Something that baffles me...

when watching replays.

most of the times, it looks like these upper level players are really taking their time in getting units out and building a nice economy.

I am a silver level player, and I feel like if I were to do that, that I would get absolutely smoked by the rushes that feel so common.

Example: I am switching to protoss right now, and am having a really rough time. I was just owned by a marine rush in a PvT game..I had my ramp nice and blocked off, but by the time he had 5 marines at my base I had 1 zealot.

Now, I just watched a PvT game that Siraz casted, and the protoss player had his buildings all spread out across his base, no form of building placement to deter units from entering his base, and he had one gateway and went straight to robo bay. If the terran player had waltzed in there with a bunch of marines, instead of expanding early (which I don't think the toss player knew about), it would have been game over.

So what gives? lol. :( I'm really frustrated right now with this.

You should check out your opening. Are you doing 9 pylon, CB on 10, 12 gate? Post a replay. :)

If pro-gamers don't seem worried, it's because they know a rush is not coming due to scouting info. Do not wall off or anything either, you need a Sentry at your ramp. You should use Sentries to trap units that come to the top of your ramp and eviscerate them with Zealots, which are one of the most cost-efficient units.

Here's a replay of my last PvT... I thought I did a nice job of securing my expansion but how in the hell was I supposed to contend with that bioball??

ANY advice would be helpful, my blood is boiling right now I'm so frustrated :(
I had a nice set of resources lined up for Zerg, but I really don't know where to look right now for Protoss advice, in terms of a good macro game and economic management, and what builds work well against what matchups.

I'll just go straight down the list the things I noticed from start to finish.

-Your first pylon is way late.

*If you are going for constant probe production, put your pylon down when your probe count is 9. People only build 10 pylons when they want to throw down a 10 or 11 gateway. This delay in your first pylon ate into your probe count, delayed your tech and built up a large excess of minerals.

-You Need to Chrono-Boost

*Your first Chrono-Boost was way late, your Nexus had enough for two full C-Boosts before you clicked the button. Your second C-Boost was at 5:52. That is FAR too late and infrequently. C-Boost is your Macro skill. Its equivalent to a zerg forgetting to inject Larva for 5 minutes or a Terran not using Mules or scans for 5 minutes. Boost more often.

-Non-Efficient Gas Mining

*Your first gas Geyser started giving gas at 3:10 seconds, a little late, but since you skipped the C-Core for a Forge, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Yet, when you did get it down you only put 2 guys into it. You NEED 3 in each Geyser. It wasn't until 5:08 seconds, that you put the final guy in. In that time, that one miss click cost you 64 Gas. That's a Stalkers or Warp Gate Tech's worth of Gas that you just didn't have.

-Lack of Probe Production

*This is probably the point that plagues every non-professional Sc player in the world. Constant Probe and SCV production can be really taxing and easy to forget, but it leads to dramatic consequences later down the road. I don't expect constant Probe production (not even from myself) but the more on it you are, the better you will be. You had far too few probes for far too long, then when you threw down your expo, you then had to spend all your C-Boost just to catch up. More consist ant Probe production will aid in the transition between taking expansions.

-Vulnerable Cannon Placement

*Cannons aren't meant to tank damage from enemies, they are meant to dish it out. Do NOT put your Cannons in front of your choke and have your units hover behind them. You want your cannons far enough back so that they can fire INTO the choke, while your Zealots and Force Fields keep the enemy at arms length, they will last much longer and thus kill more things. Cannons outrange every Terran infantry and do the same or better damage then a Marauder, but have low-ish health. Take advantage of this, place them in the middle, or back of your defensive formation.

Also your cannon placement made it very difficult for you to engage your enemy. Zealots are your primary way to shrug off damage, since your Stalkers, Sentries and Cannons are kinda squishy in comparison when fighting the Bio-Ball. However, Zealots are Melee and need to walk up to their target to attack. Your cannon placement, funneled your choke into two small bottlenecks that your Zealots could only pass through 1 at a time. This was like shooting fish in a barrel for those ranged Terran units who also had slow. In a sense, your Zealots are like Zerglings. They need to move in one massive wave and not single file, to be effective. This small placement error, caused all your Zealots to become clogged up in the cannons and kept your ranged units from engaging at all, forcing you to pull back with some losses, vs very few on the Terran side.

-Not Enough Production

*A two basing Toss can generally support 6 unit producing structures at a time, without too much going to bank. You only had 5, but even then, your Robo only created a single Observer the entire game, so technically you only had 4. Focus on saturating your main and expo and get your production up to snuff. Your opponent was producing off of 5 Barracks himself, but two had Reactors, so he was easily going to overwhelm you.

-Not Enough Tech

*17 minutes into the game, you NEED more then just a Robo and a Twilight Council. Protoss vs Terran doesn't swing into Protoss' favor UNTIL they get their Collosus/High Templar/Carrier. Tech faster and harder, you hovered around 800 minerals the majority of the game and only had 4 Warp Gates, tech'ing is not only advisable but the only way to save you in such a situation. At 17 minutes into a game, I can usually have 3 Collosus WITH 9 range, probably more if I was going hard Collosus, but this was just with taking expos at regular intervals and trying to keep on top of my workers and Gateway count. You must tech faster. Even having a single Collosus would have dramatically changed the way that fight would have gone, let alone 2 or 3 of them. And if you went High Templar, you would have broken that push without breaking a sweat.

Teching and making strong unit combination is the only true way to win as a Protoss.

It may seem like I'm nit-picking on some of these details, but remember that small things snowball and become large problems, potentially game costing ones if you let them get away from you. Notice how all these points lead into one another. Your delayed Pylon, led to non-constant Probe production, which meant you had in-sufficient workers to harvest effectively once you took your expo. Your lacking a guy in gas, lead to a slower C-Core, those slightly slowing your tech, or at the very least, cutting a unit from your army in the early game. Little mistakes compound upon each other and make the gap wider and wider between you and your opponent. They can also be difficult to notice in game or when watching the replay, because each individual case makes only the slightest of impact if you don't know what you are looking for.

If you want, it might also be a good idea to post this in the Sc: Legacy Replay Analysis Thread If you tune into the Legacy Observer stream (every Wednesday at around 9-ish Eastern), which can be located on the home page of Sc:Legacy. Our good friend Gifted does commentary on replays with the aim of helping us improve our gameplay. So if you submit a replay to him through that thread, you might get some top notch feedback in return that might be valuable.

Not nit-picking at all, this is exactly the sort of thing I was wondering about. Thanks so much. :)

NP, glad to be of help.

Another little side point, though its more technical and not really major. Its something you will find more useful once you start climbing the ladder.

Don't wall off against Terran, its unnecessary. All Terran units, except the SCV are ranged attackers, making wall offs very in-effective. All a Terran player has to do is scan up the ramp and use the range of Marauders and Marines to snipe down the production buildings used to make the wall.

Walling off against a Toss or a Zerg is a good idea, since the wall can help block 2 gates and zergling run-by's. However, walls offs are more of a vulnerability against Terran then anything else. Because like the cannon placement, your wall off creates obstacles that units must pass through. Terran don't need to pass through the wall, or even up to the wall to attack. This makes your production buildings pretty vulnerable.

Besides, your Warp gates can warp in units anywhere across the map, positioning of them isn't really important as the game goes on. Just one last thing I wanted to throw out there...

Just had a decent win against terran, used a bunch of different units...

You made double stargate just to make 3 void rays. You could have just used only 1 stargate. Might be useful to take a DT and have him scout the rest of the map to see if terran hid an expansion on the other half of the map.

Don't quite agree with moving your zealot and stalker to his base when you were doing a 1 gate nexus build with a very economic gateway on 14. Need to keep those units alive. Maybe just use your stalker to check on his ramp then leave him by the xelnaga to watch for a push. See the push coming then move the stalker back to help.

And you forgot to put 3 on gas. With the new patch just click on the geyser and check. Might want to think about hotkeying your robos/stargates etc sooner. You did well with upgrading on the forge. Maybe keep track of it more to be able to upgrade faster and more. Other than that nice win.:D

Okay so I went with the same economic build against terran this time, and I felt like I was very on the ball with probe building, getting my buildings up asap, warpgate research etc.

and yet, he rushed me with like 20 marines, and I did not have the unit count to defend that, because he came in even before my gateways were finished warping in.

So I'm still at a loss as to how to contend with this?

The problem is you didn't react......the biggest problem of your build is if they do an early rush against you. If they do an early rush you really struggle. But the main problem in this game is you didn't react at all to what the terran did. You saw a depot and rax outside his main.....it's obviously a rush. Or even if you see a quick 2 rax. Like building both at the same time or making another rax when the first rax finishes. That means a fast rush is coming at you.

There are a few choices of what to do when you see a fast rush coming. The moment you see the fast rush coming stop chronoboosting probes. Here's the first choice when your first gateway is making:
1) Do you want to defend the rush with mostly zealots
2) Do you want to get some zealots with stalkers and/or sentries

The following lists just one way to proceed. You can switch around when to make buildings and probes. This is not the EXACT way to do it. Just one way you can react to the terran's fast rush.
For 1: Cancel any assimilator that's making. Stop making probes, save up 150minerals and put down another gateway. Start making probes. Gateway finishes then immediately make a zealot and chronoboost it. Try to keep making zealots out of the two gateways. You can't really keep making probes but you can fit in a few here and there. Once you have like 2-3 zealots out with 1-2 in queue on gateway throw down a cyber core and gas. Don't panic and forget pylons. Keep chronoboosting gateways to get the units out fast. Make sure you put all your pylons to power your gateways and core. Focus on getting stalkers once core is up. Mix in a few zealots if it's a marauder conc. shell rush.

For 2: Let the assimilator finish. Keep making probes. Once the gateway completes. Immediately make a zealot and chronoboost it. Then make the cyber core. Stop probe production for a bit until you have enough to make a second gateway. Keep making out of the two gateways chronoboosted. You can go for zealot stalker with some sentries and try to beat back the rush by force.

For 2 (alternate): Or the cutesy way is instantly make a sentry when core finishes. Then only do warp gate research. Get a second gas at some time soon. I don't know the exact time of the second gas. Then keep making sentries. Place a probe in front of the bottom of the ramp. Keep your eye right here. Watch it constantly. Use hotkeys to make units and place buildings really quickly. The moment that probe dies be prepared to instantly forcefield. Usually you'll have at least 1 zealot and 2 sentries at this point with 1-2 more sentries in queue. It'll be less if the terran rushes faster. Get up to 4/5 sentries then you can constantly forcefield your ramp forever. Nice thing about the cutesy way is that since you're making lots of sentries you'll have extra minerals to make more gateways, probes, forge/cannons. But if you miss the forcefield. Like not perfectly placed or too late then you die.

EDIT: Be sure to find a terran to practice against. Tell him to keep rushing you. With marines, marauders or whatever off a fast two rax. Then try out the ways you can react to survive. You can also pull probes off mining to help in attacking. Terran will be low on SCVs since he committed to the rush. Once the rush by terran failes definitely make your nexus then and chronoboost tons of probes. Be sure to keep making units. Terran might decide to take all his units plus SCVs to try to all-in kill you.

Yeah I didn't really understand why he built the barracks outside his main but not really that close to my base? lol. If you are going to build it so close to your own base, why not just build it inside?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rezildur

Yeah I didn't really understand why he built the barracks outside his main but not really that close to my base? lol. If you are going to build it so close to your own base, why not just build it inside?

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Basically the map is pretty far from the bases. By putting it there it shortens the distance walked but keeps it close enough to his main so that if it fails he can lift the the barracks back and only lose the depots. It's almost a "Maka" rax (from GSL where the player Maka makes a second rax at his natural even though the amount of time spent walking by marine was barely cut down). Truthfully he could have made all depots in main around the mineral line in case you proxy gate zealot rush and made the barracks at the top of the ramp to his natural to improve on the terran's style.:P

But the more common tactic on jungle basin would be he makes depot and rax to block his ramp at main then makes a second rax across the gap from your destructible rocks. So his second rax is right outside your ramp almost but you can't see it even if you scout out your destructible rocks and place a pylon there. Then you see him move out with like 3 marines from his base (if you left a probe at the bottom of his main ramp) and you think ok...weird. Then suddenly when it reaches your ramp it's 6 marines. That's the best way for terran to completely surprise you but yeah....most terrans don't do that in my experience. Even though they can hide a second rax very easily they always try to proxy the first rax.:P

I think part of the reason I also have such a hard time with terran is that I have never played them, other than the campaign. I used to be a zerg player, so I know what they are capable of. Protoss, well, I can gauge what they have against what I have and monetary possibilities. Terran, I'm still figuring that out.

Well if you already know what terran is capable of against zerg it's pretty much the same in PvT. The same rushes they do against zerg they can use against protoss. The timings won't really change. You only need to have a general sense of what the race can do at each point in time to be able to play against them. You don't need to know the intricate details of each race. You just need to know the details of the race you play and the weaknesses certain builds have.

EDIT: Plus even Blizzard acknowledges early game PvT terran has advantage and late game protoss has advantage. It's a crazy hit or miss matchup. Terran tries to kill you off quickly before certain tech gets up (storm/colossus) while protoss tries really hard to get that tech before terran hits. Then once the protoss has storm tech specifically it's a real game ender.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JackhammerIV

It's a crazy hit or miss matchup.

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Still not nearly as hit or miss as ZvZ.

Been trying out a build that starts off with mostly zealots and sentries, and techs Charge pretty quickly. Been working out well. I'll post a replay of a good game.

Well, it was working well for me today, until this game.
Suggestions are welcome, I felt kind of crippled the entire game. :confused:

You were dead for sure at like 13mins when you lost your big army and he still had a large army left. Here's a bunch of reasons why you lost. A lot of times you got supply blocked. The terran got a base up way way earlier than you. You stopped probe production with like 15 probes on minerals and you only realised once your expo was going up that you didn't have enough probes. First time looking I saw 4 gate with chargelots and like 15 drones on minerals and i thought you were going to do a rush. But you didn't.... Plus you had too many unit producing structures off one base.

After you get like your main unit producing structures off one base (4 gate/3 gate robo) helps to like make 2 pylons at a time. In the later game it'll be like 3-4 pylons at a time. You were doing a bit too much off of one base. Chargelots+robo tech. You didn't really use the robo much. Considering you got charge so fast definitely make more sentries. Like tons of sentries. Plus you got early second gas so definitely lots of sentries.

And with this composition of zealot and sentry don't defend on top of your ramp once you have more than like 4 zealots. Like if you notice when he moved up your ramp only like 3 out of 9 of your zealots could actually attack. Move your zealots and sentries to the wide choke at the natural. Invest in hallucination for scouting. Spread your sentries out so they won't all lose energy from one EMP shot. Plus zealot+sentry is a good composition to expo after 1 or 3 gateways. Against terran don't put any buildings close to the ramp. Preferrably make walls around your mineral line so terran drops are easier to deal with. Spread pylons out on your base to spot drops. Remember probe production if you're not gonna do a rush. And 4 gate+robo is too much off one base. Either 3 gate+robo or 4 gate. Or a crazy all in 5 gateway.

If you're going to get zealot with charge and lots of sentries consider going hallucination tech a bit early in the game to scout then high templar and a forge with some cannons for detection. Like a really fast hallucination and going a few early sentries can let you scout out if you really need an obs for cloaked banshees. Be sure to use your sentries to forcefield. Like to stop some of his units from retreating so you can kill them all. Or to cut army in half etc.

It was a bit unnecessary pulling off so many drones to attack his small army. Wait a bit man. He was just targetting a pylon. He might have decided to run after that worried when he saw 3 completed gateways that you had new units out and was waiting for him to come up the ramp to trap and kill him. If he runs up then yeah with the army you had then take some probes off to help attack. But even if that happened the amount you took off was too much. Try to keep probes mining constantly. Doesn't help in the long run pulling off 11 probes from mining when like 6 would probably have been enough.

You let your nexus energy accumulate after the first chronoboost on nexus. You could have chronoboosted probes more and earlier. Your scouting probe you should put at the xel naga especially on such close spawn locations. If you see a marine come to take it then put that probe at the wide choke of your natural. And the forcefield placement don't panic too much. Try to place it quickly and precisely blocking the ramp (this is the hardest skill to master as protoss). That's another reason i have a probe at xel naga or in front of his base or in front of my ramp a bit (guess you'd call it 2-3 hexes in front). I'll see a bunch of units come and kill the probe instantly jump to my units hotkey and prep the forcefield with perfect placement. The moment he comes i decide quickly...can i kill it i.e. forcefield behind him or i can't kill it i.e. forcefield and trap most of his army outside.

EDIT: Be a bit more active with the observer. Like shift click it to go over the cliff by expo of terran and then wander into the main and check out his production buildings/army.

Lol. Part of what I love about this game is the high pace and attention that it commands. At the same time it is what really stresses me out!! For example, I am often reluctant to attack early in the game because I don't know good ways to attack and continue production back home ( probes I know, just click the hotkey) but once you get warpgate, you have to go back to base to place them, or place pylons, and I'm really afraid of leaving my forces out on the field unmanned even for a second.

So that is really what I would love a lesson in, is multitasking attacking and econ.

Mostly it's timing. Just before I engage opponent's army with my army I make sure I have a lot of supply left to use and then warp in one cycle. Then I attack him. If at any point I realise I don't need to micro anything then I quickly jump back to base warp warp warp warp. Back to battle. Takes like 2secs max off battle.

If the battle is really close then just focus on it. The moment you retreat just jump back and warp in units. I've been trying to get into a habit of assigning a function key to the camera view of where I want to warp things in then using that to warp in. Need to use it a lot more to get used to.:P Important thing to multitask attacking and econ is supply. If you wanna do a quick poke then enough supply for one cycle of production is alright. If you're thinking you wanna make a big push then maybe have enough supply for 2-3 production cycles.

Plus when I jump back to warp in I just do it unconciously. Very used to warping in all stalkers quickly.:P My fingers love that S key.:P LOL.

This one really makes my blood boil. Thoughts on this lame terran move and how to deal with it? I knew as soon as there was no barracks in his base that there was some proxy bullshit going on but by the time I found his rax it was pretty much too late, even after I tried chrono boosting out zealots.

Preliminary Analysis:

You defended the Bunker push well, you saw where his Barracks were placed. The logical step would be... go effing kill him. It may sound kinda funny, but your three Zealots, backed up with... like four Probes could have easily run up there and crushed his proxy. Even if he lifted off, you would have delayed his production by, about 20 or so seconds while he flies those back to his base.

The mistake that cost you the game, was that you under estimated the second strike.

Although you did the right thing and not wall off with your buildings, you should have positioned your units at the front of his ramp and kept them there. You had 4 Zealots and a Sentry, just Force Field the ramp, cut his force in half, kill them, then walk back up the ramp before the Force Field fades. The whole act of dancing back and forth from the ramp cost your Zealots A LOT of health and then they couldn't stand up in a straight up fight since they were weakened.

The thing is, his macro was so bad, that there was no way he could win a long game. At your level, know that people who proxy and fail are not going to have the macro skill to make a come back in the long game. The only way they can win is to keep pushing right then and there and win the game now.

I also think you gave up way too early. You just popped 2 Stalkers and had Warp Gates done. Pull the Stalkers back, transform your gates and pull your probes then move in with your 4 Stalkers and 20+ Probes and you easily would have decimated those Marines. Just because you lost a single Gateway doesn't mean you lost, look at his workers and tech. Even with the loss of that Gateway you were still miles ahead of him.

I don't mind so much the not rushing to attack his proxy. I always prefer defending after surviving a rush like that. The longer i defend the more at an advantage I become. This is gonna be long. Sorry.:P

It's cos of this that I always hotkey my gateways before they turn into warpgates. And really you went back to your original build too fast. Shouldn't have taken second gas and twilight council when your main focus then should be get a big army to survive/push to his main and kill him. And still the forcefield hesitation. Just throw down the forcefield man.:P A sentry that never throws down a forcefield wasn't worth the cost of getting it.

The first zealot you shouldn't have rushed to the bunker. It's out of sight range of your buildings. It can't hit anything. Let it finish. And you accidentally left your first zealot in the mineral line. You could chronoboost a bit more on your gateway. At 4:04 game time, you had two zealots out with one more on the way. Make the pylon and core now. Especially since you had the minerals and started to get gas. Your third zealot unnecessarily got into red health. Hotkey all your attacking units.:P

4:46 time you just made two pylons and your money still high. Throw down the core man.....and another gateway. With 3 zeals just push those marines back. Advance towards them and they have to retreat. 1 zealot can kill 2 unmicroed marines. The gateway going into low health was your own fault. You should have pushed him back by threatening with the zealots. The time you rushed him with zeals and probes. Just quickly check on your gateways. With hotkeys preferrably. You can just attack move and kill the bunker and marines without you having to watch it completely.

During that whole kill the bunker and marines you could have had 2 units come out of the gateway and have a third gateway almost complete. Once the battle was done you took a long time to notice the second gateway wasn't producing. Could have been another unit. So 3 extra units. Preferrably they would be a zealot and two stalkers. If you didn't make the second gas and twilight and kept using chronoboost on gateways and core, you could have squeezed out 2-3 more units. So during his second attack it was possible for you to get out 5 more units than you had. Even with the supply block at 26 (happens to me too :P). Your APM is pretty good. I average about the same.:P

Advice: Overall you sort of did what I recommended in an earlier post and it was working well. Just a bit of panic on your end. Shouldn't have put guys on gas so fast. Only put them in once your core starts. Keep checking your food. Or if you want a concrete way, once you had 2 zealots and 1 zealot making you're almost supply capped with enough minerals for a pylon and cyber core. Hence why i said earlier make the core when you get like 2-3 zealots with 1-2 in queue. Notice 2 zeals and 1 in queue. Earliest good time to get a core without dying.

And if you didn't harvest gas that early imagine how many more minerals you could have had. Enough for core, pylon and a quicker 3rd gateway. Hotkey your gateways. Always helps in early rushes. Unfortunately you couldn't cancel the assimilator in time. But imagine if you did. 75 minerals extra. Can make that third pylon earlier. Can keep pumping out even more units than the 5 extra i mentioned just now. Could get up to 7 possibly by the time of the second strike. Basically you didn't do as well as you could have and you still held off well. With a good forcefield might even have been able to win. Imagine if you did do well. Keep your cool and do what needs to be done. Repeat in your head the steps you need to do. Do them and it'll be easy to hold off such a marine rush.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ooZer0

Preliminary Analysis:

You defended the Bunker push well, you saw where his Barracks were placed. The logical step would be... go effing kill him. It may sound kinda funny, but your three Zealots, backed up with... like four Probes could have easily run up there and crushed his proxy. Even if he lifted off, you would have delayed his production by, about 20 or so seconds while he flies those back to his base.

The mistake that cost you the game, was that you under estimated the second strike.

Although you did the right thing and not wall off with your buildings, you should have positioned your units at the front of his ramp and kept them there. You had 4 Zealots and a Sentry, just Force Field the ramp, cut his force in half, kill them, then walk back up the ramp before the Force Field fades. The whole act of dancing back and forth from the ramp cost your Zealots A LOT of health and then they couldn't stand up in a straight up fight since they were weakened.

The thing is, his macro was so bad, that there was no way he could win a long game. At your level, know that people who proxy and fail are not going to have the macro skill to make a come back in the long game. The only way they can win is to keep pushing right then and there and win the game now.

I also think you gave up way too early. You just popped 2 Stalkers and had Warp Gates done. Pull the Stalkers back, transform your gates and pull your probes then move in with your 4 Stalkers and 20+ Probes and you easily would have decimated those Marines. Just because you lost a single Gateway doesn't mean you lost, look at his workers and tech. Even with the loss of that Gateway you were still miles ahead of him.

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I got a little lost with the ramp and FF talk. You mean my ramp, right? And isn't forcefielding marines on a ramp and attacking with zealots a bad idea? The marines are ranged and will still be able to get my zealots even from behind the force field...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rezildur

I got a little lost with the ramp and FF talk. You mean my ramp, right? And isn't forcefielding marines on a ramp and attacking with zealots a bad idea? The marines are ranged and will still be able to get my zealots even from behind the force field...

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The thing is marines die really fast to zealots if they can't run. Forcefield and cut the marines in half. Run the zealots forward and kill the marines. Would be able to kill off the trapped marines with sentry and 1-2 zealots still alive. Hence why terrans with marines try to avoid letting zealots get within melee range. They have a lot of experience having zealots rip through their standing still marines. By doing this you reduce his army size and buy more time for units to finish.

Edit: A full health zealot can kill two marines without dying. You lost two low health zealots and two full health zealots in exchange for killing 2 marines. With a forcefield like zero said you could have stopped his retreat and killed maybe 4-5 marines. Plus if you kept your zealots at the top of the ramp after killing off the first push then you could have gotten a few shots in on the marines of the second push since they don't have vision up the ramp. Would have walked right into the zealots.

Okay here's one where I started to expand and totally got eaten by mass lings and banelings against zerg. This is another one of my biggest issues at the moment:

I guess my biggest issue here was scouting...but even so I would feel really uncomfortable expanding with all of those speedlings running around, and I would feel the need to get AOE tech, but need more economy...but also need to deal with the fact that he was getting that spire.

First PvZ against a friend on custom i assume given the colours. He went a 10 pool and your income and his was pretty much even the whole game. If you'd expo earlier you would have had the econ advantage. Funny thing was u said gg zerg had too much of an econ advantage.:P Consider how you want to make your wall off against zerg. It's a bit wide. Most players usually put the pylon to provide power over buildings on top of the ramp and put a gateway and core or two gateways there to narrow down the choke. Again....forcefields. It seems to be a really bad habit of yours to just not use any forcefields. Keep your ranged units behind the buildings closer to the top of the ramp. The way you place it the zealots would be fighting on their own for a while before the ranged units come to help. And if units do break through forcefield the choke so more lings and banelings can't rush through.

You even saw the lings and banelings coming. Could have moved your ranged to attack them walking past the jutting out high ground and forcefielded the ramp to stop them from coming up. If you see so many lings....cancel the immortal. Won't be of any use against mass lings. Go for colossus since you already got the robo up. The moment you killed that army with lings and banelings you should have moved the army down and expo'd immediately. Start putting down buildings to block the choke a bit. Don't put a pylon in front if you've seen banelings. If you see that many lings then first thing to do is zealot charge and +1 attack after you've expo'd (with +1 attack and lings having 0 armor it takes 2 shots to kill a ling instead of 3 shots). Get a few more sentries out. Enough to forcefield off the choke at the natural. Then consider the next step is usually mutalisks or nydus. You didn't have enough base vision with pylons to watch for either. And considering you saw ling/baneling with no roaches you know you won't use your robo until later on for colossus if you choose colossus tech so make anotehr gateway to get up to 4 gateways. Definitely do not move out to attack when you've just survived an attack and your army is not big enough to kill him. At around 9 minutes if you'd just moved down to choke and expo'd. Make the forge at the choke to help block it off and some cannons you would have had the economic advantage. Gotten up to 6 gates and the mutalisks would have been less troublesome. You could have won. Till the very end your zerg buddy didn't saturate his natural. You could have out macro'd him easily.:D

The other PvZ on xel naga. You could have gone down with fewer forces to clear off the lings hanging around in front of your base. Staying close to the ramp. It was really careless of you to go so far away from the ramp letting them just run up. And again with the immortals against lings.:P Stop doing that. Try to use your chronoboost more. Expo earlier. Like around 7 minutes just make a few more sentries move down and stay near the ramp. Use the stalker to check around. Could have gotten a free overlord kill on the overlord near the natural. Then expo'd. Started to make a wall with high hp buildings like forges, gateways. Getting the second immortal was a bit pointless.

You made way too many zealots. Obviously zerg seeing that would go baneling mutalisk to just kill off all the zealots. When you're moving down the ramp it helps to just halt your army on the ramp and warp in zealots to hold position at the choke. And consider changing the position of the first pylon and gateway. If you exchanged their locations it'd take a bit longer for lings running in to reach the mineral line. You did well getting +1 but you stayed on 3 gate robo. Get up to 4 gates if you're not gonna be making lots of robo units off one base. You could have cleared out those lings and the overlord earlier in the game. Made a wall off between the expo nexus and the ramp and gotten ahead playing defensively. This zerg unlike your friend got speedlings so don't wander too far off. Oh and guardian shield only reduces ranged attacks....lings aren't ranged.:P You were doing ok until halfway in the game when the lings rushed into your base.

Oh and if the drone cancels the extractor and then tries to remake it you can always quickly take the gas if you want it early. I don't really appreciate gas steals.:P If zerg gas steals I usually go a bit crazy and do 1 gate, cyber, expand or a 4 gate with zealots and stalkers.:P

Jackhammer I love you. I'll take these things into account.

As for using the guardian shield against the lings, I know, I hit the wrong button LOL.

LOL. Reminds me of a lyric from a DMX song: "I show no love to homo thugs." LOL. Just kidding. Well hitting the wrong button is ok. Last year Huk in the EG Masters Cup notebook finals vs Idra. Researched air attack upgrade instead of warp gate and chronoboosted it to completion.:P It happens to the best of us.

This was kind of a funky match. I wasn't really sure what to do against him to be honest.

I guess question 1 is, what to do against a terran that is turtling like that? I think I made a bad decision getting templar tech, and that I should have gone double stargate pumped out some VRs and more stalkers zealots/sentries and broken his turtle with the VRs and then charged in with the gateway units.

I also keep forgetting about phase prisms, and I could have warped in some units in the back of his base and messed with his supply line!

When you said all that i thought i'd be dealing with a mass siege tank, viking, thor player. Basically usually you'd just go kill the dude doing a ghost with nuke, reaper, banshee kind of thing. But wouldn't recommend that considering the really tight choke. Again this game you didn't react accordingly. You basically died cos of two nukes. Both of which could be easily avoided. And throughout the game you didn't have good vision of the map or your base. Spread out pylons throughout the base more especially the part behind the smoke and along the southern edge of your main. Despite what you said about wrong tech choice...actually templar and twilight council tech is perfect for exactly what he was doing.

First thing is the zealots and sentries early game should be rallied to the choke. Could have blocked the hellion out of the base or killed it earlier. The reapers just set your units to attack them and just leave it. The guy has to be microing really hard to keep them all alive. So just don't bother with your units and keep macroing. Make probes, attacking units, chronoboost. And one other thing is when your probe got stuck in the base you did manage to see a factory being made before any real attacking units. Consider a gas steal then. At least helps to see what units he has. The probe is gonna die anyways. You got a robo smartly and it went into his base and saw starport with tech lab.

Make more observers then. One for each base. And put your stalkers to cover each base. Then make more observers. One in the big choke with the statue that can watch an advancing army or units going up the ramp to the third base. Probably have another observer between the third base and the gold expo as a back up in case he scans and kills the first observer. With those observers you would have noticed all those ghosts. Another thing is once you see the second set of reapers it basically says the terran's style is harass. If it's harass the idea is keep you in your base while he expos far away.

So take two probes. Take each of the xel nagas. But first have a probe make a pylon at the third on the other half of the map. Hide it behind the mineral lines. Have a third probe hide behind the mineral line of his natural. If you realise he hasn't expo'd then warp in a stalker at the pylon cross map and scout around for hidden bases. Get blink tech once you see reapers and banshees. Helps to chase them down. Expo to a third earlier. Go for a blue mineral one first to be safe. Considering he was turtling just take the shared third base. And have some vision of the bottom of his ramp. If he moves down it's easy enough to move your army to attack and storm him then retreat and he won't wanna move down for some time. Always keep some stalkers in the main and observers there. Keep on templar tech. Make your fifth and sixth gateways earlier. If you're going templar tech off two base then you can get up to 6 gateways. Get your weapon and armor upgrades earlier. You nicely had templars on a separate hotkey. Once nice thing is...if you can sort of see the shimmer where the ghost is...storm twice over it. Ghost dies. The big group of ghosts that nuked your whole army could have easily been killed if you did this. Plus banshees have energy so you can feedback and storm works well on them too seeing as two whole storms kills them. Don't really think warp prism harass would work that well. He kept his whole army in his base. The idea of that kind of harass is to attack where he isn't. Use it to scout out hidden expos and warp in units to kill it is a good idea.

On a side note if you just wanna kill him when he does this annoying crap. Get blink. A lot more stalkers. Get an warp prism to his mineral line. Have a proxy pylon at his natural. Blink in. Force his army to try to go for the stalkers. Move the zealots and sentries up his ramp. Hang close to a cliff to blink out if it's looking like your whole army will die. Be careful cos he will probably send his banshees to kill all your probes so have observer and some probes back at your base.

Another thing is you had so few probes. Not even 16 on each mineral line. Then the nuke happened. Shift click more. Make pylon, make gateway, return to mining. You missed one probe at like 4.30. Then a whole minute of no probes from 5min to 6 min. 4-5 probes there. Then two more probes as you were chasing the reapers. You could have been at 26 probes 2 whole minutes earlier. The way with chronoboost means you should actually make two probes and instantly chronoboost to maximise the chronoboost timing and then check on it to make the third probe (and fourth probe if you wanna chronoboost again) when the second probe is almost done. Around 10 mins consider getting sentries out so you can warp in and have enough minerals for a fourth gateway. Hotkey buildings as they are being warped in is useful. Like gateways/nexuses etc. As you use the hotkeys to warp in or make probes you notice "Oh they're done now. Time to make use of them."

Yeah, I agree. Also what do you think about getting phoenixes out and lifting his tanks while pushing?

I was just really taken by surprise and not sure what to do, I just got bumped up to gold so I'm starting to see a lot more creative play that I am not used to reacting to. Plus, this is LITERALLY the first time I have played against ghosts.

Yeah....basically you'll start to see in every game terran goes ghosts. I wouldn't say get phoenixes out to lift tanks. He didn't have many. If he invests in a lot then sure. But if you do go for phoenixes make full use of them. Have them always wandering around the map. Picking up and killing mules. Spotting where and when he expands. Forcing his marines to stim too much. Killing lone wandering vikings, drops and banshees. Basically...it might involve too much micro that your macro suffers. Phoenixes are basically like mutalisks. Harass with them so you can expand a lot but they're fragile so you need to keep watching them. And if you go for a lot of phoenixes your ground army suffers and sometimes they can just attack move and kill you. Plus phoenixes aren't good vs MMM players where you want either colossus or storm. So usually going air is to harass and get time to expo and tech up to colossus or storms. But ghost EMP just negates any HTs. So keep them in the back well protected. Soon you'll get tank rushed/thor rushed /banshee rushed.:P

Okay.

I also noticed in a previous PvP match that I lost, we were about the same in terms of macro when I watched the replay, but he had more stalkers and I had more zealots...so I am assuming that Stalkers > Zealots in early PvP?

Depends. It's a lot about positioning. If stalkers have no blink then generally zealots are better. If you go lots of stalkers in PvP vs a lot of zealots you wanna be on the ramp fighting or constanly moving and shooting once then moving again. If you can forcefield and stop the stalkers from retreating then zealots >> stalkers. Stalkers completely get ripped apart by zealots. If they go pure stalker they basically try to kill off all your ranged units then they infinitely kite your zealots. Basically going lots of stalkers early PvP means a lot of micro involved avoiding zealots. I like to go zealots with stalkers. Moving back my injured stalkers. The zealots force him to keep running. While he's running around with the stalkers i can macro more easily than him. It's a question of style.

Either go for more stalkers and micro them more. Have to keep avoiding zealots and keep moving. Focus down ranged units and never let zealots hit you.

Or go more zealots and either get sentries to prevent retreat with forcefield to completely kill them off. Or go for zealots and stalkers with a few sentries. Micro stalkers a bit to keep them from being killed. This method you have more time to macro. If your ranged units all die then just have your zealots on attack command on a stalker then just macro macro then when he loses those stalkers you're ahead on probes, tech, etc. You want to attack in open areas preferrably with forcefields preventing stalkers from escaping. I prefer this method with walling off my mineral line on one side. I LOL when he uses mass stalkers and tries to go behind my mineral line...then realises there's just a tiny choke for one stalker to pass at a time. Plus non-pros generally can't micro their stalkers while macroing and warping in units. So macro advantage to me.:D

EDIT: Plus your style of fast chargelots with sentries is a pretty solid good PvP strategy. Especially if they go stalkers with no blink.:P

Second EDIT: Your style of zealot with sentries and fast charge upgrade is good against most PvP strategies except fast colossus off one base, blink stalkers and DT rush. You can hold off everything else pretty well if you know what to do.

I actually only use the sentry and zealot strat against terran mostly...I usually just do a standard 3 gate robo vs protoss.

I'll post a replay of the game I had a problem with, and was kind of surprised when I lost.

3 gate robo is a good choice. Safest build that can handle pretty much anything in PvP except air. Just make more immortals then if you see lots of stalkers. But with 3 gate robo just 1st make an immortal then make the observer. You manage to find any practice partners to help you improve (if you're looking for one)?? There's a practice partners thread here:
http://sclegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4432

lol this was hysterical.

The zerg really didn't do that right. He should have used all his lings and drones to try to kill all your probes. Not use his lings and like 3 drones and let himself get surrounded then only use his other drones. Might be the worst 6 pool all in I've seen. You had a slightly weird scouting pattern on the probe. It like went to check the cavern in the middle. Other than that nice job finishing him off. 6 pools without bringing the drones puts on more pressure over time though. Get a lot more lings out that keep on coming. Be careful of those.