The HotS Protoss Help Me Thread - Page 28

On March 26 2013 13:06 Kim Hyuna wrote:


I saw PuCk did exactly the above (storm, chargelots, archon, stalkers) going against mass VR/Gateway built and was pretty owned badly. Gateway units are way too slow to react against harassment or securing 3rd.

I do agreed storm/archon did pretty well against such composition but good splitting of VRs and micro make pure Gateway pretty useless. At the current state of game, skytoss is pretty much a need.

On March 26 2013 13:38 Nokitch wrote:
Hey, so I just registered just to get some feedback/help on this.

Just some back story; I was against a terran and ever since watching Grubby's streams, I have wanted to try a proxy stargate with oracles. Everything worked fine when I was killing his SCVs when he counter attacked. I went to my base and he had ~10-12 marauders and as you can see in the replay, I had nothing to defend against it. I also never did scout after the initial scout but when I saw his early gas, I thought he would go reapers which was why I CB'ed the stalker.

Now this is the first time I have ever encountered this. So what would be the right way to counter his 3Rax Marauder because that looked really intimidating.

Replay: http://drop.sc/313831

On March 26 2013 20:08 Sated wrote:

Since I open Dark Templar Expand quite a lot in PvP (when I intend to macro), I was trying Chargelot/Archon/Templar against Skytoss a lot during the beta (I've not really been able to play since release; I moved and don't have a reliable internet connection yet) and I only consistently won against players who didn't split their Skytoss army up properly. I feel like it's really hard to win with a Chargelot/Archon/Temlar composition against a Protoss opponent who knows what they're doing. Mass Void Rays just melt through armies so quickly, even when they're fighting enemies that they don't deal bonus damage against!

That said, I am pretty bad at harassment and forcing engagements. I'm very much one of those Protoss players who either hits a timing or sits back and macros passively, so I think that I really need to work on those two elements if I expect this composition to work for me. How important do you think harassment is to this type of composition, and what's the best way to engage Skytoss with it?

I'd really like to continue opening with Dark Templar Expands since they work really well in HotS, so I kinda need to learn how to get this composition working for me!

On March 26 2013 21:12 Sated wrote:

I never really had that many Stalkers when I was trying out Gateway responses to Void Ray builds. I figured that it woudn't be the best of ideas given how quickly Stalkers melt against Void Rays, but I'll have to start mixing them in. I'm guessing though that you don't open with a Dark Templar expand, so I'll watch your replays when I get home and see what's what.

Not having a stable internet connection yet is killing me. Still another month until I get a proper internet connection T_T

On March 26 2013 21:53 Salivanth wrote:
With HotS, if I scout my opponent is going for a CC-first or a gasless 1 Rax FE, is there an all-in I can do in response that should virtually always kill my opponent if we're of equal skill levels? Basically, is it safe for Terran to go gasless expand in HotS even if he's scouted?

I've received several pieces of contradictory information on the matter, so I was hoping to get it cleared up once and for all.

And if there is an all-in I should do in response, what's the build order?

On March 26 2013 22:15 crappen wrote:


Im quite curious of this DT expand (started playing hots 3 days ago), as I have usually gone stargate. So you make a few stalkers in the beginning to fend off phoenix/oracle harrass, then how do you use your DT's? Is it for defense against ground army, seeing he can only rely on oracles for detection? Are you DT FE so that you can make a midpush with HT/archons/few_leftover_stalkers and chargelots for the mineral dump?

It just seems a bit risky seeing if the game is not ended fairly mid, he will have a few tempests to pick your base off. I guess you want to control the pace, forcing his army away from your base. Some maps, where he spawns close to you, its so easy for him to fly his army over to pick at your base, then if you push back, he is there to defend.

On March 26 2013 22:50 Vansetsu wrote:
Since RSVP seems to be answering questions today, I'll chime in with two of my own regarding PvT.

1. It seems as if nexus first or very early nexus builds are very unsafe, due to the amount of damage a terran can do with widow mines ect off of one gas early. Therefore, I tend to go stargate at 28 (probe scout to confirm after 13 gate). The Idea is i can chrono a stalker for reaper defense and use a mothership core and other stalkers to either harass or just confirm expansion or tech, Meanwhile, I'll have an oracle to deal with any widowmine shenanigans, and if they don't seem to be coming, I can send the intial oracle to harass or make a 2nd one.

My main dilemma is that in order to get the startgate at 28, along with getting a few stalkers and researching wg, this forces me to take an early 2nd gas around 16. If i see the terran took his 1 gas, but then decided to quickly get his natural up, am I just plain behind no matter what unless he has poor reflexes vs my oracle harass? Or is there a more frugal way to still play conservative, and get a decent expansion timing up, without being so vulnerable to early game pressure?

2. Even after your first base scout of the terran early mid-game, they may only have a 1-1-1 up. At this point though, you are usually laying the groundwork for a specific army type, or still building stalkers, while the terran could still be going bio or mech. When they do go mech, I often run into the problem of getting different variations of mech builds thrown at me, such as some combinations of Thor/hellbat or mass Thor and vikings + either ravens, banshees, or mass widowmines.

Without a lot of early preparation, some of these compositions seem very very hard to deal with, Are there any strong tells right now from early scouts to see this sort of play coming? And if spotted, what type of compositions are optimal for dealing with these mech variants? I like to think air toss is the way to go, but many terrans quite often will either make vikings premptivley to deal with possible air tech supplemented by thors, or ravens to counter phoenixes a bit. That seems to take collosus out of the equation, and leaves me with voidrays or high templar. Perhaps I'm missing something important here, but basically there's so much to play around with in mech and air tech for terran, that I can't seem to make a strong educated guess as to what the backbone of my army should consist of when I can at least confirm some sort of mech play.

Any help with either of these questions would be greatly appreciated .