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PvT - the most "standard" way to play current is 1 gate > expand > producing 3-4 units off that 1st gate > twilight + blink > 2 more gates > robo right after. Should be able to land a triple warpin before the 4:20 widow mine drop timing and any other starport aggressions. Pretty easy to have a sub 5 minute 3rd base with this build and you can branch it out into collosus, a gateway style, heavy 2 base play, or even 5/6 gate blink all in.
The other two builds are stargate into two gates into expand, but that can be more volatile. The second build is doing something similar to the first twilight build but with a robo instead of twilight for faster immortal/collosus.
PvZ - 2018's "standard" was opening stargate with an oracle or two and a phoenix into the 4 gate archon drops but those started dropping off a bit due to the old nydus and the fact that people realized immortal timings were just better than actually trying to go late vs 70+ drone zergs with nerfed carriers.
You'll see a lot of 2 base immortal/sentry soul train type deals or adept plays because of it. If you'd like a build that's similar and can transition go for the 1 gate > expand > twilight and robo > 3 gate > DT shrine build. You get like 3 units out of the first gateway and make a prism right away then warp in 4 DTs (or 4 chargelots then 4 DTs). You can play with the 4 DTs or morph them to archons if you prefer. It's pretty easy to transition into an immortal all in or a 3rd if you prefer, just need to make sure you prioritize immortal production right after the DTs and make sure you are constantly hallucination scouting to watch for the zerg tech choices as a muta switch/swarmhost will straight end the game if you aren't ready. If they go roach or hydra/lurker you just abuse double robo and then get storm.
PvP is a little harder as it's more volatile. Gemini posted this some time back.
https://tl.net/forum/sc2-strategy/546425-pbotw-stats-3-sentry-expand-into-fast-forge.
Most common setup is 2 gates, which produce a combination of 6 units depending on preference and what your tech choice affords you, and then getting a tech choice (twilight with upgrades, a twilight DT shrine, a stargate, or a robo and then your nexus before really pumping much out of that tech. You can put the expansion before tech but you need to watch out for 1 base play and utilize shield batteries properly and have a good defense. Proxying is VERY common in the meta right now due to heavy realiance on hallucination scouts and the fact that they might not be able to scout your tech early enough if they don't find it.
Strengths and Weakness of the Gateway Units
Adepts - Gas light so you can produce army while teching up. In PvT the adept is the best unit at defending the 1 reaper scout/harass. It can shade across the map to deny the terran natural and is generally good vs all the early terran units. In PvZ it lets you bully lings, check zerg drone counts, zerg 3rd base timing, and if they are going for an early lair or cheese builds. It can also be used as drone harass. In PvP adepts can check around the map for proxies pretty easily and you can threaten to shade into their base and keep them defensive. They also body up sentries very quickly leading to favorable gas trades early on. They are quite worse in fights than stalkers and will die ridiculously fast to stargate units.
Stalker - Strongest/most flexible combat unit early on. In PvT groups of stalkers are generally best at defending early harass and aggression, and you obviously need some to cover starport based play. PvZ stalkers only sometimes come out as a way to deny overlord scouting. Many builds will cut stalkers and go for cheaper adepts or get sentires to build energy for a timing. Post immortal production you can sometimes pick up blink to aid in fighting some of the zerg tech switches. PvP stalkers are important because they win the actual fights out on the map early on and they are the only thing can effectively fend off oracles but they typically suck in the midgame and lose out on raw combat ability to archon/zealot/immortals.
Sentry - Fit into builds unique due to heavy gas cost and low mineral cost. These are made almost entirely for the hallucination scout (and the emergency forcefield.) In PvT you won't typically have more than 3 and usually 1 or 2 is fine just for guardian shield and hallucination If you make a sentry you should be using it for hallucination and not burning force fields you don't need. PvZ you want several so you can constantly hallucination scout to make sure to keep an eye on zerg tech in the midgame, and force fields make immortalt significantly more imba vs roaches and ravagers. In PvP you will most frequently see just 1 sentry early on to get that scouting. If you mine gas a little more aggressively at the start your 2 gate can prooduce stalker/sentry/WG as soon as cyber finishes to get a 3:00 minute hallucination scout to see tech (or a lackthereof). If you have sentries and aren't hallucinated frequently you are using them wrong - for the most part.
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Northern Ireland25047 Posts
That’s great thanks, gives me plenty to work with for sure
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adepts are also pretty good in 2 base PvP situations where you want to muscle through a fight before archon tech hits the field, either offensively or defensively. they're not great fighters, but like zerglings they can be used to overwhelm through sheer numbers while your real DPS units take everything else out. and of course shading into the main is very hard to stop during an intense 2 base fight. we've seen lots of this at pro level lately resulting in a lot of crazy low economy slugfests
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On May 10 2019 14:18 Russano wrote:
PvZ - 2018's "standard" was opening stargate with an oracle or two and a phoenix into the 4 gate archon drops but those started dropping off a bit due to the old nydus and the fact that people realized immortal timings were just better than actually trying to go late vs 70+ drone zergs with nerfed carriers.
You'll see a lot of 2 base immortal/sentry soul train type deals or adept plays because of it. If you'd like a build that's similar and can transition go for the 1 gate > expand > twilight and robo > 3 gate > DT shrine build. You get like 3 units out of the first gateway and make a prism right away then warp in 4 DTs (or 4 chargelots then 4 DTs). You can play with the 4 DTs or morph them to archons if you prefer. It's pretty easy to transition into an immortal all in or a 3rd if you prefer, just need to make sure you prioritize immortal production right after the DTs and make sure you are constantly hallucination scouting to watch for the zerg tech choices as a muta switch/swarmhost will straight end the game if you aren't ready. If they go roach or hydra/lurker you just abuse double robo and then get storm.
To summarise PvZ a bit more accurately, it was a bit more like a rock paper scissors sorta thing. Once all Protoss players realised that going Phoenix first was an effective way to hide your follow up tech, it began this sort of cycle in PvZ. It was widely considered that Protoss was a bit weak in PvZ, but it was balanced by the fact that Zerg could end up behind in the mid-game ZvP if they couldn't scout the follow up and blindly chose the wrong counter. Archon drop was at first the most common but hardly the best, especially once zergs figured out the correct timings for the roach response. We used to think of archon drop as weak but quite stable and safe, but it ended up not being that safe to roach timing attacks that popped up around the middle of last year, and Zergs could basically blindly go roach and be in good shape. Zest changed this by unveiling 2 SG phoenix follow up which was a really nice counter to these zergs that were unable to scout and just went blind roaches to be safe against archon drop. However, this build was considered weak to +1 ling at the time, so it fluctuated in popularity for a while. You could go fast lair into hydra which was okay against archon and okay against 2SG phoenix, so that was quite a decent and popular option for players like Leenock, but guys like Classic started bringing back SG into Glaives timing which made it a bit risky to go blind hydra every game too. So it basically a matchup where Protoss would rotate between Archon drop/2SG/Glaives to keep the zerg honest, and Zerg would mostly go roach but mix it up between +1 melee and fast hydra to make sure they couldn't just be blind countered every game. I'm simplifying things a lot obviously, there were occasionally uses of DT Drop and SG/3gate third and Robo All-ins, but this was the main gist of PvZ for a long time (there were also chargelot timings after Archon Drop that were really popular at one point but died very quickly once Zergs figured out archon drop). Eventually, we started to realise 2SG actually wasn't that bad against +1 if you played very on point and I'd say we finally reached a period of a 'best build' in PvZ. A lot of players started almost exclusively going 2SG and having very good success as the most solid build with the best matchups against all other builds overall (this was also slightly motivated by the transfuse change too). IMO, this was the case all the way up til the nydus change which literally killed the best PvZ build and made everything a wreck.
I think all of the above is still kind of relevant because you can still play PvZ like this with decent success, especially with the nydus nerf. Ofc, the meta has changed a lot on the Protoss side due to the original Nydus change, and the only reason I think it hasn't changed back is because we've actually learnt the merit of opening robo first in general against Zerg and the fact that it can lead to much easier wins than before. I'm still not completely sold on the 4 stalker drop but it is decent and its existence forces the zerg not to blindly counter an allin whenever they scout robo. They probably should tho, given the strength of immortal all ins at the current moment. You could definitely just immortal all in every game and have a pretty positive win ratio, but it's super boring to play like that which is why I think the above SG-roulette meta is still worth knowing and practicing, plus DT Drop which is quite decent at the moment.
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May i request a protoss build order that aims for a really fast third? Preferably without stargate cause Artosis said those builds are too weak against zerg these days.
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On May 28 2019 04:21 KetoWarrior wrote:
May i request a protoss build order that aims for a really fast third? Preferably without stargate cause Artosis said those builds are too weak against zerg these days.
There some unique builds for that, kinda depends on what you actually want to do.
Maybe some Dt - ArchonDrop?
www.reddit.com
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On May 28 2019 04:21 KetoWarrior wrote:
May i request a protoss build order that aims for a really fast third? Preferably without stargate cause Artosis said those builds are too weak against zerg these days.
How fast are we talking? Standard PvZ third timing is 5 minutes. You can probably go robo and take a 4:30 third if you scout really really well, but any earlier than that you and you certainly need oracles to defend, or on the back of extremely well executed 3 gate adept harassment.
Honestly, stargate is not weak in PvZ. I think that quote from artosis is probably a bit out of context lol.
The most standard Macro based playstyle on the ladder is still stargate into HT archon drop. You can skip stargate and go for a fast DT drop, but youre taking a standard 3rd, not a really fast one.
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What's a PvZ build that's really good against a zerg that thinks you will go immortal sentry because it's the only build you know?
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On June 09 2019 23:55 neptunusfisk wrote:
What's a PvZ build that's really good against a zerg that thinks you will go immortal sentry because it's the only build you know?
Immortal sentry all-in, but delayed by 30 seconds
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On June 09 2019 23:55 neptunusfisk wrote:
What's a PvZ build that's really good against a zerg that thinks you will go immortal sentry because it's the only build you know?
Just a standard archon drop, or even better, double stargate phoenix (slightly harder to use tho)
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What is void ray supposed to be good for?
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On June 11 2019 20:09 whoopsome wrote:
What is void ray supposed to be good for?
Is ok if combined with aggressive shield batteries for cheese :D
Great at defending roach all ins and marauder pushes, but to be honest most of the time you need excellent scouting info to ever be able to actively decide that a void ray is a better choice than an oracle. It just costs a bit too much for what it offers.
Its also good at lategame dealing with corruptors.
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On June 11 2019 20:09 whoopsome wrote:
What is void ray supposed to be good for?
If you are a cheesy or crazy player void rays have plenty of uses.
I used to play skytoss a lot around some two or so years ago and it's imo a really good unit to mindgame others with. I for example found it very useful to trick gullible zergs into thinking I would go mass void ray, and poke with 4-5 void rays and then hide my ground army. Then, when the engagement came they'd have 95% hydras only and I'd have adept,collosi,archon.void ray. GG.
Cheesing wise I know that proxy stargate with voidray + shieldbattery is good vs terrans. I've seen Maximusblack do it a lot at 4700. It works.
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On June 11 2019 20:09 whoopsome wrote:
What is void ray supposed to be good for?
4.9 here so I may not be the best person to answer but: adding on to its uses against zerg, void rays have limited utility against but there are a couple of notable uses imo
If you open stargate and scout a fast nydus - not necessarily the fastest 3:22 kind, perhaps one where zerg makes a queen and then lair - you may prefer to open void ray as opposed to oracle. The void ray usually doesn't pop in time to deny the first nydus (gateway units and probes for that) but it helps with defending the next couple of nydus attempts and sniping the overlord. Since it's too late to switch to robo/TC, this gives you the best chance of surviving with current tech + gateway units.
The other one is when you scout the commonly seen roach ravager ling bust (earliest is the 19 drone all in), the oracle is good but void ray may be better if you struggle with the oracle's energy issues.
The reason why it may be better than oracle in said situations is because oracles run out of energy fast if you use them once they pop, and they can't shoot air to clear ovies.
Edit: if you are confident of targeting things using the oracle then you may prefer it for its damage against ravagers. But I guess that is more of a personal preference than anything
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Hello all, I am coming back to SC2 from a several year hiatus. I am looking for a solid 2 base all in against T. I am learning the standard PvT on my 2nd account but I am pretty close to masters now and I have a 20% win rate against T so I want something coin flippy to get that winrate to 50% since my other match ups are 70% ish it's the only thing holding me back. Im not big on blink all ins but I could try them out if someone has a good one. Thank you in advance!
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Im not good (~3k mmr, dont play ranked that often), but I found these builds quite good -
vs terran: https://lotv.spawningtool.com/build/101399/
vs protoss: https://lotv.spawningtool.com/build/101344/
and i like stargate robo twilight vs zerg.....kinda like archon drop but can do whatever really...open phoenix first for scouting for me, sometimes I make a oracle, if I see roaches make voids, immortals and units, obviously if have zealots want to move them out of your wall to fight....if you dont lose much probes or buildings, easy win...I get storm and charge mostly. Sometimes in the later part of the game if its still going I'll start building some phoenixes just to be safer against mutas (I think pheonix are great units) and if they try going GGlords atleast can have something to more easily deal with them if you clean up the ground or if they have bad positioning etc and can lift lurkers as well...
Be interesting to try going the terran blink build and going double robo and robo bay with 3rd against zerg and going collusos, archon, immortal stalker...eh probably not good though cause gas and not affording sentries and stalkers being more mobile kiting lasting type units against zerg but dont pack a whole lot of punch but thatd be interesting.
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My cutting-edge burning LotV question: I've been going for walks into a few Terrans who do a Liberator push at like 4:00 after I move Nexus first. What is an powerful method for dealing with that? It's very hard to scout the shortage of a natural on maps with a pocket expo, considering T can wall off, and by the time an Observer receives over after a quick expansion I do not have a heck of a variety of time to react.
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On June 24 2019 11:22 moltolovia wrote:
My cutting-edge burning LotV question: I've been going for walks into a few Terrans who do a Liberator push at like 4:00 after I move Nexus first. What is an powerful method for dealing with that? It's very hard to scout the shortage of a natural on maps with a pocket expo, considering T can wall off, and by the time an Observer receives over after a quick expansion I do not have a heck of a variety of time to react.
Nexus first is generally considered a bit too greedy in current PvT meta due to reaper, but in general if its a 4:00 push with liberator, I assume its 1 tank, 1 liberator, and a few unupgraded marines. Any opening should be able to deal with it if you make a few adjustments. You should also be able to scout that he has no natural. Opening adept into stalker allows you to shade across and scout in case he denies the probe scout on his natural. Theres no pocket expand in the current map pool, they are all scoutable. Robo opening gets the immo, a few stalkers, and shield batteries to hold, cut probes. SG opening depends on if you can get a stasis trap, and twilight opening will probably have the hardest time holding it because you wont have blink in time.
If you can share a replay, it will be a lot easier to offer advice, because any push I currently see at 4:00 doesn't have the liberator too often.
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generally before stim there's not a lot preventing you from running onto the map and camping his natural for the move out. the worst thing that should happen if you pay attention to your units is you lose a stalker to a fast cyclone or you shade an adept too slow and lose it, but the information and pressure is worth it. try making a sentry as your second unit, it's a pretty decent choice at mid levels on ladder because you get a very reliable free scout
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my PvT is at the point where if my opponent makes one Lib I can no longer win the game...
Any ideas? 
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EPT
