm just expecting some mmm to stim and kill everything costing me the game.

Sorry for the super long post, i've tried to be as informative of my problems as I can while pointing out my obvious mistakes. Please don't misinterpret my tone as balance whine, I only got HotS because a friend of mine promised me that the game balance was a lot better than 2011. I also love watching pro games and streams because they're not bad like me, and the protoss players like Rain and First normally smack their opponents, perhaps even making protoss look a touch too strong. As a result, I know that if I just improve more and more, have like 50 more apm than the terran, defend his stupid shit like widow mines and drops properly, out macro and expand him and have better unit and army control than him, I WILL win. I just need help getting to that stage, because I go on ladder, lose to a terran like this and just close the game and wonder what to do next.

Any help would be much appreciated, many thanks.

EDIT: I forgot to mention clearly stuff I should be doing better.

I feel like I need to:
- Be less scared and take a third earlier, and just find a way to prevent it from dying without losing the game. Hoping to see some examples of this on pro streams and see how they do it.
- Time my twilight council better so I can start 2/2 right after 1/1 without a long-ass delay
- Not get collosus and go for HT instead because most terrans I face around diamond or below level are bad and just get blind vikings because iirc 7 vikings will 2 shot a collosus
- Get less stalkers so my army is less shit and doesnt get raped as hard by his MMM
- Get more stalkers so I can kill his vikings faster and defend against drops easier
- Improve my APM so when I spot his medivac on the minimap I can start warping in faster and hopefully not lose 16 buildings, a nexus, 22 pylons and all the probes (exaggeration don't take me seriously please)
- Get more observers to help me spot drops coming
- I feel like I should use my observers better, but tbh it's not like PvZ where I need to know if he's suddenly build a spire for a muta tech switch or if he's making swarmhost, it's terran lol he's just building MMM and V/G when appropriate. I think hovering my observers over his army is more than enough, and just keeping track of his expansions
- Improve my forcefields in large army battles, I think they're pretty good in small army fights early game atm.
- Actually play the game, rather than losing a PvT on ladder then spending 5 hours watching streams and tournaments, rinse and repeat each time I feel like playing starcraft.

I watched this a few days ago so i wont go into detail but here are some comments

+ Show Spoiler [ balance whine related] +


you think going for early double gas and then not getting gas for like over 20 seconds is nothing major?
if i was playing unranked or custom i would probably leave the game right there.
If you get one gas and delay mining to get an earlier nexus thats another thing, but yours was like 30 seconds later than some double gas builds that do actually mine gas from the start.
Then after 3 gate robo you go double forge, but while you mention your delay of 2/2 you also delay 1/1 by a whole lot. Sure you were kinda busy defending but you have to get used to going through with such an important part of your build even if you are under pressure. It takes some getting used to, ive done the same mistake a few times (well, not with 1/1 but with later upgrades).
He might go for a build where he can take a faster 3rd than yours but if you had properly upgraded you could have made up for that by having a massive upgrade advantage.
Although generally I dont feel like you should have so much trouble defending that, i didnt watch the replay too closely but it seemed like you had less units than you should have, although part of that is explained by how much more economic his opening was than yours (i think at one point you had 27 probes vs 26 scvs with him having 2 orbitals done, shows you things are already going bad since he doesnt have chronoboost. But you can make up for some of that if you use whatever you got by sacrificing your economy, whether thats fast upgrades or fast tech)



if you dont see the huge fault with the battle engagement then you dont really understand how PvT micro works.
You engage in a huge open field with not the slightest hint of a choke with 130 vs 130 supply and it basically looks like this:


artistic interpretation. Actually the green zealots should be in front of the colossus, slowly trying to reach their targets to finally get a hit off.

Watch some progames and focus on how they move their army when they know the opponents army is close by, often theres a bit of a dance going on, one army chasing another, then the chased army spreads its units to have the superior arc, then the chasing army flees and tries to reposition to have the better arc again, etc...
Having a good unit spread while your opponents army is clumped should always give you the win if it comes to engagement, and with you not having blink stalkers or HTs to micro this was the only thing for you to have focus on, other than guardian shield and force fields, which certainly werent the best.
In your defense: you couldnt really choose where to fight the battle because you were all inning while he theoretically already had enough to defend - as long as he doesnt get owned by choke / force fields. It was smart of him to not just let him walk you to your natural. (Not that I blame you for all inning, with how the situation went down i might have done the same)
You were behind in eco, you had no upgrade advantage, in numbers you had no army advantage, the only advantage you had (which can be huge) was colossus vs no vikings. But that one advantage was completely negated by where you engaged and by how you engaged.


Also id recommend to not underestimate stalkers. Sure if you face MM with stim with only stalkers you get completely crushed and usually you dont wanna get too many of them in the earlier parts of the game but they help in drop defense, they put on some damage at a stage in a fight where zealots are busy running after the enemy, they are necessary vs vikings and esp. with blink they are good at killing medivacs and drops in general.
If you dont have stalkers than in any battle he can just lift his army and fly away whenever he feels like it. It also means the additional gas you have for sentries isnt as useful because he can just lift units that were trapped by forcefields and drop behind forcefields, now the ffs work against you cause they prevent the zealots from reaching MM.

Btw. observers imo are actually much more important for scouting than in PvZ. In PvZ observers get killed so easily if he has any anti air, theyre only really nice before that, main scouting tool are hallucinated phoenixes (real ones help too of course).
in PvT observers are super helpful at spotting the terran army, he cant just wildly scan everywhere, and knowing where which parts of the opponents army is is sooo important in PvT

TL:DR: fix your early game build order,
learn how to engage battles in PvT

So, msc blink stalker is one of PvP builds I know, but I don't know how to execute it properly. It always turns into an all in or me trying to play a macro game after losing a ton of stuff. My all ins don't work very well vs this build and I don't know how to gain any edge with this build in a macro game either... I don't even know when to resume probe production or stop warping stalkers.

First question - how should I deal with early marine pushes at about 8:00? They seem to range from 12 marines up to even 20. I don't want to over warp in units earlier.

If I don't see a third cc, should I just turtle on 2 bases? And if my opponent is getting a lot of marauders, should I continue colossus production or switch to immortals (at what point)?

About the PvT:
first of all, the 8 minute timing. There was no need to have any more units than you did there, you can easily hold this off with correct forcefield usage and photon overcharge. You had four force fields available, you could have held his entire army out. If he does get through just make sure you force field the ramp so he cant just walk into your main and out of photon overcharge range.

Your build was a pretty wild mix - you went for robo bay, ended up building three colossus (though you never had more than two at the same time) yet you never researched thermal lance. Either go colossus for real, or do 1 colossus without range into templar or just skip them altogether.
You invested into three colossus + double forge + templar tech - that you never used + charge + blink and took a third base against his kind of stupid all out 2 base constant aggression.
at one point you had like 400 mins and 1500 gas yet you never bothered to get archons.
With the upgrade advantage you had (near the end when it was already kinda over 3/2 vs 1/1 you could have just built archon+chargelot, a-moved without giving a damn and his marauder heavy army wouldnt have held a chance.

If you had played it right you could have taken a third despite him staying on 2 base, but for one the things i just mentioned and also you took the wrong third.
The one you took is a bit further away from your natural than the other possible 3rd, he can walk in there, then you take a long walk over there to defend -> he lifts his units up and drops your main.
Now if you had taken the 3rd to the bottom of your natural on neo planet, all your 3 bases would have been in a straight line.
If he goes to your 3rd the walking distance from natural is shorter, and, if he tries to lift up and drop your natural there were already 2 cannons in place that were defending your natural from drops either way.

Now neo planet isnt in the map pool anymore anyways, but keep this in mind for other maps as well (even on akilon wastes protoss have started taking the 3rd thats in line instead of the one close to the natural thats protected by rocks because of easier drop defense)

Watched the PvP now as well

first of all you have a pretty big supply block and are unable to properly spend your money
directly after you warp in 3 stalkers you already have the money for 3 more.
Looking at your opponents build I was thinking it really shouldnt fare well against proper blink stalker aggression, he built his robo after nexus and 3 gates and he got an observer out before immortal.
You walk in shortly before blink is done, it works out really nicely as you force out photon overcharge, be careful vs sentries though.
Then you move back to blink into his main and time warp on his ramp.
Really nice move but you screw up reallly hard with your micro.
While hes slowly trying to walk up you focus on one of his two pylons powering the gateways. Definitely the right choice here, but you stop attacking it when its like one stalker shot away from dying. It would have supply blocked him super hard and he would have lost the power for one of his three gateways.
Then his first immortal pops out and you do the worst thing possible. You blink all of your stalkers right ontop of it immortal.... and 6 zealots!
Blinking away hurt stalkers gives you a huge advantage over a non blinking players gateway units, so whenever you choose to blink all your stalkers at once, taking away that advantage, make sure it's the right thing to do. Blinking right on top of all his zealots is never the right thing to do,


+ Show Spoiler [I'm sure you got the point but…] +
Then while very far behind you go for the expand to try to catch up. Whether its the right thing to do or not depends on whether or not you feel like you can kill him if you dont expand. In this case mayybe 3 more stalkers could have done it. But if you do expand, make sure you build those probes or else youre just not gonna catch up.