EPTThe HotS Protoss Help Me Thread - Page 188
| Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy |
Make sure you read the OP before asking a question. Asking a question already addressed in the OP will result in moderation action. Also, please put some effort into your questions. Do not just ask for build orders. | ||
|
Extenz
Italy822 Posts
| ||
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On October 25 2013 17:46 kuruptt wrote: Hi, just recently came back from a 1 year break from SC2. Heard protoss is strong now so I would like to relearn the race. Just wondering which builds are the most up to date right now? For PvZ should I be learning gateway expand? What is the difference between gateway expand and FFE? I played 2 matches today against zergs and all they did was mass mutas. How do I counter this? PvT it seems like there are so many variations of the 1 gate expand. Which one seems to be the best right now? 'I am using rains 1 gate expand on imbabuilds. I've read that the initial zealot isn't necessary though. Please update me with new info! If there are replays you guys could link me on these matchups please do! Thanks. Strong is a relative term :p. Protoss is okay, definitely stronger than it was in WoL. All things considered, though, all races are pretty balanced at the moment. In PvZ, I recommend just focusing on gate expands now. FFE is still viable on some maps, but it can be pretty hard countered with the current map pool; 6pools own it hard on 2-player maps with wide natural chokes, which is basically all of the current 2-player maps. That said, gate expands are less figured out and offer a lot more opportunities for aggression and trickery. Here's a sample 1-gate expand build (for PvZ): + Show Spoiler +
The zealot should be started then cancelled if no zerglings show up by 3:30; this is specifically designed to counter 6pools. You can start your gate and core at your main ramp ("zealot revolving door" style) or next to your nexus, it doesn't really matter. Your probe scout should check the natural and the 3rd of your opponent; you don't need to scout the main at all. With an early stalker and MSC, you can do a poke to scout and kill a few lings or drones as well as pick off overlords around your base. Your walloff should finish before 5:20, which is the earliest time that zergling speed can finish (14g14p). In the case of a hatch block, just let the zealot finish, chronoboost out another, and pull 4 probes to kill the hatchery before it completes; afterwards you can do a poke with 2 zealots/MSC. Typically you want to hit a 3-gate timing with 3-6 zealots ~7:00 at the third to force some lings (and sometimes just outright kill the 3rd). You can simply recall to save these zealots. You can also substitute the second gateway with a forge if you want to forgo a warpgate timing and aim toward a later game; with some builds, you can even go for an early stargate instead. For PvT, I recommend visiting one of my older blog posts: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=422990. These are both pretty decent build orders...I would also recommend visiting this guide: 2 Base Templar PvT Hope this helps! | ||
|
Mertz
United States11 Posts
I also have trouble dealing with terran drops. If I did not warp in units right as the cool down is off would that give me more opportunities to deal with drops by warping in zealots? I come from playing terran where, once you build a production building, you almost never pause it's production of units. With the MSC I notice protoss relay on that for protection rather than some initial gateway units, so it throws me off. I just am having a hard time understanding the macro mechanics of Protoss I guess. | ||
|
Exarl25
1887 Posts
On October 25 2013 23:30 Mertz wrote: I am not quite sure if I understand protoss macro very much. Currently I have been going down the robo tech path and insure that I always have something producing from the robo and then spend all my extra money on warp ins when I get the chance. I notice that when I always am on top of warp-ins, I tend to have too many gateway units in my army and near the end game, I tend to have to bleed them out to make room for more tech units in my supply. Should I not be warping in units as much as I am? I also have trouble dealing with terran drops. If I did not warp in units right as the cool down is off would that give me more opportunities to deal with drops by warping in zealots? I come from playing terran where, once you build a production building, you almost never pause it's production of units. With the MSC I notice protoss relay on that for protection rather than some initial gateway units, so it throws me off. I just am having a hard time understanding the macro mechanics of Protoss I guess. Protoss have to invest a lot more resources into teching up their army than Terran do, where you are more or less sticking with the same unit composition all game and getting most of your upgrades (Stim, Combat Shields) early on. Early and mid game Protoss can function a bit like Zerg in that you don't want to be making more units than you need. Unless you are planning on being aggressive, you make minimal units to stay alive, utilizing forcefields to make them as effective as possible and invest as much as you can into building towards your higher tech units, getting all necessary upgrades and adding on gates that you can use to start flooding out units once you are ready. Gateway heavy armies become far less cost effective at higher supply counts so if you do make too many of them and don't invest enough in the higher tech force multipliers then you end up in a situation where you have too few Colossi, your Templar are not ready in time, and your much weaker army gets run over. Scouting and preemptively preparing for aggression are therefore very important. As a general rule, if you are only reacting to a Terran drop as it enters your base and have no preparations in place in anticipation for it, then you may be in a bit of trouble. Observers are worth their weight in gold, Hallucination is basically a free scout when your Sentries are building up a lot of energy. Correct placement of your minimal units to defend all of your bases from multiple attacks is very important, especially considering the way they need to synergize together to be as effective and generally don't work as well alone in small groups as Terran and Zerg basic units do. | ||
|
aZealot
New Zealand5447 Posts
On October 25 2013 23:30 Mertz wrote: I am not quite sure if I understand protoss macro very much. Currently I have been going down the robo tech path and insure that I always have something producing from the robo and then spend all my extra money on warp ins when I get the chance. I notice that when I always am on top of warp-ins, I tend to have too many gateway units in my army and near the end game, I tend to have to bleed them out to make room for more tech units in my supply. Should I not be warping in units as much as I am? I also have trouble dealing with terran drops. If I did not warp in units right as the cool down is off would that give me more opportunities to deal with drops by warping in zealots? I come from playing terran where, once you build a production building, you almost never pause it's production of units. With the MSC I notice protoss relay on that for protection rather than some initial gateway units, so it throws me off. I just am having a hard time understanding the macro mechanics of Protoss I guess. I've had the same question for a while. As Exarl says above, Protoss appears to need to be played semi-Zerg like. It is odd, though. I agree. Each time I try to keep on track of my warp-gate cooldowns I end up with too many gateway units and delayed tech (due to not being able to afford it). That said, it's possible to amass a decent early/mid game army off of 1 - 2 gates and keeping up with the cooldowns. But, then, sometimes you want those extra gates for emergency warp-ins, if you stuff up and need to reinforce fast with chrono, or to wall-off. (Timings are affected too.) Even the saving on gates (if you do choose to produce in the early/mid game off minimal gates) is on minerals which does not matter as much for Protoss where it is more about gas. There was an old idea in WOL when it came to Protoss of powering (IIRC). Having idle production while focussing resources on tech + upgrades in order to power later now seems to be the standard way of playing the race. | ||
Teoita
Italy12246 Posts
You cut units in the early/midgame for tech and econ because no terran pushes before that, while you try to find out if you need extra defense at a specific timing (cut units, go up to 6/7 gates, power up units, get 1-2 rounds of warpins before his push along with your tech) or if you can keep being greedy (cut production and units, take a third). It's not that protoss HAS to be played like that, but the PvT metagame favours those kind of specific, optmized builds over a generic "make units all the time" style when those units might not even be useful. They would have been useful in 2010/2011 when stim, medivac-less pushes and 4-6rax pure marine timings were common, but the game has evolved past that stage (and indeed, had evolved past it in wol as well). I actually talked about that very concept in my old templar guide, because at the time changing the gateway timings was a pretty big innovation: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=364130. Monk also discussed gateway timings in relation to terran timings in his original double forge article: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=292549. | ||
|
Extenz
Italy822 Posts
| ||
|
Teoita
Italy12246 Posts
| ||
|
Protossking
Australia103 Posts
| ||
|
Teoita
Italy12246 Posts
| ||
|
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On October 28 2013 00:24 Protossking wrote: Wondering what you guys think is the best response to 15hatch in your natural vs Gate expand builds. I know the standard way to hold the 3rd hatch in natural is by pulling 5 or so probes with a zealot and forcing a cancel on it, this doesn't seem to work/be worth the investment vs a faster hatch in the natural. I've tried going robo and doing a slower expand with an observer but this seems to put me behind too. On October 28 2013 00:35 Teoita wrote: Yeah the only way is what you mention, pull 3/4 probes and chrono 2 zealots to kill it. Also, I want to note that you generally have a pretty good timing window to push across the map with your initial units (usually I have zealot/zealot/stalker/MSC) and either 1) straight up cancel the 3rd if they try to play greedy behind the hatch block, or 2) force a bunch of lings and potentially kill off queens and drones. If things get bad, you can just recall. As long as you don't lose all of your units and get a wall up behind your aggression, you should pretty much normalize in economy. | ||
|
Lazermonkey
Sweden2176 Posts
1. Do you have one or two gas? 2. When do you scout it? If you go for a build that is very exposed to super fast hatch block (ie, any build that has a small amount of gas and a small amount of chrono boost I would say) then you should probably just scout for a possible hatch block so that you can react in time. Game 1, Naniwa vs Life at IEM finals is a great showcase of this, Naniwa scouts the proxy hacth really early and is able to react in a smart way. I'm not sure if pulling probes vs this really is effective, because the hatch will be finished almost before your first zealot pop out, and the only reason you would want to pull probes is to kill the hatch before it finishes. In order to do this without a zealot you need not only to scout it really early but also pull a larger amount of probes which kinda stinks. Pulling probes vs later hatch blocks is okay though, I think. | ||
|
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On October 28 2013 01:21 Lazermonkey wrote: I don't think there is one exact answer to that question because it depends on alot of factors, most importantly: 1. Do you have one or two gas? 2. When do you scout it? If you go for a build that is very exposed to super fast hatch block (ie, any build that has a small amount of gas and a small amount of chrono boost I would say) then you should probably just scout for a possible hatch block so that you can react in time. Game 1, Naniwa vs Life at IEM finals is a great showcase of this, Naniwa scouts the proxy hacth really early and is able to react in a smart way. I'm not sure if pulling probes vs this really is effective, because the hatch will be finished almost before your first zealot pop out, and the only reason you would want to pull probes is to kill the hatch before it finishes. In order to do this without a zealot you need not only to scout it really early but also pull a larger amount of probes which kinda stinks. Pulling probes vs later hatch blocks is okay though, I think. I just want to point out that most gate expands already have a zealot building that gets cancelled right before the nexus goes down (~3:40). Not only does this zealot cancel defend against early pools but also helps out in the case of a hatch block. I usually send a probe scout down to my natural a little early to check as well. If it's already down, just pull 4 probes and let the zealot finish. Naniwa handled that game terribly, imo. He cancelled the first zealot, didn't pull probes, and didn't wall off his natural. As a result, he wasn't able to take a natural for 3 minutes. Which is awful. | ||
|
aldochillbro
187 Posts
| ||
|
Teoita
Italy12246 Posts
| ||
|
Lazermonkey
Sweden2176 Posts
On October 28 2013 01:56 SC2John wrote: Its true that almost every gateway build starts a zealot. But unlike engenering blocks in PvT, one zealot isn't always enough to bring down the hatch block. Now, like I said, the response will differ alot depending on what type of gateway expand you go for. Pulling probes vs 15 hatch block is most likely going to be contraproductive beucase you wouldn't really want to pull any probes if you are going to let the hatch finish anyway. If it ever finishes, then you'll have to wait a long time for the creep to disapear so you might as well just be more agressive and force more lings out of him. I just want to point out that most gate expands already have a zealot building that gets cancelled right before the nexus goes down (~3:40). Not only does this zealot cancel defend against early pools but also helps out in the case of a hatch block. I usually send a probe scout down to my natural a little early to check as well. If it's already down, just pull 4 probes and let the zealot finish. Naniwa handled that game terribly, imo. He cancelled the first zealot, didn't pull probes, and didn't wall off his natural. As a result, he wasn't able to take a natural for 3 minutes. Which is awful. I think the main problem here is that we are not talking about those halv-assed proxy hatches, against which pulling probes are totally fine but rather 15 hatch on the nat that finish around 3.50. Regarding the game: I'm not sure if you're mixing things up. Naniwa doesn't cancel his zealot but goes for 3zealot + msc with oracle follow up. In fact, Naniwa ends up being slightly ahead after the early game, though he ends up losing the game for completely unrelated reasons. | ||
|
Lazermonkey
Sweden2176 Posts
On October 28 2013 04:11 Teoita wrote: I think Jim disagrees with you.Phoenix/colossus isn't good vs terran because it just doesn't scale well enough with upgrades, regardless of phoenix vs void ray dps. It worked in 2010 when none could get their upgrades done, but now it just isn't viable because upgrades are such a huge part of pvt (as opposed to pvz where they are important but not as big of a deal, therefore making colo/void ray a good army in some spots). | ||
|
Teoita
Italy12246 Posts
That's just a personal opinion/feeling, i havent seen enough pro games to judge. | ||
|
neptunusfisk
2286 Posts
On October 28 2013 10:13 Teoita wrote: Imo you should never ever ever let the hatch finish. If it does, by the time the creep clears your expo will be so delayed, you'll be horribly behind. That's just a personal opinion/feeling, i havent seen enough pro games to judge. Well, the only other viable thing to do is to choo choo Duckdeok, I think, was proxy hatched by ByuL yesterday and he just went 4 gate kinda casual and ran in with stalkers ezpz | ||
|
vhapter
Brazil677 Posts
Here's a replay to illustrate things better, in case my description above wasn't clear enough. http://drop.sc/363558 | ||
| ||
