Something that baffles me...

[Rezildur]

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.

[Gradius]

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.

[Rezildur]

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.

[ooZer0]

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.

[Rezildur]

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

[ooZer0]

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...

[Rezildur]

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

[JackhammerIV]

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.

[Rezildur]

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?

[JackhammerIV]

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.