Welcome to SC2Aiur's general guide to playing Protoss

For specific matchup help, head over to PvT, PvP or PvZ

You are new to Starcraft II or Protoss? This is the perfect place to start! Keep in mind that each race is different and plays differently, and for protoss specifically, each matchup must be thought of individually, with something as simple as placing your first pylon having severe repercussions.

This guide assumes you have a basic understanding of Starcraft II, and understand how each unit functions. If you do not, we recommend you start by playing the campaign, an excellent and very fun starter! From there, you can just jump in on ladder and have fun playing against others. After 20 games or so you, should be playing against people of your skill level, where you should win 50% of your games.

Fundamentals

Macro

What is macro? You can find a very detailed explanation on Terrancraft here. Basically, it is the actions taken to build an army as big and as quickly as possible, because in Starcraft, a bigger army almost always wins versus a smaller army. How do you macro? The first step is to constantly be building probes, never letting your nexuses go idle until you have a desired count (60-80 probes). Build pylons as to never get supply blocked. With what is left, you build buildings and units. Macro is the foundation of Starcraft, and is generally agreed upon as the best way to improve overall.

The best way to approach this is by having a build order, and following it as closely as possible, which means having the same amount of units at the same timings as the build order. This is the primary way you can get to masters, and for improving quickly, should be your main focus until at least about 4000 MMR.

For an illustration of this concept, take a look at Harstem's supply challenge.

We recommend choosing one build per matchup, and sticking to it as much as possible. Head over to the specific matchup guides up top and pick one build you like from the Economic openings to get started!

Walling

Walling is the purposeful way of placing buildings in a way to stop opponent's units from going through, thus creating a wall. It is essential as a bad wall can let units into your base which can then destroy your probe lines, your production buildings, or even your army. The specific wall recommended for each matchup will be explained in their respective matchup pages, and is different from map to map.

The first necessary step to walling well is to use grid lines to be able to place buildings at the exact right spot. In Starcraft, open up the options menu, and go to gameplay and ensure Show grid lines is checked.

You can watch more on the basics of walling in the following video from Zuka: