PvT Understanding 1.1

Disclaimer: This guide is just a short writeup and not a comprehensive guide of PvZ. It would take way more general and basic gameplay mechanics of zerg and protoss and truly understanding and embracing those, aswell as the metagame, unit and strategy viability and interaction being discussed for this to be even close to being comprehensive.
This is just supposed to be a short „what do i do if i see x“ guide. This also only applies to Gateway expands. It is not confirmed to work with FFE, as i do not use that build.

I personally really like scouting with halluc phoenix between 9 and 11 minutes, based on their base Count and gas Timings.

closer to 9 if he is on 2 bases and closer to 10 if he is on 3.


My Gateway expand includes a sentry push so i already have the sentries in place to expend the energy.

Having the sentries to hallucinate the phoenixes anyways is generally a safe Thing.


You want to be looking for a lair done or morphing.


If it is 10 minutes and there is None making, prepare for a 1base push, IE add in a robo and a twilight, get up 5+ sentries and add Stalkers.

Defend with Stalkers and Forcefields


If you see the Lair making, move in with another halluc sentry half a Minute or even a full Minute later.


If the lair is done, look for a tech building.

He will have one.

If you don't see it with your phoenix, hallucinate another one and go again.

Dependant on what you see, you should react accordingly:

Hydralisk Den: Roach Hydra pressure off of 2 bases is coming in. I am struggling with this sort of Play at the Moment but i believe that by getting up the robo and the bay ASAP and rushing your first colossus with range out is necessary, while also getting a twilight council and moving into templar archives, since vipers are going to be his next step and you Need to be able to Feedback those.

Getting to that requires a big amount of gas, so i suggest you try to take your third with Gateway Units (Stalker sentry again) while your robo is making. Defend both your natural wall and your third with atleast 1 or 2 cannons each. Use your msc to control space and use an observer to check in front of one base while having your army ready in front of the other.

Engaging vs Roach Hydra requires good forcefields so i suggest practicing that in a Unit Tester.

Later templar with storm help a lot vs hydras and are also able to Feedback vipers.

Roach Hydra usually operates off of 2 evos, so i suggest having 2 forges, not having any in your walls, since hydras can easily put you in situations where you have to sacrifice your wall.



Spire: Without even talking about stopping the mutas: Take your third base as soon as possible. The later you try to take it vs ling muta, the harder it will be. And dont feel bad about putting up 3 cannons per base. Especially with big ling runbys those are necessary for buying time for your zealot warpin to hopefully be able to clean up.

About directly dealing with the muta: Get your 2 sg out. It's your only hope. Get 2 sg, DON'T get supply blocked and chrono double phoenixes. Also Keep researching ground attack Upgrades. You WILL have zealots fighting lings and you Need those Upgrades desperately.

This will shut mutas down hard, once they enter your base.

This will put you ahead, but be wary, he will most likely be moving into hydras off of this, so add your twilight and robo as soon as his push is deflected.

Now you abuse the map control you gained with your phoenixes and go Scout his bases a bit and lift a few Queens and drones.

He will either be going infestation pit, hydralisk den, or corruptors now.


for Hydralisks: Immediately drop down your bay and archives now. Get your observer. Be calm and proceed as in the case of hydras.

You should be 3base vs 3base now.


For Infestation pit: There is 2 things he could be trying: one is Desperation mass swarmhost spine spore, the other one is infestors, trying to get a fungal off on your phoenixes and then kill them with a big muta Count. In both cases, cutting workers, adding gates and going with 10+ gates and continued phoenix production should kill this.

In the infestor case the continued phoenix production should kill the mutas and in the swarmhost case they should lift those with the help of an observer or 2. In both of those cases he shouldnt be able to kill your ground army though, as Long as you Focus on maintaining a good zealot Count.


For Corruptors: Get out more phoenixes and phoenix range. Use Sage's PvZ for the General idea, for example his game vs Paranoid from ATC. Take a quick 4th and get your usual deathball-esque army while battling his air ball with phoenixes.



If your halluc phoenix sees Infestation pit: This *could* be WoL style ling Roach into Roach infestor into infestor bl, but i have never met this in HotS yet, so i believe, that this style has died out.

Mostly this is just swarmhost spine spore or swarmhost corruptor.

This Play will take time to get off, as swarmhosts are really bad for their cost and only work in masses due to becoming unreachable after a certain Point in time, so take your third quickly and fortify it with 4 or so cannons. Those will most likely die to locust waves later.

There is multiple ways of reacting to this composition-wise.

I personally still go robo twilight as soon as i see the infestation pit, as i did in WoL, (I don't know about the twilight anymore, I think you can cut it tbh, but it allows for a quick +2 attack if you had a quick forge) so i then Transition into 2sg and a bay off of my 6 gas.

Units have distinct roles vs the swarmhost: Colossi are a reliable way of HOLDING BACK locust waves, as they deal good damage vs the glass cannon locusts (they are sort of like small range hydras) from a Long range with splash. Colossi try to allow you to not engage the locusts directly.

In order for this to happen efficiently you Need atleast ~3 of them, so start them early and use forcefields to hold the first few waves without losing Units.


Voidrays can fly, so they can't be attacked by Locusts. Also they kill Corruptors and Spores extremely quickly, but they struggle with Queens, so you should defenitely not fight those, unless you have a big numbers Advantage in the fight.

If he neglects anti air, you can easily flank his swarmhost ball and kill a lot of those really quickly with overcharge.

Also as soon as you have many Voidrays, they CAN take the role of the colossus in pushing the locusts away.


The Stalker is a General Response to the Kind of Zergs, who try to amass corruptors to just overwhelm your Initial voidrays and then snipe your colossi, leaving you with no way to push away the locusts, forcing you into a direct Engagement with them.

Blink on your Stalkers allows them to scare Corruptors away with an offensive blink and also adds great offensive AND defensive capabilities to your Stalkers vs the swarmhost directly.
Blink micro helps minimise your losses, while blinking ontop of the swarmhosts from a side or as soon as your colossi struck down a wave of locusts, will most likely net you 5+ kills on those expensive swarmhosts via targetfiring.


Immortals are basically only useful when trying to directly engage into the swarmhosts, so they are barely used, but when using a bruteforce strategy, that uses big numbers of colossi to quickly remove the locusts, then rush up and kill the swarmhosts, immortals may be a good Addition, as their hardened shields and big life pool add good meat to your army and they also shred swarmhosts, spines and spores to pieces with their anti armored attacks.

This style would incorporate multiple robos (maybe even 3), many colossi and immortals, as well as  a good number of Stalkers and can most likely not be played reactively, so be careful with this small Segment.


The high templar. I will be talking about this unit in 2 ways. The "second" way of using this unit vs the swarmhost was showcased greatly by Tod, when he played vs Stephano on Akilon wastes.

The High Templar becomes essential for fighting the more lategame zerg composition of Spine, Spore, Swarmhost, Corruptor, Viper, which focuses on never allowing you to engage into it, but draw your expensive units in for free kills one by one.

Using Feedback on the Vipers is your only chance of really dealing well with vipers.
If you don’t have High Templar by the time, vipers are there, you will be having a really hard time with them.

For engaging this kind of army, you want to have your High Templar up front, ready to feedback any vipers coming in. Observers can help spotting those beforehand, making your work a lot easier and actually possible.
Direclty behind those High Templar you should have your colossi, since they are able to deter any ground units, that try to approach your otherwise kind of helpless high templar, as you do not want to lose any units for free at this point in time.
Directly behind your Colossi you should have the rest of your army, as in archons, voidrays and blink stalkers, ready to pounce, whenever you see corruptors closing in on your colossi. Also feel free to drop a storm or two on the corruptors to help save your colossi or get efficient trades without losing all of your colossi.
Don’t use Prismatic alignment, before your voidrays start actually shooting though, as it does have quite the long cooldown.

Storm is also a great tool vs swarmhost styles, as storm deals 80 damage, while swarmhosts have 160 life and locusts have 80 life. It thus takes 2 and 1 storms respectively, to drop groups of either down to 1 hp (damn zerg regeneration, right?).
This means, that storming locusts shortly after they spawned, allows you to quickly take them out and close in on now defenseless swarmhosts, which also tend to not move a lot, so storming those or even generally flanking them with storm is hugely effective.
It forces your enemy to either unburrow and run, taking huge losses to your army, or sit there in your storms and die.
Storms also work to great effect when you see swarmhosts just burrowing, as you do not only deal damage to now newly immobile swarmhosts, but you also almost immediately take out his locusts.

Another great usage of storm vs swarmhost styles is detering corruptors from killing your colossi, as he would have to take huge damage from both storm and voidrays to get to your colossi, thus making it very inefficient for him.



The Style, Tod showcased semi-famously on akilon wastes versus Stephano uses 0 colossi or air units.
He played completely without the 2 big spacecontrolling units, the colossus and the voidray, but instead used the high templar for similar purposes.

Using almost all of his gas on upgrades and high templar, he only sees his templar as 1-way storms, which he uses to take out locusts, to then move his chargelot high templar army closer in, thus restricting the space control oft he swarmhost player, pushing him back to his base, optimally.

He then uses this gained space to take additional bases, which he proceeds to mine almost excluseively gas from, which he invests into even more high templar.
Once his hts have stormed and are out of energy, he does not recharge any energy, but morphs them into archons immediately, using them as a fighting tool together with his chargelots, though while the chargelots are expendable, the archons aren’t.

He keeps taking map presence and bases, until his archon count is high enough for him to „just go for it“ and attack into the chargelot archon composition directly, hoping to end the game in one huge sweep.

Adding Immortals into your army with this style is also helpful, as it sticks with your goal of the direct engagement.

Your minerals with this style get invested into bases, craploads of cannons to defend your outlying expansions, big amounts of chargelots, to take out sidebases of his, since your main army is controlling the space around the map, and also gateways, in order to allow for big reinforcing warpins on your main army.

Even though never having played this style, i would not recommend anyone, who is not pro, to try it, since it seems like it requires a lot of apm, finesse and knowledge, while being very unforgiving.


The Phoenix is a strange unit to have versus Swarmhost styles, as soon as they get off the ground, since spores, queens and corruptors all deal with them really well, but if you already have them anyways or are catching him, while he is transitioning into it, you can use the lift on the phoenixes to weaken his locust waves, unburrow his locusts, and desynchronise his locust spawns, which can all be fairly helpful, if you get the chance and have the spare apm.


Many players use Swarmhosts as a way to get up a big bank for a mass muta transition. This should only ever be possible for him, if the 2 of you did not trade a lot. This is not necessarily bad. (If you did trade a lot, you need to fix your engaging or look at why he had so much eco, not blame the mutas).

So if both of you are in a max scenario and banking ressources, feel free to add stargates until you are at 8+. Also add cannons to your outlying bases. 6+ cannons may be appropriate for awkwardly placed bases.
As soon as the big max engagement occurs, produce these 8+ pheonixes, make 1 colossus for each robo you have and use your massive gateway count on hts and stalkers (maybe even some sentries).
If you see mutas now, keep making those phoenixes and try to keep them alive until you have your 16+ or 24+ phoenixes out to fight him. Don’t make more then 1 wave though, until you see him having mutas, as you might rather want voidrays or carriers in your army. In that case, you can still murder overlords, queens, drones, or suicide the phoenixes.


Expanding versus Swarmhosts: While Swarmhosts may be able to move in between waves of locust spawns, the position oft he locusts can be a good indication of the general position of the swarmhosts. You want to be expanding to where his swarmhosts are currently not, to buy time to get your workers and some cannons over there.
Bases are desperately needed versus swarmhosts, as all of your useful units tend to be very gasintensive and games versus swarmhost turtle also tend to come down to splitmap scenarios and cost efficiency, where every base is mined out.

The excess minerals you gain by having all of these bases can be used well on cannons for protection from muta switches and ling runbys, aswell as zealot counterattacks to snipe your opponents bases, reducing his income and possibly even allowing you to claim certain locations, while you have your army dancing around his on another part of the map.



If you Scout Double Evo but no tech building with your hallucinated phoenix, click his queen and look at his upgrades. In case of ranged attack, rule out mutas and ling busts.
Continue on the Hydralisk path.

In case of Armor but no attack, assume melee attack being taken, but look for zerglings and try to double check.

Melee attack indicates Mutalisks, ling bane busts, or leenock fast ultras.
Research attack upgrades and add gateways until atleast 5 and make stuff.
( i can not be featuring an extensive look into leenocks ultra play as i have only played versus that style 3 times, but i think there is a pretty big teamliquid thread on it, so you can look there.)

Keep checking with halluc phoenixes and try to confirm tech.



If he does not take any tech in time with his lair (30 seconds+ after it’s finished), add twilight, robo, blink, immortals and make stalkers. You don’t want to die to proxied tech, roach drops, or similar things.

Take a third, as you see fit with your army and respond to tech.




The Lategame following this is usually dominated by Zerg tech switching, so be prepared to respond in the same fashion as mentioned before, but usually in a larger scale.

GL and HF!
Dezibell