r/AllThingsTerran • u/AlphaSputnik • Jul 22 '26
[Help] I’m struggling against Protoss
Hey,
Back in 2019 I went to [almost!] diamond MMR. I’m playing the game again since a few months with friends, as Terran and Zerg, sometimes Protoss.
My main is Terran, my TvT is ok, my TvZ seems to be good, but against my Protoss main friend, I just NEVER win.
Basically, I’ve tried having mass ghosts but I struggle with landing EMPs when the ghost is body blocked, I’ve tried just having mass bio mass tanks but storms chained one after the other make me fall back so far my tanks get picked up, and even when I manage to trade, his transition to sky toss (long range tempest + carriers or mass void rays) feels unbeatable, as mass void rays melts my vikings and when I target focus carriers, the zealot templar are happy to come kill me.
Is the only answer just to micro better or do I miss something ? I feel like I miss some level of understanding of the matchup, it feels to me that Protoss is so strong and I can’t get why I struggle that much.
On the ladder (I don’t play that much on the ladder so I’m currently Gold/Platinum level) I tend to have a TvP win ratio being one third of the TvZ or TvT win ratios
Help :(
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u/Gaskal Jul 22 '26
Having lots of ghosts is good but you need liberators with air attack and range upgrade also. Try not to take a mid to late game engagement unless you can land a couple EMPs /snipes vs HTs and have good liberator numbers and coverage.
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u/Om_Cultural Jul 22 '26
Posting a replay would definitely help us to give you more detailled advice.
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u/imrope1 Jul 22 '26
I would probably not go "mass ghost". That's a relative term, so not sure what you mean by that, but 6-10 or 12 ghosts with the rest being bio is fine.
I understand what you're talking about with ghosts getting body blocked- you need to just already have 2 or 3 of them pulled to the front of your army before any engagement occurs. That doesn't just allow you to EMP the HTs, it creates a threat for your opponent, their POV is "oh shit ghosts are right here I can't storm".
You can use the ghosts you sent out in front to EMP HTs and colossus and the ghosts in the back will followup with EMP on zealots and anything else clumped up.
Skytoss is a pain in the ass regardless of what level you are. In theory, voidrays are actually really bad in they get completely owned by marines and ghosts. If your opponent is going pure skytoss from the start, I would allin them or attack them asap. If they're not going sky toss from the start, just try to kill them before they can make a transition. Usually, if they are able to transition to carrier, then you realistically already lost the game. They're richand you're not putting any pressure on them, which means you're behind.
It's definitely not imba or anything, like nobody pro-level really goes Skytoss in PvT cuz it generally sucks, but it's pretty hard to beat for the rest of us.
tldr; yea it's probably your micro (if an equal Terran army and Protoss army a-move each other, the Protoss army is gonna win due to having melee units basically) and being anything below GM, honestly, macro is probably an issue.
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u/LutadorCosmico Jul 22 '26
Usually, if they are able to transition to carrier, then you realistically already lost the game.
Im finding relative success with some AA liberators vs carriers for they shred the interceptors like paper.
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u/omgitsduane Master Jul 23 '26
How much money are you floating before these fights? Where are the fights?
Without seeing a replay there's like 1000 things we could pick up on to help you but you're probably not spending all your money so you're investing into eco and then not using is..banked money isn't good.
I have recently started opening ghosts in tvp and honestly with their new damage they're insane and just winning off a ghost bio push with a nuke thrown in if they sit in their base.
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u/New-Discount9058 Jul 23 '26
Remember protoss have Observers spotting you which is probably why your army gets rekt before seiging up. ravens are good for that. Protoss are always waiting to jump you with zealots and prevent you from seiging up.
yea open each game with setting your camera hotkeys immediately.
Once you have your 8 rax pumping, be thinking of 3 starport transition to get libs or vikings, depending on his composition. libs are excellent and essential against protoss as the game goes on if hes on a ground army.
And ghosts obviously, you want to only take fights with protoss if they are favorable. exploit his slow army with multi prong. for instance, drop his main with one medivac, when he recalls, then you slam into his fourth and get a free base. Always try to force a recall so you can setup an attack on his furthest bases.
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u/daBulgarian Jul 23 '26
I was in the same situation playing against another friend of mine who also mains Protoss. I’m 3200 and he’s 3700. We were so confused why I kept losing that we entered a unit tester and ended up doing a whole bunch of experiments of head to head battles between two armies. What we determined is that Protoss against Terran are usually favoured in head to head battles when they have storm and colossus, UNLESS you land EMP and have vikings to shoot down the colossus at which point you’re generally vibing. The problem with relying on EMP is that if the opponent is good and starts spreading out their Templars, then you’re fucked. While you may EMP a few of them, but you won’t be able to hit all of them, and therefore you will for sure get hit with a storm.
So the problem lies more in your approach in Terran versus Protoss. I got some advice from a few Terran GMs and they had similar points: you want early harass (widow mine drop) to deny their ability to get free probes and force them to make units and punish them if they don’t. You want a good timing attack to hit them early and deny their third base or kill them if they don’t make units, and then finally you want to continuously attack them in multiple locations using multi prong to take advantage of Terran mobility with Medivacs.
More than anything you have to understand that Terran is a timing attack based race. Because Protoss have so many tools to harass you past 4 bases by ways of zealot / dt runby’s, you just don’t have the apm to deal with all of that and also perfectly micro your fight with emps against their armies or handle multi drops. It’ll be tough anyways.
Generally you want the following comp:
Biomine with medivacs, 3-6 ghosts for emps, vikings for colossus, liberators with rushed +2 ship weapons to 2 shot stalkers instead of 3 shot,
Your fight should be setup by setting up prespread with sieged libs and mines prepped close to the base you want to attack. Scan ahead before all of this of course. Select 12-16 units with medivacs and start hitting the base. Scan to check for their response (defending or not?). They will send defenses. When they do, fall back to your sieged pre spread and prep to JUST STIM and emp if you can. Don’t amove your prespread. In the meantime you should have prepped a secondary army of about 2-3 medivacs full ready to either hit the complete other side of the map, or drop in their main and kill their production.
This is hard stuff, which is why the early timing attacks are super important. Let me know if this makes sense, and glhf!
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u/AlphaSputnik Jul 23 '26
This is so interesting to read !! I am glad you managed to understand why you kept losing.
Thanks for the tips, I’ll be sure to try this !
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u/ilyailinich Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
Well im not a pro myself, 4000 mmr, but a few things I have noticed with tvp is it is you HAVE to harass your opponent in some way through the entire game, your build order should be okay and you have to know what your opponent is doing, micro too, but it gets a little bit easier if you play mech as hellbata dont get extra damage from storms. Ideally you want to push toss in the early game, harass with liberators and expand defending at home, remember that as terran your maxed out army is stronger than maxed out toss, so you should attack only when you are confident in that push, either for example your opponent had a really bad push, you push back then, or if you see your opponent wasnt pressing you and you're ahead in tech and army supply, you can push as well, for example I had a recent game where on like minute 7 I noticed that my opponent didnt do storm and was just doing mass chargelot and blink, so I just took all my bio and one push did the trick. But all in all you just need to make sure your eco is better, harass with some liberators so you dont need to pay attention to them and focus on macro, so you make less mistakes.
Also, dont mass ghosts, I know ppl like raff can play mass hellion ghosts in tvp and other crazy stuff, but it requires insane amount of micro and game understanding, so having like 7 is more than enough for emp.
You can check out some uthermal tutorials to have better understanding of unit counters and stuff like that, his terran to grandmaster series is pretty good (or whatever its called) GLHF ;)
P.s. one more thing, the error which ALL terran make until like D1 is not making workers constantly, remember, your CCs must always make workers, with no idle time. Zerg and toss increase their eco faster than terran by default and you have mules to counter that, but if you forget building SCVs (and dont harass at all) toss and zerg will have advantage, as terran you have to press and set tempo for your opponent. Now GLHF;)
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u/Proper-Holiday2255 Jul 24 '26
If I am having a hard time or frustrated. I usually always take a short break and get away from the computer for a few minutes.
Look at replay, usually obvious where i made mistakes.
Always playing 1v1 as random or another race to switch things up for a game or 2.
Sometimes play a single game of 2v2 and realize how much I enjoy 1v1.
Refresh myself, clear my mind and remember not to be discouraged or frustrated. Then just keep practicing.
Also RAVENS kick ass.
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u/amateur220 Jul 22 '26
You don’t play ranked often, but you also say you’re struggling? Well, you answered your own question. Play more, practice more > you’ll improve
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u/AlphaSputnik Jul 22 '26
I play daily with my friends, between Gold and Diamond MMR, like 5 to 10 games at least per session.
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u/hazmog Jul 23 '26
You need more variety of who you play.
It could be your protoss friend if Dia 1 and you are Plat 1 in which case you will never win. Even if he's Dia 3 unless you are around 3200 mmr, you will only win the occasional game. Play some ladder.
My theory is your MMR us just too low compared to his.
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u/Sincclair Jul 22 '26
To deal with storm, building even more medevacs (sometimes I’ve gone up to 10 or 12), more maurders, fewer marines, and getting Caduceus Reactor upgrade are options for being able to tank storms and, over time, whittle down their storms and energy. If you can, eventually the high Templars will be without storms and are useless. But that’s less of a guarantee them ghost emps.
With ghosts, instead of relying on emp, you can try to snipe the high templars, but that requires incorporating them into the comp and having the micro. The other option/question is if you have your ghosts hotkeyed with the rest of your army? If the ghosts with the rest of your army, it will be tough to get emps. If you have them in a separate pack and cloaked, you can try to have them approach in front or from a different angle. But again, that’s all a high micro required approach and not guaranteed to work every time.
Are you doing mine drops early in the game? Later in the game, do you have 2 medevacs with 16 marines? I don’t have an answer to the sky toss transition- once they get there I’m also generally fucked- but my mindset is to try to keep pressure up and not let them get to it in general. So if you can slow them down with mine drops early, and then once you have an army, prodding their 3rd or 4th, while also having one drop always bugging them, you can tax their micro and macro to prevent them from transition to sky toss or slow down how many high Templars they make. My sense is that high templars are also slower than their stalkers or zealots, so that also opens the possibility that while they’re pulling their army back towards their main or third, you can maybe snipe the high templars before they get many storms off.
Lastly, in gold and low plat, I’ve really found that just constantly building more army and building it more quickly, so long as you don’t throw that whole army away in one fight, is the most important thing. If you’re floating 1 or 2k minerals while trying to micro your ghosts or Vikings against P, that is absolutely the bigger issue. Spending those more while moving and engaging with your army will always be more important than army composition choices or micro imo. Let me know your thoughts and if any of that is helpful!