Three years of liberty: The history of Protoss part 2
Contents
I. The start of 2012
II. Genius's last peak
III. The StarTale explosion
IV. GSL final for the ages: Mvp vs Squirtle
V. Parting's revenge
VI. The charging elephant: Rain
VII. Going into HotS: 2013
VIII. Patching protoss: 2010-2012
Part One
Written by: Cyniko
A huge shift of concern: The start of 2012Genius, Squirtle, Seed, Parting, Rain
Since 2010, the matchup that generally gave protoss the most headaches and troubles was PvT. However, with the extremely popular 1-1-1 and variations of it subsiding due to immortal range being buffed by just 1 in September 2011, PvT was now stabilizing in many ways. There would be a few more developments in the match-up, but it was more or less “figured out.” PvP was still essentially an educated coin-flip, but it was generally accepted that it was the weakest match-up in all of StarCraft 2. Phoenix builds and Robotics expand builds were starting to help the cause, so not all hope was lost.
Credit: Carbot AnimationsThis brings us to Aiur’s on-going struggle with the Swarm. PvZ had not been an “easy” match-up, but one that almost always had the easy option of executing the “all-in of the month” to at least a 50% winrate. If protoss wanted to go full macro, it was definitely more challenging once the broodlord and infestor composition started to gain popularity in 2011. For most of Aiur’s warriors, the best option in macro-based play was a lucky Archon toilet, of course.
However, 2012 was the start of an era where zergs were not only getting stronger with the ultimate late-game composition, but they were getting stronger at scouting and preparing for any variation of pressure before they got there. Pros and ladder warriors alike were starting to scratch their heads. If macro-based play was a gamble on an Archon toilet, and all-ins were starting to get scouted and crushed more and more each day, what was a protoss to do? For this piece, we turn to the best in Korea to see what was happening at the tip-top levels.
Genius's last peak
You might be surprised that Genius hasn’t been mentioned yet. He was one of the staples in the GSL, and had a lot of innovative builds and strong performances throughout. However, in the start of 2012 he had a chance to really set himself apart from the pack in a PvZ finals that would tell the tale of protoss all across the world. A Blizzcon Champion and a self-proclaimed ‘Genius’ could not gain any real ground in figuring out how to play PvZ solidly.
Photo by: Player's CutIn the first GSL Finals of 2012, he went up against his teammate and unstoppable zerg at the time, DongRaeGu. Now, teammate matches take on a whole new aspect of knowing each other’s styles and builds, and many thought Genius would be able to use this to formulate strong mind games to his advantage. But it wasn’t enough, and while we did see an entertaining finals overall, there was no lesson to be learned except that Aiur was in trouble.
In terms of his actual play, Genius did mix a simple blink stalker all-in for a win, but he also showed that he had graduated from his typically gimmicky style. An intense macro-based Game 6 on Crossfire was one of the most suspenseful and underrated in a GSL Finals History, and it came down to DRG’s last six mutalisks.
Unforutnately for Genius and the rest of protoss, his service was more or less done in Wings of Liberty. I salute you good sir, thank you for your service.
DRG played a Mutalisk-heavy style in the first finals of GSL 2012, and in Game 6 he was able to lock up the title away from Genius in one of the most suspenseful base-trade scenarios in GSL Finals History. The screencap on the right is the final engagement, it came down to those last few units.
The StarTale explosion - Squirtle and PartinG
Parting doing a variation of his triple-nexus build against ForGG in the GSL 2012 Season 2 Ro32. In this case, he was just forcing bunkers and SCV pulls, it was a flexible and powerful build at the time.
Remember When: Naniwa and SaSe started using the double geyser build with two probes in each that protoss players all around the world embrace in PvT now? The “Expandiwa” or “2-BaSe” as Artosis liked to call it.Since the efforts on figuring out PvZ seemed to be futile, Protoss needed to gain a stronger foothold in the other match-ups to stand any real chance to stay afloat. PvT was stabilizing, but there was nobody truly dominating the match-up just yet, but that was about to change.
In GSL Season 2 2012, there were only two zerg players in the round of 16. Two. With seven protoss and seven terran players filling the remaining 14 slots, it was a golden opportunity for Aiur to seize front and center stage once again. Protoss couldn’t figure out PvZ effectively, but two Startale players were eating terran players up for breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m talking about Squirtle and PartinG of course, along with foreign hope Naniwa who managed to make it to the GSL Round of 8 where he fell to IMMvp.
Now remember, before PartinG became infamous in the PvZ matchup, he created the triple nexus into mass gateway build against terran on the map Daybreak. Parting displayed such a dominant brute-force grip on the match-up similar to when MC took his first GSL title. He had this flexibility in his builds to either macro overwhelming gateway forces or just slam down the natural before a terran even saw their first medevac.
As strong as Parting was, he was also young and cocky, and in an interview regarding his upcoming match against #1 terran IMMvp, he said “Terrans are a free meal to me and that’s the case for whomever.” No free meal for you this time boy, because Mvp displayed superior experience and build choices, and moved on to face the other top Startale protoss, Squirtle.
The best GSL finals in all of WoL: Mvp vs Squirtle
If you want to debate that the GSL Season 2 2012 Finals between ST_Squirtle and IMMvp was not the best GSL finals in the history of Wings of Liberty, that’s fine. I’ve watched them all, and I was lucky enough to be there in person for this one. For pure entertainment value, this was the best one with enough excitement and tension to make any nerd giggle. Even though ST_Squirtle didn’t become a defining hero for protoss that day, he did show us something special.
Now before you move onto the arguably the most famous moment in all of Wings of Liberty, I want to mention this entire series was pretty incredible starting from game four. I think game six of this series was just as exciting and tense as game five, so if you haven’t seen it in a while, go watch it.
Now, here’s the famous clip from game 5 on Metropolis, in what many consider the most climatic moment in all of Wings of Liberty. If your jaw didn’t drop when you first saw this, you probably don’t have a soul. The phrase “nerd-chills” has never been more appropriate than at this very moment.
Remember When: In the Worst GSL Finals of all time, Seed was the second protoss player to ever win a GSL title against MC in the only PvP GSL finals? You would think since this is the history of protoss it would get more mention, but that entire Monseiur J ‘I hate you’ season of GSL left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I hate them. I’d rather just forget it ever happened.
Parting’s Revenge: This Time, It’s PvZersonal
Remember when: Parting faced CombatEX at the WCG 2012 and CombatEX actually took a game off of the Korean Beast? I found myself cheering for that cheesy bastard. PvZ was still a complete mess after the first half of 2012, and besides (relatively) strong efforts from players like Liquid’Hero to fully utilize the upgraded Warp prisms to harass the immobile infestor/broodlord composition, there was no “standard” style that was yielding true success. That would all change once we hopped aboard the Soul Train.
Now before Parting refined the build and made it his own dominant force, he and his teammate Squirtle were using variations of it. Artosis likes to say that Squirtle is the brains behind a lot of Parting’s success, but what does he know.
Parting’s persistent and dominant use of this build did to PvZ what the 1-1-1 had done to PvT. You must scout for it, you must prepare for it perfectly, and if you let it show up to your front door, you’ve already lost.
Many would argue that it is the most powerful build in all of Wings of Liberty, and it left zergs completely dumbfounded. For the first few months and beyond, you could scout and know exactly what’s going on, but with good execution from the protoss, it was still extremely difficult to stop. And with Parting’s execution and warp-prism pickup micro, it was damn near impossible. And because of this, he started winning tournaments and making money. He won the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and WCG 2012, partly thanks to the powerhouse build.
Step 1: Make Immortals, Sentries, Stalkers, Warp Prisms and push
Step 2: Wave Korean Flag around as you just won $25,000, smiling because you won $100,000 a few weeks ago at the Battle.net World Championship
An elephant comes charging - SKT Rain
Rain brought an aspect to protoss that we hadn’t seen in a very long time, a seemingly solid, observer-heavy, macro-based style of play that seemed godly. So the concept of the “Elephant in the Room” had been sitting with the Starcraft 2 Community for some time. Many had been hyped and fallen just as quickly, showing no real results. At this point, with players like Flash, Jaedong, and every other Brood War pro switching over, the prophecy was either going to come true or not. And for the most part, it didn’t really take off like some thought it would. With that said, one kid stepped forward very quickly and showed that maybe the way protoss was being played was just plain unprofessional.
What can I say about this kid, SK Telecom’s Rain, he’s just an absolute monster. I’m not going to go into great depths about why he is just so damn good since that would be a 10-page piece in itself, but he is. He brought an aspect to protoss that we hadn’t seen in a very long time, a seemingly solid, observer-heavy, macro-based style of play that seemed godly. He was winning games with an informed and reactionary style of play, a style that many thought was a “weaker” way to play the race, at least amongst the top Koreans.
He delivered incredible performances in the 2012 OSL Season 1 beating DRG in the finals 4-1, the 2012 WCS Asia Finals beating Parting 2-0, and the 2012 GSL Season 4 taking a slim loss to IMMvp in the Quarterfinals 3-2. This made the kid an unprecedented run at a Double Royal Road Achieivement, and fell just a tiny bit short when it came to the GSL, but triumphed in the OSL.
He showed strong DT expand builds that were safe, he showed templar-heavy PvT late-game with each base beautifully defended with cannons and templars on stretched out maps like Whirlwind. He showed incredibly smart build choices based on his opponents, but not blind counter all-ins. He was an inspirational player, and one that many thought would be the defining protoss until the end of Wings.
However, even though he came charging through and did provide legitimately amazing results, he too was deflated by the end of Wings. While he’s still an incredible player, his results after this little burst didn’t sing as loudly as many expected, and all I can say is I can’t wait to see this kid in HoTS.
Going into Heart of the Swarm: 2013
It’s been a bumpy road for protoss, and one that has never had a clear answer as to whether it would become a complete race. Terran was always considered to be the most “complete” race according to Blizzard and many others, and Zerg’s skill ceiling proved to be as high as everyone expected. At many points, protoss fell into this gimmicky spot that many expected, but they also proved to be dynamic enough to create these great memories in the past 3 years. I know I missed so many great moments, feel free to post some that you remember in the comments below.
In the start of 2013, MC rose up once again in the GSL to show some immaculate and well-thought out skytoss play, and with the power of the Tempest and the buffed void rays in HoTS, we should be seeing a lot more of that. The meta-game has already shifted rapidly in HoTS, but will the new units for all three races prove to be enough to pull protoss out of their awkward funk and become a complete race?
Patching Protoss: 2010-2012
Written by: Tossinator
Since Wings of Liberty first launched Protoss has had it’s moments of triumph as well as defeat. A race whose builds mainly consist of different all ins, however in lieu of this it is a race that many players including myself deeply love.
Immediately after SC2's releasem Protoss saw moderate success on the ladder and in tournaments as with the development of the dreaded “4 gate” Protoss had a solid form of taking out opponents. Blizzard took note that this build was just a little too good, so patch 1.3.3. was released with a heavy focus on nerfing 4 gates. Not only was their research time increased by twenty seconds, but the power radius of pylons was also reduced by one. At the same time, Sentries' build time was downed by five seconds and in the process gave Protoss a way to not so heavily rely on warp gates to survive into the mid game and excel in the PvP match up with a simple two gateways and a robotics facility. Archon's increased range and their Massive subtype, on the other hand, made the unit viable in all three match-ups and it quickly became the staple front-line tank in toss compositions.
After the massive patch Protoss had a difficult time figuring out its place since they could not match Zerg’s macro and the need for variety of all-ins arose. In the PvT match-up Protoss were having problems since Immortal’s had no utility in late game engagements. A simple plus one range to the Immortal’s attack was given to fix this.
This, however, did more than just fixing the unit, it made it amazing, giving immortals the same range as Stalkers in PvP match-ups thus making the “Two gate Robo” build even more viable. In PvZ it gave Protoss a hard counter to Roaches and in and in turn helped pave the way for PartinG to develop the “Sentry Immortal all in”. Also included in Patch 1.4.0 was a boost in the acceleration of the Mothership being increased from .3 to 1.375, making it much easier for Protoss to engage a maxed out Zerg Brood lord/Infestor army by giving the Mothership much needed mobility, allowing for easier Vortex usage, especially against large Zerg armies.
A good amount of time after patch 1.4.0 Blizzard wanted to make Protoss air more viable. Thus came patch 1.4.3 that gave Protoss the Anion Pulse-Crystals upgrade, allowing Phoenix’s to be an even better counter to Mutalisks. In spite of this, however, most Protoss would still go Robotics Facility instead of Stargate. Going down the Stargate tech path just didn’t set a Protoss up well enough for the mid game, and so this strategy was left mostly unused.
I. The start of 2012
II. Genius's last peak
III. The StarTale explosion
IV. GSL final for the ages: Mvp vs Squirtle
V. Parting's revenge
VI. The charging elephant: Rain
VII. Going into HotS: 2013
VIII. Patching protoss: 2010-2012
Part One
Written by: Cyniko
A huge shift of concern: The start of 2012Genius, Squirtle, Seed, Parting, Rain
Since 2010, the matchup that generally gave protoss the most headaches and troubles was PvT. However, with the extremely popular 1-1-1 and variations of it subsiding due to immortal range being buffed by just 1 in September 2011, PvT was now stabilizing in many ways. There would be a few more developments in the match-up, but it was more or less “figured out.” PvP was still essentially an educated coin-flip, but it was generally accepted that it was the weakest match-up in all of StarCraft 2. Phoenix builds and Robotics expand builds were starting to help the cause, so not all hope was lost.
Credit: Carbot AnimationsThis brings us to Aiur’s on-going struggle with the Swarm. PvZ had not been an “easy” match-up, but one that almost always had the easy option of executing the “all-in of the month” to at least a 50% winrate. If protoss wanted to go full macro, it was definitely more challenging once the broodlord and infestor composition started to gain popularity in 2011. For most of Aiur’s warriors, the best option in macro-based play was a lucky Archon toilet, of course.
However, 2012 was the start of an era where zergs were not only getting stronger with the ultimate late-game composition, but they were getting stronger at scouting and preparing for any variation of pressure before they got there. Pros and ladder warriors alike were starting to scratch their heads. If macro-based play was a gamble on an Archon toilet, and all-ins were starting to get scouted and crushed more and more each day, what was a protoss to do? For this piece, we turn to the best in Korea to see what was happening at the tip-top levels.
Genius's last peak
You might be surprised that Genius hasn’t been mentioned yet. He was one of the staples in the GSL, and had a lot of innovative builds and strong performances throughout. However, in the start of 2012 he had a chance to really set himself apart from the pack in a PvZ finals that would tell the tale of protoss all across the world. A Blizzcon Champion and a self-proclaimed ‘Genius’ could not gain any real ground in figuring out how to play PvZ solidly.
Photo by: Player's CutIn the first GSL Finals of 2012, he went up against his teammate and unstoppable zerg at the time, DongRaeGu. Now, teammate matches take on a whole new aspect of knowing each other’s styles and builds, and many thought Genius would be able to use this to formulate strong mind games to his advantage. But it wasn’t enough, and while we did see an entertaining finals overall, there was no lesson to be learned except that Aiur was in trouble.
In terms of his actual play, Genius did mix a simple blink stalker all-in for a win, but he also showed that he had graduated from his typically gimmicky style. An intense macro-based Game 6 on Crossfire was one of the most suspenseful and underrated in a GSL Finals History, and it came down to DRG’s last six mutalisks.
Unforutnately for Genius and the rest of protoss, his service was more or less done in Wings of Liberty. I salute you good sir, thank you for your service.
DRG played a Mutalisk-heavy style in the first finals of GSL 2012, and in Game 6 he was able to lock up the title away from Genius in one of the most suspenseful base-trade scenarios in GSL Finals History. The screencap on the right is the final engagement, it came down to those last few units.
The StarTale explosion - Squirtle and PartinG
Parting doing a variation of his triple-nexus build against ForGG in the GSL 2012 Season 2 Ro32. In this case, he was just forcing bunkers and SCV pulls, it was a flexible and powerful build at the time.
Remember When: Naniwa and SaSe started using the double geyser build with two probes in each that protoss players all around the world embrace in PvT now? The “Expandiwa” or “2-BaSe” as Artosis liked to call it.Since the efforts on figuring out PvZ seemed to be futile, Protoss needed to gain a stronger foothold in the other match-ups to stand any real chance to stay afloat. PvT was stabilizing, but there was nobody truly dominating the match-up just yet, but that was about to change.
In GSL Season 2 2012, there were only two zerg players in the round of 16. Two. With seven protoss and seven terran players filling the remaining 14 slots, it was a golden opportunity for Aiur to seize front and center stage once again. Protoss couldn’t figure out PvZ effectively, but two Startale players were eating terran players up for breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I’m talking about Squirtle and PartinG of course, along with foreign hope Naniwa who managed to make it to the GSL Round of 8 where he fell to IMMvp.
Now remember, before PartinG became infamous in the PvZ matchup, he created the triple nexus into mass gateway build against terran on the map Daybreak. Parting displayed such a dominant brute-force grip on the match-up similar to when MC took his first GSL title. He had this flexibility in his builds to either macro overwhelming gateway forces or just slam down the natural before a terran even saw their first medevac.
As strong as Parting was, he was also young and cocky, and in an interview regarding his upcoming match against #1 terran IMMvp, he said “Terrans are a free meal to me and that’s the case for whomever.” No free meal for you this time boy, because Mvp displayed superior experience and build choices, and moved on to face the other top Startale protoss, Squirtle.
The best GSL finals in all of WoL: Mvp vs Squirtle
If you want to debate that the GSL Season 2 2012 Finals between ST_Squirtle and IMMvp was not the best GSL finals in the history of Wings of Liberty, that’s fine. I’ve watched them all, and I was lucky enough to be there in person for this one. For pure entertainment value, this was the best one with enough excitement and tension to make any nerd giggle. Even though ST_Squirtle didn’t become a defining hero for protoss that day, he did show us something special.
Now before you move onto the arguably the most famous moment in all of Wings of Liberty, I want to mention this entire series was pretty incredible starting from game four. I think game six of this series was just as exciting and tense as game five, so if you haven’t seen it in a while, go watch it.
Now, here’s the famous clip from game 5 on Metropolis, in what many consider the most climatic moment in all of Wings of Liberty. If your jaw didn’t drop when you first saw this, you probably don’t have a soul. The phrase “nerd-chills” has never been more appropriate than at this very moment.
Remember When: In the Worst GSL Finals of all time, Seed was the second protoss player to ever win a GSL title against MC in the only PvP GSL finals? You would think since this is the history of protoss it would get more mention, but that entire Monseiur J ‘I hate you’ season of GSL left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I hate them. I’d rather just forget it ever happened.
Parting’s Revenge: This Time, It’s PvZersonal
Remember when: Parting faced CombatEX at the WCG 2012 and CombatEX actually took a game off of the Korean Beast? I found myself cheering for that cheesy bastard. PvZ was still a complete mess after the first half of 2012, and besides (relatively) strong efforts from players like Liquid’Hero to fully utilize the upgraded Warp prisms to harass the immobile infestor/broodlord composition, there was no “standard” style that was yielding true success. That would all change once we hopped aboard the Soul Train.
Now before Parting refined the build and made it his own dominant force, he and his teammate Squirtle were using variations of it. Artosis likes to say that Squirtle is the brains behind a lot of Parting’s success, but what does he know.
Parting’s persistent and dominant use of this build did to PvZ what the 1-1-1 had done to PvT. You must scout for it, you must prepare for it perfectly, and if you let it show up to your front door, you’ve already lost.
Many would argue that it is the most powerful build in all of Wings of Liberty, and it left zergs completely dumbfounded. For the first few months and beyond, you could scout and know exactly what’s going on, but with good execution from the protoss, it was still extremely difficult to stop. And with Parting’s execution and warp-prism pickup micro, it was damn near impossible. And because of this, he started winning tournaments and making money. He won the 2012 Battle.net World Championship and WCG 2012, partly thanks to the powerhouse build.
Step 1: Make Immortals, Sentries, Stalkers, Warp Prisms and push
Step 2: Wave Korean Flag around as you just won $25,000, smiling because you won $100,000 a few weeks ago at the Battle.net World Championship
An elephant comes charging - SKT Rain
Rain brought an aspect to protoss that we hadn’t seen in a very long time, a seemingly solid, observer-heavy, macro-based style of play that seemed godly. So the concept of the “Elephant in the Room” had been sitting with the Starcraft 2 Community for some time. Many had been hyped and fallen just as quickly, showing no real results. At this point, with players like Flash, Jaedong, and every other Brood War pro switching over, the prophecy was either going to come true or not. And for the most part, it didn’t really take off like some thought it would. With that said, one kid stepped forward very quickly and showed that maybe the way protoss was being played was just plain unprofessional.
What can I say about this kid, SK Telecom’s Rain, he’s just an absolute monster. I’m not going to go into great depths about why he is just so damn good since that would be a 10-page piece in itself, but he is. He brought an aspect to protoss that we hadn’t seen in a very long time, a seemingly solid, observer-heavy, macro-based style of play that seemed godly. He was winning games with an informed and reactionary style of play, a style that many thought was a “weaker” way to play the race, at least amongst the top Koreans.
He delivered incredible performances in the 2012 OSL Season 1 beating DRG in the finals 4-1, the 2012 WCS Asia Finals beating Parting 2-0, and the 2012 GSL Season 4 taking a slim loss to IMMvp in the Quarterfinals 3-2. This made the kid an unprecedented run at a Double Royal Road Achieivement, and fell just a tiny bit short when it came to the GSL, but triumphed in the OSL.
He showed strong DT expand builds that were safe, he showed templar-heavy PvT late-game with each base beautifully defended with cannons and templars on stretched out maps like Whirlwind. He showed incredibly smart build choices based on his opponents, but not blind counter all-ins. He was an inspirational player, and one that many thought would be the defining protoss until the end of Wings.
However, even though he came charging through and did provide legitimately amazing results, he too was deflated by the end of Wings. While he’s still an incredible player, his results after this little burst didn’t sing as loudly as many expected, and all I can say is I can’t wait to see this kid in HoTS.
Going into Heart of the Swarm: 2013
It’s been a bumpy road for protoss, and one that has never had a clear answer as to whether it would become a complete race. Terran was always considered to be the most “complete” race according to Blizzard and many others, and Zerg’s skill ceiling proved to be as high as everyone expected. At many points, protoss fell into this gimmicky spot that many expected, but they also proved to be dynamic enough to create these great memories in the past 3 years. I know I missed so many great moments, feel free to post some that you remember in the comments below.
In the start of 2013, MC rose up once again in the GSL to show some immaculate and well-thought out skytoss play, and with the power of the Tempest and the buffed void rays in HoTS, we should be seeing a lot more of that. The meta-game has already shifted rapidly in HoTS, but will the new units for all three races prove to be enough to pull protoss out of their awkward funk and become a complete race?
Patching Protoss: 2010-2012
Written by: Tossinator
Since Wings of Liberty first launched Protoss has had it’s moments of triumph as well as defeat. A race whose builds mainly consist of different all ins, however in lieu of this it is a race that many players including myself deeply love.
Immediately after SC2's releasem Protoss saw moderate success on the ladder and in tournaments as with the development of the dreaded “4 gate” Protoss had a solid form of taking out opponents. Blizzard took note that this build was just a little too good, so patch 1.3.3. was released with a heavy focus on nerfing 4 gates. Not only was their research time increased by twenty seconds, but the power radius of pylons was also reduced by one. At the same time, Sentries' build time was downed by five seconds and in the process gave Protoss a way to not so heavily rely on warp gates to survive into the mid game and excel in the PvP match up with a simple two gateways and a robotics facility. Archon's increased range and their Massive subtype, on the other hand, made the unit viable in all three match-ups and it quickly became the staple front-line tank in toss compositions.
After the massive patch Protoss had a difficult time figuring out its place since they could not match Zerg’s macro and the need for variety of all-ins arose. In the PvT match-up Protoss were having problems since Immortal’s had no utility in late game engagements. A simple plus one range to the Immortal’s attack was given to fix this.
This, however, did more than just fixing the unit, it made it amazing, giving immortals the same range as Stalkers in PvP match-ups thus making the “Two gate Robo” build even more viable. In PvZ it gave Protoss a hard counter to Roaches and in and in turn helped pave the way for PartinG to develop the “Sentry Immortal all in”. Also included in Patch 1.4.0 was a boost in the acceleration of the Mothership being increased from .3 to 1.375, making it much easier for Protoss to engage a maxed out Zerg Brood lord/Infestor army by giving the Mothership much needed mobility, allowing for easier Vortex usage, especially against large Zerg armies.
A good amount of time after patch 1.4.0 Blizzard wanted to make Protoss air more viable. Thus came patch 1.4.3 that gave Protoss the Anion Pulse-Crystals upgrade, allowing Phoenix’s to be an even better counter to Mutalisks. In spite of this, however, most Protoss would still go Robotics Facility instead of Stargate. Going down the Stargate tech path just didn’t set a Protoss up well enough for the mid game, and so this strategy was left mostly unused.
