Starcraft 2 Protoss Strategy

This Starcraft 2 Protoss Strategy guide will teach you about Protoss, which enables you to play quite a few different styles. You can put early pressure on the opponent with Zealots or Gateway-units, or macro up and dominate the game with a heavy groundforce. This guide is an introduction to some of the special abilites and units that Protoss can offer you.

Chrono Boost

The Chrono Boost is used from your Nexus, and doubles the speed of production or research for 20 seconds. That means you are saving 20 seconds for each Chrono Boost you are using. To use a Chrono Boost, you need to select your Nexus. This means you want to make sure you have that hotkeyed at all times. Also remember to add any future Nexus you build, as that will increase the Chrono Boost you are able to use. You can not Chrono Boost the construction of buildings.

Boost your economy: With Chrono boost, protoss is able to produce more workers early on, giving them a very strong early economy.

The Chrono Boost allows you to get a stronger economy early on and produce more workers than any other race. You generally want to use your first Chrono Boost on Probes when your first pylon is finished. If you are doing a very offensive build, you might want to save up energy for upgrades or units for a timing attack. Examples of this is early Void Rays, Colossus and Warp Gate-techology.

When then midgame starts, and you have your expansion up, remember to continue use your Chrono Boost. Many players forget that they have energy later in the game, and you frequently see a Nexus with 200 energy. That is 8 Chrono Boosts that can save more than two minutes of productiontime. Remember that you can Chrono Boost your Warp Gates, reducing the cooldown. This is very useful when you need to produce a lot of units in a short time, or when you reach a new technology.

Gateways and Warp Gates

The Gateways of protoss can be upgraded to Warp Gates after you have finished the research in your Cybernetics Core. This upgrade is something you want to get as Protoss, no matter which build you are going. The Warp Gates allows you to warp in units instantly instead of waiting for them to be built. You can also place them anywhere you have a power field, generated by a Pylon or Warp Prism. The Warp Gates allows you to quickly react to aggression and make units where they are needed.

Warp Gates: Warp Gates allows protoss to build units wherever they want. Using Chrono Boost on the Warp Gates decreases the cooldown, allowing units to warp in faster.

When units are warped in with Warp Gates, they use 5 seconds to warp in. Instead of build time, the Warp Gates have a cooldown before you can use them again. This cooldown is lower than the build time of the units from a Gateway.

The Warp Gates can be used in many ways. The most important feature is that you can always get your units at once, instead of waiting for them to build. This is important if you are being attacked and need them quickly. When you warp them in, you also get them at the same time, no matter the cooldown caused by the units. You can use Warp Prisms to warp in units close to or inside your enemys base, reinforcing your army or harassing the enemy. This is often a vital part of a Dark Templar-attack.

An important concept related to Warp Gates are Proxy-Pylons. This is a Pylon placed outside your base, preferably somewhat hard to find for the enemy. A Proxy-Pylon allows you to warp in your units almost anywhere on the map, and is not force to keep walking them out of your base like other races.

Proxy pylon: By placing a Proxy pylon on the low ground and bringing in a unit with sight, the protoss player is able to warp in units inside the enemy base.

There might be situations where you want to have Gateways instead of Warp Gates, but the general rule is that Warp Gates are better. The problem with Warp Gates is that you have no ability to queue up units, and you have to actively warp in units whenever you want to make them. If you are in a very intensive game, requiring you to do a lot of actions, having Gateways is in some ways better for keeping the production up. You can switch between Warp Gates and Gateways whenever you want to.

The Mighty Mothership

Many new players look at the Mothership and thinks, “Wow, if I get one, I’ll win this game!”. This is usually a mistake, the Protoss Mothership is a mighty unit, but in most cases not a gamechanging unit. Most of all, the technology, cost and supply required doesn’t pay off. If you are at a standstill in a macrogame, you might want to get it to try to break the line with a good Vortex and the ability to cloak your units. Don’t get the Mothership just to get it. The resources and time it takes is usually more valuable spent on other units.

High Templars and Sentries

Protoss has two very interesting spell casters. The Sentry is a early unit you can use to control the enemy army with the Force Fields. Using Force Fields on strategic positions to make a choke or block a ramp can swing the battle in your favor. The Guardian Shield is also useful for any gateway-army, giving all units under the shield another 2 armor against ranged attacks. Using a Sentry for this in the early game can help a lot, expecially against units like Roaches, Stalkers and Marines.

Forcefields: Sentries with Force Field can help both when you want to block your entrance from rushing zerglings, and when you want outnumbered marines to stay a little longer and die.

The High Templar is purely a spell caster, with two very useful abilites. The Feedback, which they have by default, is great against all other units using energy. It will deplete all the energy of the unit, and also damage the unit for an amount equal to the energy removed. You can also remove the energy from a Nexus or Orbital Command with Feedback.

The Psionic Storm has to be researched, but is usually necessary if you are going for High Templars. The Storm will damage all units within an area for 80 damage. This is a powerful attack against units can clump up and are low on health, like Hydralisks, Marines or Sentries. They also work well for harassing workers or taking down flying units like Vikings or Mutalisks. The Psionic Storm costs 75 energy, and it is recommended that you also research Khaydarin Amulet. This will give the High Templars 75 energy when they warp in, allowing them to use Psionic Storm instantly.

Storms, storms, storms! A well-placed storm can make terran players planning on harassing your base cry hard.

Scouting as Protoss

After your first scouting probe has done its job, scouting usually means Observers. Observers are permanently cloaked, allowing them to freely roam around as long as the enemy doesn’t have detection. Keeping one around the entrance of the enemy base and one over the enemy army will usually get you the information you need while they are alive. The Observer in the base will show you what he is building, while the other will follow the army and telling you when he is planning to pushi out or attack.

Observer: The Observer is one of the best units for scouting in the game. Placing it in the right spot can show you everything the enemy is doing.

The Protoss does not have a lot of fast ground units for scouting, but have a few flying units that can do the job. The Pheonix is very fast, allowing you to quickly sweep across the enemy base and seeing what’s going on. Another trick is to use an Hallucination from an Sentry. A hallucination of a Pheonix will have the same speed as the real thing, and might also make the enemy think you are going for air even if you don’t have a single Stargate.

Harassing as Protoss

The most obvious way to harass with Protoss is using the Warp Gate technology in combination with Warp Prisms to warp in units behind enemy lines. This allows you to attack the enemy at places where they are not prepared. If you use Dark Templars they also have to get detection to be able to stop the harassment. With a few DTs you might be able to take down vital buildings. If you warp in two High Templars, you might be able to take down most of the workers in a mining base with the storms. After that you can combine them into an Archon to try to take out the rest.

Harrasing with DTs: Using Dark Templars with the support of Zealots for harassment is effective. They will melt the workers away in no time.

Another way to harass is using flying units. While Void Rays are slow, they can be deadly if left alone for a short while. If the Prismatic Beam is charged, they will quickly take out both workers and buildings, and maybe even reinforcing units. Another air unit often used for harassment is Pheonix. If you are using the Graviton Beam to lift up workers, a group of about 4-5 Pheonixes can quickly take out most workers in a base. This is popular against Zerg, who usually only use one Queen as defense. Remember that investing in 4-5 Pheonixes takes a lot of resources, so make sure the investment is worth it and that you can also use the Pheonixes in combination with your army.

Rushing as Protoss

Protoss has a few options for rushing the enemy. The most cheesy and all-in build of this is Cannon-rushing. This means you are building only a Forge, Cannons and Pylons. You place the cannons inside the enemy base, just outside the sight range. Cannon-rushing usually only work on lower levels of the ladder.

2-Gate Rush: By building two gateways and using chrono boost on them, the protoss can mass up a lot of zealots early in the game.

A safer way to rush is using Zealots. Zealot is most durable and powerful of the basic units, making them very powerful early on. Two other rushes or early pressure-builds are Void Ray-rushing and 4-Warp Gate. The 4-Warp Gate is one of the most popular ways to put early pressure on the enemy, allowing you a strong economy at the same time.