[G] PvT: Effective dt harassment

Most commonly (unless you’re maringking or wish you were ☺), the flow of play consists of the terran player expo’g or 2 raxing, with the protoss player following suit and fast expanding or defending the 2 rax . But ultimately, both players are expanding onto two bases and the game goes to the mid game.

Generally speaking, this is the most important part of the game for several reasons:
1) Both players are building their economy (workers), and are establishing the worker count that will remain for the rest of the game-i.e. this is the biggest opportunity either race will get to safely build workers before things heat up.
2) The terran player is on ~3 raxes (unless a 4-5 rax un-upgraded marine push is his follow up of choice, in which case his push will come out a bit earlier, but you’ll be able to defend with gateway units and good micro) with add-ons, researching stim/combat shield etc. with 1/1 possibly on the way as well. Once a significant economy is established, the terran player wants to add on raxes, which take ~a minute to build+addons (~a minute). This means a 600 min. investment that can’t be utilized for two minutes. We will call the point when this has been safely accomplished the late game
3) Players are looking to take a third. If the terran player takes a third, he forfeits much of his ability to be aggressive in the mid game. As such, he allows the protoss player to cut corners to the late game un-encumbered (TOSS PLAYERS WANT TO CUT CORNERS). This is bad news if you’re playing the average diamond player. Even worse if Liquid’Hero is your opponent.
4) Terran have a tech advantage with the combined fielding of stim and medivacs at this stage. Protoss players can hold a push of this type, but not in a very efficient fashion, and the average toss player won’t be able to take a third, and defend the terran’s 10 minute stim/med. Push.
TERRAN PLAYERS KNOW THIS.
Thus, the mid game often revolves around the stim/medivac push (~10 minutes), the follow up of which is usually some sort of multipronged drop attacks.

Allowing a toss player to get to the late game unencumbered is a death sentence. He’ll death ball you at about 16 minutes (usually most 3rd tier tech-paths kick in at about 14-15 for toss). Thus, terran players want (need) to do damage before the late game, hence the medevac/stim push’s popularity.

The game becomes pretty back and forth. Toss players are bouncing between Templar and colossus based armies while Terran players are bouncing between heavy ghost and heavy Viking production. And the name of the game is bases. Fun fun fun.

As armies grow, Templar tech is stronger and more efficient than colossi. Terran are more than able to mass Vikings in the mid game, shutting down colossus pushes with effective control (somewhat of a joke statement. Vikings are a 1a unit in a bio composition. They just shoot colossi. That’s their one job.). On the other hand, ghosts vs templar is a micro battle, thus, with better control/sneakiness/timings (if he doesn’t have ghosts/ he doesn’t know you have storm) toss can outplay terran in big fights much easier.
The problem is that Templar tech is more expensive and require more time than colossi:
Templar tech=Twilight (150/100 & ~1min.) + Templar archives (200/200 &~1 min.) + storm research (200/200 & ~2 min.s)+ (x)*wait time for Templar to get to 75 mana (25 seconds [although energy can be banked while things are being researched]=~0.5 min.s)+ (x)*cost of Templar (50/150)
Total: for one storm (x=1): 600/650 & ~4.25 min.s (this is the kicker, lots of time needed, and additional templar will cost 250 a piece)
Collosi=robo fac. (200/100 &~1min.) + robo bay (200/200 &~1 min.) + (x)*colossus (300/200+~1 min.)
*range (200/200 & ~2 min.s, if started when bay done should finish when 1st coll. Is out)
Total for one coll. (x=1): 1000/500 & 3 min.s or 1200/700 & 3min.s with range (given good macro/build order)

The math should speak for itself. Colossi are faster (I didn’t even factor in C’boosts (note-one chrono shaves ~10 seconds off any given build time), and as such, are more efficient mid game when armies are small. Additionally, storm is hard to utilize effectively when terran’s army is small, as he can more easily split his units and dodge your storm radius. The problem is that colossi are a tech path you will eventually need to abandon, which gives the terran another timing window of attack. These attacks (about the 14-15 mark, and can be anything from straight down the front 150 food upgraded bio to multipronged drops and and counterattacks on any of your three (hopefully by now) bases. They will likely will be aimed at denying your third, which can be a crippling maneuver, setting you back too far to recover before terran reaches a maxed late game army. Thus, if you go colossi, survive the mid game, get on a third and are about to switch to storm. And lets say you have a twilight council already (-1 min.), you still are without storm for ~3 min.s. Thus, going colossi effectively delays storm until about the 16 minute mark, which gives terran a window to kill you.

Yes, harass your opponent with well timed counterplays. My favorite method is with Dts.
Why Dt?:
Dt are incredible harassment units. They force a reaction, by default will cost the terran money (turrets and scans [which=mules[), and can often delay his 10 min. push. That’s not even considering the economic damage you will likely inflict. Furthermore, Dts stay relevant the entire game, and are very efficient during the later stages as they provide a powerful harassment tool that heavily stresses your opponent’s multitasking ability. Additionally, the time you buy yourself by going dt and harassing your opponent is enough to build up a substantial chargelot archon force, and perhaps even to research storm. The beauty of it is that it both buys you the needed time, and develops the tech path that is necessary to transition into this composition. You have already taken a lot of gas geysers and gotten a twilight council to get the dark shrine, and your harassment has bought you time to research charge, armor upgrades, and to get up a solid number of gateways (Note: 4 per base is a solid number for chargelot archon). You could feasibly just go for chargelot archon from the start, but by harassing him with dts you’ve taken the ball away from the Terran player, forcing him to be defensive, at a time when, in theory, the protoss need to be defensive. It delays your tech, but only to the extent that, for a short time, you are investing your money elsewhere. The switch into chargelot archon, takes about 2 minutes (140 sec. build time for charge, the longest build time of any of the upgrades/structures you’ll need, and you’ll likely chrono it a few times) and be started as soon as the harassment has begun. To put it simply, the transition just flows well, and gives you an early vice grip on the game’s pace.

Bio play (especially any gasless fast expands) and most Bio/tank play, though the concept of denying the 10 minute stim/medevac push doesn’t apply. I like to go for this when I see a gasless fast expands (as stated earlier), because it means that any early push he does will be un-upgraded marines, which can be held with effectively micro’d gateway units. Its also easy to predict his follow up from a gasless FE with gently poking the front. I.e., if you see marauders after he expands (or you’ve determined he’s going to), he’s probably going for a medevac push. If you see pure marine, no combat shield, he’s probably gonna push a bit earlier than that.
More on gasless FE from Terran→ http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/1_Rax_FE
*Though I have had success with this build when facing a 1.1.1, I cannot endorse it, both because there are so many variations of the 1.1.1 and because the success I’ve had with it is probably more good luck than sound strategy.

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To put it more explicitly, at ~6 minutes:
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This is a build you have to play out in a reactionary way. Once you are harassing, pay close attention to how your opponent reacts. This will determine when you are safe to add on gates, transition into storm, take a third etc. Basically, once you have begun harassing him, play the game out intuitively. Map vision is very important, things to watch for are early un-upgraded marine pushes, and quick 3rd bases.

1 Dt= 125/125
each Dt requires either a turret’s sight (100 min.s +scv building and NOT mining [~40 min.s/1 minute* 5/12 minutes (25 seconds ☺) build time= ~16 minerals)) or a scan (270 min.s lost=amount a mule will yield because each scan is a mule’s worth of energy out of an orbital)
-keeping these numbers in mind:
270 resources per scan, and 116 resources per turret vs 250 resources for a Dt
Even if you do not kill an incredible number of workers, you’ve still done a good deal of damage simply by forcing him to get detection.

This is probably the most important part of the build (duh, it’s a dt build), but the intricacies of the harassment deserve some emphasis. You want to try your best to divert his attention. I like to drop 3 dts into his main, send 1 to the mineral field, 1 to a back corner on hold position (out of scan range of the mineral field), and 1 to his natural (if you have seen that he built a turret at the natural, as is a common thing for terrans to do these days, then send this 3rd dt to another corner of his base, perhaps cue up a few depots or add-ons as targets). The most important thing with this split-up method of harass is that you micro in such a way that he’ll need to drop >1 scan to deal with your harass. So, hypothetically, you hit his mineral line with dt 1, your dt headed to his natural sees the army move into the main. Send the natural dt to the natural mineral line at this point and begin taking out scvs. Be on the look out for any building turrets in both locations and delay these as much as possible. Once he has dealt with your first dt (main mineral line, he probably scanned it) and is moving to deal with his natural, send in the dt you’ve hidden and warp in a 4th into another far corner and a 5th outside his natural. You should have already checked for a 3rd base with a probe/obs, use the 5th to patrol the attack paths so you can weaken his army if/when he moves out without mobile detection. Its worth noting that ravens are good units to have in any Terran composition, and high level players have begun incorporating them into bio builds, especially if they see dt. Do all this, and you should force 1-2 scans, a few turrets (often in excess if your opponent is faint of heart), and have killed off a fair number of workers (5-20). So, for this example, lets say the total is 2 scans (540)+ 2 turrets (232) + 5 workers (250 & the future resources they could’ve mined) =1032 total resources lost. For 3 dts (750 resources total), that’s a pretty good trade, especially because you’ve denied him the future income of the 5 workers you killed. But, most importantly, you have bought yourself time and map control, both necessary to tech. Again, as protoss, you need more time to tech up to your big death ball style compositions, and effective harassment can buy you this time. As such, don’t fret if you don’t kill off an entire mineral line, or feel like you lost more than you killed, because half the damage is in the fact that his army had to be at his base for every second it took him to clean up your harass.

-All ins:
This is often not the case, but every once in a while, upon seeing the dts, a terran player will pull all scvs and go all in. This is very dangerous. As protoss, when going dt, you will be at a supply disadvantage for a while just by virtue of how expensive dt are, both in the time the tech takes (dark shrine takes 100 seconds to warp in) and the cost of the individual units. Good players know this, and him going all can often kill you, especially if he already has a few medivacs out. If you see him go all in, use dt as much as possible to weaken his army as it crosses the map (he won’t hesitate to scan these down, so try and stutter them so he runs out of scans), use sentries to block the ramp as much as possible, and chrono your gate/cut everything else/panic mode etc. He’s all in, so if you hold with 10 workers you’ll probably be able to win the game regardless of how good mules are ☺.
-Doom Drops/multi-pronged drops:
If constant medevac production is maintained, by the time he’s cleaned up your dt harass, he should have at least 4 medivacs. Finesse minded terran players will try and come back from the damage you have inflicted by loading up and dropping your main. More sophisticated finesse minded players will drop your main, and counter attack your natural in an effort to split your forces. Neither of these should be a problem if you see them coming (have observers/dt out on the map constantly!!). You’ll have eight gates, which will allow you to defend most 1-2 medivac drops with just warp in rounds. Furthermore, chargelot archon excels at dealing with drops/multipronged aggression, and gives you access to feedback; with which you can just straight up kill drops, or at the least severely weaken them by denying his units healing.

You’ve harassed him, taken a third, and defended any follow up he’s attempted. Life is good! Transitions are intuitive from here, you’re on three bases, which as any toss player knows, means you can do pretty much anything you want. So go carriers ☺ haha. But seriously, you should be in a good spot. Keep your foot on the gas pedal and keep up the drops, switch to zealot bombs vs dt to save gas, get warp prism speed etc. Switch to colossi tech, and get storm if you haven’t already. Get your death ball and wait for the opportunity to break the front.

Terran players are getting better at scouting your mid game tech path, often through hiding a scv or by spending a scan on your main base. To avoid having your dark shrine seen before you’re ready to drop him, try and place it as far away as possible from your natural, as terran players usually scan near the cliff line dividing the natural and the main to see how aggressively you’ve expanded (and on higher levels, to get a rough probe-count estimate).
If he sees your dark shrine, you can go ahead with the harass and try and salvage the build as best you can, as you will have a significant degree of map control and your opponent will likely be pretty scared of what’s to come. Another completely viable option, and the one I’d advocate, is to cancel the dark shrine, take your third right there, and start a Templar archives and charge. Basically, get a faster third, and go straight into chargelot archon/storm. The thought behind this is that he likely will be turtling up a little longer than he planned, which buys you some extra time to get up higher tech paths.

Some things to notice in this vod are
1) the production of immortals, which you will have some spare resources for while adding tech structures/gateways. It can’t hurt to mix in a few of these, they will give you some extra counter to his marauders and some extra ability damage.
2) Storm is delayed, in favor of more archons/upgrades/immortals. With enough chargelots and archons (especially if you have armor upgrades for the zealots), you don’t need to start storm right away, but make sure to research it when you can. In the above game, I defeated my opponent’s army and won the game before I started storm.
3) Map presence is important, having and solid core of gateways (3-5) and good map control allows you to cut corners and tech faster. Notice my severe lack of units for much of the early/early-midgame.
4) Drop defense is worth the investment of a cannon and a Templar in the back of your main. Drops are prevalent enough that your main is more or less a second front, and a cannon, a Templar, and 2-5 zealots is the cheapest frontline force you’ll ever invest in. Its worth your while to make a habit of it. Drops are another reason why you want to maintain good map control/vision.

1) There are variations in the number of raxes terrans will get off two bases, depending on how fast they are trying to expo/get medivacs. This game, my opponent invested in a quick 3rd CC, and goes for a much larger barracks count to defend his investment.
2) My harassment does very little damage (lets not point fingers as to whos fault it was ). However, while I did relatively little tangible damage, the presence of dts kept him in his base until about 13 min.s, at which point he’s invested in a raven and feels safe taking his expo.
3) I took an earlier storm (at ~12), and was less immortal heavy. I was also supply blocked at the time, which may have influenced the fast storm.
4) The placement of my main base drop defense was…just bad. You should protect your mineral line first. I also whiffed the probe pull, which didn’t help the situation either

1) My opponent in this game is mid diamond while I am mid master. As such, things go very badly for him. While this isn’t the best replay to include, I felt it would be worth it show how the build works if you build 3 gates before the robo/twilight council.

1) Here is an example of how to play out an early scout of the dark shrine. At the time that he sees the dark shrine building, it was ~halfway done. As such, he had more than enough time to react, and nullify my harassment/keep it to a minimum of effectiveness. He saw the warp prism pop out as well, further undoing my strategy. I anticipated that he would turtle up and wait for the harass to come. As such, I cancel the dark shrine, take a faster third (important!) and go straight into chargelot archon w/ storm. At least in this game, it worked like a charm.
2) Nothing wrong with a little gentle harass I any game. Zealots are expensive mineral wise, but gas is what’s going to matter a lot of the time, and efficient harassing (albeit easy for the terran to deal with in this game) in general is a good tactic in most situations. The warp prism is in my humble opinion the best unit in the protoss arsenal, I’d encourage all players to learn its ways. Watch players like Hero, White-ra, and Sase to learn some good methods of warp prism play.
3) Sorry about the BM on my part towards the end of the game. I don’t have a better excuse than I was annoyed that he scanned the dark shrine, and was put off by his remark after the fact. He probably had more reason to be annoyed than I did, but I felt like he should’ve seen the cancel coming, or at least suspected it.

This is another way to turn a time when protoss often have to defend into an opportunity to take control of the game. While there are many ways to go about this, dt is one that can set you up very well for the later stages of the game, if executed in the way I have described above.
I have had a lot of success with this build. It takes some getting used to, but I strongly advocate it as a way to be more aggressive in your PvTs.
I’d love feedback on the clarity of the guide and your experience with the build if you try it. I’d love to hear your ideas on improvements/optimizations you would suggest, although I will emphasize that this build is one that is meant to be somewhat reactionary. Part of its strength is that it is very flexible. As such, I have NOT ironed out the PERFECT time to harass the terran or the PERFECT time to take each gas etc. because that has the potential to lock you into an all-in ish style of timing attac, which, if thwarted, may leave you with no follow up. Basically, the build revolves as much around the harass, as what the harass allows you to do.
[Important] If your feedback is that you hate me for advocating a “cheesy” or “gimmicky” style of play I’m not interested. Those sorts of discussions are incredibly un-objective and do nothing to advance strategic understanding. Regardless of your opinion, these strategies exist, we all have to deal with them, and complaining about it doesn’t help you get better at StarCraft. Your boss may be a jerk, but no matter how much you tell yourself he sucks you still have to go to work everyday, and he’ll still ask you to work weekends (“ummmmmmm, soooooo, yaaaaaaa”). For all you “straight up macro game” players, carry on if that’s where your heart lies, but don’t yell at me cause I like leaving my base.