Characters / Starcraft Protoss

Main Index The Races The Terrans | The Zerg | The Protoss | Other races Terrans Characters and Factions Raynor's Raiders | Terran Dominion | Ghost Corps | Other Factions | Independent Terrans Zerg Characters and Factions Sarah Kerrigan | Zerg Swarm | Other Zerg Protoss Characters and Factions The Daelaam | Protoss Empire | The Nerazim | The Tal'darim Co-Op Commanders

"We are the protoss. Children of ancient gods. We are the Firstborn. And we shall be the last left standing."

Eons ago, an alien race called the Xel'Naga came to the world of Aiur where a species called the Protoss lived and genetically augmented them, believing the Protoss possessed "purity of form" needed for their experiments. The Protoss worshipped the Xel'Naga as gods, but the Xel'Naga believed their experiment was a failure and left Aiur. The Protoss tribes blamed each other for this and the entire planet descended in a civil war, an age known as the Aeon of Strife. The Aeon of Strife came to an end when the philosopher Khas founded a belief system known as the Khala, which teaches the Protoss to use their telepathic powers to temporarily join minds, bestowing profound empathy and understanding of each other.

The Protoss on Aiur reformed into a great and glorious Empire that explored the stars and colonized the sector, and it was under the banner of the Empire that the bulk of the Protoss race lived. Some Protoss that rejected the teachings of Khas and the Khala were banished from Aiur and become the Nerazim, the Dark Templar, who eventually settled on Shakuras. Other Protoss that had served the Xel'Naga and left Aiur with them founded the Tal'Darim, a brutal war-loving tribe that made their home on Slayn, where they made preparations for the day the Xel'Naga would call on them to serve again.

• The Daelaam ^note Artanis, Selendis, Karax, Rohanna, Talandar, Urun, Karass, Talis, Kaldalis, Clorlarion, Lassara, Expedition Leader
• Protoss Empire ^note Tassadar, Fenix, Mojo, Aldaris, Zamara, Khas, Temlaa, Adun, Vetraas, Kortanul
• The Nerazim ^note Zeratul, Raszagal, Vorazun, Ulrezaj, Mohandar
• The Tal'darim ^note Alarak, Ma'lash, Ji'nara, Nyon, Nuroka

Race as a whole

• Achilles' Heel: While some units in the other races are crippled by Energy drain or an EMP, all Protoss units are potentially screwed over because their shields will be depleted. Additionally, damage to the physical Hit Points of their units can not be undone except with the help of a Terran ally (Medivacs/Medics for biological troops, and SCVs/MULEs for mechanical stuff, the latter being possible in StarCraft II). Legacy of the Void corrects this in the single-player campaign, as repairing is finally available to the Protoss by selecting the Carrier from the War Council or using passive Reconstruction Beam from the Spear of Adun.
• A Commander Is You:
  • Numbers: Elitist. Protoss units are more powerful stats-wise but are more costly, limiting their numbers. To use base units as a key example, Zealots cost 100 minerals apiece, take up two supply, and have 100 HP in addition to 50 shield (compare with Marines and Zerglings). Their raw firepower isn't on the same level as a Terran mechanical army, but their core ground forces have better mobility and cost less in exchange.
  • Doctrine: A weird mix of Brute and Technical, with some Turtle. Brute because units-wise Protoss are not very versatile and have generally high stats, which lets them take on many units head-on and still win. Technical since Protoss require quite a bit of micro and use of abilities to be used optimally, necessitating foresight and sometimes subversive tactics to compensate for the lack of raw damage in their main army. Psionic Storm is one of their signature spells to deliver this extra damage or distract enemies by forcing them to dodge and forgo attacking. Reavers, Colossi, or Disruptors are another source of much-needed area damage support.
    
    While the Protoss don't quite have the turtling prowess of the Terrans, their Photon Cannons give them protection against ground and air attacks, even while their army is away from the base. If backed by defensible terrain and a Protoss armada, their base(s) will be difficult to besiege. Plasma Shield upgrades further boost structural shield armor but unlike the Terran's Neosteel Frame, their physical armor remains unaffected. In Legacy of the Void, all structures even benefit from Shield Batteries, helping them weather a siege longer. In the single player Void campaign, this turtling ability is taken to the next level, thanks to Khaydarin Monolithis and the option to use Nexus Overcharge to enable all Nexus structures to contribute to base defense.
• Alien Blood: Protoss blood is purple. It's only seen in other media, like the canon Shadow Wars comic, as they often teleport and/or dissolve when they take near-lethal injuries, but they do have blood.
• A House Divided: While the Nerazim and the Khalai live together come Starcraft 2, tensions between the two still linger. The major point of contention is Aiur; the Khalai of course want to drive out the Zerg and take back their home, while the Nerazim don't care because Aiur holds little meaning for most of them. The strip-mining of Shakuras to build the Golden Armada to lead the invasion of Aiur only heightened tensions just before the events depicted in Legacy of the Void.
• And Man Grew Proud: Hubris and self-assurance of their own superiority is one of the Protoss' big collective flaws. The Conclave was so certain that they could defeat the Zerg that they sent an expeditionary fleet from Auir to arrest Tassadar while the planet was being invaded, and a number of Protoss leaders look down upon Terrans despite the latter having defeated them multiple times. Wings of Liberty and Legacy of the Void also implies that hubris has lead to a stagnation in Protoss technology, as the Spear of Adun is an ancient Protoss ship from a past age but has more advanced technology than the current Protoss possessed, and Raynor's Raiders are able to come up with some surprisingly obvious adaptations of Protoss technology (i.e. teleporting Vespine gas directly to the Command Center) that the Protoss seem to have been blind to.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: They possess three hearts and no digestive system. Instead of eating, they gain nourishment through sunlight and nutrients dissolved in ambient water vapor. Then, there are their psionic traits.
• Bling of War: Most Protoss warriors wear gorgeous suits of armor into battle. The purpose of the suits is usually to amplify their psionic powers and project their defensive shields: looking very cool is just because the Protoss make all of their war technology look good.
• Born Under the Sail: While it makes no difference in-game, the manual explains that the Auriga tribe of Protoss were the first to explore the seas of Aiur, and ten millenia later they maintain their species' space fleet.
• Borrowing from the Sister Series: In Starcraft 2, the Protoss inherit some mechanics that first appeared in Warcraft III. The Mothership has its own structure (A Nexus) that it is summoned from and like Warcraft III heroes, is restricted to one at a time. The Protoss Nexus also has the Strategic Recall ability that works similarly to a Scroll of Town Portal, but it's the structure that is calling the units back instead of a Hero. In addition, the Phoenix works like an inverted Crypt Fiend, pulling a ground unit into the sky instead of an air unit to the ground.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Many of the new Protoss units in Starcraft 2 are technically mothballed weapons and technologies recommissioned to better take on the Zerg swarms. This also includes the massive space ark, Spear of Adun.
• Catchphrase: "My life for Aiur!". The sentence is best-known to be delivered by their Zealots, but some bigger characters get to say it as well.
• Cosmic Plaything: To Amon and his faction. They uplifted the protoss, while committing a great taboo in the eyes of the "good" Xel'Naga. When the suspicions of the ancient protoss were aroused, they fought off all Xel'Naga. Amon and his faction may or may not have a hand in the leadup to the Aeon of Strife, but Amon was clear that the protoss had to be exterminated for the "crime" of defying him. For that, the zerg Overmind was created. When Amon himself became able to venture beyond the Void, he "reclaimed" the protoss via the Khala, which was created by him for precisely such a purpose. Amon himself also had contempt for the Tal'darim protoss, who serve him and worship him as their god. In fact, defying this trope is the main thrust of the main campaign in Legacy of the Void.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: The Protoss are a race of warrior-philosophers who use special psychic Khaydarin crystals for most of their technology, and normal wear for most of them is a combination of ornate armor and robes.
• Deflector Shields: All Protoss units have personal shields that regenerate slowly and protect the unit from taking HP damage. In Starcraft I they took full damage from all sources but Starcraft II improved them by allowing them to benefit from a unit's typing attributes.
• Dull Surprise: Given that they have no mouths, it's hard to tell how they are feeling without context.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • In the original Starcraft, they were mostly Going Commando; almost all of them wore loincloths with nothing underneath. Later installments, and the remastered originals, have the protoss firmly in the Crystal Spires and Togas category, while the original Going Commando has been the butt of a quite a few Stop Poking Me! gags.
  • In the first game, the Protoss had a variety of eye colors among them that ran the entire color spectrum from red to green. Later games would tie the Khalai Protoss to universally having blue eyes, the Nerazim have green, and the Tal'darim have red.
  • Originally, Protoss Plasma Shields took full damage from all damage types, minus shield armor points. This meant that shields were very easily stripped off even by Terran anti-personnele weapons and were only upgraded when there was nothing better to spend money on as the upgrades cost a premium. StarCraft II reworked shields to also be affected by a unit's type attributes making it a buff when a unit isn't weak against a damage type; after a few seconds of not taking a hit, depleted shield points now rapidly regenerate until full. As a side note, the shield upgrades were reduced in cost and have added value in Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors decisions due to the aforementioned buffs.
• Elite Army: In contrast to the Zerg Rush of lots of cheap, weak units, the Protoss generally rely on smaller numbers of expensive units that have superior stats over the other two races. The most direct example is their base unit, the Zealot; compared to the Marine and Zergling, Zealots cost twice as much supply and minerals, but have about three times the HP and attack power. The only situation when the Protoss can get matched or even beaten in eliteness and cost is when facing Terran Mighty Glacier compositions that favor Factory units.
• Fantastic Caste System: The Protoss Empire and Daelaam (particularly the Khalai) uphold a strict caste system: the Judicators serving as administrators, the Templar embodying the race's martial prowess, and the Khalai comprising laborers, artisans, and technicians, while the original Purifiers acted as a robotic servant race. By the end of Legacy of the Void, however, Artanis does away with this system outright, making Protoss society more egalitarian than ever by recognizing the Purifiers as fellow Protoss and allowing anyone a chance to become a Templar.
• Fantastic Racism: Some of them can show this toward Terrans, though how much vary widely from one individual or group to another. Most of them believe Humans Are Bastards, but do have genuine respect for Jim Raynor and his allies.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: A trait of Protoss.
• Godzilla Threshold: It's revealed by Legacy of the Void that the struggle against the Zerg and ultimately, Amon prompted the Conclave to reverse-engineer the technology behind the original Purifiers to both develop new weapons and a create a new generation of them. Artanis seals the deal however by reawakening said original Purifiers and welcoming them equally as fellow Templar.
• Hair Substitute Feature: The Protoss naturally have a long bundle of cable-like nerve cords growing out of their head like a ponytail; Dark Templar crop theirs to sever their connection to their race.
• Higher-Tech Species: Definitely this compared to Terrans and Zerg. The Spear of Adun arkship alone is one of most powerful forces in the entire universe. However, the Terrans aren't going to be left in the dust and show signs of trying to catch up in the technology and psionics department.
• Large Ham: An entire race of beings who speak mainly in dramatic pronouncements via booming, echoing voices with a strong tendency toward Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: The Protoss have a reputation for being a lategame faction for a reason- slow to start, but watch out once they have enough units to protect their casters and heavy-hitters.
• Low Culture, High Tech: Downplayed. The Protoss possess a highly advanced civilization with a deep understanding of both technical prowess and psionic abilities. At the same time, however, their culture retains a strong spiritual and tribal framework, as well as at least until Artanis abolishes it in Legacy of the Void a rigid caste system. Given that they were uplifted by the Xel'Naga in their distant past, it's justified. Stetman notes in the research terminal in Wings of Liberty that some obvious applications of Protoss technology seem to have been ignored, and he theorizes that it may be due to "primitive superstition." Legacy of the Void shows that the Protoss are willing to improve their capabilities and have their own automated refinery option just like the Terrans and Zerg.
• Magic from Technology: Their technology is so advanced and so deeply related to their psychic powers that it appears like magic to humans.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Normally averted, since the psionic matrix has nearly unlimited applications as long as the technology is there to back it up. However, the war with Terrans and Zerg has put a major strain on Protoss development and since the fall of Aiur, most research has halted, meaning that only Sentries can create illusions and only High Templars can call lightning storms until things get better.
• Magitek: Most of the Protoss' technology manipulates psychic energy in one way or another and uses it as a main power source.
• Meaningful Name: They are often called the "first born" of the Xel'Naga — "protos" is Greek for first.
• Mecha-Mooks: Due to being outnumbered by the Zerg and Terrans in population count, the Protoss supplement a lot of their military and civilian forces with various robotic constructs. Some units such as the Probe, Observer, and Warp Prism are nothing more than peace time machines drafted into military operations, but other Protoss constructs such as the Sentry, Reaver, Interceptor, and Disruptor were fully intended to be Killer Robots. The most extreme case of this was the Colossus, which bordered so much on being a Mechanical Monster that the Protoss decided that they had to seal it away.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: In PvP, the only faction that has shielding on all of their units and structures but also the only faction that lacks native healing and repairing abilities (A Terran ally helps here). They're also the only ones who have a Heroic support unit in the form of the Mothership, and have the unique ability to place structures without the worker remaining adjacent or being consumed. Their teleportation abilities and ability to turn Gateways into Warpgates let them easily move troops around the map.
• Mirroring Factions
  • Ironically, with the Zerg; both were made into what they are by the Xel'Naga, both have their own form of a Psychic Link (The Zerg's being a Hive Mind), and both have two dissident factions representing the conflict between unity (the Swarm / the Khalai Protoss) and individuality (the Primal Zerg / the Dark Templar) that are eventually united into one race. Further, the Zerg operate in Broods and packs, while the Protoss never fully abandoned their tribal origins and developed a caste system on top of it. As it turns out, this was deliberate. Both races were uplifted by Amon and his faction for his great plan to end all life in the universe.
  • The Protoss tech tree paradigm has some similarities with the Terrans, with them using a variant of the Barracks, Factory, and Starport paradigm. The differences lie in most of their ground forces being focused on their Gateways, and their Robotics Facility being a supporting factory instead of an alternative tech path. Their airforce also has a similar paradigm of capital ships being supported by smaller fighter craft and caster vessels with the Terrans taking lessons from their encounters with the Protoss to remain competitive. The Terran Battlecruiser also mirrors the Protoss Carrier in spirit, as both can act as Carriers of smaller vessels, with Terran scientists working tirelessly to meet and exceed Protoss marvels such as shielding.
  • Despite their pride over being superior to Terrans in avoiding civil strife, they fell into civil war briefly during The Fall and The Stand campaigns due to the return of the Dark Templar and Aldaris rebelling in objection to helping the Zerg respectively. They don't war with each other nearly as often as the Terrans, but it has happened. Indeed, there were tensions with The Nerazim, and The Tal'Darim until they made peace, if only temporarily with the later.
• Mutually Exclusive Party Members: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, each unit has three alternate versions, only one of which can be chosen at a time. These choices are not permanent, and can be changed between missions.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Protoss can survive in the same earth-like environments as Terrans despite considerably different biology. This is further confirmed to be so in cinematics showing Terrans and Protoss together in the same scenes without any life support aids.
• No Mouth: They communicate telepathically, and absorb light through their skin for nutrients. Brought up by a Terran Medic's Stop Poking Me! quote:
  "There's a Protoss here who needs mouth-to-mou - ooh... well... mouth to... something."
• No-Sell: Their DNA is so drastically opposed to Zerg's that the Swarm cannot possibly assimilate or infest them. This is likely an intentional design by Amon, who uplifted both the Zerg and the Protoss
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: StarCraft: Ghost development renders revealed that female Protoss have breasts, despite the fact that they are aliens unable to eat solid food, being purely photosynthetic. However, StarCraft: Ghost is not considered canon, and the Protoss females so far seen in the RTS wore chestpieces that weren't shaped in a way suggesting bulges underneath. The female Protoss seen in Starcraft II appear to be flat-chested, but again: their torsos are usually covered by armor. The main way to tell a female protoss from a male is that females have smoother skin and more delicate features. That said, the shirtless Zeratul appears to have nipples.
• No True Scotsman: A running theme with them is who exactly qualifies as heretics or traitors to their race. The Tal'darim are declared heretics for being too brutal and for worshipping the evil god Amon, the Khalai and Nerazim are declared heretics for not worshipping the true god Amon, and the Nerazim are heretics for rejecting the Khala.
• Plugn Play Technology: Terran repair technology eventually became compatible with Protoss tech and is able to repair their machinery (this can be put to use easily in team matches). Moebius Corps was also making progress in reverse engineering the warp-in process for their own use and found a way for Terran tech to interface with Pylons. SCVs & MULEs are even able to repair ancient machines like the Colossus & Mothership! Stetmann also discovers that the Protoss crystal in his lab is able to interface with, modify, and improve Terran technology after he leaves a nanoprocessor in the tank overnight.
• Predator Pastiche: A humanoid Proud Warrior Race with no mouths and a vicious rivalry with a Xenomorph Xerox.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Many Protoss are proud of their victories in battle and love to fight. Aldaris remarks in the first game when Fenix dies that he died fighting as a Templar, the greatest glory a warrior could hope for.
• Psychic Link: The Khala, which connects a majority of the Protoss. Novels emphasize that when Protoss connect through the Khala, they almost become each other, their thoughts, memories and personalities become so closely intertwined for the duration.
• Power Echoes: All Protoss have a form of reverberation to their voice.
• Really 700 Years Old: Maximum Protoss life expectancy is about 1,000 years. Artanis is considered young at 262, while Raszagal, just over 1,000 years old, is one of the oldest living Protoss.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: All Protoss units and buildings are protected by a shield that regenerates over time or with the aid of a nearby shield battery, but unless they're lucky and find friendly Medics and SCVs^note the latter applicable to Starcraft II only, they have no method to restore HP damage once those shields fall. The exact ratio of HP-to-Shield is a major balance factor in the race. Driving the point, Archons are the only melee-mode direct-attack units with about 97% of their health invested in shields (10 hp / 350) making them abnormally reusable if you're able to pull them back from dying. The melee-mode Mothership also has unusual stats with 350 shield points in addition to 350 physical hitpoints but you may only build one of these at a time.
• Scary Dogmatic Aliens: An archetypical example. Both the Khalai and Tal'darim protoss are this trope, while the Nerazim are less scary and dogmatic.
• Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Protoss craft are universally sleek and beautiful, and are usually gold and silver in coloration.
• Space Elves: Protoss and their architecture are emphasized to be beautiful and graceful, their race is long-lived and wise, they originate from a jungle-based homeworld with a lot of vegetation on it and psionics are so prevalent in their lives that their technology is almost magic to some. Furthermore, the fall of Aiur and the disaster of the Zerg attacks have devastated their population size and damaged their culture, and elves being fewer than humans are a staple of elf stereotypes. For direct Tolkien comparisons, the Khalai are Space Noldor, and the Dark Templar are Space Sindar. The Tal'darim don't really fit any particular Tolkien category, but Legacy of the Void gives them a lot of a similarities with the Dark Eldars and The Sith.
• Superior Species: How they see themselves compared to Terrans; they are more advanced both biologically and technologically, live longer and have a better mastery of psychic powers. In fact, nuclear weapons are considered quaint, though Alarak does find them amusing to watch in action if his announcer pack is any indication. They do however start to grow out of it later on. Xel'naga on the other hand, they can't even compare themselves to.
• Telepathy: All Protoss are natural-born telepaths and use it to communicate with one another, even with other races (since they have no mouths).
• Teleporters and Transporters: One of the Protoss' signature abilities is that they make heavy use of teleportation in many variants; both their buildings and units are brought on the field through portals rather than created and both games have them use at least one caster with a mass teleportation spell. In Starcraft II, they even get an upgrade allowing them to instantly teleport fighters anywhere on the field by combining Warp Prisms, Pylons and Warp Gates, and armies may be recalled to any Nexus by using the built-in Strategic Recall ability.
• Tron Lines: Some of their units have them.
• You Cannot Fight Fate: The Protoss don't believe in chance or luck. They believe that everything is determined by fate. Though some, like Zeratul, believe that the future isn't always set in stone. As seen in this exchange from the "Sky Shield" mission in Legacy of the Void:
  Artanis: It seems fate has drawn us together once again, James Raynor.
  Raynor: I'd call it luck...
  Artanis: Luck is a concept that is purely human in origin. We protoss see the synchronicity of events and know there is a grander design behind them.

Defensive and Supporting Structures

Nexus

The Nexus is the heart of a Protoss settlement, allowing the processing of mined resources and was later expanded into a place where you can call upon three support powers; they are Chrono Boost, Strategic Recall, and Battery Overcharge. More on these abilities in the tropes listed below:

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• Borrowing from the Sister Series: Strategic Recall works very much like Scroll of Town Portal from Warcraft III but is cast by the "Town Hall" itself instead of needing a hero with a scroll equipped.
• Deflector Shield: Battery Overcharge allows a Shield Battery to recharge a target's shields 50% faster without spending energy for 14 game seconds, providing a unit a powerful deflector shield until that battery is destroyed or the effect expires.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The Nexus was originally just a vanilla structure where you return resources with no unique traits like creep generation or the ability to lift off and fly around. Starcraft II upgraded them into a Support Power structure as well, making it even more of an advantage to expand due to each Nexus providing their own independent set of spells.
• Teleportation: In Legacy of the Void, the Nexus eventually gained Strategic Recall, enabling a Nexus to teleport a huge amount of units back to the casting Nexus.
• Simple, yet Awesome: The Nexus is available right off the bat and it provides the invaluable ability to speed up the activites of a structure and/or teleport a large number of units back to itself. The more you expand, the more opportunities you have to recall troops and/or Chrono Boost structures to work faster.
• Support Power: Much like the Terrans gaining the Orbital Command upgrade option for Command Centers, the Nexus evolved from a basic resource collector to a provider of powerful support powers in its own right.
• Time Master: A Nexus can accelerate a structure's activities by granting them a Chrono Boost. In melee matches, this ability lasts twenty game seconds and boosts a structure's activity by 50%.

Shield Battery

A bank of shield energy that Protoss units and structures may use to refill their deflector shields. In the Brood War ruleset, it was basic and only allowed manual recharging of mobile units but not structures, but Legacy of the Void added auto-casting, support for recharging structure shields, and the ability to be overcharged by a Nexus to recharge 50% faster for 14 game seconds and do so without spending energy supply.

• Balance Buff: Legacy of the Void brought back Shield Batteries after they were Put on a Bus and allowed them to auto-cast their recharge to targets in need and also work on structures. Attacking units or structures no longer need to stop attacking while benefiting from Shield Batteries, deeping their strategic value.
• The Medic: A stationary one that provides shield recovery to both units and structures. Batteries will let a target rapidly regenerate shield points, but they will need medical or repair units to recover physical damage which isn't possible in a standard one on one melee match.
• Put on a Bus: They were gone during Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm until The Bus Came Back in Legacy Of The Void.

Photon Cannon

One of the most iconic defensive structures in the game and well appreciated for its ability to detect stealth and attack both ground and air targets. While not as cheap as the Terran Missile Turret MK1, efficient and cheap as the Terran Missile Turret MK2, or as durable as Zerg Spore defenses, they makes up for their lack of a specialization with versatility, plus they can detect AND attack cloaked units on the ground or in the sky.

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• Anti-Air: When the skies are contested, the Photon Cannon is the primary solution for the static anti-air needs of the Protoss. If the fight reaches the ground, then the cannon(s) can still help out.
• Jack of All Stats: A very well rounded all-purpose defense. You don't have to plan too hard for the right ratio of ground defense to air defense as this cannon does both. In the sequel, they even got a health boost for a total of 300 Hit Points, and their shields now benefit from the structure's elemental attributes like all Protoss units were buffed to do. In Legacy of the Void, the Shield Batteries may increase their effective health thanks to automatically recharging and recharging shields only costs spell energy and a payment of minerals to warp in Batteries, but this isn't quite as good a feat as the Terrans can pull off with SCV repairs as physical health remains unable to be repaired. Their main drawbacks are that they're not as cost-efficient as the Terran Missile Turret MK2 for anti-air duty or as innately durable and movable as the Zerg Crawler defenses and can still be overwhelmed by heavy numbers or turned to scrap by enemy Siege Engines outside their attack range.
• Simple, yet Awesome: It's available early on and is the only standard defensive structure that targets both ground and air and detects stealth, all in one convenient package. They're also popular in the Cheese Strategy called the Cannon rush, where a Probe sneaks into a player's base and starts building Cannons near their mineral line out of sight. Just remember that Cannons can't move at all so don't sink too many minerals into them so you have a sufficient mobile army.
• True Sight: Dangerous to all stealth units unless the cannons are outnumbered and unsupported by backup. It targets both ground and air varieties of stealth units.

Khaydarin Monolith

Exclusive to the Legacy of the Void campaign, these massive structures possess immense up-front damage and extreme attack range (rivaling the Terran Siege Tank). However, they are very expensive for a defensive battery and also cost gas, so they need support from the relatively inexpensive Photon Cannons. They also can only strike one target at a time, and have a considerable cooldown before they may fire again.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: Downplayed but you still don't want to build solely these for your defense as they can be overwhelmed by large numbers without support. On the plus side, they have siege range, which is a relief when units like Brood Lords and Siege Tanks attack. Photon Cannons will still make up the bulk of your defensive needs however.
• BFG Their weaponry is huge, rivaling the height of a Colossus and will strike a single target for obscene damage.

Biological warriors

Biological warriors as a whole

• Empowered Badass Normal: Buildable units' biological endurance is higher than most Terrans and even Zealots can gain Super-Speed for brief charges, but hazards like Ghost snipers and radiation poisoning are still threats to them, with the exception of the Archon warriors.
• Hollywood Healing: In gameplay, Protoss can be healed by Terran Medics of Medivacs just as easily as any human being. This is lampshaded in II where one of the Medic's Stop Poking Me! quotes has her declare that there's a Protoss who needs "...well mouth to something."
• Super-Strength: Protoss warriors can typically match or exceed the endurance of a Terran Marine in bulky Power Armor with their mostly their natural bodies and a suit of form-fitting armor on top of their Deflector Shield. Even frailer units like High Templar have a light shield to help them take more hits than even an upgraded Marine.

Zealot

"My life for Aiur!"

The Protoss base unit, stalwart warriors armed with two psi-blade extending from their wrists as an emanation of the Zealot's psionic powers. In lore the Zealots are the backbone warriors of the Protoss infantry, with even ranking members of the Templar Caste more often being Zealots than anything else.

Zealot variants include the Aiur Zealot, who exchange their warp blades for psionic polearms that can cleave through multiple surrounding enemies and better overcome generic armor protection; the Nerazim Centurion, with limited cloaking abilities and a stunning attack; the Purifier Sentinel, a robotic construct that can self-repair upon destruction; and the Purifier Legionnaire, also a robotic construct with just higher stats than normal Zealots.

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• Always Someone Better: They are historically a well-rounded melee tanking unit with good attack power, and can fight Zerglings at an advantage as long as they're ahead in weapon upgrades. They only need 100 minerals each so they are a good way to put spare resources to use. However, with equal upgrades, they're are not as good at DPS as an equivalent-supply of Zerglings (4), don't have the Anti-Air or micro potential of Marines, aren't as honed for dedicated tanking as the Zerg Ultralisk, and in melee, do not have a means of healing without stealing a Terran SCV to unlock Medics (SC I) or having a Terran ally with Medivacs (SC II). However, Zealots are usually great support with a balanced army covering for their weaknesses. They make good protection for Archons, due to costing only minerals. Starcraft II gave them a boost with the Charge upgrade allowing them to move even more quickly than normal for a brief period, but Zealots became more of a supporting unit rather than a primary one, distracting enemies from vital targets in a Protoss army composition.
• Auto-Revive: The Sentinel's ability, though they cannot revive again for 120 seconds.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Aiur Zealot and Nerazim Centurion suffer from this as the campaign progresses. They have abilities that seem incredible like Splash Damage for the Aiur Zealot and a stun ability plus a phased-charge that goes through solid units for the Centurion. However, these units fall off in usability against top-tier threats due to poor survival traits. As a result, the Boring, but Practical Sentinels steal the spotlight with their ability to return from the dead (albeit, on a two minute cooldown) and can be repaired by the Spear of Adun's reconstruction beam passive ability.
• Balance Buff: The sequel gave them the Charge ability to make them more effective at closing in on enemies and allow them to chase down fleeing units. The Aiur Zealots got one in a patch since before their attacks only did as much damage one from a normal Zealot, but only attacked once(normal Zealots attack twice) giving them a lower damage output. After the patch they did as much damage with their one attack as other Zealots did with two, making them much better against armored units.
• Battle Cry: Noticeably has several, since most other Protoss units are more stoic about combat or are stealth experts (and therefore not into the business of being loud).
• The Berserker: When All You Have Is A Laser Blade, everything becomes a target to charge at.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Two of them, in fact.
• Blood Knight: The most enthusiastic about combat, in contrast to the more reserved High Templar. Taken up a notch in Legacy of the Void: most units, when attacked, tend to state that they are being attacked or call for retreat. The Zealot?
  "WE EMBRACE THE GLORY OF BATTLE!"
• Boring Yet Practical: As with the Marine and Zergling, even in the late game a group of upgraded Zealots can make short work of an unprepared opponent.
• Can't Catch Up: Unlike Marine or Zerglings, Zealots don't get any kind of attack speed upgrade, which severely reduces their hitting power in the lategame comapred to their peers. Zealots in lategame Protoss compositions are there as a mineral dump and to absorb enemy fire with their high health, unorthodox armor type for such a bulky unit, and ability to get to the front of the fight quickly.
• Close-Range Combatant: Their main weakness is their melee limitations: slicing up Marines isn't the hard part, getting to them is. Obtaining their Charge attack through research thus bridges the gap between Zealots and Marines somewhat.
• Chewing the Scenery: Very few of their remarks and none of their battle cries don't involve this.
• Dual Wielding: In the sequel their base damage is listed as 16, but that's the total output since the zealot makes two attacks of 8 each, however, the drawback of this is that their attacks are more penalized by armor. ^Explanation In both games, armor reduces attacks in a simple reduction, that means, if someone attacks with 3, and the attacked has 2 of armor, the total damage will be 1; because the zealot does two attacks, that means his attack is reduced each time, so if a zealot of 12 base damage attacks a Firebat of 6 armor, he would do 1/2 damage per attack to the Firebat for a total of 1 as SCI arbitrates that attacks much do at least 1/2 a point of damage. In SCII, armor was changed so that all hits do at least 1 damage, so the firebat would take a total of 2 damage..
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: A fighter to the High Templar (mage), and the Dark Templar (thief).
• Flash Step:
  • In StarCraft II they get "Charge" which lets them quickly charge in on enemies when they get close.
  • The Nerazim Centurion has an improved charge that briefly cloaks the unit, and lets it charge through allied units blocking the way. It fits the trope better than the regular Zealot's Charge since, from the enemy's point of view, they seem to have teleported.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The story treats them as the backbone of the Protoss ground forces, Lightning Bruisers who move so fast Terrans have difficulty keeping track of them, their psi-blade are strong enough to slice through the armor of Siege Tanks and Ultralisks and can be seen killing Zerglings and Hydralisks in one or two stokes. None of that is true in gameplay; while Zealots are decently strong and fast, especially compared to Zerglings and Marine, they're mostly used as Cannon Fodder to give the opponent something to shoot at that isn't one of your higher-tier units with superior firepower and heavier resource cost.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: The melee Spear Counterpart to the Adept.
• Incoming Ham: All variants have their creation quotes, but the Centurion takes the cake.
  I WALK the shadowed path!
• Large Ham: Always screams about honor and glory. Fittingly, they're voiced by Jamieson Price in Starcraft II.
• Laser Blade: Psionic blades, actually.
• Lightning Bruiser: When the Charge upgrade is researched, they can keep up with Marines while losing none of their toughness and attack power.
• Mascot Mook: The face of the Protoss race among their Gateway lineup.
• Mighty Glacier: By far the strongest of the basic units, being as tough as a Terran Viking, but they are also by far the slowest when not upgraded. In the first game, even the fellow Mighty Glacier Dragoon was faster.
• Ninja Run: With speed upgrades they start running like this: one blade hanging behind them and one arm folded sideways so that the blade is held close to them.
• No Indoor Voice: Whatever they have to say, they say it outloud and proud.
• Not Afraid to Die: A basic requirement to be a Zealot is to be fanatical (or just plain crazy) enough to charge unflinchingly into heavy fire. Parodied in the Dominion Field Manual by the Zealot being noted for "I run directly into the machine-gun fire! For Aiur!" and the Dragoon lamenting their Suicidal Overconfidence.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Come Legacy of the Void, they saw less usage due to the addition of Adepts, which have superior mobility, damage against Light units (which is most early-game units including workers) and most importantly a ranged attack, all for only a marginally higher cost and the requirement of a Cybernetics Core (which a Protoss player will always build anyway). Various attempts to make Zealots more viable followed.
• Powered Armor: That incorporates a teleportation system when they're too badly hurt (in the original game, at least).
• Screaming Warrior: A lot of their lines are battle cries or just angry yelling.
• Simple, yet Awesome: The primary mineral-sink unit of the Protoss. At 100 Mineral apiece, they'll use up minerals quickly and have many uses. They can shield your army using their respectable endurance and have a good damage rate too. They can also be dropped onto key targets, drawing fire while they attack said targets. Give them Leg Enhancements and they become lightning bruisers.
• Spin Attack: In Legacy of the Void, Aiur Zealots can perform one of these to deal area-of-effect damage.
• Three Approach System: In Legacy of the Void's campaign, Zealots have three variants: The Aiur Zealot (Warrior) focuses on pure damage dealing and uses a poleaxe that is more effective against armor than regular psi-blade and they can spin to deal Splash Damage, The Nerazim Centurion (Rogue) adds utility to your army by stunning foes with their charge and the ability to phase through your units when they charge and not get stuck behind units as a result. The Pruifier Sentinel (Tanking) is the most devoted to defense, able to be repaired by Reconstruction Beam and/or Carriers, and able to return to life when they die (after a cooldown, they can even resurrect again).

Adept

"Glory to the Daelaam!"

A new Gateway unit added in Legacy of the Void designed as a counter to the early game units. Has a form of teleportation via its Psionic Transfer ability. They appear in the Legacy of the Void campaign as an alternate Stalker.

The war against Amon saw Adepts being augmented by Purifier technology, allowing their glaive cannons to attack air units and causing their Psionic Transfer shades to weaken enemies they pass through. The Purifiers also field their own Adept variant, whose shades can attack enemies.

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• Action Girl: The only Gateway unit to be a female Protoss.
• Anti-Infantry: Much better damage vs. lightly armored units.
• Balance Buff: In melee they cannot attack air units, but they can in the campaign as they're a tech option alongside Stalkers and Dragoons, who can also attack air units.
• Battle Cry: "For Selendis!"
• Blood Knight: Their "under attack" quote is far too enthusiastic for anything else, even by Protoss standards.
• Confusion Fu: Their specialty. Psionic Transfer sends out "shades" of the Adept; they are intangible, move quickly, and can be controlled independently of the Adept and can travel quite a long distance. After 10 seconds, the Adept teleports to the shade automatically... unless the Protoss attacker cancels the shade, leaving the Adept where it is. Meanwhile, the Adepts themselves do not do the standard "Can't move, doing psychic stuff" trope; they can keep fighting while the shades are traveling. This can create extremely confusing raids where the attacker seems to be wherever the enemy is not, the Adepts happily dancing around the battlefield while the defenders scramble to catch them.
• Crutch Character: A downplayed example. They're an early to midgame harassment / anti-light unit with a decent amount of bulk, and a doppelganger ability for safe scouting or teleportation. Their attack haste may also be upgraded to help them become better frontline fighters. They fare better than the analogous Fragile Speedster Terran Reaper in this regard as the Reaper has less than half the vitality, and no further research abilities for the midgame.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: The Adepts in the Legacy of the Void campaign; their Psionic Transfer now causes units the shade passes through to take additional damage for a short amount of time.
• Glass Cannon: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, they lean towards this compared to Dragoons and Stalkers. They have much better mobility than Dragoons and deal higher damage than Stalkers (even more so with a previously applied Psionic Transfer), but they lack the Dragoon's higher durability and the Stalker's ability to regenerate shields quickly after a Blink (compensating the Adept's higher HP and shields). The Adept is the only Biological ranged warrior variation, preventing them from regaining HP via the Spear of Adun's Reconstruction Beam, or the presence of nearby Carriers.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: The ranged Distaff Counterpart to the Zealot.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: They were designed as potent harassment units for mid-to-late game.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: She could give the Zealot a run for his money.
  (when attacked) "Glorious combat is upon us!"
• Shadow Walker: Its Psionic Transfer ability works this way.

Supplicant

"My life for the Highlord!"

Low-ranking Tal'darim warriors, they appear in Co-op Missions where they serve as Alarak's basic infantry troop, replacing the Zealot. Unimpressive on their own, they mainly exist to be sacrificed to Alarak and his Ascendants to empower them.

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• Black Comedy: Most of the humor in their Stop Poking Me! quotes comes from them being completely aware that their entire purpose is to be sacrificed in short order.
  "A few of the supplicants and I have a bet going over which of us dies first. We call it "The Dead League." Yes, we're still working on the name."
• Cannon Fodder: Acknowledged in-universe, they're weak units that exist solely to provide Alarak support and will quickly die in his name. Their character models don't even have weapons or armor.
• Energy Ball: They attack by flinging energy orbs at targets.
• Foil: To the Zealot, seeing as they replace them as Alarak's base infantry unit. Zealots are powerful but fragile melee attackers while Supplicants are weak but sturdy ranged attackers Zealots charge in first to serve as meatshields from your bigger units, Supplicants will be staying at range while Alarak charges in, sacrificing them to survive. Zealots get the Charge and Whirlwind abilities to improve their offensive capabilities, Supplicants get Blood Shields and Soul Augmentation upgrades to improve their survability. This is even reflected in their unit quotes; the newly trained Zealot shouts "My life for Aiur," while the Supplicant shouts "My life for the Highlord."
• Heroic Sacrifice: Their main purpose is to be sacrificed to Alarak to restore his health when he grows weak, or to his Ascendants to restore their energy.
• Irony: They use a modified Preserver model from Wings of Liberty. Preservers use the Khala to absorb and store the memories of other Protoss; as the Tal'darim do not access the Khala, they cannot have Preservers.
• Stone Wall: With their unique shield upgrades as well as faction-universal shield upgrades, they have 150 shields with an armor rating of 5, making them surprisingly effective tanks. Still not much on offense, though.
• Zerg Rush: They're individually weak, but easily massed. Interestingly they warp in two at a time just like the Trope Namer Zerglings.

High Templar

"Khassar Detemplari."

Protoss mystics that have foregone traditional combat training to hone their psionic abilities. They can manifest illusions and call down storms of psychic energy. During the struggle against Amon, the High Templar further enhanced their powers, letting their Psionic Storms replenish allies' shields.

The Tal'darim have their own version of the High Templar, the Ascendants, who can drain the life force of their fellow warriors to restore their energy, bombard the foe with Psionic Orbs, and destroy heavier targets with Mindblast.

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• Anti-Air: Psionic Storm is useful for zapping large clusters of air units out of the sky. Capital fliers will be affected the worst due to moving too slowly to dodge the storm before taking most or all of the damage.
• Anti-Magic: Gained this utility in Starcraft II when they adopted the Dark Archon's Feedback power. It's unlikely to kill on its own as it was nerfed to only deal damage equal to half of the amount of energy drained but it will surely take an enemy caster out of commission, at least temporarily, so you won't have to deal with them casting in the short term.
• Balance Buff:
  • In the Legacy of the Void campaign, their Psionic Storms now heal the shields of allied units, making them more effective support troops now that players don't need to fear their own casters.
  • In Legacy of the Void multiplayer, High Templars were given a Ranged Emergency Weapon so that they can do something when unable to support with spells. It also prevents High Templar from going right into enemy formations when using the Attack-Move command and die a foolish death.
• Black Mage: The Tal'Darim Ascendant in the Legacy of the Void campaign focuses purely offensive magic, disregarding any shield-charging utility and in fact draining life from allies to fuel their destructive power. This ability may be cast upon mechanical targets who may then be repaired by Carriers or the Spear of Adun's Reconstruction Beam, so expendable units like Sentinels make ideal targets for a life drain.
• Borrowing from the Sister Series: The High Templar fill a similar role to the Conjurers/Warlocks from Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. HTs originally had a "minor summon" with their Hallucination spell (later replaced by Feedback), Psionic Storm works like the Poison Cloud as consistent Area of Effect spell, and their Archon Warp sacrifices two High Templar to create an Archon, a durable short-ranged unit similar to a summoned Water Elemental with the same range of three map tiles.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: A mage to the Zealot (fighter), and Dark Templar (thief). May become fighters themselves by merging into Archons.
• Fusion Dance: Can merge with each other to form an Archon.
• Glass Cannon: Zig-Zagged, they can do a lot of damage with Psionic Storm, but are relatively slow and can't take much damage themselves having only 80 total Hit Points; this is more HP than a Terran Marine's max (55 HP) but 80 is still relatively low protection and they're also far more expensive. Driving the point, if two Brood War-era High Templar duel one another, their Psionic Storms may lead to Mutual Kill. However, if High Templar are at risk of being sniped, they can merge into Archons in an attempt to save themselves. The Ascendant takes it up a notch with abilities that can rip through heavy units and clumps of light units alike, but they still can't take a hit, can't morph into Archons, and have to drain health from your own units to restore energy, indirectly decreasing the durability of your army.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Psionic Storm. Ascendants, meanwhile, get Psionic Orb instead which deals damage to enemy units in a line.
• Heroic BSoD: This is why they don't appear early in the Legacy of the Void campaign—the loss of the Khala was devastating for them, and implicitly needed therapy before serving again.
• Heroic Sacrifice: How their Archon Morph is seen in the lore.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In StarCraft II they inherit the Dark Archon's Feedback, which lets them zero-out the energy of an enemy unit and inflict damage to them equal to the energy drained (this was nerfed in melee-mode to deal damage equal to 1/2 the amount drained). Given a lot of enemy spellcasters tend to have low HP and are sent out with high energy reserves, this tends to be very effective at wounding or killing casters.
• Life Drain: The Ascendant can refill energy by draining health from an allied unit. This doesn't kill the unit, leaving it with a minimum of 1 HP.
• Mana Burn: The High Templars' Feedback destroys an enemy's Energy and deals damage to them as well, the damage amount varying based upon the balance patch. This gives the Mage-like High Templar an unusual secondary role as a Mage Killer, but Terran Ghosts in Starcraft II can give them big run for their money in this department.
• Master of Illusion: Hallucination, which lets them create copies of a unit as distractions. This power is given to Sentries in Starcraft II.
• Power Floats: Which help them to stand out amongst other protoss infantry like the Adept or Zealot. They also leave behind afterimages whenever they move.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: They gained a ranged attack in multiplayer in Legacy of the Void, but it's very weak, slow, and only targets ground units, so High Templar are not expected to use this attack unless under dire circumnstances. Instead, it's meant so that, when High Templars are ordered to Attack-Move, they stay behind friendly lines instead of marching straight to their deaths.
• Red Mage: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, the High Templar assumes this role, as their Psionic Storm now restores shields to allies while harming enemies. They are also the only Mage that can merge into the powerful Archon and fight with your frontline fighters which usually comes into play once they've used up their energy reserves.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Actually, you'll probably get fried by lightning before you ever get to see them. They switch to blue eyes in the sequel, but the Ascendant picks up where they left off.
• Shock and Awe: Their famous Psionic Storm.
• Squishy Wizard: With 40 HP and 40 shields and a slow movement speed, they won't last long under fire. But Psionic Storm decimates anything that passes through it, even flying units, and in the sequel their Feedback can quickly cripple enemy spellcasters. The Ascendant is similar; with the same amount of hit points as a normal High Templar, they neverthless possess devastating abilities.
• You Have Researched Breathing: Even though High Templars are stated to be psionic masters, they do not have any psionic abilities when unupgraded (they can only merge to become Archons). This is made stranger as Protoss units are warped in, and not trained or created, meaning these unupgraded Protoss somehow became High Templars while unable to cast any spells. At least Starcraft II partially addressed by starting them with Feedback, so they can zap spell casters right out of the gate.

Dark Templar

"Adun Toridas."

"From the shadows I come."

Long ago, the Dark Templar rejected the Khala and so were branded traitors and outcasts, banished from Aiur. Reunited with their brethren in Brood War, they have learned to channel the energies of the Void to render themselves invisible. The higher ranks of the Nerazim Shadow Guard, the guardians of their homeworld, are made up of elite Dark Templar. To fight back against Amon, the Dark Templar underwent further training, granting them the ability to rapidly teleport between enemies while striking them down.

There are a few variants of Dark Templar. The Aiur Avengers are former Khalani Protoss who adopted the ways of the Nerazim and use recall technology to escape mortal danger, while the Tal'darim Blood Hunters are assassins who can freeze structures in temporary stasis.

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• Achilles' Heel: Vulnerable to True Sight like other stealth units.
• Anti-Frustration Features: In StarCraft II, Dark Templar can also merge into regular Archons with a High Templar or another Dark Templar. This way, if your investment in a Dark Shrine is nullified by timely detection from your opponent, you can change gears and convert DTs into more durable frontline fighters.
• Ascended Extra: They go from campaign only units in the original to regular units in Brood War.
• Badass Boast:
  • "You could no more evade my wrath than you could your own shadow."
  • Blood Hunter: "You may find our ways harsh, Templar, but it is better to be harsh than pathetic."
• Badass Cape: Their standard attire.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: While Zealots have dual-blades, the Dark Templar have one.
• Close-Range Combatant: No ranged abilities, just a Laser Blade and a skilled hand wielding it.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Merging with other Templars to form Archons is seen in-universe as a dangerous action, reserved only for the greatest of perils.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Dark Templars are no less heroic than the High Templars — they just use a different source of power.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The Avenger are recalled back to a Dark Shrine and can be used again after "death" (as long as the cooldown isn't active).
• Diagonal Cut: Even heavily armored units are bisected by a single, deep slice.
• Double Weapon: After Wings of Liberty, Dark Templar can appear as either their classic Lenassa form (pictured) or a double-bladed warp scythe wielding Zer'atai form.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: A thief to the Zealot (fighter), and the High Templar (mage). May become magi themselves by merging into Dark Archons, but availability of this option varies.
• Flash Step: In Legacy of the Void's campaign, base Nerazim Dark Templar gain an ability that lets them rapidly teleport around an area, attacking enemies multiple times. Vorazun in Co-op Mode retains this upgrade for them and adds in the Stalker's Blink, a short-range teleport. The multiplayer version gets Shadow Stride, a short-distance teleport similar to Blink that also leaves a visible cloud of smoke.
• Foil: Fast moving heavy-hitting attacker to contrast the High Templar's slow-moving heavy-hitting spellcaster.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Downplayed in that Dark Templar have a combined 120 health between HP and Shields, and 1 Armor. While it's one of the most fragile Protoss units, it is simultaneously one of the toughest infantry units in the game (with the same Armor and only 5 less overall HP than the Marauder), with the ability to one-shot Drones and Probes (and SCVs in StarCraft II) and they have decent movement speed. On the other hand, they have a disappointing attack speed, reducing their ability to fight back if detected, and their decent health is diminished by the fact losses are very costly due to the 125 vespene each one requires to warp in.
  • Downplayed further with the Aiur Avenger and Tal'darim Blood Hunter. The former can teleport back to your Dark Shrine when their health is depleted, and be fully healed. Just be sure to time your attack so their teleport is off of cooldown. The Blood Hunter can be even more of a menace, with the ability to place stasis effects around units and structures including detectors, attack many sites unimpeded and thus be virtually invulnerable.
• The Heretic: In the lore, but they're actually heroic, friendly and ironically can be more reasonable than some of the Khalai Protoss, especially Aldaris. By the time of Brood War they became an undeniable part of the Protoss military due to their ability to assassinate Cerebrates permanently.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: They can only be seen by Detectors due to their permanent cloaking ability, which makes them ideal for harassment and dirty tactics like this.
• I Am the Noun: In Starcraft II, they say "I am the darkness" in one of their quotes.
• Important Haircut: Sort of. Those long, hairlike appendages regular Protoss have at the top of their skulls serves as their psychic link to the Khala. The Dark Templars' are noticeably cut short in a kind of Samurai Ponytail.
• Invisibility Cloak: Permanently invisible without using energy.
• Laser Blade: They wield Warp Blades, similar to the Zealot's Psi-Blade but formed from void energies.
• Locked Out of the Fight: The Blood Hunter's Void Stasis allows it to disable enemies or structures on the ground, preventing them from attacking or being attacked. They're also smart enough to autocast the ability on detectors.
• Nerf: Zig-Zagged, in Starcraft II, while they're much more powerful with weapon upgrades than they were before and can be upgraded to Blink like Stalkers, they now require a not-inexpensive Darkshrine which makes a scouting opponent aware of what you're up to if they find the structure and are able to prepare more in advance as a result. To compensate, players can hide the shrine in an out of way location. If your DT attack fails, worry not as they can now merge into Archons like High Templar transitioning into a more direct assault unit.
• Ninja Run: They do this just like the Zealots, though more fittingly since they are effectively ninja.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: In the campaign missions, the Aiur Avenger has this problem. Their sole perk is cheating death by auto-teleporting back to a Dark Shrine when taking a fatal hit. This isn't all that impressive outside of some specific cheese tactics however; the Dark Templar has Shadow Fury which allow them to "Jump from target to target, dealing 20 (+15 vs. Light) damage with each jump. Hits 5 times." and makes them excellent at raw damage and One-Hit Kill utility against Zerglings, while the Blood Hunter can also "cheat death" by locking down detectors in Void Prisons,^note They will do this automatically even. and thus can attack with impunity.
• Power of the Void: Their source of energy and how they cloak themselves.
• Predator Pastiche: With their wrist blades, (or blades on a stick), shimmering cloak, Skeletons in the Coat Closet, and severed nerve cords, they've got the theme nailed.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Too bad you can't see them before the Dark Templar carves you up. They're changed to green in the sequel, but the Blood Hunter picks up where they left off.
• Revenge: The motivation of the Avengers; they are Khalai Protoss who are enraged with the loss of Aiur, and thus adopted the ways of the Dark Templar and returned to their zerg-infested homeworld to wage guerrilla war against said Zerg.
• Sinister Scythe: In Starcraft II, though it has no effect on gameplay, Dark Templar randomly spawn armed with their original wrist-mounted Warp blades, or these. The exception is Vorazun's Dark Templar in Co-op, which always use warp blades to distinguish them from her Shadow Guard, which always use scythes.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: In II, they wear Zerg carapaces and mandibles as armor, giving one variant a Predator look.
• The Social Darwinist: This trope describes the job of the Blood Hunters; to hunt down and kill Tal'darim deemed too weak to serve the Highlord.
• Stealth Expert: Though they stay cloaked even when it's highly obvious that a Dark Templar has infiltrated (unless revealed using True Sight).
• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, they get a Shadow Fury ability that hits up to 5 targets for 35 spell damage. Spell damage ignores armor, making Dark Templar perfect for slicing up Zergling swarms with ease.
• Three Approach System: In the Legacy campaign, The Nerazim Dark Templar focuses on maximizing damage output (combat), The Aiur Avenger is more cost-efficiency focused with an emergency teleport to save them from dying (cost efficiency). The Tal'darim Blood Hunters is focused on solo infiltration using their Void Stasis to disable ground detection (stealth).
• You Have Failed Me: The Blood Hunters are tasked with hunting down Tal'darim too weak to serve the Highlord, and carry out this verdict on their behalf. In other words, in Tal'darim society, "only warriors deserve the honor of fair combat."

Archon

"The merging is complete."

The pinnacle of Protoss psionic power, formed by two High Templar sacrificing their bodies to manifest as an orb of pure energy. They can decimate enemies with bolts of energy.

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• Armored But Frail: Their Shield Hit Points are nothing to sneeze at, but EMP attacks can quickly deplete said shields, leaving them with a paltry 10 HP, much less than even a basic Zergling (35 HP). Without EMP, this is also Inverted in their Starcraft I debut, as they are well protected but have zero armor points on their shields and receive the full damage from all attacks, negating much of their cost-efficiency against Terran mech armies with their powerful single-shot attacks.
• Cast from Lifespan: Within the lore Archons usually burn themselves out shortly after being created, which is why it is a great honor to make this sacrifice.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: They are hyped up as an ultimate warrior and one is shown in a Legacy of the Void cutscene as holding their own against an Ultralisk, pulling a Taking You with Me maneuver as they burn out and disappear. In gameplay however, Archons aren't on this level of power against an Ultralisk in a duel, don't have a timed life, nor do they have the ability to implode and take a unit with them.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: The sacrifice is seen as one of the highest a Protoss can make, and Archons are greatly honored for their valor.
• Discard and Draw: Archons lost a significant amount of attack speed and splash radius going from Starcraft I to II, however at the same time the changes in damage mechanics made them go from taking the most damage from all sources (as Shields took full damage from both Concussive and Explosive damage) to the least (as explained in No-Sell) making them tougher but less powerful offensively. However, they now deal bonus damage against biological units giving them an advantage against Terran Infantry, Protoss foot warriors, and anything the Zerg fields. Indeed the Archon has been a staple against the Zerg since Brood War due to the Zerg's frequent use of rapid-Scratch Damage.
• Energy Beings: They're made from psionic energy.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In the sequel, any two Templar can merge to form a normal Archon. No story explanation has been given for how this is possible, as two Dark Templar merging used to create a Dark Archon, and one of each Templar merging tends to have explosive results. While the outlawing of the Dark Archon has an excuse, the changed results of the merging Templar does not. Indeed, in the Starcraft II beta, there was a new Archon called the Twilight Archon that was meant to be like hybrid of the Dark Archon and Archon, but this was removed.
  • In lore, the creation of an Archon is supposedly the ultimate sacrifice the Protoss involved can make. In-game, they're basically the next step in using High Templar once they're out of energy and, in II, Dark Templar once the enemy starts getting detectors.
• Kryptonite Factor: Archons are really beefy, with hundreds of HP. Unfortunately, almost all of those are shields, so in both games they're highly vulnerable to EMPs. In StarCraft, shields took full damage from all damage types, making them vulnerable to cheap units like the anti-infantry Vulture who would normally do weak damage to their actual health.
• Lightning Bruiser: They hit hard and have a lot of shields. They aren't very speedy, but are far from slow.
• No-Sell:
  • In the first game, they're one of the few units immune to the Queen's Spawn Broodling ability, as they're a unit of pure psionic energy with no biological matter to infest. They also shrug off the Defiler's Plague since they have only 10 HP, with most of their vitality coming from their 350 Shields.
  • In the sequel, they're one of the few units with neither the Light nor Armored type, and also are neither Biological nor Mechanical. This makes them immune to a lot of abilities and denies many units any form of damage bonus against them. Their types are Massive and Psionic; the former also makes them immune to Force Fields, Concussive Shells, and Graviton Beam, leaving the Raven's Interference Matrix as one of the few abilities that can affect them. They still don't like the Ghost's EMP Rounds, but with 350 shields they can tank a single round better than most other Protoss units can, and it would take at least two rounds for the Archon to start worrying.
• Our Archons Are Different: In this case they're psionic energy beings.
• Power Floats: They technically hover over the ground rather than walk.
• Shock and Awe: Their attack is a bolt of psionic lightning.
• Splash Damage: They deal it with their normal attacks.
• Weaksauce Weakness: They're mighty psionic energy beings who are like embodiments of miniature stars, yet the Terrans can combat them with mere electromagnetic pulse effects.

Dark Archon

"We are as one."

An ancient secret long forbidden to the Dark Templar for the sheer danger of it, the Dark Archon is formed by the dark energy of two Dark Templar merging together. They can shroud enemies in a paralyzing maelstrom and drain their energy reserves, but the greatest expression of their great power is the ability to dominate enemy minds.

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• And I Must Scream: Stop Poking Me! quotes include screams of agony and pleads to their gods for succour ("Adun save me...") They're also consumed by a need to feed, but no Life Drain, unfortunately.
• Anti-Magic: Their Feedback gives them this niche, letting them counter enemy spell casters by zeroing-out their energy, causing them to take damage equal to the amount of energy they lost.
• Armored But Frail: Like the vanilla Archon, most of their Hit Points are invested in Shields which can be handily stripped away with EMP attacks, leaving them with paltry protection. (25 HP in Brood War & 10 in Legacy of the Void). Also inverted in Brood War as shields took full damage from all attacks and had no native armor points, making their shields take hits with little mitigation.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In Legacy of the Void, they swap out Maelstrom for Confusion, which causes enemies to attack each other for a short time. They also keep their Mind Control ability.
• The Bus Came Back: Dark Archons are available as alternate units to the High Templar in the Legacy of the Void Campaign. Since having a Dark Archon means you don't have Archons (Dark Templars can't merge into them in the Legacy of the Void campaign) either, the Dark Archon has Mind Control, Confusion, and the attacking capabilities of an Archon!
• Cast From Hitpoints: Mind Control in Brood War, in addition to its hefty energy cost, also completely depletes the Dark Archon's shields (which, like normal archons, make up the vast majority of its total hit points). Use with caution.
• Cast from Lifespan: Same as the original Archon.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: In-Universe, the creation of a Dark Archon is this. In-game, using Mind Control makes the Archon lose its shields and leaves them very vulnerable.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Dark Archon's Mind Control can be used to capture the enemy's SCVs, Drones and/or Probes. Doing so allows you to create buildings and units from that unit's Tech Tree. While this could be called Awesome, but Impractical due to the difficulty in manning 2-3 separate tech-trees (and thus extra expansions which would have to be defended in the same way as existing expansions), you don't actually have to build up entire additional armies — you can settle for building units which shore up holes in the Protoss ranks. Zealots, High Templars and Dark Templars benefit from a Terran Medic's Healing just as much as Marines, Firebats and Ghosts, and their Restore ability provides an otherwise unobtainable counter to the Zerg's Plague debuff (and others likewise), for example, and a Zealot-Dragoon charge would be just as intimidating with a few Zerg Ultralisks bolstering their push. Really, the player's economy is the main obstacle to overcome and ultimately the only real skills required to make this strategy work are due diligence to prevent your opponent destroying your Terran/Zerg allies and a little creativity with the units you field. ^note In final Brood War Protoss Mission, the game even gives you an opportunity to Mind Control Zerg Drones (from a Zerg base that can be easily destroyed early-on), allowing you access to the entire tech tree of that race (keep in mind that two missions earlier, you had Zerg forces under your command, but you could only have access to Lair level units). This means you even have access to Devourers and Lurkers before they're even playable in the Zerg campaign. Therefore, you can use those units to help aid you with defending the temple.
  • Maelstrom requires very good timing to get the most out of its short duration when it stuns a group of biological units. But if you quickly follow up with a Psionic Storm from a High Templar, valuable units such as a group of harassing Mutalisks will be left severely wounded and vulnerable to being picked off quickly by your Cannons or army. Succeed and you've quickly shut down the Zerg's harassment tactics.
• Eldritch Abomination: Let's see, they have an insatiable need for energy, they can forcefully make regular units ally with you by overriding their minds, and, depending on their iteration, stun a group of biological units, or send a group into such confusion they all attack one another.
• Energy Beings: They're made from psionic energy.
• Foil: Reversed from the two Templar types, the Dark Archon is a potent spellcaster but has no attack, while the standard Archon has only pure brute attack power and no spells. Averted in the Legacy of the Void Campaign, where Dark Archons are spellcasters and attackers.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In Starcraft II, Dark Templars can only merge into normal Archons, with no In-Universe explanation as to why their merging does not create Dark Archons. Instead, Dark Archons are trained as separate units in the Gateway in Legacy of the Void, taking the High Templar slot.
• Godzilla Threshold: In the lore, they were finally allowed to be born when Aldaris rebelled and lead a Protoss force headed by Archons against the Dark Templar. None of the involved parties were particularly joyous that their war had come to this, which is why by Starcraft II the Dark Archon's creation is outlawed again, until things get even worse in Legacy of the Void.
• Hate Plague: Confusion in Legacy of the Void isn't permanent like Mind Control, but it is Area of Effect and will cause the affected units to start attacking one another for ten game seconds.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Their Feedback drains the energy of enemy units and deals damage equal to the energy lost. Against many units this is a One-Hit KO, since most spellcasters aren't very durable and are going to be sent out with lots of energy.
• Horror Hunger: Many of their quotes invoke a constant need to consume energy.
• Mage Killer: Their Brood War debut had them equipped with Feedback as a starting spell, giving them an anti-caster niche. In Starcraft II the High Templar'' learned this ability with the Dark Archon absent from melee multiplayer. Mind Control is also a suitable way to deprive an opponent of a spell caster by turning them to your control.
• Magic Knight: Legacy of the Void brings back the Dark Archon in both Campaign and Coop Commander modes. In the former, they're an alternative to the High Templar and Ascendant having the same protection as the regular Archon but trading some attack power for two Mind Control themed spells.
• Mana Burn: Feedback, which causes energy to be converted into equivalent damage.
• Mind Control: One of their powers, named exactly that. All units seized in this manner get their own supply level separate from the player's, which means that if an enemy worker is mind-controlled, they can be used to construct buildings for their separate race using resources from the player's pool and produce units of that race as selected.
• Power Floats: As with the original Archon.
• Purposely Overpowered: In Legacy of the Void outside of Melee mode, the Dark Archons are back, and more powerful than ever, combining an improved Mind Control and a Confusion ability to confuse masses of enemies into attacking one another. They are also beefed up to be as durable as regular Archons. Their attack isn't that impressive but it's one of the prices for their prodigious spells.
• Quirky Bard: Unlike the Tal'Darim Ascendant or the High Templar, their spells are more support oriented. This was especially the case in Starcraft: Brood War where they had no direct attack at all. However, in the campaign for Legacy of the Void, they returned as one of the Mutually Exclusive Party Members to the Ascendant and High Templar. They now have the same defenses as the standard Archon and a less powerful attack. Their specialty became confusing enemies into attacking one another and outright stealing control of single enemies with their signature Mind Control.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Subverted, they are outlawed until times of desperation lore-wise due to fear of this trope, but the sacrifice is made by the noble Dark Templar rather that the Tal'Darim who use a similar color scheme.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Red everything, including yes, the eyes.
• Support Party Member: In the first game, they are powerful spellcasters, but were incapable of damaging units besides through their Feedback ability (and even then, it only worked on units with energy).
• Took a Level in Badass: Their return in Legacy of the Void gives them the same defensive stats as the regular Archon and a decent attack, in addition to two Mind Control-themed abilities. The price of this new versatility is that they are mutually exclusive from High Templar (and Archons by extension) & Ascendants in the story campaign.
• You Have Researched Breathing: Dark Archons only start with Feedback. Their formidable Mind Control and supporting Maelstrom (biological stun) requires research to enable. Corrected in general in Legacy of the Void where they have all of their abilities unlocked right from the start, but are no long available to recruit in melee matches as they're Purposefully Overpowered to an extent.

Robotic forces

Robotics as a whole

• Achilles' Heel: Robotics Facility units are largely support units who need the support of a Gateway and/or Stargate army to cover their deficiencies. With the exception of the Gateway-summoned Sentry, and non-melee-mode units like the Wrathwalker, Robotics tend to be helpless when it comes to countering aerial threats.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Subverted, as by and large, Protoss robotics are very reliable and will only misbehave if their programming has been damaged. The Purifiers only turned against their masters because the Conclave wouldn't recognize them as Templar, an injustice that Artanis set out to correct.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: The Stalkers, Dragoons, and Immortal models are effectively walking tanks housing a Protoss in body or spirit. In the case of Dragoons and Immortals, the full-conversion compensates them for their very severe injuries.
• Killer Robot: It depends on the programming so not all of the robots are like this. The Colossi were one of the most infamous examples and were sealed away in shame after their destruction horrified the Protoss who built them. Some of the robots are also members of the Purifier faction and share tropes that apply to them. The Tal'Darim have no reservations against weaponizing robots and like to arm them with obscene firepower if possible, with the Wrathwalkers being an embodiment of this philosophy (retrofitted Colossi).
• No-Sell: The lack of biological tissue makes pure robots immune to certain abilities like the Zerg's Spawn Broodling ability.

Probe

The Protoss gatherer, they collect resources and can place warp beacons to call in structures.

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• Action Survivor: Frequently the target of mineral line attacks by Hellions, Reapers, Mutalisks, Stalkers, etc.
• Boring, but Practical: Again, you're not getting anything done without them.
• Red Shirt: The likely fate of the unlucky Probe that gets sent on scouting duty.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Averted compared to the SCV and Drone, as the Probe never actually builds anything. When a build command is issued, it places a beacon to mark the point to open a warp rift, and the "construction time" is actually the time it takes to open the rift fully. Once it finishes, the building warps through the rift and appears pre-constructed from somewhere else.
• Shock and Awe: They fight (inasmuch as they can) with small bolts of electricity.
• The Turret Master: Probes take on this role, typically by deploying Photon Cannons. This works both defensively as well as offensively when performing a Cannon rush.
• Worker Unit: The Protoss one.

Dragoon

"I have returned."

A Protoss walker unit consisting of a robotic shell driven by the body of a wounded Protoss warrior contained within, they fire phase disruptors to attack.

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• Artificial Stupidity: In the first game. Just like the Goliath, don't expect Dragoons to navigate all but the most open areas well.
• The Bus Came Back: In Legacy of the Void, the Protoss manage to recover the means to create them in the Spear of Adun, making them available once again.
• Captain Ersatz: A Space Marine Dreadnought but protoss-ified.
• Energy Ball: Their attack.
• Fate Worse than Death: Many Protoss regard becoming a Dragoon pilot this way — as a Proud Warrior Race, they see becoming wounded or crippled to the point you have to fight using a robotic walker as an unfortunate or shameful thing. Make no mistake, however, that the Protoss contained within the machine is often just as proud and warlike as they were when they were Zealots and/or High Templars, as demonstrated by Fenix.
• Lost Technology: As of the sequel. The facilities to create them were lost after the fall of Aiur, so whichever ones remain have been modified into Immortals. Their role as ranged units capable of attacking airborne enemies is now filled by the Dark Templar replacement, Stalkers. However, they return as the Templar option in Legacy of the Void when the Spear of Adun and its Star Forge are recovered.
• Man in the Machine: All Dragoons are a wounded Protoss in a robotic shell.
• Mighty Glacier: Its perk over the Nerazim Stalker and the Purifier Adept in Legacy of the Void. The Dragoon has the worst mobility of the three (Stalkers can Blink, Adepts are small and fast, and Dragoons are the slowest even if the Stalker or the Adept don't use their mobility skills) but it has the highest hit points and range of the three. It also deals respectable damage against all targets, while the Stalker is comparatively weak, and the Adept is specialized against Light units.
• Spider Tank: Four legged robots, ayup.
• Vanilla Unit: Particularly notable in Legacy of the Void, where compared to Stalkers and Adepts, Dragoons have higher stats but no actual abilities.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Their backstory in the lore.

Stalker

"I am here in the shadows."

A ranged support walker based on Dark Templar emulations of the Dragoon, they fire phase disruptors and can use Blink to teleport a short distance.

Stalker variants include the Purifier Instigator, which can Blink multiple times in succession, and the Tal'darim Slayer, who can be upgraded with Phasing Armor to avoid attacks and a Phase Blink which doubles the damage of their next attack after blinking.

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• Dark Is Not Evil: They're Dark Templar units, but like them are quite benevolent.
• Energy Weapon: They shoot short blue laser blasts at enemies.
• Flash Step: There's even an achievement for dodging a killing blow with Blink.
• Healing Factor: Blinking in the Legacy of the Void campaign lets the Stalker restore 50 shields in a few seconds.
• Homing Boulders: They follow the same physics rules as Roach acid.
• Jack of All Stats: They move even faster than Zealots until they get their speed upgrade, but compared to other Protoss forces their damage output and HP is mediocre.
• Man in the Machine: Like the original Dragoon, Stalkers are robots controlled by a Dark Templar contained within, though the Dark Templar only use souls instead of full bodies.
• Simple, yet Awesome: They're available once you build your Cybernetics Core (very early), and have respectable speed and decent damage output. However, their Blink ability is what makes them truly shine, allowing a short-range teleport to blink Stalkers away from dying, or allowing them to catch fleeing units and score kills. Blink is such a pivotal ability that the Google Alphastar AI can perform amazing feats with Stalkers alone.
• Spider Tank: Walk on four legs.
• Stalker with a Crush: Parodied in their Stop Poking Me! quotes.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: They're basically Dragoons with the ability to Blink.
• Teleport Spam: The Instigator is a Purifier Stalker with the ability to use Blink up to three times in a row.
• Unique Enemy: The Instigator only appears a single time in the Legacy of the Void campaign, as an AI-only unit spawned by the Purifier forces in the mission "Purification."

Sentry

A robotic support drone that specializes in energy manipulation, it can project energy fields to protect allies and block passage over terrain. The Protoss later modified them with portal shield generators, allowing the Sentry to restore the shields of their brethren in the battlefield.

Sentry variants include the Purifier Energizer, which can boost the speed of allied units and project a power field; the Tal'darim Havoc which boosts the range of nearby units and can designate enemy targets to boost damage against them; and the Purifier Conservator, which can place stationary shields to reduce damage to allied units in their radius, and can also project power fields.

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• Barrier Warrior: Force Fields physically block enemy units, which have many uses to deny enemy advance/retreat or to funnel them into a chokepoint.
• Boring, but Practical: A relatively small group of Sentries with good energy reserves can rapidly erect several Force Fields, letting them stop the opponent's retreat, block their reinforcements, and keep melee units at bay. Add in Guardian Shield to defend allies and the support fire it offers normally, and Sentries are a nice addition to any Protoss ground army.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: The Havoc's Target Lock ability increases damage dealt to the targeted unit by 30%.
• Deflector Shields: Besides the standard Protoss plasma shields, it has Guardian Shield to reduce damage to nearby allies.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: While all Sentries are purely a Support Party Member, the varying forms of their support falls into this trope: The Aiur Sentry provides Defensive Buffs with Shield Regeneration and Defensive barriers. The Purifier Energizer gives Mobility Buffs by boosting Speed and providing a power field to warp in units wherever you might need it. And the Tal'darim Havoc gives Attack Buffs, boosting damage and range of allies.
• Master of Illusion: They inherit the High Templar's Hallucination skill from the first game.
• The Medic: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, it can restore friendly units' shields, not unlike the Shield Battery. The Aiur Sentry in particular can restore shields of two units at the same time.
• Spotting the Thread: Illusions of units deal zero damage despite attacking just the same as real ones; knowing this is important to figuring out how many of the enemy are fakes.
• Squishy Wizard: Keep them alive and they'll more than prove themselves worth the cost. The problem is that first part.
• Support Party Member: Incapable of killing much (or at all in the case of the Havoc variant) on their own, yet invaluable for their abilities nonetheless.

Immortal

"I return to serve."

In the lore, the Dragoons of old can no longer be created, the shrine dedicated to their construction lost with the fall of Aiur. The Dragoons that survived have been adapted into Immortals, anti-armor walkers with hardened shields that resist heavy-hitting blows.

Variants of the Immortals include the Nerazim Annihilator, which are armed with a powerful shadow cannon to shoot down priority targets quickly, and the Tal'darim Vanguard, who have cannons that fire in a spread pattern to deal powerful area-of-effect attacks.

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• Anti-Armor:
  • Its intended role, between its shield and an Armor-Piercing Attack that gets an impressive damage buff when attacking an armored target.
  • Taken even further with the Tal'darim Vanguard, as it can effortlessly tear down the omnipresent hybrids and Ultralisks.
• Armored But Frail: Inverted with later revisions of the unit. When accounting for their Barrier, they can withstand up 400 hitpoints of harm, but 1/4 of those hitpoints are 0-base-armor shields, the other 1/4 is their barrier that doesn't benefit from upgrades, and last half has only one native armor point. This means they can withstand a lot of punishment but a swarm of basic infantry units (their main counter) can tear through those hitpoints in short order, assuming equal upgrade levels.
• Artistic License – Physics: Subverted with the Vanguard which does NOT have an Always Accurate Attack. Their Scatter Cannons work like a mortar and have velocity instead of never missing. It's quite possible for targets that are fast enough (such as Zerglings) to completely avoid all damage from a Vanguard attack, as they run out of the blast radius long before the shots can land.
• Awesome, but Impractical: This trope is the reason why, according to the Assembly Panel's Flavor Text, being placed into an Immortal assault frame is only for the most revered heroes; their heavily reinforced shielding make it impractical for Immortals to be mass produced, unlike Dragoons which any Protoss felled in battle can volunteer to be made into. Additionally, for how advanced they are, only the Nerazim variant can attack air using a special ability on a long cooldown.
• Badass Boast:
  Immortal: We shall serve forever!
• Balance Buff: The Vanguard got hit with a (justified) nerf for its Co-Op mode appearance with Alarak. It now only does eight hits per attack instead of its usual sixteen in the campaign, but the splash radius of each shot was increased to compensate. Additionally, it can be upgraded to have even greater splash radius.
• Beehive Barrier: How its shields manifest.
• BFG: Their twin cannons can punch through armor with great force. They are able to put a noticeable dent in even Ultralisks and follow up with another blast about a second later.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Immortals are big, beefy, hard-hitting units with a big, beefy, hard-hitting voice to match.
• Cool Old Guy: The warriors that became Immortals are old, yet just as ready to kick ass as they were hundreds of years ago.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Immortals are very specialized towards their role of fighting big, heavily armored units. They do a borderline overpowered 50 damage per shot against armored targets, but only 20 against light ones, meaning they'll need 3 shots to kill even a basic marine. Exacerbated in earlier versions, where their Hardened Shields were well suited to negating big hits, but did nothing to the Death of a Thousand Cuts inflicted on them by swarms of lighter units, which is why it was later replaced by a less potent, but more universal barrier ability in Legacy Of The Void.
• David Versus Goliath: Immortals aren't really small, but their particular properties allow them to take on Thors and Ultralisks at an advantage.
• Death Equals Redemption: Vanguard pilots are Tal'darim who failed in some fashion and now seek to erase their disgrace by dying in battle.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Immortal's hardened shields reduce all incoming damage to 10, causing anything that does large doses of damage to have a fit. Its obvious weakness are the small, weak units that do 9-or-less damage to begin with, but in the end everything approaches an Immortal with the attitude of slowly whittling them to death. Some units simply achieve this faster than others. Removed in Legacy of the Void, in which it got a barrier that absorbs 100 damage.
• Death Seeker: Vanguards are disgraced Tal'darim who were defeated and now seek redemption by dying in battle.
  "We are the first to battle, and if fate smiles upon us, we shall never return."
• Fate Worse than Death: The Khalai Protoss already find the prospect of being fitted into an Immortal just to be able to battle as something humiliating, but Tal'darim Vanguards exaggerate this. Given their culture of "kill or be killed", the mere idea of being defeated but not killed is an outright disgrace to everything the Tal'darim stand for. Thus, surviving Tal'darim warriors are put into Vanguard walkers, not to be able to keep fighting, but just to make up for their actions and finally die in battle.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Until Legacy of the Void, the Immortal had to turn its entire body to be able to attack enemies that were not in front of it.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Zig-Zagged. They're noted as being more difficult to mass produce than the more common Dragoon and Stalker and being reserved for the highly-regarded Templar heros, but in gameplay you can build as many as you can afford in a match and a scarcity of revered Templar doesn't affect your ability to build them. On the other hand, compared to the Dragoons they are based on, Immortals are Tier 2 units requiring the expertise of a Robotics Facility and they nearly cost twice as many resources and double the supply.
• Glass Cannon: The Vanguard deals massive damage to single targets/Splash Damage to multiple targets, and the Annihilator has an ability that deals 200 damage to any enemy unit, air or ground. It is a Downplayed Trope, because the Vanguard and the Annihilator still have the same health and shield points as a standard Immortal, they just lack defensive capabilities of the Aiur Immortal.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Vanguard variation fires sixteen projectiles per attack^note Mechanically, they actually fire only four shots, but each shot hits four times for a total of sixteen hits, and said projectiles, unlike many others in the game, are not hitscan and they don't home towards their target. This allows the Vanguard to deal devastating damage to large, slow targets, especially if they are armored (this makes the Vanguard particularly good against Hybrids and buildings), or deal Splash Damage against small targets. On the other hand, the Vanguard's attack is heavily penalized by the target's armor and its projectiles can be dodged by fast units, such as Zerglings.
• Man in the Machine: Like their Dragoon predecessors, every Immortal is a wounded Protoss warrior in a robotic shell.
• Mighty Glacier: Not that fast, but high damage output against armored targets and fairly durable to boot.
• Mythology Gag: It's implied through his Stop Poking Me! quotes in Legacy of the Void that the protoss inside the Nerazim Annihilator is the Dark Templar unit from first Starcraft game. It helps that he also quotes many of the same lines spoken by the classic Dark Templar.
• Nerf: In Legacy of the Void, Immortals lost their Hardened Shields ability, and instead got a barrier that absorbs 100 damage and is autocast when their shields are depleted. While it does slightly help Immortals tank against units with weak attacks, it does prevent them from being extremely hard counters in certain matchups, such as against Siege Tanks, which were completely helpless against Immortals, and can now take out a few of them before getting wiped out.
• Not Quite Dead: Enforced on the Annihilator; they are a Nerazim warrior kept on the verge of death via their combat walker, treading the boundary between the living world and the Void. It is from this that they draw incredible power.
  Annihilator: The fallen still serve...
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • Prior to Patch 1.4 the Colossus was almost universally preferable to the Immortal due to higher HP, significantly greater damage output, siege range, splash damage, and increased mobility, while not being much more expensive. Said patch boosted the Immortal's range from 5 to 6, making it easier for them to engage enemies without getting stuck behind other units, and they became much more useful.
  • In the Legacy of the Void campaign, the vanilla Immortal & Nerazim Annihilator may feel overshadowed by Vanguard variation, due to the sheer firepower the latter brings to the table, causing heavy damage to colossal targets like Hybrids. The main drawback is their mortar-like weapon trajectory that can miss moving targets but thanks to their splash damage, this isn't necessarily enough to make the Vanguard impractical.
• Spider Tank: They're essentially a humanoid turret on top of the classic Dragoon's central body.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Being repurposed Dragoons, this trope is enforced on Immortal pilots.

Reaver

A Protoss robot equipped with on-board manufacturing facilities used to construct bombs called Scarabs. They move slowly but can decimate enemies.

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• Animal Mecha: Unambiguously a giant slug.
• Armored But Frail: Inverted, A couple of good scarab shots can cripple armies and destroy worker lines and the Reaver has a servicable health pool equivalent to a Dragoon (180), but they have no base armor points and so are even more vulnerable than Dragoons to Death of a Thousand Cuts. It's also the slowest unit in the game. This is why Shuttles are so vital to getting proper use out of them. Became even more so in the Legacy of the Void campaign, gaining an even more massive health pool (350 total), but only one single base armor point for their 200 HP hull.
• Balance Buff: In the sequel campaign, they can auto-manufacture Scarabs and do it without a mineral cost.
• The Bus Came Back: Like Dragoons, the Spear of Adun allows the Protoss to bring them back in Legacy of the Void.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Reaver is a high-risk, high-reward unit. It's fat, slow, squishy, and hits really hard. If the scarab gets stuck it may do no damage, or if misused or outplayed it may waste its lengthy cooldown on a suboptimal target. If you position the Reaver right and get a good shot off you may devastate your opponent's economy or military. The ability to micro a Shuttle with a Reaver is a highly valued skill for Protoss players.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Combined it with a Shuttle it can do this, able to slip into enemy lines, launch its scarabs, then re-enter the Shuttle and escape before defenders arrive. Reaver Drops are used in professional games as a form of devastating harassment tactic.
• Mighty Glacier: Abysmal movement speed, but their scarab missiles hit harder than even Siege Tank cannons and for virtually full damage against all targets. Became even more so in Legacy of the Void where their health pool increased from 180 to 350 due to being in a similar tier to the Colossus.
• Mobile Factory: They're armed with on-board facilities to manufacture scarabs in the field.
• Mook Maker: Unlike the Carrier's, the scarabs can't be targeted by enemies.
• Necessary Drawback: In Brood War, their obscene power is curtailed by each shot costing 15 minerals and having a maximum storage capacity of 10 with no option to auto-cast, forcing the player to pick their targets carefully and pay attention to the unit. These drawbacks were lifted in Legacy of the Void, however due to the Reaver only appearing in Campaign and Coop modes or maps with custom settings.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: They were initially in Starcraft II, but their role as a siege unit overlapped with the Colossus, who was simply better than the Reaver at said job. Legacy of the Void brought them back to the campaign as an alternative to the Colossus, but this trope is still very much apparent — while the Reaver has better raw damage, the Colossus moves faster, can walk over cliffs, and their attacks don't need to track to the target to hit. However, they do have the advantage of dealing instant damage — similar to the Wrathwalker — and may be valuable in cases where you want instant damage and the benefit of splash damage.
• Siege Engines: Attacks from outside the range of conventional defenses and can hit outside of range of many enemy units. Combined with a speed-upgraded Shuttle, they are a highly mobile source of sustained heavy damage.
• Splash Damage: Their scarabs deal damage across a large area.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The fate of anything they aim at, more likely than not.

Colossus

Massive four-legged walkers that can walk up and down cliff and fire incendiary beams to strike multiple targets at once. They were developed centuries ago but sealed away in asteroids. The Protoss have recovered and reactivated them to serve as heavy support fighters.

Variants of the Colossus include the Purifier Colossus, which shoots beams that create waves of flame for greater damage to clumps of units, and the Tal'darim Wrathwalker, which loses its thermal lance in favor of a powerful energy blast that deals heavy damage to single targets.

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• Achilles' Heel: Their range is fairly long, and firepower is able to devastate swarms of light units, but flying Anti-Air units are bad news for them since they can't fight back, and some of said units deal bonus damage to the Colossus. They are also somewhat inefficient against any target without light armor.
• Anti-Air: The Wrathwalker has added value as the only heavy-weapon robot that can attack aerial targets, a feat that the Reaver and Colossus lack.
• Anti-Structure: The Wrathwalker variant deals bonus damage to structures.
• Armored But Frail: Inverted, they have a respectable health pool, but unimpressive native armor stats and their shields have zero native armor (like all Protoss units), so any of the basic infantry units stand a chance of taking them down if they swarm the Colossus. Even worse, they can be hit nearly unimpeded by dedicated anti-air weapons, one of their main counters. In short, they can take hits, but can't do much to soften them.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Colossi are huge. So huge, in fact, that they're a viable target for Anti-Air weaponry.
• Break Out the Museum Piece:
  • The Colossi were buried in shame after the Aiur Protoss tried to intervene in another species' civil war and had to use them to defend themselves against an unexpected counter attack. They were brought out of storage when the threat of Amon loomed over the universe and the Daelaam needed all the firepower they could find.
  • The Tal'darim however had no problem with Colossi to begin with and retrofitted many into Wrathwalkers equipped with single-target BFG energy cannons while keeping others equipped with their standard Thermal Lances. It appears Thermal Lances were also adopted for their upgraded Motherships.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Averted Trope for the Wrathwalker variant, which can fire while moving in a similar fashion to Diamondbacks.
• Elite Mooks: They're the Protoss answer to the Terran Thor and Zerg Ultralisk, acting as the heavy-walker of the Protoss forces. Their speciality is countering swarms of light targets but the Wrathwalker variant focuses instead on burst damage against single targets and can also fulfill Anti-Air duties.
• Energy Weapon: They fire long laser beams against enemies that do Splash Damage, or a BFG that deals heavy damage against single targets (Wrathwalker).
• Foil:
  • To the Protoss Immortal and both are built from the Robotics Facility. Colossi are heavy walkers that deal effective Splash Damage against lightly armored unit swarms but aren't as efficient against non-light units. The Immortal instead focuses upon dealing with single, armored targets and itself isn't efficient against units lacking the Armored trait, such as infantry, and is vulnerable to swarms of them.
  • The Wrathwalker contrasts the Colossus by using a devastating single-target cannon instead of Thermal Lances, losing splash damage and gaining an Anti-Structure damage bonus. They can also perform Anti-Air, for added utility.
• Godzilla Threshold: According to the lore, they're the reason the Protoss don't meddle in the affairs of lesser species — they tried to pacify a species involved in a civil war, and when the species turned on them the Protoss employed the Colossi to defend themselves and exterminated the other race. The Colossi were then sealed away beneath Aiur's oceans because the Protoss were ashamed of themselves; nowadays, with the war being what it is, they can't afford not to use them any more.
• Humongous Mecha: So humongous that air units can shoot them down.
• Kill It with Fire: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, its thermal lances leave fire where they hit, burning whatever stands on it.
• Lightning Bruiser: High damage output and a good amount of HP, it moves at a fair clip and can walk over cliffs to take shortcuts and outrun ground enemies. It still pays to keep them behind your army, however, as many anti-air weapons will damage them at an alarming rate.
• Logical Weakness:
  • One of its unique strengths — its size — is also one of its weaknesses. Colossi legs can climb up and down cliffs with no problem, but they're so darn tall that dedicated air-to-air combatants can attack them.
  • In Legacy of the Void multiplayer their fire-based Thermal Lances now only deal their maximum damage to light targets, much like how Terran Hellions/Hellbats only deal full damage due to their combustion weaponry. The Disruptor unit was meant to take its place as an all-purpose AoE unit.
• Mascot Mook: Unlike other examples in the series, this robotic siege walker was introduced in the sequel and became an immediately recognizable part of the Protoss robotics forces. It helps that they have unique attributes like the ability to walk up and down cliffs, and are famously tall enough to be engaged with anti-air weapons.
• Nerf: Legacy of the Void re-balanced them to only deal their maximum damage to light targets such as basic ground units, making them similar in function to Terran flamethrower units, but working at siege-range instead of close-quarters.
• Splash Damage: This makes Colossi the best of three race's heavy ground walkers for dealing with large groups of smaller units. As a drawback, it's less durable than the Thor and Ultralisk, and packs less of a punch against durable targets.
• Siege Engines:
  • The Wrathwalker variant especially, which outranges normal defenses and deals bonus damage to structures.
  • In a pinch, the multiplayer baseline Colossus can perform siege duty with their Extended Thermal Lance(s) and by default in the Void campaign, but their true strength is countering swarms of light units.
• Tripod Terror: They may have four legs, but otherwise totally in fit with the spirit of the trope. They fry stuff and destroy Zerg Rushes at extreme long range with sweeping heat rays, and have very long stilt-legs that let them stride over any terrain with ease. They had three legs in earlier incarnations, but it was changed to four to make them look more realistic.

Disruptor

"Consciousness awakened."

A new unit in Legacy of the Void, they can fire orbs of pure energy that explode in a blast of psionic power.

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• Action Bomb: The initial version of the Disruptor would turn into a Purification Nova, then revert after the Nova detonates.
• Anti-Armor: An atypical version of this trope. Purification Nova deal 145 damage against regular units, but if it is targeting a unit with shields, it will remove 55 points of those shields before dealing the normal damge for a possible total of 200 damage points. This allows Disurptors to retain great cost efficiency against Protoss opponents.
• Balance Buff: Disruptors used by Fenix in Co-op Mode are much more powerful than the ones in multiplayer; he can upgrade them to permanently cloak themselves, their Purification Nova materializes at the target location rather than travelling from the Disruptor and can be upgraded to explode twice, and they possess a basic attack.
• Death or Glory Attack: Their Purification Nova has a hefty 30 second cooldown. Hit and a lot of things are gonna die. Miss and your Disruptor is helpless against reprisals. Furthermore, the Purification Nova is not Friendly Fireproof, so aim it badly and you will just blow up your own units.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In StarCraft: Evolution, the Disruptor's blast radius is described as having a blast radius of 3 kilometers by 2505. This would obviously be overpowered if the Nova successfully lands so in gameplay its blast radius is comparable to a Psionic Storm due to balance constraints while a Terran Tactical Nuke has a considerably larger blast zone.
• Glass Cannon: Subverted, 200-total hitpoints are pretty decent for the high damage Disruptors can inflict in comparison to the High Templar's 80-total. Nonetheless, these units are very large and distinct targets and opponents will have an easier time clicking them to focus fire on these potentially devastating units.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Though a robot unit, it can produce an orb of pure psionic energy.
• Mythology Gag: Disruptors use a recolored model of the Replicator, a cut Protoss unit from Heart of the Swarm.
• Player-Guided Missile: Purification Nova is controllable while active, letting you redirect it if the opponent tries to run away.
• Splash Damage: Their primary offense is a targeted bomb.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: With the Reaver being retired from melee matches, the Disruptor plays a similar role to the former. They have a devastating Splash Damage ability that can eliminate a considerable group of enemies, can be dropped near mineral lines to take out many workers, and require micromanagement to get the most out of them like the Reaver.
• Squishy Wizard: They have a workable amount of health and shields, yet they're large and easy to click units with slow movement speed and no basic attack, making them an enticing target of opportunity. After throwing out the Purification Nova, they're completely defenseless until it comes back online.

Observer

A small flying drone armed with a cloaking field, it acts as a spy and escort, detecting invisible and burrowed units and watching points of interest.

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• Boring, but Practical: They don't do anything except act as detectors, but they are excellent detectors; low cost, fast build time and decent movement rate makes them quick and simple to deploy. Their cloaking ability meanwhile makes them the ideal scout, able to slip into an opponent's base and see what they're doing without being caught, and they can be sent out in numbers to watch points of interest for opposing armies on the move or expansions under construction.
• Difficult, but Awesome: In the first game, they are relatively cheap and readily available once you unlocked them but require their own building on the Protoss Tech Tree — the Observatory — to be unlocked and need specialized upgrades to mitigate the risk of losing them. They also require proper attention as they are the frailest detector by far, at 60 HP, and losing too many will seriously impact your Vespene Gas expenses. The Observatory was removed in Starcraft II, and their one remaining upgrade (a speed boost) was moved to the Robotics Support Bay and their maximum sight range was provided by default. In Legacy of the Void, they can activate a new Surveillance Mode to anchor in place, but gain even more sight range for even more advanced warning of opponent actions. They are still just as frail, so it remains prudent to micromanage Observers sufficiently. Regardless, if possitioned properly, Observers can make it seem like the Protoss is using map-revealing cheats and let them have strong awareness of what's happening all across the map, and hunting down cleverly placed observers can be a hassle for the opponent.
• Dual Mode Unit: In Legacy of the Void, Observers gained a stationary mode, where they provide more vision at the cost of not being able to move.
• Invisibility Cloak: Same as the Dark Templar.
• Non-Action Guy: No attack and flimsy armor and health, they die in seconds if detected. Steer clear of those Anti-Air defense structures ^note All of the defensive structures that can attack air units i.e Spore Crawler, Photon Cannon, and Missile Turret are all detectors .
• Spy Bot: Their role.
• Spy Satellite: They're also used as this in the lore.
• True Sight: The Protoss detector for burrowed and cloaked units.

Shuttle

The Protoss transport, a simple carrier vessel that has the distinction of being the fastest transport of the races with its speed upgrade.

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• Boring Yet Practical: With their speed boost, in the original game they were the fastest of the three transports. But much like the Terran Dropship, transportation is all it did.
• Defenseless Transports: No attack and easily killed by air turrets. Find a safe place for the drop then get it out.
• Drop Ship: Their role as unit transport.
• Flat Character: Feature-wise, their main trait was their upgrade that makes them the fastest transport in the game during melee matches. They are replaced by the Warp Prism in II which also has the ability to deploy into a flying pylon, enabling building warp-ins and Warpgate(s) reinforcements.
• In Name Only: In Heart of the Swarm, a flier called the Shuttle appears during one campaign mission. However, it's a huge, slow-moving, fairly beefy, different-looking ship, and is a mission objective to be destroyed rather than a typical tech tree unit used to drop off ground units.
• Put on a Bus: The Warp Prism took its place in StarCraft II.

Warp Prism

The new Protoss transport, consisting of a crystal "computer" inside a mechanical structure, the crystal can covert matter into energy, allowing it to transport even the massive Colossus across great distances. It can also transform into a stationary form to tap into the psionic matrix and provide pylon power.

The Tal'darim field a variant known as the War Prism, which is able to attack enemies in transport mode.

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• Applied Phlebotinum: To elaborate on the above description, the Warp Prism is a crystal lattice controlled by a robotic mind created by psionic manufacturing techniques, capable of converting matter into energy, imprinting the subject's energy signature on the crystal, then reconfiguring that energy signature back into matter... Yeah.
• Drop Ship: They're the new Protoss transport.
• Dual Mode Unit: The Warp Prism can change between two modes, one where it's a mobile transit unit, the other has it as a stationary power-producing unit.
• Mook Maker: Thanks to its ability to become a floating Pylon, you can use them in tandem with Warp Gates to create units anywhere.
• Simple, yet Awesome: They're available from a Robotics Facilty right from the start and aren't merely a transport like the Shuttle they replaced. They can also deploy into a flying Pylon, enabling structures to be warped in or enabling offensive warp-ins right in the opponent's backyard.

Aerial fighters

Scout

"Teleport successful."

The Protoss aircraft and the backbone of their fleet, they launch anti-matter missiles at aerial foes and photon blasters at ground targes.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: In the first game. Like other Protoss units tend to do, Scouts have much higher resource costs than their counterparts in the Terran and Zerg armies in exchange for higher health and attack power. But while the Terran Wraith has cloaking to be a base raider and launch sneak attacks, and the Mutalisk is an effective hit-and-run attack with splash damage, the Scout's unique benefit are rather meaningless speed and sight upgrades and very lackluster Dual Phonton Blasters for ground units. Otherwise its only advantage is its higher stats, which aren't so much higher to be worth it. A single Scout costs more to build than two Dragoons or a single Reaver, and either one is far more cost-effective and useful than a lone Scout in the Anti-Air role. The Void Ray largely succeeded it with its ability to use its best and only weapon system against both air and ground targets.
• Balance Buff: For the fact they weren't player-usable in the Legacy of the Void campaign ^note  Unless you use a Dark Archon's Mind Control on them. , when AI Scouts appeared they had been given a substantial buff to their ground attacks, doing 16 damage +16 vs Light units.^note This, ironically, makes them effective against ground light units, a foil to the Phoenix, the Corsair and the Mirage, which are effective against air light units. Fenix in Co-op has Scouts that retain this damage buff against ground light units, and they are cheaper to build, 180/60 compared to 275/125.
• The Bus Came Back: After not being playable in Legacy of the Void's campaign, they finally make their playable debut in Starcraft II via Fenix's arsenal in Co-op.
• Cool Starship: Sleek, fast, and well-armed, the Scout is a futuristic-looking Space Plane that can shred heavy ship armor with their antimatter seeker missiles.
• Demoted to Extra: Seen in StarCraft II a few times as a campaign unit, but their role in melee games is taken by the Phoenix. They don't even appear in the Legacy of the Void campaign as a player-available unit; AI enemies have them, but the player never does. Fenix eventually got them in Co-op mode.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Scout is an odd part of the Protoss armada as it's like a Terran Wraith that has twice the health and is also equipped with missiles. Other protoss units use Energy Weapons, a fact that Karax is well aware of when he first sees that Terrans favor missile weapons in Legacy of the Void which makes the Scout feel even more of an anomaly. Starcraft II would replace it with the Void Ray, while the aging Scout would still see use with certain factions.
• Flat Character: Feature-wise, the Scout is a relatively bland unit, working like the Terran Wraith, but about twice as durable with beefed-up anti-air missiles & and a similar weak air-to-ground attack. (No cloaking though) They were effectively replaced by the more versatile Void Ray in the sequel, which has the same defense stats.
• Nonindicative Name:
  • They're fast, well-armed and armored, and capable of beating a Wraith or Mutalisk in a 1-on-1 fight with ease, but the Protoss only consider them "scouts." Lore flavor text explains it's because of the vast difference in power — for the Protoss, the Scout is a lightly armored scout flyer, but against the "inferior technology" of the Terrans, it's seen as a powerful fighter craft.
  • In a gameplay sense, Scouts are far too expensive and slow to build to be used as scouts. Observers are more cost effective and are cloaked to boot, and the Corsair is faster by default and cheaper and thus a common choice for scouting and harassing a Zerg player.
• Space Fighter: As with the Wraith, they're used in space and on planetfall.
• Space Plane: It's design aesthetic, looking like an exotic fighter jet.
• Vanilla Unit: Has no actual abilities aside from relatively high stats.

Corsair

"It is a good day to die!"

Spacecraft designed by the Dark Templar, they move fast and launch neutral flares from their hull to rapidly attack enemies. They can also project disruption webs, creating electromagnetic fields on the ground that prevent units and structures from attacking.

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• A.I. Breaker: In Legacy of the Void, casting Disruption Web will make whatever enemy AI ground units were in its area escape. In a choke point, clever placement of multiple webs can make the enemy units run in circles, never doing anything.
• Artificial Stupidity: In the sequel, a group of them tend to be rather trigger-happy with their autocast Disruption Web on the first enemy they see, and will overlap each others fields if no other enemies are nearby, often wasting the ability since they all cast at the same time and reach the enemy first due to their insane speed.
• Blood Knight: They're very enthusiastic about being ready for battle and even dying, at about on the same intensity as Tal'Darim warriors. This carries over to gameplay with their zeal to engage aerial targets, necessitating carefully control like ordering them to hold positions when unattended.
• The Bus Came Back: They return in Legacy of the Void as the Nerazim variant of the Phoenix.
• Cool Starship: One of the speediest units in the game with a powerful ability.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The Corsair has no abilty to directly fight against ground targets (just disrupt them), so care must be taken to not squander resources on too many. While they're made to engage air, they are inefficient agaist armored fliers like Carriers, Battlecruisers and Devourers.
• Fragile Speedster: Subverted, they are surprisingly tanky in Brood War due to their unusual medium armor type so many Anti-Air weapons only have 75% efficiency due to their Explosive damage attribute. However, they have the highest utility against Zerg players...who can take each Corsair out with a pair of Scourge, bypassing their unusually high vitality; this can however become exponentially more difficult as the number of Corsairs increase due to their Splash Damage.
• Splash Damage: Their flares deal it to tear up stacked units.
• Support Party Member: They're best used for their supportive Splash Damage against clumped air units such as Mutalisks and Scourge, and their Disruption Webs to neutralize ground targets. They're excellent escorts for capital ships for this reason.

Carrier

"Carrier has arrived."

The Protoss flagship. Although they aren't armed with weapons of their own, they house swarms of small robotic drones called Interceptors that can be launched to fight for them. After unearthing the Spear of Adun, the Protoss were able to replicate its technology and outfit Carriers with repair drones.

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• Achilles' Heel: Their Interceptors are an advantage in that they can shield Carriers from receiving damage but they can also be a liability. If the opponent builds significant Anti-Air, the Interceptors can suffer heavy losses if you engage, plus you must spend minerals to build interceptors regardless; A large amount of Terran Marines can practically delete interceptors in seconds. Zerg Scourges are also bad news if they're caught out alone as the Carrier's targeting has difficulty with a swarm incoming.
• A.I. Breaker: By default, units would target the interceptors rather than the Carrier that is launching them. If you ensure they do not return, your Carriers will be safe from most danger.
• Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Carriers house swarms of Interceptors that are launched to fight for them.
• Airborne Artillery: They double as this, as they barely outrange most defenses, the exceptions being Starcraft II Terran Missile Turrets with Highsec Auto Tracking, and the Brood War Terran Ghosts in bunkers who deals negligible damage. However, the Tempest — added in Heart of the Swarm — is more specialised for base sieging, and Terran Thors and Vikings easily out range carriers.
• Attack Drone: The dozens of Interceptors it launches do the real damage.
• Balance Buff: A very necessary one in Legacy of the Void. Carriers now have the ability to launch all of its interceptors from and to anywhere, self-destructing after 60 seconds. This lets Carriers attack without exposing themselves to the enemy. After all, interceptors only cost 25 minerals. This was later removed completely and instead interceptors only cost 10 (80 minerals for a full flight vs the previous 200).
• The Battlestar: The lore indicates that they are also armed with Wave Motion Guns used for purifying Zerg-infested planets. For balance reasons, you don't ever have one of these kinds.
• Combat Medic: The Legacy of the Void campaign gives the Carrier repair drones which restore HP to nearby mechanical units, allowing them to keep your Void Rays/Colossi/Immortals alive while sending swarms of Interceptors at the enemy.
• Cool, but Inefficient:
  • On the one hand, having a ship that can fire off drones to deal with enemies is pretty cool. On the other hand, they are high up on the tech tree, very expensive, don't deal super-high damage given that their drones deal barely any damage against anything with armor, and pretty much any mobile anti-air unit in sufficient quantities can counter them for less cost. They don't even get Awesome, but Impractical because they don't do enough to qualify as "Awesome". Averted for a while in Legacy of the Void with the shorter Interceptor build time and the Release Interceptors ability. Carriers are still a late-game unit, but if a game actually gets to the late game, they become one of the best weapons the Protoss have at their disposal. Some have even gone so far as to compare them to the pre-nerf Swarm Hosts from Heart of the Swarm. Release Interceptors has since been removed, instead the cost of interceptors has been reduced.
  • They're this in the lore as well. The Carrier short story has one character refer to them as "weaponless, inefficient husks", and the StarCraft Field Manual also notes their complete lack of ship to ship weaponry.^note They do have an extremely powerful beam weapon used for Orbital Bombardment, but they've never been seen using it against other ships and sources consistently refer to them as lacking weapons capable of engaging enemy vessels, indicating this weapon is only for bombardment. This is despite them being nearly a kilometer and a half long. It's implied that the protoss were only able to get away with using such an inefficient vessel as their mainstay for so long because no other species prior to the terrans and zerg were actually advanced enough to field a notable Space Navy to begin with. As a result, the terrans speculate that the protoss factions will mostly replace them with the smaller and more heavily-armed Void Ray.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Interceptors will wear down enemies bit by bit, meaning it can take a while to finally take down an enemy capital ship.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: An Invoked Trope for Word of God. Even though they're useless competitively, and Blizzard has acknowledged this, they can't seem to bring themselves to give it the axe for the sequel. They were initially cut, then came back, were going to be cut in Heart of the Swarm, and then were brought back again. Both times the reason sited was emotional attachment to the original unit. In a developer's post after the release of Legacy of the Void they pretty much acknowledged the trope, noting that Carriers currently don't see much use, but that's what makes them "cool" on the rare times they are used in competitive matches. The short story Carrier is practically a piece of Meta Fiction, as the antagonist of the story rants about how inefficient and outdated the ships are, their enemies have had years to learn how to fight them very effectively, and clinging to them is a waste of lives and resources. And yet the protagonist of the story is able to save the ship and the final passage describes it with majestic awe.
• Keystone Army: If you destroy the Carrier, the Interceptors fall out of the sky, having no ability to fight (or, for that matter, exist) without their mothership.
• Magikarp Power: An unconventional example for the entire army. A single Carrier is much less dangerous than a single Battlecruiser since their interceptors don't have great DPS and the Carrier is easily focused down. With a fleet of Carriers however, their DPS reaches very high levels, and if the opponent tries to focus down a Carrier it can retreat out of and let its allies fight, then stop and relaunch its interceptors from safety. In short, Carriers get exponentially more dangerous the more of them you have.
• Mascot Mook: They are the symbol of the Protoss Armada, appearing frequently in artwork and splash screens. If the Protoss are mounting a significant aerial assault, you can bet Carriers will be present.
• Mighty Glacier: They move very slowly but deal a lot of damage. In StarCraft II their armor is reduced but their interceptors attack twice per volley at 5x2 instead of 6x1 before. This makes them best against standard fare low-armor targets, but inefficient against high-armor targets like Battlecruisers, though the 5x2 attack is still better than the 6x1 one for total damage per hit. Because structures don't necessarily have additional armor points to offset the Interceptors' damage, Carriers can be powerful Siege Engines under these circumstances.
• Mobile Factory: Constructs interceptors while in flight.
• Mook Maker: Interceptors actually count as units that can be targeted and shot down, though their speed makes it hard to focus them down one by one.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Lore-wise they carry Purifier beams that can pierce a planet's crust, but of course they don't have them in gameplay. Lore also notes that they don't use their purifier beams in combat.
• Your Size May Vary: The Field Manual's appendix has a scale chart that depicts standard carriers as over 1.3 kilometers long, but in all of the cutscenes (particularly notable in Legacy of the Void's opening cinematic), they appear much smaller, a few hundred meters at most. Then there's the gameplay itself, where they're maybe a couple dozen meters and can be shot down by a couple rifle squads.

Arbiter

"Warp fields stabilized."

Support vessels piloted by members of the Judicator Caste, they act as anchors in reality for time-space rifts that render nearby allies invisible and warp in reinforcements from a distance.

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• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • They're very powerful when fully upgraded but lie at the top of the tech tree and require a large investment of time and resources to deploy. further hampered by the Templar Archives and Arbiter Tribunal being on two different branches of the tech tree in the first place. Their stealth ability also renders other powerful units invulnerable except for themselves, meaning that if there's any arbiters around, they get focus-fired.
  • Subverted in Protoss vs Terran match-ups; the Arbiter is a staple unit for dealing with late-game Terran mechanical-unit death-balls. Their Stasis Field ability allows the player to temporarily cut down the amount of troops the player has to face when engaging the death-ball head-on and engage at more favorable/manageable proportions, and the Recall allows the player to harass the Terran player and force him to overstretch his defenses. This is still Difficult, but Awesome, however, because you need to have enough APM and micro skill to utilize the unit effectively.
• The Bus Came Back: The Daelaam recover the Arbiter schematics in Legacy of the Void when they find the Spear of Adun, and they can be built in the campaign.
• Cherry Tapping: Justified in some cases if both player have been weakened severly. Their attack may be pathetic, but if a match is nearly a stalemate and you're fighting a Terran who has lifted off structures to hide, you can still technically win if you're left with just Arbiters and at least one structure. Arbiters can hunt down stray buildings and slowly peck away at them to trigger the Instant-Win Condition. Even if you must engage Missile Turrets, you can retreat to let their shields recharge or do it quickly at a Shield Battery if one is available. Their Stasis Field means that if stray anti-air units are present, you can stasis them to get them out of the way for a time.
• Energy Ball: Their attack, which is a weaker version of the Dragoon's.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Their pilots, as members of the Judicator Caste, outrank you (the Executor). This is especially egregious in the single-player campaign of the original Starcraft, as Arbiters are unlocked after you and your Templar allies just got done fighting the Judicators in a civil war.
• Invisibility Cloak: Cloaks nearby units without using any energy, though this doesn't affect other Arbiters.
• Locked Out of the Fight: Stasis Field allows you to make a group of units (including your own) invulnerable, immobile and unable to attack. This immobile status effect comes in handy for some unusual tactics too.
• Mass Teleportation: Recall brings a group of allied units right below the Arbiter.
• Non-Action Guy: Though they have an attack, they are definitely not fit for fighting.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Stasis Field isn't just good for locking part of a enemy army out of the fight, you can freeze units in strategic places, such as on a chokepoint into your base to stall an opponent while your army responds.
• Stone Wall: In StarCraft, they're very durable for a spell-casting unit (150 shields & 200 HP, the same as a Colossus in StarCraft II), but their attack power is all but nonexistant. Their Stasis Field spell doesn't even allow you to damage affected units, rather it's meant to reduce the burden when your army attacks an enemy army.
• Time Stands Still: Stasis Field makes a group of enemy units invulnerable, but also unable to do anything.

Phoenix

"Teleport successful."

Fast-moving air skirmish units, they can't attack ground units but don't need to—their Graviton Beam lets them bring ground units up to their level instead.

The Purifiers field their own variant of the Phoenix, the Mirage, which are equipped with Phasing Armor that temporarily renders it invulnerable to damage after being attacked.

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• Beam Spam: During development their ability was "Overload", where they fire a flurry of lasers to attack enemies with a Herd-Hitting Attack, then go off-line for a period of time.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Alongside the Terran Diamondback, Cyclone and Battlecruiser, the Phoenix and its variant, the Mirage, are among the few SC2 units that avert this. They're also very fast, making them perfect for chasing down transport vessels.
• Fragile Speedster: Subverted, they're about average durability by Protoss standards, but they're fast enough to make Hit-and-Run Tactics and outrun other air-to-air fighters and up to 180 points of protection is higher than most basic aircraft such as Mutalisks (120), and Vikings (135). However, they can not attack ground units directly, only lift up non-massive ones so that their fellow Phoenixes can fire upon them. In team games, the ability to lift ground units is lethal around allied Vikings and/or Corrupters with their powerful Anti-Air. Their weapon is also less efficient against non-light targets and more penalized by armor points to balance out their swift speed.
• Energy Weapon: Equipped with twin ion cannons, which tear through lightly-armored foes.
• Gravity Master: Their signature ability is to lift a ground unit up, allowing other Phoenixes (the one doing the hoisting cannot do anything else) to attack the hapless victim with air-to-air weapons. Even more in the Legacy of the Void campaign, as Phoenixes can lift two units at the same time, with no energy cost and not preventing attack by the user. This also has the fun element of completing the trifecta: while the most basic air unit of each race begins as an air-to-air combatant, all of them have ways of nonetheless attacking ground units (Vikings by being Transforming Mecha, Phoenixes via the Graviton Beam, Mutalisks by... shooting downward.)
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Phoenixes are infamous for using their speed and maneuverability to dance circles around larger air units, attack, then make their getaway. They don't even need to stop to attack.
• Intangibility: The Purifier Mirage's signature ability, Phasing Armor, allows it to phase out when attacked, turning invincible for two seconds. This recharges very quickly.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: They're the successor to the Corsair as Protoss air-to-air Support Party Member.

Void Ray

"Prismatic core on-line."

A Protoss support ship, it is armed with a prismatic beam that fires a steady stream of energy. The longer it fires at a single target the better the crystals firing the beam align together, slowly intensifying the beam's energy output and doing more damage.

The Tal'darim have a variant of the Void Ray called the Destroyer. The Destroyers use a different lens for their beams, made from volatile bloodshard crystals, that causes their beams to fragment on impact and strike multiple targets.

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• Beam Spam: Fire long continuous lasers at enemies.
• Blood Knight: The Tal'darim Destroyer pilot is this for Tal'darim standards, which says A LOT about him. Good luck finding one line that is not related to destruction.
• Chain Lightning: The Destroyer has this effect, the longer it fires on a single target, weakly chaining its beam to up to 3 targets.
• Chewing the Scenery: The Destroyer pilot makes Large Ham look like an Understatement.
  "ONLY DESTRUCTION AWAITS OUR FOES!"
  "YOUR FOE SHALL BURN!"
• Cool, but Inefficient: In the Legacy of the Void campaign, the Destroyer suffers from this compared to the regular Void Ray. Its crimson energy beams may look impressive and dangerous, but their Chain Lightning ability deals little damage to adjacent targets and loses the Void Ray's ability devastate single targets more and more in three stages. The Void Ray's specific Gathering Steam ability is preferable as you simply can queue up targets to deliver its superior damage where it matters the most as opposed to spreading around Scratch Damage aimlessly.
• Converging-Stream Weapon: Their weapons converge on a crystal hovering in the middle of their laser array that combines the beams into one.
• Evolving Attack: In Wings of Liberty and the Legacy of the Void campaign. The longer they attack a single target, the higher their damage (And range, in the Legacy of the Void campaign) climbs.
• Gathering Steam: Depends on the patch: The very first version had them do more damage the longer they stayed on a single target by having their Converging-Stream Weapon use only one, then two, then all three beams (their damage and, in the Legacy of the Void campaign, attack range increasing with each one), other patches instead give them a temporary damage bonus against Armored enemies. The versions seen in the single player campaign remain unchanged from the first patch, and so all have this trope built into them.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: The Tal'darim Destroyer in Legacy of the Void has its beams hit more targets as they power up, instead of dealing more damage to the primary target.
• Incoming Ham: The Destroyer pilot, again.
  '"THE DEATH FLEET DESCENDS!"
• Jack of All Trades: They have good durability by aerial unit standards but are medium strength aircraft by Protoss standards. They are not as fragile as the Phoenix or Oracle, but not as durable as the Carrier or Tempest, nor as nimble as Phoenix or Oracle (even with the speed boost from Flux Vanes). Their lack of native armor value means their effective health has no baseline mitigation, but 250 total Hit Points still gives leeway to pull them back from harm. Legacy of the Void removed their charge-up mechanic due to a high prevalence of cheese tactics with it, but their speciality remains Armored targets, of which there are an abundance of; players can strategically toggle Prismatic Allignment for additional anti-armor power at the expense of movement speed. They're directly effective against both ground and air, unlike the Phoenix, and more accessible than the Carrier and Tempest, but lack the siege range of the two Airborne Artillery ships and have to use finess to avoid unnecessary damage.
• No Indoor Voice: Dear Lord, the Destroyer pilot. Just look at the quotes above.
• Shout-Out: Their organic design feels very reminiscent of the Species 8472 Bioship with both using a Converging-Stream Weapon that melts through dense targets with ease.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: They repace the Scout's role as the medium flier of Protoss, boasting a much more flexible weapon system that can engage both ground and air targets. Like the Scout, their forte is punching through heavily armored targets. Both also use a polarity-based attack, the Scout using Anti-Matter Missiles against matter.
• Units Not to Scale: They're not that much bigger than single-pilot fighters like Scouts or Vikings in-game, and have the same defense stats as the former. However, according to the StarCraft Field Manual, Void Rays in lore are over half a kilometer in length.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Their laser gets impressively large when powered up. Really, it's more of a giant energy beam with engines to keep it aloft.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: According to the lore, it was designed by combining Dark Templar and Khalai manufacturing techniques, and its powerful energy beam is created by combining the two forms of psionic energy.

Tempest

"Kinetic matrix active."
"You seek our aid?"

The new Protoss capital ship in Heart of the Swarm, it is a very long-range siege ship that blasts enemies from beyond their normal line of sight and can disable enemy ground units with its Disruption Blast ability.

The Purifiers have a Tempest variant that can fire more powerful energy orbs to disintegrate enemies over time.

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• Airborne Artillery: They out-ranged even Terran Siege Tanks back in the Heart of the Swarm balance paradigm, but were eventually nerfed and had their range reduced so they only outrange Terran Siege Tanks (14 vs 13 units for Siege Tanks) when targeting air and only have a range of 10 units for their anti-ground weapon. Terran Thors will pose a problem, as they outrange Tempests by one map tile. However, they also gained the Tectonic Destabilizers upgrade as an option to practically double their damage against structures.
• Anti-Structure: Later Legacy of the Void patches gave multiplayer Tempests the Tectonic Destabilizers upgrade, greatly increasing their damage against buildings.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Invoked in order to enforce the Tempest's role as a support unit. Despite its very long range and respectable health (But somewhat low shields), the Tempest deals low damage-per-second for its cost unless attacking structures with Tectonic Destabilizers. It's not supposed to spearhead an offensive like the Carrier, but rather supposed to hang back and offer fire support.
• The Bus Came Back: The Tempest was in the Wings of Liberty alpha as a dedicated anti-ground unit, though it had a different appearance. It got cut when the Carrier made it back into the game in Wings of Liberty, only to return in Heart of the Swarm. Now it's the original Tempest In Name Only: The original cut Tempest was basically a modified carrier, while this final Tempest is entirely different.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: It's stated that handling the humongous amount of energy that uses the Tempest takes a toll on the body of its pilots, something lessened by the armor they wear. The Purifier Tempest sidesteps this problem entirely due to being piloted by an AI, allowing them to crank the power to the max.
• Energy Ball: Word of God has commented that the massive sphere of electricity that dominates the front of the ship is as much a part of its design appearance as the actual ship.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Flavor Text mentions that, due to the strain that handling the Tempest has on the protoss, its only piloted by loyal and fanatic protoss, hence why the unit portrait looks like an armored Zealot.
• Nerf: The 3.8 patch drastically reduced the Tempest's anti-ground range in return for the Disruption Blast ability, making them more of a support unit against ground enemies, its supply cost was also increased from 4 to 6. The Disruption Blast ability was removed in a subsequent patch but in return, the Tempest anti-ground weapon was slightly buffed (8 to 10 range and 35 to 40 damage anti-ground attack). All-in-all, the current version of the Tempest is weaker than its pre-3.8 iteration due to its shorter anti-surface range and its increased supply cost. Later patches tweaked them, bringing their total hitpoints down, and slowing their movement speed and acceleration, but reducing their supply cost from 6 to 5. Their resource costs were lowered a tad as well. This further reinforces their role as a support ship rather than a primary one but also lowers their impact on your Arbitrary Headcount Limit.
• Shout-Out: Their roughly insectoid-like design, siege range, and energy weaponry give them a similar look and feel to the Scrin Devastator Warships in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. It helps that the Protoss Carriers function similarly to the Scrin Planetary Assault Carriers ^note These are like shout-outs to the Protoss Carriers due to SC 1 predating Tiberium Wars., highlighting the similarities further.

Oracle

"Dimensional strings attuned."

An aerial support caster debuting in Heart of the Swarm, Oracles featured a variety of abilities during development. In the final product, they can detect hidden enemies and reveal areas in the fog of war, making them effective scouts. They can also attack units with a damage buff against light targets, making them dangerous harassers. Legacy of the Void combined their two abilities into one and gave it a new ability in Stasis Ward.

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• Fragile Speedster: That's how you know it's a Nerazim unit. Don't keep them over anti-air towers or they'll return to the Void in seconds.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Moves at a fair clip and its basic attack is horribly potent; two harassing Oracles can chew through an entire base's Worker Units in about five seconds.
• Irony: During the Blizzcon preview of the Oracle, it was billed as a "worker-friendly harassment unit" because it sealed mineral clusters in forcefields that made them unmineable — the specific words being used were "Not a single worker will be harmed by an Oracle". Over the course of development however, this sealing ability was removed and the Oracle gained an energy-dependant weapon that gets a bonus against Light-type units — if not dealt with quickly, even a single Oracle can kill many workers very quickly.
• Nerf: The Oracle gets hit hard in the patch 4.0: its weapon has its damage reduced to 22 vs light (down from 25, its damage against armored remain unchanged), its Stasis Wards have 170 seconds timed life, instead of infinite duration and its Revelation ability has its duration reduced to 30 seconds (down from 43 seconds).
• The Smurfette Principle: Their presence averts it, being the second Protoss air unit with a female voice set.
• Spy Bot: was formerly able to either stop the enemy from seeing or give you sight on an enemy building (depending on the build); the latter of which had obvious synergy with the Tempest's BVR attack. Now it just has the 60-seconds-vision ability called Revelation and in Legacy of the Void, it reveals cloaked and burrowed units hit by it.
• Squishy Wizard: Damn good damage against light armor and useful abilties, but they won't last long against dedicated attackers.
• Trap Master: In Legacy of the Void they can set Stasis Wards, cloaked traps that trigger against nearby units and freeze them in stasis.
• True Sight: Can make itself a detector to sense cloaked and burrowed enemies. This was changed in Legacy of the Void by changing the above Revelation by making it reveals cloaked and burrowed units hit by it. In Co-op Missions, Oracles have detection by default.

Mothership Core

A spellcasting ship with potent abilities, the Protoss are only allowed to have one at a time. It can use "Mass Recall" to return itself and all nearby units to your base; "Photon Overcharge" to temporarily turn a Pylon (no, Warp Prisms don't count) into a makeshift Photon Cannon; and "Time Warp" to reduce the movement speed and attack speed of all units in the chosen area for a short time. Finally, once you climb the Tech Tree enough, it can be upgraded into a Mothership (see below). The Mothership Core was removed in later patches of Legacy of the Void.

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• Nerf: Prior to Legacy of the Void, Photon Overcharge targeted the Nexus instead of a Pylon and had a much longer duration. However, its damage was improved in return.
• Squishy Wizard: Its abilities are all pretty nice; HP, shields and movement speed, not so much.

Mothership

"Justice has come!"

The height of Protoss air power, a flying city long used as a mobile base in the lore but not deployed in the field until now. Compared to the Mothership Core, it trades in Photon Overcharge and movement speed for an Invisibility Cloak that shrouds everything near the Mothership. In Wings of Liberty the Mothership had Vortex, which draws all units into it and removes them from battle for a period of time; from Heart of the Swarm on they instead have Time Warp, which creates a temporal field that slows down enemy units in its radius.

In the campaigns the Mothership juggles numerous abilities across different missions, including projecting power fields, self-teleportation, and the Planet Cracker, a powerful beam of energy fired into the ground that incinerates anything nearby. The Tal'darim also build motherships, arming them with thermal lances to quickly burn down their enemies.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: While its abilities and power are impressive, its long build time, top-tier tech requirements and huge resource cost make it difficult to deploy, and once it hits the field it moves very slowly and needs time to build up a store of energy to use properly. This is why the Mothership Core was introduced, making the Mothership less impractical, until Legacy of the Void when Blizzard just integrated Strategic Recall into all Nexi and brought back the traditional method of summoning the Mothership; this setup allows your Mothership and any surrounding units to be recalled to any Nexus to save them from destruction. Their overall costs were eventually reduced, and their energy bar was removed in return for each ability being limited only by a fixed cooldown time, but they were made physically and magically weaker, being made not quite as durable as a Terran Battlecuriser and having less effective radius on their Time Warp and Recall abilities.
• Action Girl: Tal'darim Motherships have a distinct contralto. Making them one of the few female protoss units

"My will is iron"

• Balance Buff: The Mothership Core was introduced to allow Motherships to be more useful. Legacy of the Void further boosted their viability by appending them the Heroic type allowing them to No-Sell devastating effects like Mind Control, while the Mothership Core was removed and some of its features folded into the Nexus itself.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Zig-zagged, they gained the "Heroic" attribute, rendering them immune to debilitating abilities like Neural Parasite, but Abduct remains a threat that will still force them into a Zerg army's line of fire. However, if this happens, a Protoss player may recall them to safety with a Nexus casting Strategic Recall. They eventually lost their energy pool and their spells were given a fixed cooldown, removing their weakness to EMP and Feedback.
• Combination Attack: When combined with Archons, the stacking effect Vortex has on air units plus the Archons' splash damage leads to the splash destroying nearly any air unit caught within the Vortex after they emerge.
• Flying Saucer: Their design aesthetic, resembling a flying triangle with a transparent dome. They are large enough to house a small city inside said dome.
• Energy Weapon: They utilize Purfier Beams that combine for a decent amount of damage in gameply. The Tal'darim replace them with Terminator Beams when they upgrade captured Motherships, and each one of these Beams deal more damage than all six Purifier Beams combined; on top of that, the Tal'darim engineers also love equipping them with Thermal Lances even more devastating than those found on Colossi.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the lore, they are the height of Protoss power, and are Kill Sats armed with a "Planet Cracker" superweapon that can purify planets ala classic Mothership from Independence Day. We witness one such ability in Wings of Liberty on a smaller scale. In the gameplay, however, they are Arbiter-like spellcasters with a weak attack that, if not protected, can be killed by Marines. Justified, since in the beta they had the Planet Cracker and the ability to create Black Holes that obliterate fleets, but that was obviously overpowered. Their Vortex was ultimately replaced with a Time Warp Area of Effect that slows enemies by 40% for use with combined arms tactics such for landing devastating hits with Psi Storm, and sending Disruptor Novas that would otherwise be dodged.
• Interpretative Character: The Mothership has gone through a lot of changes through the original announcement trailer up to the release of Legacy of the Void. The result is that in different gameplay modes, different expansions, and even different missions in the same campaign, their abilities can vary greatly. Yet all are just different variants of the same unit in the lore.
• Large and in Charge: Without question the largest unit in multiplayer. In the campaign it's rivaled by the Odin and the Leviathan.
• Mass Teleportation: Can use Mass Recall to teleport itself and nearby allies to a friendly Nexus.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Painfully slow but their purifier beams are very strong and their spells are very dangerous.
  • Tal'darim Motherships take this to the next level, with a 1000 shields and 1000 hitpoints. They are equipped with six powerful Terminator Beams and souped-up auxilary Thermal Lances like those found on Colossi, allowing one annihilate priority targets and to lay waste to large chunk of an army. They have Blink to help with positioning and downplay their slow speed too.
• The Mother Ship: They're based on the idea of a flying city that represents the golden age of exploration from a bygone era, and house cities with their domes.
• My Beloved Smother: Some of her Stop Poking Me! quotes emphasize the "mother" in mothership.
• One-Man Army: The Tal'darim Mothership. It boasts a jaw-dropping 1000 shields (more than the normal Mothership has HP and shields combined) on top of an equally massive HP pool, trades in the Mothership's support-oriented kit for Blink and two very powerful offensive abilities, and has a devastating normal attack (like the normal Mothership, it attacks with six beams simultaneously, except a single one of the Tal'darim Mothership's beams matches the normal Mothership's entire six-beam volley). It's not likely to be brought down by anything short of a decently-sized army. And to top it off, Ji'nara fields an even more powerful one in Nova Covert Ops.
• Revealing Cover-Up: if you see a single Mothership floating towards you, you know she's got a bunch of guys hiding under her Invisibility Cloak. In addition, since the Mothership does not cloak herself, she's the only thing you can shoot.
• Super Prototype: They're historically the predecessors of the mass-produced Arbiters but with better armaments and in lore, a Wavemotion Gun that can deal immense purification on a planetary scale. Downplayed in multiplayer however, as they obviously lack their over-powered "Planet Cracker", and their colossal price tag and slow speed detracted from their desirability, and players may only have one built at a given time. Blizzard seemed to acknowledge this as in Legacy of the Void, all Nexus structures gained the ability to perform a defensive recall (like the Mothership Core), which can even be used to rescue an endangered Mothership (saving your investment), while the Mothership still had their offensive-oriented Recall ability.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: They functionally like a Super Prototype version of the Arbiter.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: Vortex, which was actually named Black Hole during development. The Tal'darim Mothership's Black Hole stuns all enemy units that were sucked into the Black Hole, leaving them vulnerable.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Tal'Darim enjoy modifying their Motherships with Terminator Beams, each of which is more powerful than six Purifier Beams combined. Any target blasted by six of these beams will be in a world of hurt if not destroyed outright. They also come equipped with Thermal Lances, basically a bigger version of the eponymous weapon mounted on the Colossus, with appropriately devastating effects on clusters of enemies.

Other Protoss units

Stone Guardian

Massive statues of Protoss warriors that decorate an altar to one of the Xel'naga artifact fragments, they come alive to attack when someone tries to take the item.

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• Eye Beams: They fire beams like the Colossus from their eyes to attack, though they don't deal splash damage.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: They're the size of buildings and tower over your army as they attack with lasers from their eyes. However, they don't deal much damage and despite using the Colossus' attack, don't deal splash damage, and with an infantry deathball of Marines and Marauders (which deal bonus damage to Armored units, which the guardians are), you can kill them in a few seconds. That there's an achievement for killing them without losing a unit to them should be an indication of how threatening they are.
• Mistaken for Granite: They appear to be statues around the altar before they come to life and attack.

Megalith

A Protoss machine left on the forest moon of Endion to safeguard the stasis locks holding the Purifier space station Cybros in orbit.

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• Escort Mission: It automatically goes to the stasis locks to release Cybros, but the path is infested with Zerg, so players have to clear the way and protect it.
• Energy Weapon: It attacks with a laser beam that sweeps across the field, like a singular version of the Colossus' beams.
• Stone Wall: It moves a bit slow and deals pitiful damage, but has a ton of HP. Justified since it's an Escort Mission — the player is to do the heavy lifting of killing things, the Megalith is just supposed to not get destroyed.

Purifier Warden

"Firstborn... I remember... betrayal... death... Unacceptable."

A Purifier that was left on Cybros in stasis with the other Purifiers. It awoke early when Cybros was released from stasis, but its AI had degraded to the point it thought everything not a Purifier was its enemy.

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• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: You can tell it's struggling to speak.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: It's gone rogue and attacks anything in sight. Justified by how long it's been sealed away and its memory lattice had degraded, corrupting it.
• Attack Drone: It is accompanied by two smaller Purifier units, one heals its shields and the other provides support fire.
• Tragic Villain: It was probably once a noble Protoss warrior like the other Purifiers, but its memory has degraded to the point it speaks in broken sentences and barely recognizes the Protoss. When it is destroyed, Fenix and Karax treat it as a somber moment.

The Spear of Adun

One of the three arkships that were built during the Protoss's golden age in case their civilization fell into dire times, and the only one that survived the Zerg invasion of Aiur. The Spear of Adun was rediscovered by Artanis's forces when looking for a way to escape Aiur following Amon's corruption of the Khala. The ship itself carries an entire army, military production facilities, an artificial star that provides nourishment to the tripulation and energy to the arkship's components, among other useful traits.

The Spear of Adun does not appear as a unit proper in Legacy of the Void, but it does provide several support powers that can be used in most missions, with Baseless Missions and progressively the final main campaign mission as the only exceptions. It also supports Artanis, Vorazun and Karax in Co-Op Mode.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: Even though Warp-In Reinforcements (Warps in a Pylon and four units) seems to be a straight upgrade from Deploy Pylon, the fact the former power costs 50 solarite makes it less desirable later on, where not only does the more powerful units outclass the reinforcements, but said powerful unit’s longer build times also make Chrono Surge a more desirable power.
• The Battlestar: Exaggerated. This is, practically, a massive ship capable of waging war on its own.
• Boring, but Practical: Orbital Assimilators don't seem that impressive compared with being able to get not only Warp Gates, but also Warp Stargates and Warp Robotic Facilities. However, it makes vespene gas gathering significantly cheaper.
• Cool Ship: It comes with the fact that it's a humongous spaceship, capable of holding an entire civilization within it.
• Deflector Shields: Shield Overcharge gives all friendly units a shield that absorbs 200 points of damage during 20 seconds. It stacks up with Protoss shields.
• Dyson Sphere: It's powered by a miniature synthetic star, which also provides sustenance for the Protoss on board.
• Enemy-Detecting Radar: The first Tier 3 power, Nexus Overcharge, gives all Nexus one not unlike the Terran Sensor Tower's.
• Fling a Light into the Future: A surprising variation on it - the Ancient Protoss who built it were not under threat, but they built it in case their descendants might be.
• Friendly Fireproof: Not a single one of its damage dealing powers can affect friendly units and structures.
• Godzilla Threshold: The Spear of Adun and two other arkships were buried beneath Aiur, and were only to be reactivated in the event of a Darkest Hour happening.
• Heroic Second Wind: Guardian Shell provides a five-second invulnerability to friendly units that would take fatal damage in an attack.
• It's Raining Men: The final Tier 4 power drops Fenix to the battlefield not through a warp-in, in such a way it deals noticeable damage in a radius around the zone of impact.
• Made of Iron: Not even the entire Golden Armada ramming the Spear of Adun does any significant damage. At worst, the support powers stop working during one mission.
• Mass Teleportation: Mass Recall teleports a group of units to the player's oldest Nexus.
• The Medic: The Spear of Adun can passively repair up to three mechanical units or structures at a time.
• Mile-Long Ship: The Spear of Adun is stated to be 223 times larger than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier and 5 to 10 times larger than a Zerg Leviathan. This, at least, equals to the Spear of Adun being 74,592 meters long (making it a 46-mile-long ship) and makes it the largest ship in the entire series.
• Orbital Bombardment
  • The first of the Spear of Adun's Tier 2 powers, up to having the same name. It fires five barrages of three blasts on the locations chosen by the player. The third Tier 2 power is the Solar Lance, which arcs three beams of energy along designated paths.
  • The first Tier 6 power, Purifier Beam, produces a beam that deals massive damage along a path designated by the player. Solar Bombardment, the final Tier 6 power, fires 200 projectiles in an area for around 15 seconds. The damage adds so much that not even units like Battlecruisers can stay in blast radius.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Nexus Overcharge gives the Protoss Nexus a permanent weapon. While it has a very long range (As much as a Siege Tank), it only has the same damage and attack speed as a Photon Cannon. However, this can make the Nexus a very useful Stone Wall on defensive missions.
• Ragnarök Proofing: The Spear of Adun hails from the Protoss' Golden Age, well over a thousand years prior to the games. Even after generations of seeming neglect and the Zerg invasion of Aiur, however, it still looks as it had when it was originally sealed.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction
  • Even by the Protoss standard of warping in structures, the Spear of Adun's deployable Pylons are warped in extremely quickly. Warp-in Reinforcements takes it even further by warping in a Pylon and four units.
  • The Chrono Surge ability provides Ridiculously Fast Production for any allied building, increasing the warp-in and research speeds tenfold for 20 seconds.
  • After Shakuras is blown up, the Spear of Adun is capable of manufacturing every building you need to such a degree that in gameplay terms, you won't even notice it.
  • You can also allocate extra solarite to warp in buildings even faster.
• Sealed Army in a Can: Carries a massive army in stasis, who can easily have their nerve cords removed and most won't question the necessity.
• Sealed Good in a Can: In stasis, with a big 'Do not open unless shit has hit the fan' sign on it.
• Status Buff: Matrix Overload is the first Tier 5 power and it gives a speed boost (in both attack and movement) to allied units that are in a power field, for up to 15 seconds after leaving it.
• Sufficiently Advanced Technology: It comes as this towards modern Protoss, with some of said incredibly advanced technology, such as artificial stars, never being used again after building the arkships.
• Superweapon: The Spear of Adun is unrivaled by everything In-Universe by the time it has fully energized - it's got the firepower to destroy entire planets according to an April Fools article published by Blizzard, which if true, means that not even entire fleets of capital ships can withstand its firepower. It's got the production capabilities to wage war for the entire Protoss civilization all on its lonesome, including constructing and launching Motherships by itself, holds a legion of Protoss warriors, is an Arcology IN SPACE! thanks to its miniature Dyson Sphere power core which not only provides it with power for all of its functions, but also allows it to feed its photosynthesizing Protoss occupants, is extremely maneuverable for its size and is nigh-Made of Indestructium - the only thing that did any significant damage were entire fleets of ships weaponizing Ramming Always Works - and it still survived that in a repairable state, while the attackers did not survive at all.
• Time Stands Still
  • Temporal Field stuns all enemy units in a small radius around three targeted spots for 20 seconds.
  • Time Stop does the same as Temporal Field, but also targets structures and it targets the entire map.

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