Starcraft 2: Protoss Units – Impressions & Strategy

The third and final race in Starcraft 2, the Protoss, is packed with powerful units and unique abilities.  Read on for our full recap of everything that has changed since Starcraft 1!

Also read: Zerg Units – Impressions & Strategy

Terran Units – Impressions & Strategy

If you’re familiar with the original Starcraft and its Protoss units, you already know that this race has expensive units, which take a long time to build.  However, you do get your money’s worth, as the Protoss units tend to pack a serious punch.  There are several new units, but the Protoss structures are more or less unchanged.  That is not to say the winning strategies for  this race haven’t changed, though.  Let’s take a look at the tech tree though to get a peek at what is new.  Give it a click to view a full-size version:

In the single player story of Starcraft 1, the game concluded with the destruction of the Protoss homeworld, Aiur.  For this reason, many of the new units are styled around the Dark Templar tribe, and their surviving home world of Shakuras.

Units returning from Starcraft 1 are:

• Probe
• Zealot
• High Templar
• Dark Templar
• Observer
• Carrier
• Archon

Unlike the other races in Starcraft 2, these returning units have had very little changes made to them.  The Zealots have a new “Charge” upgrade, giving them a quick speed burst when they need to close the gap between themselves and enemy units.  This is useful for taking down retreating units, as the Zealots can charge forward and catch up with fleeing enemies.  The only other notable change is to Carriers, as they can now auto-cast the creation of Interceptors.

New Units:

• Sentry:
  • A support unit, the Sentry is available early in the game, and comes with two abilities.  The first is “Force Field”, which lasts for 15 seconds, and completely blocks movements through the area where it is placed.  This can be used to create false choke points.  The second is “Guardian Shield”, which is a large, 15-second, +2 shield against ranged attacks.  The shield is quite large, and two should cover every unit in most armies.  The final ability is “Hallucination”, and much be researched separately.  This allows the Sentry to create false copies of units to distract their opponents.  These copies last 60 seconds.

• Stalker:
  • Also available early in the game, the Stalker is a Dark Templar influenced version of the Dragoon from Starcraft I.  They essentially work the same way, providing ranged attacks versus both ground and air.  Where the Stalker really differs, though, is when the “Blink” ability is researched.  Blink allows Stalkers to teleport a short distance once every 10 seconds.  If the player has sight, Blink can even be used to teleport up onto cliffs, which is a very useful tactic to enter an enemy’s base without facing their choke point defenses.  Take a look at these Stalkers in mid-teleport over a cliff and past a Terran Supply Depot wall:

• Immortal:
  • With Stalkers now serving the role of Dragoons, it is explained in the Starcraft II story that all remaining Dragoons where upgraded to Immortals.  The Immortal is an advanced unit produced by the Robotics Facility, and can only attack ground units.  However, it will do so with force.  Immortals are the perfect counter to heavy-hitter units such as the Terran’s Siege Tanks, as their hardened shields reduce all heavy damage attacks by a whopping 10 points.  The catch is that an Immortal’s shields will not activate for lesser attacks, allowing a Zergling or Marine to pass right through the shields and destroy an Immortal fairly quickly.  For this reason, Immortals must be used in conjunction with an escort of Zealots and/or Stalkers.

• Warp Prism:
  • The Warp Prism serves the same role as the old Protoss Shuttle, allowing players to transport ground units via air.  There is a twist to this unit though, as the Warp Prism can transform into an air-based Pylon when not transporting units.  In the Protoss strategy section below, the usefulness of such remote Pylons will be further explained.

• Phoenix:
  • The Protoss air-to-air superiority machine, a group of Phoenix units can devastate any lightly armored enemy air units.  To make up for their lack of a ground attack, the Phoenix may use its Graviton Beam ability to lift an enemy ground unit into the air for 10 seconds.  A few Phoenix units can support a ground assault by temporarily taking the enemy’s best units out of the fight.

• Void Ray:
  • A companion to the Phoenix, the Void Ray can attack both air and ground units, and is also strongest against heavily armored units.  Void Rays attack by focusing a beam of Dark Templar energy onto an enemy.  This attack starts out fairly weak, but grows in damage as the beam stays focused on its target.  Coupled with a bonus against heavy armor, Void Rays are perfect for taking down structures, or big units such as Battlecruisers or Carriers.

• Colossus:
  • The most advanced ground unit in the Protoss arsenal, the Colossus is a four-legged walker reminiscent of the Tripod walkers in “War of the Worlds”.  These units use their high legs to ignore all terrain, allowing them to climb right into enemy bases.  They are also tall enough that enemy air units can attack them!  The Colossus attacks with incredibly powerful dual-lasers, which burn everything in their path.  The range of this unit can also be upgraded by 50%, allowing it to take out enemy defenses from a safe distance.

• Mothership:
  • The most intimidating of all the new units in Starcraft 2 is most definitely the Protoss Mothership.  Expensive, and only available late in the game, there can only be one Mothership at a time for each Protoss player.  This unit is produced from the Nexus, so it does not tie up any of your Stargates during its construction.  The Mothership is just about as powerful as a Carrier, but it can do so much more.  Every unit and structure underneath the Mothership’s wide footprint is automatically cloaked.  It also possesses two special abilities, the first of which is the “Vortex”, which when cast, disables all units in the casting area for a full thirty seconds.  This can easily cut an enemy’s force in half.  The second ability, “Mass Recall”, allows the Protoss player to teleport a large number of units directly under the Mothership’s cloaking field, from anywhere on the map.

Protoss Strategy:

With all of these powerful, yet expensive and slow units, putting together a large Protoss army may seem to be a daunting challenge.  However, there are two abilities that allow the Protoss player to overcome this handicap.  The first is the “Chrono Boost” ability of the Nexus building, which costs a low 25 energy.  This can be used on any Protoss building to speed up its production by 50%, for a period of time.  This is useful early in the game to pump out Probes at a quick pace, allowing you to out-resource your opponents, and negate the fact that your units cost more.  It is also useful late in the game when producing Carriers or a Mothership, which usually would take two minutes or more to build.

The second ability must be researched, and it is the upgrade from Gateway to Warp Gate.  This upgraded structure allows units produced from a Gateway to be warped in anywhere on the map where there is a Pylon present. This is where the added ability of a Warp Prism comes in.  After unloading troops into an enemy base, a Protoss player can transform their Warp Prisms into air-based Pylons, opening up a steady flow of reinforcements.

The Warp Gate also allows any unit to be produced in 5 seconds!  This means those reinforcements will be coming in fast.  However, a cool-down period must be waited out before new units can be produced that is equal to the units normal build time minus 10 seconds.  Still, if a Protoss player is good at micro-managing their Warp Gates, they can cut the build time of every subsequent unit by 5 seconds.  The downside it that you cannot queue units for production in a Warp Gate, but players are notified of any idle Warp Gates by a small icon in their corner of the screen.  This allows the player to select them and start a unit without actually having to scroll back to their home base.

Overall, the Protoss race varies most from the Terran and Zerg in that the strong micro-management skills required to excel at Starcraft are needed more for the production of units, rather than for the timing of offensive maneuvers.