As many of you know PvP on ladder is pretty annoying and mindless, there are very few variations of valid BO and it often gets into a 4gatevs4gate. Maps are also really important as in Steppes going doublegate can be quite decent or in Scrap it is almost impossible to do something that's not 4gate.
The builds I'm pretty confident on using are:
- 3gate robo, the most standard build I play on maps with only 1 small ramp (no scrap, no blistering, possibly jungle basin). It allows me to counter 4gates with sentries and the fast immortal, 3gateblink is also going to lose if you land the first forcefield correctly. Obviously DT play is also going to lose and if your oppo tries to expand you still have some great chances of punishing him once you hit 2-3 colossi (without expanding yourself, 1base colossi vs an oppo who gets tech slower than you is deadly).This build relies on getting your second gas after getting your first zealot (before Cybernetics completes) which makes it obvious to the opponent's scouting probe. Whenever I scout a 2gas I either think of blinkstalkers or that build so it is pretty obvious when someone is doing this.Playing this build can be tricky, you usually want to get a zealot before CC is done, then a stalker (chronoboost only the warpgate research) and then sentries. With the zealot and the stalkers make sure you have no pylons/probes in your base then sit on the top of the ramp and start pumping sentries. With 3 gates and enough sentries you should be able to repel anything until you get your first immortal (if they 4gate getting an immortal and microing decently is pretty much gg). If nothing comes at you, they could still be still going for 3gate blinkstalkers as the timing is usually pretty late but I'd still turtle in my base, maybe sending out a stalker to see if he has gotten an expo or to check is army composition (if it's only stalkers, then it's blink. Get two immortals and either exp or go for the push). If you are versus a mirror build, then skip the immortal and put down robotics bay as soon as you can and start saving gas, warp in only zealots. If he expo's and you aren't behind in eco, a 1base push with two chronoboosted colossi should be enough to win. The 400 minerals really make a difference in those conditions. Something that someone might find hard is pushing when facing 3blinkstalkers: if an open fight you simply destroy him with immortals/colossi but if you leave your base he can sneak up with the higher mobility and force you to come back. That is a very tricky situation which will lead to your opponent getting up 3 bases relatively quickly while you can only stay on 2 and if he gets voidrays+chargelots+blinkstalkers he's even on army composition with you.
- 4gate, well well. I'm trying to avoid using this as much as I can but in certain maps (scrap station, delta quadrant, etc) It's just something you have to do. The BO is pretty simple: 12gate, cc when gate finishes, chrono probes at 10 and at 12, then when you have 16probes on minerals and 3 on gas throw down the other 3gates and stop making probes. Your army composition for your first push should be mostly stalkers with 1-2 zealots: you don't want to make too many zealots in the situations in which he can avoid taking damage from them. On the contrary, when you are deep in his base and you are both pretty high on stalkers count zealots are usually better as they tank and hit more when the opponent is unable to micro against them.
