it doesn't.

Yeah, this seems pretty essential, I need to execute the timings better. There are also some basic mechanical things I need to learn/practice too. Like, I don't even know how to cycle through the nexus (nexi?), which I imagine would be helpful .

Thanks for the feedback so far everybody.

Actually, I'll offer some more thoughts:

- So at 11:00 you take out his natural, poke up the ramp, it's very heavily defended. I'd say your work here is done for now and you should retreat, expand, build a couple robos and a twilight council, research blink, get some immortals out (they'll crush through the tanks/marauders), and eventually hit him with some kind of two-pronged attack where you blink into his main (CK is great for this, you can do some damage, force his army to split to deal with it, then blink out) with stalkers and hit him with zealots/immortals at his natural. This probably wins you the game. Sticking around and taking that engagement against a force that's very good against your stalkers (tanks + marauders both have bonus against armored, so your stalkers will go down quickly) wasn't a great idea.

- 16:00: Attacking up that ramp just isn't a good idea. It's too well defended, and if he pulls SCVs to repair it's actually quite possible you never get through that wall no matter how strong your force is. Colossi would be good in that spot (both to attack out of range of the static defenses as well as having the ability to cliff walk up the high ground around them).

- Scout more; send probes/observers/whatever to poke around and see what your opponent is up to. His natural (after you killed it for the 2nd time) and his 3rd were up for a reaaaaallly long time without you knowing about it, and you could have taken either one out pretty easily since his army was in his main. If he wants to keep his army there, use it against him; keep him from being able to put up expansions. You can win a game just by economically starving him out if he wants to turtle on 1 base; once he runs out of minerals, it doesn't matter if he stomps you in a fight, you have a 3 base economy and can remax really fast while he has no money to do anything.

A lot of stuff I'm sure you know intrinsically but just haven't gotten into your head yet - for example, you researched +1 weapons and then forgot about your forge for 20 minutes, you never built a twilight council to get blink or charge (both are very very useful, and for like the entire game you were running a big enough mineral+gas surplus to get them at any time), and you just need to play games and try to remember to do this stuff and over time it will get built into your head through repetition to check your upgrades, research new ones if necessary, build new tech buildings, etc.

At higher levels, you will want to know different openers for each racial matchup. But, for low level protoss, to get a hang of mechaniics, timings, and just how units & the game works, doing only 4 gate is your best way to understand the game at this stage. Right now, you have little grasp on the basics, so get a grasp on them by playing hopefully short games with all in builds like 4 gate. Right now, just trying to get the order of buildings/units correct as your money allows will help you a great deal at your level.

Pylon-Gate-Gas-Pylon-Core-Zealot-Stalker/Warpgate-3*Gateway = Pretty acceptable 4 gate.

Yeah, I did a couple test games vs the AI and you're right. It's worth noting though that if I execute everything perfectly, incl probes doubled on close patches, this is how narrowly I avoid supply block:



If I don't double on close patches, I'm even farther from supply blocking (I guess slower mining = starting probe #10 later = your pylon has more time to finish before probe #10 finishes):



In both cases I did avoid supply block, so yeah it's not normal, but it's worth noting that I was actually less close to supply blocking in the situation where I played worse. I guess it's a reminder to keep your timings tight

I thought about this and it's interesting. I've also seen korean pros occasionally supply block themselves for short amounts of time, so it's possible that if you have perfect mineral pairing or something, you do get supply blocked for a short amount of time...not exactly sure

I dunno, while I've struggled with going into the midgame as Protoss, I feel like I started getting a lot better at the game when I switched from 3raxing as Terran to 1rax FE as my standard (which I still do against against all 3 races and it's pretty rare that I lose purely based on builds). My Zerg build is also based around the midgame. I think it's important to learn to control resources beyond the 10 minute mark and keep tabs on upgrading to 3/3, getting tech, etc. which you can only do through practice. If you 4gate your way to gold league and then suddenly try to learn midgame skills it will probably be a disaster.

My TvT is the opposite. Are you just doing tank/marine stuff better than everyone else or MMM or other? I'm rank ~50 diamond and would be down to play some games and get schooled.

you learn the most when you move away from your comfort zone. don't be afraid to try new things.

i experienced the most growth in my gameplay when i played custom games vs very easy AI and just sat around practicing building stuff and controlling the game. customizing my hot keys and control groups and just drilling all that stuff into muscle memory.

in actual ladder or competitive games is way too stressful and intense of a situation to try to learn how to improve imo

i touch on it a bit in this post...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...6&postcount=15

so ya try diff stuff other than 4 gate and also try this practice method out imo

glhf

O snap!



Xaston 7pool for the win

This followed a ZvT that I won while playing absolutely terribly...my ZvT is not quite terrible, but also very much not good. He tried to bunker rush but showed it too early, so I got 6 lings out before he was even close to finishing his bunkers and dispatched it pretty easily. I was already rushing speed (which is becoming a standard for me vs T, I think I like it) so I had map control pretty quickly, and took out his expansion easily when he placed it, and basically kept him on one base, but obv my ZvT scouting blowwsssss and he did a TON of damage with cloaked banshees that I didn't see coming until my **** was blowing up. Not enough to actually change the outcome, since he was still trapped on 1 base by my speedlings and I just had to fight through his bull**** long enough to get air defense before resuming my 3base economy, but against a player that isn't terrible (he was gold but still quite bad) stuff like that will turn a game I should win into an insta-loss. Sigh.

Here's a replay if anyone cares. I think it's easy to tell that I get complacent when I'm way ahead (which is only a problem with my ZvT really, against other races I know to just keep building a ****load of roaches, pretty ez game...I should have done it here too actually, it's not like he was building marauders or tanks, I just built a roach warren on autopilot and never used it lolz) and I don't really know how to leverage my advantage into some kind of lategame army. I was on my way to taking him out with BLs + corruptors when he quit at the end, but still it shouldn't take 30 minutes for me to end a game that was basically decided after 5.

Lol that's adorable. The thing is, if I wanted him to learn standard play for each matchup, he'd have to do things super differently for each racial opponent (4g PvP, FFE PvZ, 1g FE PvT) as toss. Doing it as terran or zerg is much simpler, since you can basically 1 rax FE each MU or pool-hatch/hatch-pool as T/Z respectively. Right now, he can hardly execute a build that takes less than 5 minutes IRL. Why would you want him to learn riskier or longer term builds? That's right, because you don't understand.

Nothing will happen karak, just like with gospy. They're both in short bus league compared to me.

Donk on donk violence

I do a proxy marauder rush, if they dont scout my base (very rare) i make 3 marauders with concussive shell and try to do maximum damage. If they do scout I just make 2 marauders w/o concussive shell and expand immediately while at the same time keeping him on 1 base. As Im attacking I have enough gas to make a factory and start teching to cloak banshee. After my marauders are done harassing I float in the barracks to scout if he's 111ing or going mass barracks or expanding or whatever else. If Im really on my game or my opponent is particularly terrible, Ill have a banshee into his base before any turrets have even begun getting made, so i can do even more econ damage. At this point its time to start my main army which is sky terran, mass battlecruisers and vikings out of 3 starports (2 techs, 1 reactor). I get upgrades as fast as possible. Ill throw in some more banshees if it looks like he's going to attack soon. Once I get my first few BCs out I usually feel pretty good. If I successfully get down my 3rd and 4th Im basically unstoppable. It should be noted though that my natural expo is a PF instead of an orbital. And my future expos are all double PFs. You sacrifice some economy getting a PF, but sky is a gas intensive composition, so your going to have plenty of minerals anyway. Also, be sure to get those building upgrades (the two things in the Ebay, i dont know what their called). I try to turtle up to 200/200 before i move out, as a maxed sky army is ridiculously cost efficient.

Things that this build loses to:
-People who make 4 barracks and actually move out and try to kill me immediatly after my maruader harrass is over. Most of them just sit in their base worrying about a follow up. Once the PF gets up at the natural any kindve one base push can be held off (you can kill tanks seiging the PF with the cloak banshee, and PFs lol at marines.) Also, drops can be a big problem so litter your bases with turrets.
-People who go MMM and continously snipe my expansions before I get a few BCs out. Stim marauders are great for this. Kills my gas income and ****.
-People who do something else that i havent run into yet.

Im about rank 50 diamond as well, so I dont think I would necessarily 'school' you. Its just that its something people arent used to seeing so they dont know how to react to it. And now i wait for karak to read all of this and lol at me and call me a noob.

like i know **** about tvt

Trey,

You seem upset

It's just cute to see a silver league player think he knows how best to learn the game, by his experiences with T, and trying to say to do so as a P player. Almost like a kitten

Trey,

I have no idea if you're kidding, but your posts are really going way too far.

Okay fine. Sorry, won't happen again. Remember though, you kind of spurred on one of them a bit

Too funny man.

Gonna ladder a bit or maybe buy cs go after I run some errands. We'll see.

Karak since you are the best active player on 2p2 atm I think we can officially state that you are the 2p2 version of Scarlett.

petzergling was knocking me around last week pretty well. he's prob best active player.

So you open with cheese, transition to cheese, and then transition to cheese? Lol.

Trey,

It is cute to see how easily you get upset