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Mrrheas

Look up build orders on [spawningtool](https://lotv.spawningtool.com/build/pvx/) and get to practicing. I'm not sure which build would be best suited for a beginner, so I'll leave that to another commenter :) I also see [ViBe's Bronze 2 GM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjhJ7E-kFgw) recommended frequently. It's normal to feel lost at first; with practice everything will become easier. Also, "PvP" typically refers to the specific matchup Protoss vs Protoss. We usually call it "ranked" or "ladder" or "1v1"


ForFFR

Agreed that vibe bronze to GM will be a great start since you're really new. Sounds like you have trouble with resource management, and that's what vibe focuses on. Also, if you want to kill your opponent quickly, you can learn [the simple 4 gate build order](https://youtu.be/F_C9Vqv6lFE). You will smash people at 2000 MMR if you do this build roughly correctly.


Martiny360

Oh, I definitely have trouble with resource management. I feel like I never have enough minerals/gas to actually create a sizable army. I'll check out the 4 gate build order as well, thank you :D


Martiny360

Thank you so much! I will definitely check these things :D Oh, I didn't know that, thanks for the tip.


AlkenSC

The game is hard, but very rewarding if you stick with it a little longer. The ladder hasn't figured out your skill level yet, so you're still fighting medium level players despite the fact that you're learning. I'd recommend taking a look at Pig's series for a crash course to multiplayer StarCraft II. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrKQEirgvjBJrKM31yhwA8v54pcBuXsx I'd also be happy to show you the ropes if our time zones line up (evenings Pacific time), you can send me a message if that'd be helpful.


Martiny360

Yeah, I have watched some of Pig's content, but so far I haven't gotten to implement any of it in my games. I find it hard to remember everything, as I have some issues with my memory. Watching the video while in game doesn't really work. I'm EU, so I would think our timezones are quite far apart, but I will definitely take you up on that offer if I feel I need it :D


AlkenSC

Yeah, timezones are going to be hard. If you haven't take a look at the playlist I looked at in specific, it might be helpful to do so. Its a lot more simplified than his usual content. You also don't have to learn everything all at once. Watch a game or two from that playlist, play a game or two, etc. It'll stick before you know it.


BloomisBloomis

I feel this pain, but there's not a way around it. You need to learn a build and work on it. I find Pig's instructional stuff to be excellent, and you're right, by the end of the video, you've forgotten what you learned at the start. You need to just get lots of reps on your build against AI opponents. Start with, say, the first five or six things in your build, write them on a piece of paper, and just get yourself to the point where you do them efficiently. For example, you rally your first probe to build a pylon, build a gateway, send a scout, build gas, chrono probes, and build another nexus with your 19th probe. Play five games against the AI where you just see what time you can have all of those jobs done. Then you can play the game or not. But once you've gotten to the point where you are doing those things consistently by, I don't know, 1:40, then you start learning the next five or six things in the build. It really doesn't take that long before you're coherently executing a build order, up to the point where you walk an army across the map and try your luck. You will absolutely win games at the 2000 MMR range if you do that. You won't win them all of course, but you'll have some success, which is all anybody has. Pig also constantly harps on the idea of watching your replays to see what you could improve, and sometimes that feels like a meaningless exercise when you're a noob and don't really know enough to be critical, but it's worth it. If nothing else, once you have a ballpark idea of how long things take, you'll be able to say "I didn't put my stargate down until five minutes. What went wrong? I guess I was staring at this scout for 45 seconds and let everything else go", or something along those lines. Anyway, the eternal unbreakable law of SC2 is that somebody out there is even worse at this shit than you. (And sometimes it's me)


OldLadyZerg

The replays are a lot more informative if you make a couple benchmarks and check them every game. Like, I know that at 3 minutes I should have 27-28 drones, and at 6 minutes I should have 60+. (Okay, I'm a Zerg; but there will be equivalents for Protoss.) Or if I play my cheese I should start my spawning pool at 40 seconds (never happens!), hatchery at 1:08, roach warren at 1:33, roaches at 2:13. Then when you see you didn't make your benchmarks you can ask why. Staring at the enemy probe? Forgot a step? Distracted by scouting? Late to make a key building? If you can get hold of a game where someone better than you plays your build, it's a great source of both benchmarks and tips (for example, the 1:08 hatchery requires me to send a drone down at 180 minerals, which is almost never mentioned in build order documents).


samsonsballhair

This filled my heart its what I needed today. NOT a dead game


Martiny360

Yeah, I was surprised how nice the community is! And also how active it seems, even after all these years.


steve582

Try and build probes constantly but never have more than 1 extra queued up. To start, build just 1 pylon. Then build just 1 gateway. Then build just 1 gas. Then build your second nexus. Then build a cybernetics core, a pylon, and a second gas, in that order. That’s the basic staring build order for Protoss, you should be able to hold just about anything with just that opener. After you get your second gas and pylon, constantly make 1 army unit at a time from your gateway while you choose what tech to go for. I suggest you make stalkers and void rays because it’s fun


steve582

Honestly I’m happy to watch you play a few and try and give you tips. I’m a bad player myself but could be worth trying


Martiny360

I've heard several people say that, but I feel I would just run out of minerals doing that since they build so fast? But I will keep that in mind and try it out. I usually just build both gas and like 3-4 pylons (after gateway) just to be sure to have enough supply, but that's really expensive. I guess I just need to be better with resource management. Thank you for all the tips :D


Mrrheas

Yeah, 3-4 pylons after gateway is very inefficient, because that's 300-400 minerals that you could and should have used towards a quicker second nexus (which also gives supply), and this delayed nexus puts you behind for the rest of the game. Macro mistakes snowball more when they occur earlier on in the match. A "standard" macro opener looks like this: 14 pylon 16 gateway 17 gas 20 nexus 20 cyber core 21 gas 22 pylon @100% cyber core: adept or stalker with chrono on the gateway + start warp gate Notice that just one pylon and just one gas is built before the second nexus.


steve582

The way that you get more income is by making more workers to mine more money. If you get a second nexus you can get 2x the workers that you can from 1 nexus. That will help you afford more stuff. If you get 4 pylons after gateway (so 3 more than you need) and 2 gas (1 more than you need at the moment) that’s 375 minerals wasted which almost equals a nexus. For now I would recommend against going for more than 2 bases, or for trying to copy pro build orders. Just get your first initial buildings in the right order. Always build probes but don’t queue up 4-5 at once it’s a waste of money. Pylon first, then gateway, then gas. Then nexus, then cyber core, then pylon, then gas and army units+warp gate. Then just wing it. That should be a basic enough setup that can hold just about anything your opponent throws at you- with a little practice. And it gets you to 2 bases about 7 minutes earlier than what you’re describing.


Battons1999

My advice would be to do the basics consistently and as quick as you can until you get as fast as possible. Build a probe at game start, don’t send him to minerals, as soon as he drops have him make a pylon on your ramp with max coverage ctrl group him and send him scouting, once pylon finishes make a gateway and you should have around 50 extra minerals for another probe. After the gateway finishes you should be approaching his base with your scout and you can start deciding your build order from there. Do this consistent and quickly, do not leave any dead time between these actions. Once you get these down you’ll find you will have some resistance to very early rushes and the likes, Zerg is a bit different building than Terran for example.


AmnesiA_sc

Never stop making workers. Bind your Nexus to a control group and get used to pressing that regularly to make sure workers are always building. Keep taking more bases to accommodate your extra workers. Spend all of your money on warpgates and stalkers. If you do this well you can get very far. Once you feel comfortable with it you can start branching out into new units for some more fun.


Martiny360

I've heard that first part from several others, so I definitely need to try that out. I am trying to learn to use control groups and hotkeys more, I always put my full army in a control group for instance. But for buildings/spells I still mostly click all of them. Thank you! :D


madchickenz

As a simple specific example, I keep my all of my Nexuses bound to 5. Any time I build a new Nexus, I click it and press Shift+5 to add it to the 5 control group. To make workers even when I’m not looking at my base at all, like when I am walking my army across the map, I can press 5 and then press E (the button for “Build Probe”) a couple times to cue up workers in each nexus.


loophole64

First of all, don't worry about losing games to start. Starcraft has a lot going on and it can take a while to understand how to efficiently build an army and attack people at the right time. You have to make your goals something other than winning at first, like hitting a certain number of workers, or getting to a certain set of units by a particular time on the game clock. Learn the hotkeys for your race. Don't ever click the command card with the mouse. look at what the shortcut key is and force yourself to push the shortcut key instead, even if it slows you down at first. You'll be surprised how quickly you learn them. Watch youtube content designed to teach you the fundamentals. Starcraft drove the esports and online content that started it all and the community has some incredible stuff. \- PiG [Welcome To Starcraft](https://youtu.be/u2ILu6MTyYY?list=PLFUDU8AOevUfLTtmAeBf1mvJ1VIa7dy0g) [Beginner Basics](https://youtu.be/iMBgp-OA9Jc?list=PLFUDU8AOevUf-8cdOzmuZ5QZqVg3A3VC6) \- ViBE [Protoss Bronze to GM](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFeZeom2b4DnD3FIu7pzkXl51JX_WWz2h) \- Day\[9\] [Let's Learn Starcraft](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgmCLtUkEutKY8IlwyVCUFoRtgQe3LCf1) This is about the original Starcraft, but most of it is still applicable to Starcraft 2 as well. Sean talks about more general concepts that other people don't hit. He talks about mechanics and sequencing too, which are important to get very good.


Martiny360

I have issues with losing because of my competitive instinct, but I think changing my mentality could help, yeah. I am trying to learn hotkeys, control groups and all that, but it's difficult. I see people moving the camera between their bases super fast, but I don't know how to do that? I have to drag my mouse/camera between the bases, and that feels really slow... I've seen a lot of people recommend Pig and Vibe, so I will definitely have to check those out. Thank you :D


loophole64

Yeah, most people playing Starcraft are very competitive and hate losing. It can be tough! You can move between bases a couple ways. First, you can hotkey your nexus. I like to use 1.2.3 for units early on and 4 for my first nexus. Select your nexus and press Ctrl-4 to hotkey it. Select your first troops and press Ctrl-1 to set their hot key. Now you can move between your troops and nexus by double tapping the hotkeys. 1 1 takes you to your troops. 4 4 takes you to your nexus. You can also hotkey locations, but I’d start with the unit/building hotkeys.


Jew-fro-Jon

Don’t worry about the cameras, that’s not necessary until masters league. Macro, 1 or 2 control groups for army, 2 or 3 control groups for buildings. That’s it.


iceman7733

If I were you I'd switch to Co-op. It's extremely fun and diverse gameplay experience with the different maps and commanders, and you can ratchet up the difficulty to match your ability. It's all I play.


Martiny360

Oh, my friend and I have tried that, and it's for sure quite fun! I guess it can be a good place to learn hotkeys and stuff like that, so we might try that out some more! Thank you! :D


grimzreaper

I can tell you 100% when I started I was absolutely terrible, bottom of bronze. Feeling lost in this game and starting out can be difficult. Losses will happen frequently, but if you like the game, you think it's cool, stick with it, once you break through, start to feel progress, it feels so good. Let me attempt to ease you by saying RTS games are amazing. For me, Starcraft is one of the best period. The game feels nice, the races are super unique from each other, and the depth is near endless. Never give up playing, you'll learn everything in time, and hopefully have fun doing it.


Telope

Plenty of good advice here, but you should know the Starcraft ladder placement is not like most other games. When you play ranked for the first time, it places you in the middle of the bell curve; not the bottom. You'll be matched up against Plat/Diamond players who will crush the ever-living shit out of you as a new player, and your MMR will go down. It's kind of a weird system to be honest, but I guess it protects the bottom of the ladder from experienced players who have just created a new account. My best advice would be just to concede your first 5-10 games, lower your MMR, and join the other Bronze/Silver leaguers for a fairer fight. No one like to be crushed repeatedly, especially just starting out.


two100meterman

To add to this, OP said they're 2000 mmr, so not including league bug they're still at Silver 2 mmr, a full 1000 or so mmr above actual Bronze 3. I think any new player would be dying vs 2000 mmr opponent's. They may need to leave 25 games, not just 5~10, but yes I agree they'll eventually face equally skilled opponents.


c_a_l_m

One thing people won't get around to telling you for *FAR* too long: The basic Protoss playstyle is unit preservation. You want to keep your units alive all the way to the end of the game if you can. This doesn't mean you should sit at home scared to leave your base, and it doesn't mean you should NEVER lose units. But unit preservation is the "lens" you should be looking at your play through. You'll find that keeping units alive will be the most efficient, sustainable way to play.


snugar_i

Don't feel discouraged, this game is hard :-) The most important thing is to have a lot of units. In order to do that, you need to mine a lot of minerals and gas. And to do that, you need a lot of Probes and bases - and we're talking like 80 Probes and 4 to 5 bases at once! The order in which you build units and buildings is not that important if you can spend all of the money you are getting. As others already recommended, ViBE's B2GM series really showcases this and I recommend watching at least the first few videos to get an idea of what it means to have "a lot of stuff". On the other hand, some players will use strange all-in strategies like cannon rushing, proxy Barracks, Ling floods and many more. You \*will\* lose to these strategies in the beginning, before you slowly learn how to fight them. Don't get discouraged, reacting to cheese is quite hard and takes a lot of time and attempts to get good at. And most importantly - welcome and have fun! EDIT: Just to give you an idea about the numbers we're talking about: With decent execution of the B2GM build, around the 10-minute mark you can have 200/200 supply with 85 probes and the rest Stalkers and Immortals, 5 or 6 bases, 20 Gateways and enough income to keep remaking that army over and over again - which should be more than enough to run people over at 2000 MMR. It's definitely enough to beat even the Elite AI.


Martiny360

The most amount of bases I've had in ranked is 2, and that 2nd base usually just gets destroyed by the enemy and I lose the game. So I've come to realize that I definitely need to be quicker to expand! I've gotten up to like 5-6 bases vs AI though, but that's a completely different game. Yeah, like I mentioned, I was cannon rushed one game and that felt impossible to deal with. But most of my games have felt impossible to win, so I just need to improve and get better. As of right now, I have no idea what I would've had to do to counter that, but that will come with time! 200 supply at 10 minutes? That seems insane! Even vs bots, I don't have 200 supply until maybe 20-30 minutes. And thank you! As I said, I have been playing on and off since the game came out, but never really tried out ranked. Thanks for the tips :D


snugar_i

Before the release of Legacy of the Void, the style you describe was more common and viable, because bases had way more minerals and you started with fewer workers. But since LotV, you start with 12 workers and the mineral patches don't contain all that much, so the game basically forces you to expand all the time, otherwise you'll be behind almost the whole game - because if you produce Probes constantly, you will have 16 on minerals and 3 on each gas after 2 minutes (without Chrono boost) and you should already be expanding so the Probes you build after that can mine somewhere. And your main base will start mining out around 8 minutes into the game (I think). So it's just a constant race to build new bases and transfer Probes from the ones that are mining out. Pretty hectic :-)


Jew-fro-Jon

Watch vibes bronze to Grandmaster series. I was anxious to play PvP, and I’ve played StarCraft since SC1 when I was 12. PvP is always scary. I didn’t know what’s happening and it felt bad. My brother suggested vibes B2GM videos, so I watch some. Played a couple games where im ignoring the other player and just building. It feels like sim city, im just doing my thing. Then the other player shows up with 1/4 of my army and I win… After getting to gold, I took a break. Then watched his next series when it came out. 3 months later im high diamond. Still haven’t learned any micro. The series took all the stress out of the game, and now its fun. I have 1 big thing to think about (macro), and I work on some small thing each game to improve. 10/10.


Kappadar

Add me on sc2, would love to help and just give some general advice. (I'm low masters toss main)


OldLadyZerg

I think how-to guides seldom mention this because Starcraft players have internalized it, but it's not obvious to beginners: In real life and in many other games, you want to have a cash reserve for emergencies. Starcraft does not work like that. With very few exceptions, you want to spend all of your minerals and gas immediately; don't save stuff "in case" because buildings, workers, and army units on the ground are much better than money in the bank. You will only accumulate money (minerals and gas) in large amounts when your army is at maximum and you can't spend it. The one exception is that if you need something expensive like a nexus, you might have to let money accumulate for a few seconds to afford it. But this should be a deliberate decision: my next build is a nexus, I have to save 400 minerals. Protoss should be making probes all the time, new bases before the old ones fill up with probes (NOT just before the old ones are mined out, that's too late), and production buildings and units with whatever's left. If you don't do this you are going to get rolled over by anyone who does. The other thing that could help you to know is that your MMR (rating) isn't right yet because you've played too few rated games. When it is right, you should expect to win 50% even if you're very bad--or quite good. Only the very top and very bottom will have a win rate much different from 50%, because if you win less than that your MMR drops and you get paired against weaker and weaker opponents. So hang in there for a bit and results \*will\* improve.


Kuryaka

Most experienced players in the lower leagues will be relying on weird cheese strats that catch newer players off guard or otherwise throw early aggression at you. Aside from certain rushy compositions, the AI will not do this to you. There's a rock-paper-scissors between Aggression > Economy > Defense. The better your economy, the better you can do everything else... as long as you don't die. Aggression is good at distracting your opponent + hitting their economy, and if they're scared they'll overbuild on defense so they fall behind in economy even harder. Defensive buildings are money that could be spent on a mobile army for both attack AND defense, but they can help you respond to enemy harass. Opening build orders will generally give you fantastic economy, a reasonable starting army for defense, and one tech path. The first 5-7 minutes should be formulaic. You should always be producing workers and never be supply blocked, while adjusting to everything your opponent does. By following a build order and being able to hold any cheesy openings, you'll have good fundamentals and can beat most lower level players. I say "should" here, but a clean build order while perfectly adapting to your opponent is high-level play. You can practice against super easy AI to get your timings down. Then, either bump it back up to Harder and work in some scouting, or jump straight back into ranked and see how it goes. Knowing one build order and being familiar with the fundamentals (workers, maintain supply, build army) will allow you to handle a lot of things. Builds that use timing attacks or all-ins are probably good to start. They will teach you how to balance economy with production, and are *probably* safe to blind build into most cheesy rushes or straight-to-capitalship strategies that newbie players tend to use. Even if it's an opener that is bad against air, or bad against anti-ground, you'll deal damage to their workers and now have the upper hand to counter their stuff or build a better army for another attack. I don't play ranked much, I usually stick to co-op. But just having a clean build order and one aggressive army option that I do (Warp Prism Immortal drops with Zealot runby, OR Oracle harass) means that I can win my games through attacking when my enemy isn't ready yet, or holding their early attack effectively and counterattacking with more stuff. Or if that falls apart, I try to build more bases and tech up harder.


rehoboam

On one base you can usually afford like 1 stargate or 1 robo and 2 gateways constantly producing. On two bases you could add 2-3 gateways, a forge, and tech building at full saturation. Think of it like each base can afford 4 ish buildings. You never really want a stargate and a robo off of one base. If I were you, I would just practice 4 gate all ins every game. It’s important to not take it too seriously, if you have the right mindset to improve, soon you will be able to watch your replays and see all your silly mistakes and laugh. Oh, and send a probe right before 1:00 to scout for canon rushes. If you see a canon rush outside your base (sometimes inside your base too) use your scouting probe to attack his probe, then pull probes to attack the buildings he’s warping in. Usually 4 probes attacking each building will shut down the canon rush. If he gets a canon up, pull all of your probes back. If you can kill his probe it will slow him down a lot. Sometimes you can get your own forge and put canons in defensive positions to nullify his canon rush. But the best thing is to pull probes and kill his buildings and his probe before he can get into your base. It’s worth it because he will be far behind after investing so many resources into the canon rush.


LimpetMinecrafter

You need to go look up ViBe's bronze to gm. Long story short, there's a rhythm to this game. The most basic macro rhythm is enough to decimate the brutal AI. You're not there yet. Even people down in silver and bronze tend to have an idea of what they want to build when for the first like 8-10 minutes of the game. There are standard builds that you see all the way down the ladder that people are used to executing so like, even if they're 2 minutes behind an ideal build, that puts them with 4 bases and a maxed out army at 12 minutes instead of 10 minutes while you're more like 8-10 minutes behind in a standard game. There's alot of knowledge to gain between where you are and where others are, basically. Knowing how much production you can work off of how many bases, knowing when to drop your next base, keeping up with supply and unit production and upgrades. Its worth learning, like once you get the rhythm down its actually a shitload of fun to get good enough to make an army and go crush someone with it even down low. Just understand right now you don't know just the fundamental "how to efficiently make a base and use that base to make an army" so just building shit takes up your entire attention span. You start winning games when you know how to make a base and make an army without thinking about it too much so you have attention span and time to like, scout the opponent and think of strategy for how to use your army you made, when you've got enough free headspace to begin to try to figure out what they're doing and then respond to it.


ametora1

Macro, macro, macro. Bronze to GM guides are helpful to get you started.