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Protoss Stalker + Void Ray Rush Build

The General Strategy:

This strategy is an early game strategy, designed to get you to the midgame with an advantage over your opponent using stalkers and void rays. After that, I will leave you with some ideas to finish off your opponent, but it ultimately comes down to the situation and personal preference.

The goal of this strategy is to abuse the mobility, range and shield regeneration of very early stalkers, void rays, and warp gates to make it very difficult for the terran to attack you or expand, allowing you to expand, tech, or just win outright. It also allows for a fluid, easy transition into zealot/templar for the mid game, and tends to force the T to get an anti-armoured and anti-air mid-game composition, making your zealot/templar even stronger.

The key is to put constant, non-stop pressure on the T starting at about the 4:30 point, preserving your troops while whittling away theirs, and only engaging in a full battle on your own terms.

To do this, get stalkers quickly and send them to your opponent's ramp as soon as they spawn. You should aim to get them there early enough that only a couple of terran units are made. Push up their ramp and take pot shots at the marines/marauder, or their wall if they pull their troops back, and then just fall back and let your shields recharge; rinse and repeat. The key is to try to hurt as many soldiers as possible (since medivacs are a long way off), and to damage the wall so you can snipe scvs if he goes to repair. Keep reinforcing with more stalkers and do more harass.

Avoid making more than 2 gateways until you have a stargate. It is likely that your opponent's build will skew towards marauders and/or tanks since stalkers are so good against marines and hellions. When resources permit it, tech to void ray (I usually begin my stargate when I have between 2 and 4 stalkers). The void rays tend to start popping when I have approximately 6 stalkers and 3 warp gates. The void rays provide an alternative method of harass, can give vision of the ramp to your stalkers, and can shoot the SD's and barracks that are walling the ramp if they have chosen to put them there. It is so easy to micro your void rays when there are a bunch of stalkers underneath that outrange marines, or if the terran has their own wall blocking their way.

If you continue this harass, and avoid committing to close battles with the terran army, you should gain enough of an advantage to be able to safely expand or tech. Not only that, but you shouldn't lose many units if your micro is crisp, ideally leaving you with an economic and army advantage.

I will talk about specific build orders, tactics, and additional complementary units in the three sections below:

1. The Opening
2. The Harass
3. The Mid-Game Transition


1. The Opening:

There are a couple of openings that you can use which allow you to get that early stalker pressure, and transition into the void ray. You can go with a one-gate cyber stalker opening, which allows you to get your first void ray and warp gates out sooner - or a fast dual-stalker opening which allows you to put on a very strong, early harass in exchange for a slightly slower void ray.

Dual-Stalker Build:

One-Gate Cyber Build:

2. The Harass:

Depending on the map, and your enemy's composition, you will want to do either a stalker-centric harass, or a void-ray-centric harass. All that really means is that you will either have a composition skewed more towards stalkers, or more towards void rays, as a response to what your opponent is doing.

Stalker-Centric Harass

The stalker-centric build is stronger against a walling or marine-heavy terran. The idea is to get stalkers, with some sort of high-ground vision unit (the void ray), that will allow the stalkers to harass your opponent up a ramp. For my reasoning behind the void ray over the phoenix, observer and hallucinate, see here:

My old build, which worked quite well, did not include void rays but instead used hallucinate to give me vision while my stalkers harassed the front. While I could really hurt a walled-in terran, there were a lot of builds that the terran could do that shutdown the straight stalker harass. For that reason, I began to experiment with void rays and found a winner. Not only can void rays provide that vision, but they deal a great deal of damage, cannot take damage from marauders or tanks, and harass from all sides of your opponents base.

Here's the breakdown:

Void ray > Phoenix > Hallucinate > Observer
Warp Prism?

Observer Observers are a great scouting unit and will help deal with any banshee pushes that your opponent may do...but you need to get expensive tech to use them - the robotics facility. You would essentially be spending 50/100 for the observer + the cost of the robotics facility. Great for scouting, but doesn't compliment the stalker harass.

Hallucinate I really like this one since it is so cheap, it lets you stay on gateways units, and lets you get more sentries. Those sentries can not only hallucinate a scout, fake armies, etc. but they can also be used to contain the terran with force fields. You also end up with a larger ground army this way. However, it lacks the harassing potential that phoenixes and void rays have, and allows the terran to sit back a little bit more comfortably.

Phoenix You need several of them to harass well, but to get the phoenixes you need stargate tech, then the 100's of gas and minerals to get the phoenixes, so you better make any harass good enough to offset the smaller army size you will have compared to if you had gotten hallucinate. Generally speaking it doesn't make sense to spend the same amount of money on phoenixes that you could spend on void rays, when they are not dangerous enough to scare a terran into staying in their base. Never mind that they are useless against bio - why use a 150/100 unit to lift a 100/25 marauder that is armoured, when you could just blast them with a void ray? However, that said, there are certain instances when phoenixes may be preferable to void rays - namely if your opponent goes with a 1-1-1 build. Not only that, but if you do the 2-gate into void ray build, you will easily be able to tell if your opponent is going 1-1-1 well before the stargate finishes...so just make a phoenix instead of a void ray. I am admitting right now that I have not tried phoenixes much in PvT as protoss, but many people have sworn to me that phoenixes are great against the 1-1-1 build. It seems intuitive, since phoenixes are strong against vikings and medivacs, and can lift tanks, putting 2/3 of the 1-1-1 structures out of commission. (I really like this idea since enough terrans have read this guide, that when I play PvT some terrans begin fast-teching to starports in anticipation of my void ray before I even throw down a stargate.) Meta-game aside, it seems like the concept has potential, and I would love if anyone who has made this work (or had it fail horribly) could send me their replays to help support the discussion!

Void Ray Void rays can provide the vision for stalkers, they can provide solid harass around the base while drawing units away from the front where your stalkers are, are pretty meaty, and can pack a punch. Not only that, but stalkers can support the void ray very easily. Simply put your stalkers at the bottom of the cliff, and use your void ray to attack things on the top of the cliff. Your opponent has to be very careful, since if the void ray gets charged up, and you manage to snipe a few marines with your stalkers, it could be GG right there. Also, since your main army is stalkers, it is great to force your opponent to make missile turrets and marines, skewing his composition favourably for your stalkers. They don't know how many void rays you plan on making, so they have to play defensively against that anti air. And you never know - the stargate tech makes it easier to get a MOTHER SHIP!

Warp Prism It was suggested in the comments that a warp prism may be an effective scouting unit. My first reaction was, "Robotics facilities are expensive and warp prisms have low health!" but, after considering it for a bit, it could be kind of neat to harass the front with stalkers, then pick them up and drop them behind the minerals, and then back around. Or simply warp a zealot to send at their scvs and force them away from the front. Food for thought eh? You could also deal with banshees more effectively. I'll reserve judgement until I see it in action.

With the stalker-centric strategy, just keep constant pressure on the front, with the void ray (or maybe 2 void rays) poking around, and you should be able to expand or tech to blink/charge/templars safely. Make sure to keep everything alive! If the terran tries to push out at your stalkers, send the void ray to his minerals, and he has to choose between chasing your stalkers or losing his economy. Likewise, if he is chasing your void ray, just pull it back and put as much pressure on the front as you can safely do. He won't be attacking you if he is chasing a void ray around his base. Remember to keep macroing!

Void-Ray-Centric Harass

3. The Mid-Game Transition:

If you keep harassing and reinforcing your stalker army, you should find yourself in a safe enough position to try to tech or expand. Note that your opponent is stuck on one base and has no map control, so you are not under any huge pressure to expand. If you can instead get a tech or composition advantage, you may be better off than if you go for an expand.

I consider the mid-game core of any protoss PvT to be chargelots, templars and armour upgrades. It is beyond the scope of this guide to discuss why, but in short I find the cost effectiveness of the army, the mobility, and the fluidity of the transitions to be superb.

Below are a series of mid-game transition tactics that can be used to compliment the mid-game transition towards chargelots, templars and armour upgrades.

Sentry Tactics

Robotics Facility

Blink

I used to consider blink to be a necessary step between getting void rays and chargelots, as it allows you to use your stalkers that are already on the field much more effectively. However, I have been convinced both by reader feedback and my own experiences that there are some maps and compositions that make blink an uneconomical choice.

Blink is always useful for kiting bio-balls, blinking into their base after they push out, etc. However, it is often more useful to get charge and templars faster instead of getting blink. I tend to only get blink on select maps such as metalopolis and kulas ravine. These maps have bases that are easily accessible to blink stalkers from multiple directions, and long rush distances for my opponents to take before reaching my base.

Compare those maps to a map like steppes of war. Trying to blink up in steppes of war is like a death sentence since your stalkers are probably going to have to blink near the enemy army, and the enemy army can easily block the one escape route. After they mop up your stalkers, they can then quickly rush across into your base before you can replenish your forces with the short rush distance.

Now I know some of you want to get blink just because it is so damn fun. But is losing fun? NO!!! So don't get blink if it won't be as good as charge.

Carriers

Several people have suggested that a carrier transition would be easier than a chargelot-templar transition, and if "easier" means that you don't have to invest as much money in tech structures and research, then I have to agree. Not only that, but my limited experience with carriers have suggested that they are cost-neutral against vikings, and we all know that they can decimate tanks and marauders.

I think it would all come down to your opponent's composition. Fortunately, because of the stalker-void ray harass, you should have an idea of what your opponent is making. If your opponent manages to get 1 or 2 vikings out with some tanks, and doesn't have many marines, it seems like it could be a good idea. However, it seems to me that if your opponent is able to deal with stalker-void ray, he probably already has the units available to deal with carriers supported by a weak gateway army.

Weaknesses of the Strategy

Now, while I've only lost a few times - and often just because I was being an idiot - I have picked up on some weaknesses that this build has.

Weakness # 1 - Bunkers at an open ramp.

Weakness # 2 - Long rush distances.

Weakness # 3 - BANSHEES!!!

Weakness # 4 - Reapers?

Weakness # 5 - Subtle Timings

Weakness # 6 - Marine-Ghost?