Lets theorycraft PvP - alternatives to colossi

So I'm getting really bored with this mirror match up. Zerg and terran fights are mighty fine and even if I lose, I feel like I had a good fight. PvP, even when I win, I pretty much feel slightly dirty.

Fights are confined to a mix of the following, I won't stat all permutations, but you get the gist.
1. 4 gate rush/3gate robo defend/proxy gateways etc
2. Late game - COLOSSI!!!!!....
3. Occassional DT rush

I've experimented a ton (almost all my losses now are against protoss since I refuse to go colossi... just cause I want to be different), and I have yet to find any decent strategies.

1. Mass speedlots with blink stalkers (to try and kite colossi) with hallucinates for meatshields
2. Phoenixs (fails miserably)
3. Carriers... can be surprisingly effectively, but I still lose most of the time coz my ground army just doesn't last long enough
4. Templers - generally not great against high HP units... which is the whole protoss army

Basically, most of the stuff I've tried are massive failures. I can get an expansion way ahead of him and have an army 10-20% larger, and I still lose. When I win, its because I do a 4 gate push.

So I'm thinking of gathering ideas from all Brotoss to find alternatives to the mid/late game. I'll start the ball rolling with some ideas I haven't tested... but when coming up with suggestions, do bear economy in mind.

1. Void Rays - I'm not sure how these do mixed in with the armies, but I doubt they'll be more useful than carriers.... anyone with experience? I've faced a few of these before... nothing my stalkers can't handle.

2. Mass air - This takes advantage of the piss poor protoss anti-air (ie. stalker). However, the time and cost needed to get this up usually means you're pretty much dead by then.

3. Archon/immortal - Again cost is the major major issue. 2 tech paths and both units gonna put a huge strain on your gas requirements. Not sure how well it works in practice, but in theory, archons decimate zealots and can tank stalker/colossi decently, while the immortals do their thing. I've tried a few archons on occassion, and I do think they are not bad, if not exactly 'power overwhelming'.

So people, lets hear some ideas from everyone. I'll try some of the strats that seem more doable and I'll post my reviews here.

I go blink Stalker and speed Zealots personally. Blinking is amazing to pick off Colossus/Void Ray/Templar, and Speedlots tank everything (mostly pesky Immortals). 6 Gate with a Robo pumping Observers and Warp Prisms is just sick. Then it transitions easily into DT and HT for yourself.

Void Rays are beastly in PvP when used correctly.

Think of them like Mutas. If you invest in 3 Void Rays, if he leaves his base, he dies. Void Rays just eat buildings alive and do pretty good against low numbers of Stalkers. Just make 3 of em and just bounce around to where the Stalkers can't get under them and just poke and threaten to kill him if he leaves his base. He will have to hold back to keep from dying, giving you free map control.

They also work really well in diversionary plays. Zap his Nexus for a couple of seconds, and he WILL pull his units back to defend, leaving his front door open for a nice prodding. Or vice versa, poke at the front while striking the back with the Void Rays. In such a situation damage is GUARANTEED, how much depends on how far ahead of you your opponent is.

Having Voids in your possession really eats into his Robo count... heavily, since he HAS to invest in Stalkers to defend. Templar don't do anything to Stargate tech and Robo has no anti air at all. Going any kind of Stargate play against Toss is very threatening, as long as you can survive the early and early-mid game pushes.

Hi Demosquid... how exactly do you use your speedlots/blinkstalkers? I've tried that combination a million times because I thought exactly as you did. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is before my stalkers can take out all his colossi, his colossi totally obliterates my zealot army in a few seconds, leaving just my stalkers. I've started adding hallucinated units to the mix and its helped a wee bit.... but just a bit. I still lose terribly despite pumping from 8 warpgates off 2 bases (all spare gas goes to upgrades and sentries).

No real comment on the voids yet. Maybe will try them out... but my own experience fighting against voids is that early game, their pretty easy to defend against, and late game, they die too fast to make much of a difference.

There was this strat that I got pwned by that i've always wanted to try:

Basicly he hid a stargate and just pumped stalker/pheonix. I only scouted the Stalkers (cause he hid the stargate) and went for 4 immortals then pushed out. He lifted my Immortals with Pheonixs' and attacked with his larger army of stalkers.
Always though it was a cool strat.

Personaly in PvP I like to go 1gate robo into fast colossi. Just gotta hold your ramp is all.

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Originally Posted by masakari

Hi Demosquid... how exactly do you use your speedlots/blinkstalkers? I've tried that combination a million times because I thought exactly as you did. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is before my stalkers can take out all his colossi, his colossi totally obliterates my zealot army in a few seconds, leaving just my stalkers. I've started adding hallucinated units to the mix and its helped a wee bit.... but just a bit. I still lose terribly despite pumping from 8 warpgates off 2 bases (all spare gas goes to upgrades and sentries).

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What is the timing of this? Is your expo up at 30-50 food, or we talking about a 70+ food expansion?

For Zealot lines to evaporate against Collosus, we must be talking around the 5-6 Collosus range. That many Collosus means we are around 25 minutes into the game, if he was pumping them off a single Robo. 20 if he was pumping them off a double Robo. If your trying to go mass gateway against any kind of tech, you need the economy advantage. Two Basing mass Gateway is a recipe for disaster against a Two Base any tech. 8 Gate ways is no big deal against 6 Gate 2 Robo. You need like, 10- 12 Gate to fight off Tech combos with sheer numbers. Even in PvP, 2 Basing at 20 minute mark isn't good, you need a third. Once you get your third up and running is when large numbers of Warpgates can break peoples backs.

If he is going Collosus, it means his army is gonna take a big hit once he places down his Robo Facilities. Collosus aren't scary off of one base, they basically need two bases to become any kind of threat. Even then though, Collosus suck all the Gas out of 4 Geysers, meaning his Sentry and Stalker count will be low if you kept picking off as many as possible early. Basically, to use Gateways against Robo, you need to either hit earlier and exploit his weak army size. OR out expand him and crush him from multiple sides with massive numbers

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Originally Posted by masakari

No real comment on the voids yet. Maybe will try them out... but my own experience fighting against voids is that early game, their pretty easy to defend against, and late game, they die too fast to make much of a difference.

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Don't think of them as base destroyers, or game winners. Think of them as Mutalisk. Does a good Zerg player suicide his first 5 mutalisk over a mineral line? No, he does whatever damage he can for free and then runs away before reprisal comes. Does a good Zerg player just give up if he only kills 3 Probes with his Mutalisk? No, he keeps poking and prodding at different angles, forcing his opponent to constantly stare at his base and keep groups of units behind to stay alive.

If your only able to kill a Pylon off with your first two Void Rays before he moves his Stalkers back, don't fret and don't think of them as a lost cause. As long as you keep poking and keep them alive, while still prodding and looking for any vulnerability, you will be in an advantageous position.

They also work very well in your army mix late game. If an army looks like 12 Zealots, 8 Stalkers, 2 Collosus and 3 Void Rays, its gonna be really tough for an opponent. Does he focus the Collosus or the Void Rays? The Collosus shred his infantry, while charged up Void Rays wreak havoc with his armored support units. They mix in very well into your army, maybe not so much against Zerg, because Corruptors will eat that army mix alive, but in PvP its pretty tricky to deal with.

Also with Voids you can keep his expansions down. If you have 2-3 Void rays on the map and focus on Gateway and Robo, or even Gateway/ Templar main army, you can move forward with your main army and spot expos with the Voids. And those Void rays will eat lightly defended expos for breakfast.

Again, I'm TRYING not to go colossi.
And my 8 gate comment was in response to Demo's 6 gate being able to hold off a colossi army. I'm not saying its supposed to work. But yeah, once the opponent hits 4 colossi, zealots just get vaporized. I'm looking for an army composition which can stand toe to toe with an equal food colossi based army... say anything 80 food and above.

Will try the voids... but my experience is that phoenix's are way better for that purpose. I've done quite a few successful phoenix harassment runs on probes... and more than 1 toss player has commented that it feels like he's fighting zerg muta vs that. Voids are too slow to fill the harassment role... especially if the opponent has blink stalkers. They used to be quite effective in the lower leagues, but after I reached platinum, I lost more than I won with voids.... and once in diamond, I gave up on the strategy altogether. The other problem with voids is that they actually lose to phoenixs.... I had 1 instance where a couple of voids were irritating me from behind and just picking off the pylons at the corner of my base, never letting my stalkers catch up. No real dmg, but irritating nonetheless.... I just threw down 1 stargate and phoenixes totally whooped the voids.

Anyway, that aside, I will give voids a try as I've never really used them in mid/late game.... but without the colossi. I want a new/different strat, not just a variation of a tried and overly used one.

I almost always go voids in PvP. Usually I got something like:

2 sentries out asap
make some zealots, observer
1 stargate making 2-3 voids

most toss will invest a lot in stalkers, which can't stand up to a fight against lots unless they kite. use sentries to turn fights in your favor, while striking his base with voids. if that fails, use the voids in battles - theyre pretty good vs stalkers (use make sure they dont get focus fired) and immortals/colossi/zealots can't hit them.

ive seeen both voidray and phoenix tech perform well against standard stalker/zealot/colossus .. making it work is probably quite subtle though; if the opnent sees it and is given time to react, he aught to mass stalkers, and if you're forced to engage those without optimal positioning it can get ugly.

i would try for a timing attack with void and7or phoenix if possible; espeically if you can spot a colossus tech path somewhat early.

.. if that doesnt end the game r the situation doesnt favour such a timing attack try to harass, stay safe and scale up on zealot + stalker (or immortal??) ... just having the stargate untis in tehre aught to deterr heavy colssi prodcution, giving you more freedom in what you want to do.


.. this is pure theorycraft. i literally CANT play P.

OK, I think I'm gonna change the plan a bit.
Maybe if everyone can give suggestions of mid to late game strategies... ie. plans that do not involve hoping to surprise your opponents or trying to end the game early. I'm a sucker for macro games so I love huge fights (which are not overly 1 sided). So, propose an army composition of say about 80 control and above.

PS- tried voids.... failed miserably in an all out battle. Colossi cleared all the zealots before the voids were even fully charged, and it was gg from there.

I came up against an interesting PvP strategy the other day.

Zealot, Immortal, Voidray. Starts off with zealot, sentry, immortal early game then gets lots of void rays. An interesting combination.

I'm thinking perhaps with the next patch in January phoenix/voidray might be a good alternative to immortal/colossus.

Spychi has a funky PvP. Phoenix, DT, obs. Kill opponent's observers then nothing left to see the DTs.

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Originally Posted by masakari

Hi Demosquid... how exactly do you use your speedlots/blinkstalkers? I've tried that combination a million times because I thought exactly as you did. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is before my stalkers can take out all his colossi, his colossi totally obliterates my zealot army in a few seconds, leaving just my stalkers. I've started adding hallucinated units to the mix and its helped a wee bit.... but just a bit. I still lose terribly despite pumping from 8 warpgates off 2 bases (all spare gas goes to upgrades and sentries).

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I will answer your question with a question of my own: why are you sending in your Zealots first so they get shredded by the Colossi?

Basically, you're doing it backwards. Send the Stalkers in first, to pick off key units like Colossi, Void Rays, Sentries. Blink them out, THEN send in the Chargelots to mop up, with ranged support from the remaining Stalkers.

The problem with doing anything besides 4-gate or Colossi is that it's too easily punished. Sure, you can build a Sentry at your ramp, but when I come over with my warp gate push and build a pylon by your ramp, all I need is just a split second of vision to warp in a line of Zealots. It's difficult to stop. In essence, the only room you have to try new strats is the mid to late game.

Also, instead of transitioning to Colossi, I like to go the Twilight route and upgrade charge/blink, using it to snipe Colossi. When he's only got like 1 or 2 Colossus out is the perfect time to just roll him with this.

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1. Void Rays - I'm not sure how these do mixed in with the armies, but I doubt they'll be more useful than carriers.... anyone with experience? I've faced a few of these before... nothing my stalkers can't handle.

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Mixing it into your army would have been a valid strat before the nerf. Not so much anymore.

Might work with the coming buff to Void ray damage to Massive, though. Mixing them in will make them super powerful vs colossus heavy armies, while keeping them decent support units vs gate units.

A build that I have been liking a lot lately is 2gate/stargate with VRs. Do a timing attack after your 2nd/3rd VR and expand in the process. Ive beaten 4gates/3gate blink/2-3gates & robo builds with this against 2k+ diamonds. You dont have to harass with them. I just mix them in with zealots and a couple stalkers. If his stalkers try to snipe your VRs, you will have plenty of zealots to surround them. It's a PERFECT counter to a robo opening.

PvP can be more exciting than most people think. I have 6 build orders including this one in PvP. The others are FE into 4 gates, regular 4 gate, 3 gate blink stalkers, 2gate/colossus and 2gate/carriers (yes this works but hard to stop early pushes w/o FF). I usually follow every attack with an expansion. Late game I almost always have to make colossi though even if I start off with a different tech. I pick out my build depending on the map and spawning locations. It's a great thing to have several tricks up your sleeve for the right situation. You never want to be a one dimensional.

@demosquid - I've tried that too... ie. sending stalkers in first... they just die. Stalkers don't hold up well vs anything except maybe hellions. They need a distraction. Collossi with their own stalker/zealot support will destroy my stalker army even if I have double the number of stalkers he does.

I'm still skeptical of the voids post patch, but we'll see. I doubt they'll take down collossi fast enough still... only takes 5s to vaporise zealots, my 2 attack upgrade carriers take longer than that to kill all the collossi, and they do a whopping amount of dmg. Still, never hurts to try.

Sending Stalkers in first doesn't sound like a great idea. You want to send everything at once and try to flank him.

I'm a micro player, and its a micro build. Blink in, kill important target, Blink out. You NEED Blink for my strategy to work, but Blinking isn't exactly hard micro anyway.

im pterry sure its also a timing build; yes, ive seen it work and its kind of awesome, however, if its ater in teh game and the scales are larger, your chances of being able to blink in, pick off colossi and get otu again without taking ciritical losses, will deminish greatly.. with enough colossi, the splash damage buildsup to a level quite good even vs stalekrs, while supporting gateway units hinders your stalkers from positioning well and gets oh so many more free hits than during an early timing attack vs the first 1-2 pre-range colossi

I agree with Todie. I use blink stalkers all the time. Using them works if your enemy had maybe 1-2 colossi max. Anything more and it tends to fail.

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Originally Posted by Todie

im pterry sure its also a timing build; yes, ive seen it work and its kind of awesome, however, if its ater in teh game and the scales are larger, your chances of being able to blink in, pick off colossi and get otu again without taking ciritical losses, will deminish greatly.. with enough colossi, the splash damage buildsup to a level quite good even vs stalekrs, while supporting gateway units hinders your stalkers from positioning well and gets oh so many more free hits than during an early timing attack vs the first 1-2 pre-range colossi

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@ Demosquid:

At that large scale, it is synonymous to bunching up a control group of dragoons to focus down 5 reavers. By the time you start firing on the 2nd or 3rd one, all the goons in the control group are dead or their numbers are greatly diminished. And stalkers take a lot less punishment than dragoons.

It is a tactical move only meant for early-midgame for Colossus rush builds or 1 robo Colossus builds. If it is 1-2 Colossi as mentioned, you can blink/snipe them, but once the other guy gets 3+, no amount of blink will do enough to kill enough colossi. You might snipe 1, maybe 2 if you're lucky, but there will still remain 1 with another reinforcing one that will decimate your remaining stalkers while his stalker/zealot force will crush your existing force and reinforcements. Not only that, you will still have 2+ Colossi to deal with, using an inferior tech army.

That never goes well.

I'm not saying that using that tactic is bad Demo, but it is only 1 solution for a specific situation only. You cannot use it consistently in this matchup, bro. You need a followup plan if you time it right, otherwise, consider using the blink stalkers to blink up into his main and harass his pylons and probes as soon as his army moves out, and blink away when he comes back to defend.
Rinse and repeat, and tech up to Colossi as well, or mass Immortals and take a 3rd relatively safely.

Hell, I almost never see colossi in PvP. I usually get into zealot/stalker/immortal fights.

Keep in mind I'm in gold/silver, but these games usually end pretty fast and involve very close fights between armies of abut 10 units where you're waiting for every immortal to pop and chronoboosting warp gates. Because of this, neither side has much of a chance to tech higher without risking getting overrun. The one/two immortals on the field at any one time also make colossi easy to kill.

Don't know if a simple strategy could easily win this fight, but it's really fun and fast-paced, so I try to put early pressure on 'toss to force them into this.

Colossi fire in a straight line. So why exactly are you guts Blinking in a straight line? You Blink ON TOP of the Colossi. You know, SURROUND them so they can only hit 1-2 Stalkers at a time. Stalkers can Blink into any open space, even between a ball of Colossi and other Gateway units. Treat the Stalkers as expendable and the Zealots as the ones you need to keep alive.

The problem with that is zealots die very quickly to stalkers, and even if the Colossi unleash a few waves of their splash, they will weaken the zealots waaay too much for them to live through the battle. You have to keep your stalkers alive; they're the backbone. The zealots, on the other hand are more expendable. Once you blink in to surround 3+ Colossi, your stalkers are going to die too quickly. Colossi are gateway unit killers, especially in high numbers...

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

Colossi fire in a straight line. So why exactly are you guts Blinking in a straight line? You Blink ON TOP of the Colossi. You know, SURROUND them so they can only hit 1-2 Stalkers at a time. Stalkers can Blink into any open space, even between a ball of Colossi and other Gateway units. Treat the Stalkers as expendable and the Zealots as the ones you need to keep alive.

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I guess I'll have to try it but sentries might just make this strategy a bit...hard. Guardian shield to keep colossi alive longer and forcefields to stop your zealots. Just have to try it i guess.

@protoswarrior Zealots actually do well against stalkers actually. But only if those stalkers can't move.:P Hence why in early PvP zealots are so fearsome. But yeah colossi rip through zealots so easily.

It is the same dynamic as zealot vs dragoon in SC1 between Zeals and Stalkers in SC2. Stalkers are always superior to slow zealots due to their move speed and long range. The only time Zealots would outmatch them is if they have charge. The problem with a Colossus ball is that the zealots tend to bunch up when trying to surround the ball of stalkers under the colossi. When that happens, the zeals just melt to Colossus fire. The Stalkers basically do the rest of the damage, and they fire pretty quickly and do a lot of damage for a tier 1/tier 2 unit.

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Originally Posted by DemolitionSquid

Colossi fire in a straight line. So why exactly are you guts Blinking in a straight line? You Blink ON TOP of the Colossi. You know, SURROUND them so they can only hit 1-2 Stalkers at a time. Stalkers can Blink into any open space, even between a ball of Colossi and other Gateway units. Treat the Stalkers as expendable and the Zealots as the ones you need to keep alive.

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PW is right. Unless your opponent has nothing, your stalkers are going to get obliterated - the cooldown on Blink is too slow for you to just jump in & out like some ninja, and pretty much every other Protoss unit does sick damage to stalkers. After that, he can either kite your Zealots or force-field them. Like I said before, you send everything at once and minimize colossus splash by flanking & proper positioning. That way when you blink in, he has to worry about zealots and stalkers, not just stalkers. Doing it the other way is just counterintuitive.

I'm really starting to like void rays in this match up, once you hit 5-6 voids they do extreme amounts of damage, then just load up on chargelots. Chargelots eat up stalkers, and 5-6 voids will just melt the rest away.

Managed to get a friend to test out void rays in the unit tester for an all out battle. The results were terrible. The void ray army was absolutely abolished. Trying to pick off stalkers first didn't quite work, and going for the colossi first was even worse.

This doesn't take into account the +20% massive from PTR, but I doubt it'll make a difference. Guess that's one idea down the drain.