Warp Gates: How Important?

[Tim-and-Carl]

I started dabbling in the other races today so I could get more of an understanding of each of them, and perhaps this is a really stupid question, but for you protoss players, how important are warp gates to you? Like on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being imperative?

When I fell upon this upgrade, I found it a little bit more of an annoyance than a help for me. I am most likely in the wrong but I am wondering if all protoss must have this upgrade? Here are my main complaints:

1. The ability to warp units in at any pylon is very nice, but unless I am trying to scare away some kind of air harass, I can't fully appreciate this bonus. If you have a pylon outside your enemy's base it's VERY good, but really then you are just cutting the walking time for say 6-12 units.If you are really so strong that you are able to maintain a pylon outside your enemy's base, is this cutting of walking time really important? And warp gates seem to be too late in the game to pull off some kind of strange proxy pylon warp-in, which would probably only be viable with say DT or something (because even if you get warp gate pretty early, you still need a decent amount of gateways to pull off something surprising). I mean it can't hurt to have this luxury, I just don't see it as a very strong luxury.

2. When I am building more gates, I have to waste time turning them into warp gates or else hotkey them to a different hotkey, because they will fuck up if they're in the same ctrl key as warp gates. I found this a little annoying, especially if I was under such danger that I need the extra unit production immediately and had to deal with this inconvenience.

3. I find the extra command of needing to place the unit in a location annoying. Rather than setting a single rally point and just spamming the appropriate hotkeys then returning to micro on the battlefield, I now have to add more commands to my micro and click some more to get my units made. This is obviously not that big since if you had say 12 gateways, you are just clicking 12 more times for your units, but over time this can pile up, and in my opinion seems a little unnecessary compared to just pressing hotkeys for the units. Once again it seems like I am being inconvenienced.

4. As far as I know the units don't create any faster? You save time off the initial unit you make at each warp gate, but after that, all you have really done is shifted the production time on one of your sets of units. It's a bonus, but it doesn't seem like a big bonus.

Thoughts? I feel that if I didn't use warp gates, I really wouldn't be put at much of a disadvantage. But maybe I am missing something here.

[SuperKiller]

well i thought the cooldown was faster for one, this was the sacrafice for not allowing queue

then the instant army effect - build units, transfer to warpgate, get more units right after is good for a timing attack or something

works with warp prisms and hidden pylons for backdoor attacks (warp in 4 zeals or something)

faster reinforcements

deal with drops, nydus worms, and other harassment easier due being able to build units anywhere

contaminate affects the timer i think, but if warpgate is ready to build it won't have an effect (I think)

w key is a nice easy way to select all your gates

you can hold shift key to continue buildings units instead of s click s click s click

[TheRabidDeer]

The cooldown is shorter than the build time for units, so having a warp gate lets you build your army more quickly.

As SK said, W hotkey selects all of your warpgates and holding shift when building lets you build VERY quickly without having to hit the hotkey each time. I didnt realize it for a long time, then it dawned on me and I am glad I know about it.

In addition, you can warp in -> change to gateway -> build units -> change to warp gate -> warp in units -> change to gateway and repeat to build units faster still (the cooldown for warping in continues even when its a gateway), though it is a lot of work for a minimal gain.

[SilA-Slayer]

Faster production
Save loads of time on rally time
Proxy pylon is like the equivalent of proxy gates and that's huge.
"Walking time" basically means you are one whole production cycle ahead in units.
Easier to macro --> you don't have to wait for units and them bring them, either you warp them where you want, or you warp in and tell them all to go to your army as soon as you can.


Warpgates are amazing.

[protoswarrior]

Warp-gates are the lifeblood of Protoss macro. If you didn't have it (and Chronoboost), you can't make units as fast as you need to esp vs Zerg.

[0xDEADBEEF]

Nobody mentioned the phase prism? My FAVORITE thing to do with toss lately has been going for DT, get a prism down just outside of his supply line, warp in as many as I can, have them hold, warp in more, have them hold, warp in more... WALK them into his SCV base, make sure not to attack
then hit stop and let them devistate his base. For efficency, try to land DTs into all his lines.

If you're out of luck he went for a detector quickly, just keep pumping in zelots or something while building 4 carriers and some other stuff.

[protoswarrior]

LMAO

Nice there Drakain

Only thing is, I dont think that DT "drop" will work on better players. DT tech takes way too long to get, but if you do manage it without falling behind on macro and stay alive to do the drop, it's a fantastic idea

I like warp prisms too

[0xDEADBEEF]

LMAO

Nice there Drakain

Only thing is, I dont think that DT "drop" will work on better players. DT tech takes way too long to get, but if you do manage it without falling behind on macro and stay alive to do the drop, it's a fantastic idea

I like warp prisms too

Oh it's not easy, you're basically doing it to kill all his scv's at once. I like to do it on a 2v2, and hopefully you've got it set up so that you can activate all the DTs at nearly the same time.

If they have a lot of detectors up and I know a hread of time I'd build an extra 3 or 4 gates and just pump in zealots.

[roegi]

2 immortal drop -> massive sentry warpin -> kill all their buildings while you perma-forcefield the ramp lol

But yeah warp gates are pretty much essential
Saves you 10 seconds on each warpin and walking time
Plus it lets you defend expansions easily with sentry or templar warpin

[0xDEADBEEF]

2 immortal drop -> massive sentry warpin -> kill all their buildings while you perma-forcefield the ramp lol

But yeah warp gates are pretty much essential
Saves you 10 seconds on each warpin and walking time
Plus it lets you defend expansions easily with sentry or templar warpin

No questions asked. Any unit: 10 seconds, almost anywhere you want instantly.

[protoswarrior]

I have to share this!!


I played one of my "other" friends on bnet a few days ago and he devised a pretty unstoppable strat so far, esp if probe get's inside your base in PvP.

He basically opens similar to you but saves Chronoboost after using it the first time. He gets 1 gate > gas > Core > pylon > zealot > 2 more gates then WarpGate tech and constant CB every 20secs on core while getting 4th gate.
Then, his scouting probe makes 2 -3 pylons in your main with 1-2 behind your min line. Then warps in 3-4 zealots in that line with insta probe massacre...

- You tech (robo/stargate) you lose
- You 2 gate, he can mod his build and still accomplish it with 2 forces (1 at entrance and 1 in your min line).
- You open stalkers, you can't kill the probe before pylons go down, and when you try to kill, they stay up long enough for the 4 zeals to warp in.

Have anyone of you ever encountered this weird strat?

[SilA-Slayer]

This is like old old old cheese that asian server was abusing all the time and its why they made warpgates take like 3x as long to research. Just be careful about a probe in your main and if he starts it you just go 4 warpgate and he has to make tons of pylons so you're ahead.

It does kinda beat tech builds pretty well. The strength of this build is actually that 4 warpgate is really strong in itself.

[MajinMojo]

Pwar, I saw a thread about that build in TL.net a few days ago. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...opic_id=127921
Tozar claims that he saw it done on the Asia servers and transcribed the BO with a pretty decent replay pack demonstrating it being used.

I myself have yet to try it vs a good Protoss but it is pretty damned fast. And no probe cutting either or so he claims. Many rebuttals to the OP were made but he has explained why this works pretty convincingly.

[SilA-Slayer]

This is like old old old cheese that asian server was abusing all the time and its why they made warpgates take like 3x as long to research. Just be careful about a probe in your main and if he starts it you just go 4 warpgate and he has to make tons of pylons so you're ahead.

It does kinda beat tech builds pretty well. The strength of this build is actually that 4 warpgate is really strong in itself.

Also make sure to attack his probeline with your first zealot if you went zealot before core and he went core first. You're not doing anything with it anyway and it can seriously delay his warpgate attack, since you're probably going to kill at least 1-2 probes AND force him to make units to take it down. Always be agressive with your first units when you can and have virtually no risk of losing your units for nothing.