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Recently I got into Starcraft 2 again [before hand I was extremely casual]. I'm currently top silver trying to get into gold. I beat gold/silver players frequently but do not get promoted. I then come up against the odd Platinum player, one whom I beat but the rest I lose then all my progress to gold is gone. Anyway... I'm really, really struggling against Protoss.

Currently TVT is my best match up, but I hate it. TVZ is fun and i'm not too bad. TVP is frustrating and difficult. This is personal, I'm not whining about balance like most people seem to be.

My problem comes from not being able to beat Protoss in fights, and when I do - they remake an army faster than I can continue with the advantage. I ensure I have more upgrades, Ghosts for EMP and I stutter step from zealots and focus collosi. I generally go for unorthodox builds so I am not easy to scout/read but it generally involves 2rax - factory - expand + starport + 3 rax and so on....I obviously never stick to one build vs everything but that is broad. I will normally go for early ghosts vs Protoss and I can beat them in early fights.

I have read that harass is key in TVP but my harass tends to get wiped out pretty quickly because Protoss units are one to one more powerful than Terran ones and the Protoss player seems to have too many units out too fast with warp gate and Chrono. I find four gate/three gate pushes very difficult to deal with, I bunker up when they do that and it's generally 50-50 if i'll lose. Macro games I find near impossible. I go for a nice mix of marines and marauders, ensure I have medivacs and sometimes siege tanks depending on what the toss has. I have vikings if they have collosi and always ghosts as mentioned before.

Sentries are really problematic for me, forcefields wipe out half my forces in fights and the shield is a real problem for me when attacking the rest of the army. Generally from my games I have far higher APM than the toss in fights and about the same or slightly slower when not. Even when the EMP's take all the shields off blobbed toss units they still feel too tanky, I'm not sure what I need to build.

What am I doing wrong? Is there anything you can gather from that i'm missing out or doing horribly wrong?

Thanks for reading and i'd love some help. :)

Some replays might help us analyse your overal gameplan to see what you are doing wrong.

From what you say you are doing the right kind of strategies and trying to engage correctly, so it's just a case of get better at doing it and you'll win more often. If you are losing to a toss army after you EMP it, then that's like saying 'He dropped storms on my whole army but I still won the fight.' If that is happening, he just has way more stuff than you.

As with 99% of terrans on this forum, you need to harras more. From the 10 min mark to the 16 min mark you need to harrass and expand.

Use drops to lure his army away from the natural then stim in with the bulk of your army to get probe/nexus.

And even if one drop dies, dont stop trying. Most terrans try once and if it dies they just give up, letting the toss max out and enter the late game unphased. If you dont do damage in the 10min to 16min mark, then you will loose.

People dont complain about TvZ because they know they need to harass. It's exactly the same with TvP. Dont harass = loose

Some ideas: Drop as madman (like two drops at once while pushing); try some powerful all-ins like 1/1/1; banshee/marine (raven) is somewhat nasty to deal with too; doomdrops into main are quite strong too, because of lots of chokes in toss base (unless he simcities); I have also troubles with early pushes off two bases, because marauders are very very strong until chargelots or higher tech.

I can't really tell without replays or more specific information. I am on the same level as you and recently my TvP improved by a LOT from my worst (by far) matchup to my best thanks to applying one simple overall principle that i partly learned from watching a few TvP day 9 dailes:

Once collosus and storm are out things get way more difficult, but teching to those is pretty expensive for toss. At the same time fighting with low tier units favors terran by a large margin.

So dont let them tech there freely. Make him spend his gas on sentries and stalkers rather than teching. If he fails to do so, he will just die. If he doesnt he is not going to be able to afford a lot of tech. I'd advice to not go for expensive units such as ghost early on, but mainly marines with some marauders, medivacs obviously and maybe tanks (unitl they get blink, charge or coll). I usually go for a 1 base attack and expand behind that when i move out (1-1-1, with all the marines i could afford, 3 tanks and 2 medivacs (or sometimes 2 banshees) at around 8:30). For tosses on our level this is really difficult to hold if they expand themselves. Almost always this attack will do significant damage (e.g. kill the natural). you only need to make sure that your army is not caught out of position on the middle of the map against toss one base play, so scout. You really have to be able to siege your tanks in a good position. Try to lure stalkers in the tank line and prevent zealots from getting to your units becasue of splash. Medivacs or banshees are very useful to provide sight up the ramp or to divert the attention of the main army.

another way to apply this principle is to do drops to snipe particularly the robo bay or to divert the attention of their main army. If they move their army out of position you can then move in with your army to do an attack.

Change race, then wait for heart of the swarm = profit

22/05/2012 20:23Posted by OkamaQueen

Change race, then wait for heart of the swarm = profit

Or learn to play, may be faster actually.