I just wish you would have played game 4 to see what I had planned there.

Pretty sure mad would have been an understatement

I don't have much recollection of any of those games, I was drinking pretty heavily.

she didnt even give me a chance to profess my love to her

Deep down, from your screen name, she knows

lol

played a long ZvZ today without making a roach warren or a spire. its a pretty cool build, go heavy ling/infestor with big upgrades then ultras

My TvT is absolutely beastly right now....im sending out a challenge to any terrans on 2p2

there are no terrans on 2p2

there's good zergs

and then there's bad zergs

and then there's 8 layers of ****

and there's protoss players

I'm looking for some feedback on what I'm doing wrong (besides playing toss). I think this replay probably features all the terrible stuff I tend to do and is pretty typical of the matches I get stuck in: something resembling a slow 4-gate, opponent walls off, armies max out, herp derp, gg. It's a very long match, but I'm guessing most of the fail occurs early.

This is my first concerted effort to try and play more and get better, so I'm forever bronze right now. I'm the protoss in the replay. Thanks in advance for any advice.

REPLAY LINK

I'll watch this later, but if you're trying to 4 gate and not doing it right, I'd bet it's either core timing or proxy pylon placement or timing.

1. I would hope this one isn't typical, but you didn't send your workers to mine and start a probe until 0:13
2. You didn't queue up another probe at 10/10 despite having the minerals, so when your pylon finished you weren't building another probe for a few seconds
3. At 12/18, you have 155 minerals and haven't sent out a probe yet to be ready to put your gate down. Get the probe out to where you want to build it so that right when you hit 150 minerals, boom, it's ready to be put down right away. It's especially important for a timing build like a 4gate that you get buildings down speedily, that stuff adds up!

I gotta run, I'll finish later w/ lots more thoughts

All my games start at 0:11 cuz of stupid lag at the beginning of the game but there's no lag anywhere else. It sucks =[

look at goofy

all grown up now

Yeah, I have a bad internet connection right now so I think I get lag to start.

Aside from bad timings early on, what sort of strategic blunders stand out? I know my timing is bad, working on that. Question: it sounds like I should have a probe sort of hanging out where I want to build that gate. So I just need to time the probe's travel with when those last few minerals I need hit? I'm concerned about losing mining production if the probe ends up standing around waiting to build.

Not to mention you shouldn't get supply blocked at 10/10 anyway as Protoss

Just found a beginner questions thread. Mods, feel free to move this convo there.

And a replay critique thread. Sorry, should have looked before posting here.

here is fine

no one uses that thread anyways

I'm just going to write down everything I see wrong:

9 pylon: Why start a wall against T with it? If you're planning on putting it there, start moving a probe there at around 55-60 minerals. Same thing kind of happens with your gateway

Keep making probes early on, you miss a few moments. Queue them if need be. Make your gas way faster, you have the money for it.

4:45: Why make 3 pylons? Your production can no way scale to make the extra 2 you're making valuable. A classic 4 gate gets supply blocked at 26/26 with a zealot, 2 stalkers, and 20 probes (The supply block is alleviated with your proxy pylon). Here you're making way too many probes given you're on 1 gas, and your extra gateways are delayed by these many things. You should work to erect your extra gateways as soon as the second chronoboost on warpgate finishes, and not too much after. In the game, it takes you 3 minutes to reach the 50 supply that your gave yourself with these 3 pylons, a big waste/tieup of resources.

Scout more. You know nothing except what your first scout gave you. You're doing an all in build blindly and doing it poorly. Make a proxy pylon. Stargate? Why? Void rays suck against marines, and phoenix are only good in a few compositions vs T. Robo or twilight play are always better long term.

Your first attack was ill advised and lucky that your opponent didn't have his units below his ramp. The second one probably would have worked either way (I just mean the attack at his natural expansion) but you have zero way of knowing. Don't try to overextend after a victory. You knew your opponent was walled off so your zealots were worthless. Just fall back rather than lose a whole army.

You don't need your whole army to scout or hold watch towers. If you go to late game, you need twilight for +2 upgrades and at least zealot charge against terran.

As a whole, my suggestion to you is: Learn a better 4 gate. An acceptable 4 gate hits at no later than 6 minutes with 6 stalkers and a zealot, and is done with this build order:

9 pylon (CB probes when finished), 12 gate (CB probes once started), 14 gas (No more CB on probes!), 16 cybernetics core, 17 zealot, warpgate+stalker when core finishes (CB only warpgate from now on).

Move out with zealot stalker and probe to your opponents base, set up proxy pylon. Attack with your first warp in of 4 stalkers

You could also learn a better hotkey set up. You should have both of your nexuses on one hotkey (I have mine on 3), your non warpgate production (Should only be a robo in PvT IMO) on another hotkey, and your army on 1/2.

if anyone wants to learn to 4gate they just need to talk to zefa imo

wait, really?

Obviously I don't 4-gate properly yet, but the main reason I do that build so often is because that's what I was told to do as a beginner. Are there any other builds I should practice for low-level play? Or is it all just macro and 4-gate timing at this point?

maybe this is why i always win our PvPs...

proxy 11/11 gates and chrono zealots

if you want to have some fun, just get blink and make a lot of stalkers. don't do it against terran though- you'll probably lose to marauders.

4. At 3:10, your gateway finishes, you have 215 minerals, and...where's the core? You build a zealot first, which delays the core slightly - the zealot can wait, but the core can't if you want to get a fast 4gate out. Even if you don't have 100 minerals after putting your core down, the zealot takes 38 seconds to build versus 50 for the core, so your stalker won't be delayed or anything if the zealot has to wait for you to hit 100 again. Generally you want to build a stalker instead of a 2nd zealot, but since you hit gas late and don't have enough for wg research + stalker, it will have to do in this game.

5. As Thamel mentioned, the 3 pylons are unnecessary and hurt your economy. I generally throw 1 extra down in my base along with my forward pylon, because I suck and I get supply blocked during warp-ins while I'm attacking if I don't. Remember that you need your 3 extra gateways to be done when WG research finishes. You're starting them at 6:00 in this game - that's ideally when you want your first warp-ins to be finishing, at the latest.

I can't comment much beyond this part since I'm terrible at Toss, and I just 4gate every time and if I have to get to a midgame I always lose. But, I think you have potential if you can learn the timings better, because you're actually pretty good at chrono'ing your WG research at the right spots (I'm bad at that part) and if you can get the other timings right like hitting your gas a little earlier, not missing probes, etc you could probably do a pretty good 4gate build.

Practice against a very easy CPU until you get the timings down, it helps a lot.

I dunno, it's pretty standard for me to get supply blocked for like half a second at 10/10. I feel like if I don't that means something went wrong and I'm too slow on my probes.