These are the most common questions I find asked about Protoss both in the Protoss question thread and general TL thread. Most of these suggestions are from my old posts, but I’d added a lot to make it more complete. Make sure you look in here before asking any new questions regarding Protoss matchups.
General Recommend me one basic build versus each race. + Show Spoiler +
In order to defend this attack, it is essential that you scout it out. There is no other way. If you don't scout it or kill it very early, there is no hope of beating it. Ways to scout it include gateway pressure, stargate, pressure, but most commonly an observer. Any build that does not incorporate any of these is close to an autoloss versus the 2 port banshee build.
Now, once you scout the 2 port banshee, this is what you do:
Immediately throw up a stargate and a forge. Make only enough stalkers to fend off his initial banshee harass and then cut stalkers entirely. Constantly chornoboost phoenix out of your stargate and throw up ~5 cannons at your front. Make only zealots and sentries from now on, but don't overdo the sentries. ~3 is perfectly fine. Cut probes accordingly around 35 if you don't scout a command center.
In my experienced opinion, this is the only way to fend off the 2 port banshee allin if you're on 2 base.
The key is vision. That is, observers, spotting pylons, and watch towers. The obvious benefit of this is that you can spot drops incoming. However, if you have vision of his army, you can correctly position your troops to accordingly defend both his army and any potential drops. For example, if you see his army far away from your base, you don’t need to keep your entire army at your front. Instead, put it in probable drop locations.
Another option is pressure. A believable fake allin will sometimes keep your opponent contained in his base. He will be afraid to send anymore than 1 medivac out to harass, which is a manageable amount.
Notice how I didn’t mention anything about units. Blink stalkers, chargelots, templar(with or without storm), and dts all do fairly well versus drops and almost any unit composition you go will be able to defend against drops.
How do I scout terran with gas before observers can come out? + Show Spoiler +
Firstly, you want to identify all the builds your opponent can do with a gas. The prominent ones include 1 rax fe, 2 rax with reactor/tech lab, 3 rax, or a factory/tech build. These factory/tech builds could include cloaked banshee, marine tank allin, thor allin, or some type of hellion build. I'd say these are the primary builds you want to look out for. Now with every little piece of information you get, you want to cross off possibilities based on this information. For example, if you see a maruder, you will most likely want to consider tech builds as much less likely.
Now for actual scouting tips. The first thing you want to look for is whether he builds a rax or a depot after his first marine. The standard 2 rax build builds a rax before a 2nd depot, so if you see a depot being built, 2 rax will be less likely. Keep in mind, however, that your opponent can still cancel the depot. Next, the most important part is that you want to keep your initial scouting probe alive as he can get you a lot of information. Poke around his ramp and see what's guarding the bottom of the ramp. If you see a marauder, then you know it's a tech lab build, most likely 1 rax fe, but could be 3 rax or a tech lab 2 rax push. If you see 2 marines early, you know it's a tech build, because every other build adds an addon immediately. This also tells you that you can poke around with your initial stalker and harass him. If you see just one marine, you can choose to run past the marine and either see what addon he has on his barracks or what other units he has on the top of his ramp. If he has no units at the bottom of his ramp, feel free to poke up and have a look and make a judgement call off of that. Even if you see just marines, you can get a lot of information from that, because tech builds go for factory and then reactor later on the rax while a standard 2 rax gets the reactor right after the first marine. Thus, a tech build will have a gradual build up of marines while a 2 rax will just have one early and then 2 at a time.
PvZ How do I deal with a 6 pool with a gateway first build? + Show Spoiler +
The best way to defend if you scout it early is to throw up a 2nd gateway and a 2nd pylon to block. Chornoboost zealots out right away and pull probes along with your first 3 zealots to fight his lings. This video shows what I mean.
An alternative is to throw up a forge asap and wall with a pylon. Defend with a cannon asap. This option leaves less room for error, but also doesn’t get you as far ahead as the 2nd gateway option.
The only situation where you could be in danger is if you scout the zerg last on a 4 player/4 possible spawn map and opened gateway first. You best option there is to double pylon your gateway, don’t let your gateway get unpowered, and try to not engage unless he’s attacking your pylon until your first zealot pops out.
How do I deal with a 6 pool with a forge first build? + Show Spoiler +
On big 4 player maps with 4 spawn locations, you must both pylon scout and 13 forge scout to be safe versus a 6 pool. Once you scout the 6 pool coming, cut a probe to put a pylon in your main and make a cannon in your base asap. Then, go gateway, gas, core, gas as you would a normal game.
Scout your opponent's base. Specifically, look for the existence of a natural, how much gas he's mined, and the existence of a lair/roach warren/baneling nest. If you scout any big tech off 1 base, obviously prepare for that accordingly, usually with 4 gate 2 gas. If there is no gas or a late gas, it is safe to expand off of just a zealot and a stalker and be safe. If you scout fast gas and an expansion, you will have to go for a slower 3 gate sentry expand. In any situation, as long as you react accordingly, you will be ahead. Example vod
What is a standard forge fast expand build order? + Show Spoiler +
Generally, these are the standards. There are many variations however, depending on the map and what you scout. If you can confirm 14 pool or later: 15 nexus, 15 forge, resume probe production, ~ 17 pylon, ~18 cannon, gateway
If you cannot or you scout a <14 pool, but >10 pool 13 forge, 17 nexus, 18 cannon, 18 gateway, 18 pylon Usually, gateway before cannon is safe, however.
What's the difference between 15 nexus and 13 forge 17 nexus? + Show Spoiler +
Nexus first is more economical. 13 forge 17 nex is always safe while blind 15 nex is not safe. If you scout 14 pool or later on all ffe maps, you can safely go nexus first. Depending on the map and the timing of the pool, 15 nexus may or may not be safe verus pools earlier than 14.
How do I place buildings for a forge fast expand? + Show Spoiler +
15 hatch is actually somewhat safe versus protoss. The 2 reasons high level zergs don't do it often are as follows: 1. You normally can't get the 15 hatch down before a probe comes to your natural and tries to block it. 2. Cannon rushes can be very deadly versus 15 hatch. You usually need to commit a drone scout or drone block to be somewhat safe versus cannon rushes.
With gateway first versus 15 hatch and a late gas,, you can chornoboost stalkers out, gain map control, and force lings or spines. With forge first, if your opponent isn’t blocking his ramp properly or isn’t watching your probe well, you can attempt a cannon rush. However, both of these options are dependent on your opponent, so in reality, there’s no reliably consistent way to punish a 15 hatch.
If you want to play a macro game versus a zerg, you must scout him. Scout his tech, his drone count, his base count, his unit composition, his army size and his available tech. There are a few ways to accomplish this.
1. Robo for observers: In my opinion, this is the worst option, as even if you scout certain builds, you're either too late to respond to them or cannot aggressively punish greedy builds. 2. Hallucination: hallucinated phoenix are a great way to constantly scout your opponent. 3. Stargate: This is a form of light pressure. With either voidray or phenoix, you are both pressuring and scouting at the same time. 4. Pressure: This technique scouts your opponent by pressuring his base and seeing what he reacts with. You may not get to see everything, but as you get better at the game and develop better game sense, you will be able to make more and more reads from pressure scouting.
How do I defend roach ling allin with a 1 gate expansion? + Show Spoiler +
There are 4 ways to defend a roach ling allin with a 1 gate expand: 1. Fast voidrays, put up a stargate right after nexus. 2. Fast dts, put up a twilight council right after your nexus. You will take damage from the roach ling attack. You also probably won't survive the earliest most allin versions. However, as long as you survive long enough, you should be able to do a ton of damage to your opponent, because he won't have an evo or lair. 3. Fast forge into preemptive cannons 4. Preemptive chornoboosted stalker/sentry off of 4+ gateways
How do I defend roach ling allin with a 3 gate expansion? + Show Spoiler +
3 gate expand is still viable. Here are a few tips to help you survive these roach ling attacks. 1. Sim city. Use your buildings to protect you so that you have as few paths to your army as possible. This is usually with 2 pylons and a forge or 2 pylons and a 4th gateway. 2. Do not overly rely on cannons. Cannons are good, but the problem is timing. Roach ling attacks can hit anywhere between 7:00 and 7:50. Even if hits at 7:50, the latest time possible, your cannon with a standard 3 gate expand will just be finishing. 3. Perfect forcefields. Pretty obvious advice, but I'm just reinforcing it. 4. Constant unit production. Do not skimp on units. Keep pumping stalker/sentry as much as you can. This is probably the biggest problem with the roach ling attack. Before it became popular, you could transition to stargate or get a quick robo safely. While you still somewhat can, it leaves you very open to roach ling allins. 5. Reinforce with stalkers. Once you see the attack coming, making nothing but stalkers. Sentries don't do enough dps and they come with only one forcefield. On the other hand, zealots are great versus lings but you want to rely on sim city and forcefields versus lings instead of zealots. Of course, if you have only few minerals and tons of gas, a sentry or 2 doesn't hurt. 6. Do not cut probes if you don't have to. That is, you want to focus on making units, but with extra minerals keep pumping probes. You can judge how allin the roach ling attack is by the timing. The later attacks are simply pressure while the early attacks are more allin. Even if you defend a 7:50 roach ling attack, you can still fall behind, because you cut so many probes during the attack. 7. Chornoboost gateways. Again, pretty obvious one.
Some example games include MC vs Idra from a few MLGs ago and Huk vs DRG on crossfire from the recent AOL.
What are the advantages of a stargate followup after a forge fast expand? + Show Spoiler +
It's rather effective at stopping early roach allins, however rare they are.
It lets you take map control.
It limits the zerg's unit composition. They have to have something to attack air, so for example pure roach/baneling drop is no longer an option.
It kills scouting overlords and leaves zerg in the dark.
The biggest reason: It's very flexible. There are a lot of followups possible; I can probably name 10 off the top of my head. This, combined with killing scouting overlords, forces zerg to prepare for a number of things so they may not react as optimally to what you're doing.
Obviously, you want cannons, and stalker/templar/archons are good versus muta, but here are some less obvious tips versus mutas.
Pressure. Mutas are not very good fighting units and even if you can't kill your opponent by pressuring, you force spines and delay the mutas from reaching your base.
Don't go reactive stargates for phoenix. If you already have a stargate and a few phenoix on the field, keep making phoenix. However, if you don't have stargate, go for the blink stalker/templar route instead. If you try to get reactive phoenix, you will get overwhelmed by zerg production and superior economy.
Do not get caught making collosi while your opponent is transitioning into mutas. The worst feeling in the world is seeing ~8 muta in your mineral line as your first collosi is halfway done. A way to do this is to make sure no spire is building/completed as your put up your robo bay.
When you move out, keep one templar in each mineral line to deter harass.
How do I deal an opponent once he gets infestor ling/roach broodlord? + Show Spoiler +
The first way to deal with infestor broodlord with ground support is to abuse the imobility of his unit composition. Go around his army and attack an outlying base. Of course, this is only viable on very very large maps such as talderim altar. If your opponent plays correctly, it shouldn’t even be viable on a big map like Termius SE.
The unit composition you want to be aiming for is this following: 1. Some form of consistent AoE: You need either archons or collosi to kill broodlings or they will rack up too much damage. Templar do not work for this purpose, because you cannot keep perma storming no matter how many templar you have and storm hits your own units if you attemp to storm broodlings. Keep in mind though that archons can get neural'd rather easily. 2. Blink stalkers: This should be the core of your army. 3. Templar: this is optional, but a great help if you can get them. they cost not too much supply for how fast they kill ground units and they can feedback infestor and then turn into archons as well. 4. Upgrades: Unlike versus roach hydra where you can rely on forcefields and blink as your armor, armor/shield upgrades are actually very important versus broodlord/infestor. Lings and broodlings’ damage are greatly reduced by armor and forcefields and defensive blinks are close to useless as well.
Once your opponent gets 10+ broodlords, it can get impossible to engage your opponent directly with a ground based army. Thus, you will need to take to the air. The best transition to go from here is a mothership. Even without an archon toilet, mothership can give you the edge versus this composition. If you want to go even further, carriers can be a good addition to the deathball.
You must scout this in time, preferably as his first proxy pylon is building. Immediately throw up your own forge. His first cannon will finish and there is usually nothing you can do about it as long as the cannon is not in range of your probes/buildings. Throw up a cannon between your buildings and his first cannon but not in range of the cannon. If he tries to throw up more than 1 cannon, keep throwing up cannons, either matching his cannon count or going over by 1. The key is to make sure your cannons win this cannon vs cannon fight. Whoever wins this will usually win this game. If you think it will be close, you can even pull probes to attack the cannons just so you get a small edge on cannon hp, even if you lose probes. If you think you can decisively win this cannon war without additional cannons, cancel your other cannons in production.
Ideally, if you scout it in time, throw up a 2nd gateway yourself and chornoboost out zealots. Your better economy, combined with the rush distance to your base will allow you to defend..Pull enough probes so that you have a dps advantage over him. For example, if he brings one probe, pull 2 probes to fight him. If you don’t scout it in time, throw up a forge for a defensive cannon which covers your entire base. Then, transition into a 4 gate.
Chronoboost your first gateway and kite his first few zealots that are walking toward your base. Sim city so that his zealots will have a hard time getting into your mineral line while your stalkers get free shots on them. Then, go for a delayed 4 gate for the win.
Wow, this is really good. I actually thought about doing something similar but I'm lazy and you beat me to it XD. Thanks, 4kmonk.
EDIT:
I'll continue to update this post with comments, most of it is good but I'd like to add to some topics:
PvP cannon rush - throwing up your own forge and cannons is the best response if you don't happen to scout the cannon rush until the cannon is already going up and there's already pylons walling it in. However, you should be able to spot it coming before that happens - if a scouting probe enters your base and immediately leaves or you lose vision of it, that's a big sign of proxy shenanigans so follow it and check outside your base! This is especially important if you're playing on a map where there's a low ground area near your mineral line, such as metal, xel naga, antiga, and abyssal. On those maps it might even be a good idea to build your first pylon overlooking that low ground area to be able to spot a probe that puts down pylons/cannons there (since a cannon rusher will often send 2 probes, so they can keep the initial probe in your base and still have that 2nd probe build those pylons/cannons without you being aware of it). If you manage to spot it as they are just placing pylons down on low ground, getting a forge in response is not necessary, just immediately send some probes to kill the pylons and eventual cannons from warping in. Chrono out the first zealot, but don't delay your first stalker. Cut probes to be able to afford all of this.
Last edit: 2011-09-26 10:32:17
aka Anihc
ZeromuS Canada. September 26 2011 10:23. Posts 8288
A quick question -- is cannons of your own the best way to stop a cannon rush because you can't really count on getting a surround and killing his probe? I certainly believe you that it's the right response, I was just wondering why cannoning up your own base is better than clicking 4 probes on the pylon and chasing his probe. Sure, he can keep dropping pylons everywhere until you catch the probe, but it's not like defending warp-in pylons where if one finishes you lose immediately...
This is such an amazing threads, gathering the random statements said all over teamliquid. Though i've read pretty much these things myself it's definetly nice to have them confirmed, and i'll recommend it to any Protoss newcomer. Very good job!
More GG, More Skill
Shintuku Canada. September 26 2011 10:57. Posts 76
I would like to add that an alternative method for dealing with cannon rushes if you scout it as he throws down the first pylon or the first cannon out of range is throwing up a second gateway and pulling 4-5 probes to attack the first cannon while chronoing zealots. It allows you to pressure him in return after the cannon rush (not every player will leave immediately after you defend the cannons) much more easily.
Another awesome thread by 4kmonk If I can add something about cannon rushes in PvZ, on tal darim and shakuras it is impossible for Z to hold off a cannon rush while going hatch first. Protoss always forge first and a pylon on the low ground will be impossible to kill.
geiko.813 (EU)
AmericanUmlaut Germany. September 26 2011 17:05. Posts 2251
On September 26 2011 10:21 Anihc wrote: PvP cannon rush - throwing up your own forge and cannons is the best response if you don't happen to scout the cannon rush until the cannon is already going up and there's already pylons walling it in. However, you should be able to spot it coming before that happens - if a scouting probe enters your base and immediately leaves or you lose vision of it, that's a big sign of proxy shenanigans so follow it and check outside your base! This is especially important if you're playing on a map where there's a low ground area near your mineral line, such as metal, xel naga, antiga, and abyssal. On those maps it might even be a good idea to build your first pylon overlooking that low ground area to be able to spot a probe that puts down pylons/cannons there (since a cannon rusher will often send 2 probes, so they can keep the initial probe in your base and still have that 2nd probe build those pylons/cannons without you being aware of it). If you manage to spot it as they are just placing pylons down on low ground, getting a forge in response is not necessary, just immediately send some probes to kill the pylons and eventual cannons from warping in. Chrono out the first zealot, but don't delay your first stalker. Cut probes to be able to afford all of this.
How many probes do you send per pylon/cannon being built? 3 or 4?
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EliteReplay Dominican Republic. September 26 2011 10:42. Posts 913
eugalp United States. September 26 2011 13:49. Posts 203
