StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void is all about outwitting your opponent. While most games reward brute force, this title is only responsive to wit and strategy. To that end, you are going to want to take advantage of these tips if you want to improve your Protoss play.

Playing Protoss units is all about timing, utilizing ample reinforcements and causing some serious chaos along the way. To that end, we have developed five top tips for all of you Protoss players out there.

1. Timing Your Attacks

If you are playing as a Protoss, then you want to either strike early or during the mid-game. There are several different Protoss builds that utilize several different timings.

However, in general, you are going to want to punish your opponent before they begin to utilize tier two technology. Around the 8:00-11:00 mark within your game, you should have two bases established for your army.

Ultimately the concept of the timing is to attack your opponent early. For an example of how to properly take advantage of this timing strategy, check out the video below.

2. Take Advantage of Proxy Pylons

Whenever you decide to go on the offensive, make sure to bring a probe with you during attack runs. This way, you can use the probe to build pylons wherever you feel that you will need to warp in reinforcements.

Some players will form the bad habit of only building a single proxy pylon. However, you are going to want to have backup pylons on your side. Otherwise, your offensive mission is going to come to an abrupt end when your enemy takes out your only pylon.

Keep the reinforcement flowing by building a slew of proxy pylons.

3. You Can Cause Some Serious Chaos With Oracles

If you are playing against a Terran, then you are going to want to utilize your oracles. These nifty units have incredibly powerful pulsar beams that can be used to harass your enemy by killing their many workers.

The first step is to track down your enemy’s mineral lines. Then, you can attack their mineral lines with your oracles. This can easily create a war of attrition, as you begin to throttle their mineral mining.

Better yet, you should coordinate your oracle strikes so that you are attacking multiple mineral lines at once. This way, your opponent will be left adequately retaliate. A single oracle is often enough for an entire mineral line.

4. Bluff With Hallucinations

The “Hallucinate” ability can be a great way to bolster a win early on, though it is somewhat risky.

Through this ability, a sentry can muster an illusion of any unit. The illusory unit will have twice as much health, but will also be unable to deal damage.

Consequently, you can use these illusory units as a form of a bluff. If you offensively push forward a hoard of colossi, for instance, your opponent may quickly be spooked into backing down from you. If you can pull this off, then you can get an early victory for nearly nothing.

Of course, a majority of your colossi in this scenario are illusory units. If your opponent has a keen eye and notices that your damage output is not up to par or that your units are tanking more than they should, then your enemy may figure out what you’re doing.

Other than that, however, your opponent would have to use a detector in order to weed out your illusory units. So, the key here is to provide enough illusory units to make your army seem more intimidating. But, you cannot use so many illusory units that your enemy will be able to quickly catch on that something is amiss.

5. If Things Are Not Looking Good, Use a Dark Shrine

Sometimes things will simply not go your way. If you find yourself behind in a game, try using a Dark Shrine to even the odds. It’s more effective than you may realize.

Once you have a Dark Shrine, warp in Dark Templars to attack your enemy at their most vital facilities. As long as your opponent does not have ample detection, you may be able to swoop in and deal a devastating surprise attack.

Once your forces have been spotted, your enemy will likely have an easy counter attack for this if you are behind in the game. However, this tactic can be a wonderful “hail mary” play of sorts if you are nearing a lost game.