I can't seen to find a way to get below 25 units lost in this challenge.
In first part of the challenge I lose around 9-10 units. Second part is pretty ok, I lost 3-4 units there, but in 3rd part I lose around 10-15 units every time. Mostly I lose zealots to siege tank in the very last part of the challenge.
Do you have any tips for this challenge.
EDIT: Path of Ascension is protos challenge, where you need to chose type of units to counter 3 different enemy groups.
For the last part I used hallucinations along with the shield to help protect from incoming tank fire. I found it helped to split the forces above and below, making sure the zealots charged the tanks.
For the hallucination, try and make the tanks splash their own units
In the beginning...
On the very first round, Blink your Stalkers up to the high ground for the Helions. You might need to leave one on the ground to entice them over. Once there, You can deal with about half of them fairly quickly, while the other half attack the pylon. Then Blink down and finish them off. Shouldn't lose any units (1 max). Make sure you have them all selected, and if one is taking a lot of damage, move it away.
You can get away with using only 4 Colossi against the marines. Same deal as the stalkers: if one is taking a lot of dmg, move it out of range and then back into range when they marines start targetting another unit.
This leaves you with a Colossus for the Siege Tanks. My path was to make 2 more Colossus hallucinations, and let the zealots charge in.
(I think i've got the waves right....I might not. Apologies if this is the case. Shall fix it up when i get home....)
With some patience, finesse and tweaking, you should be fine.
I just got 0 losses total pretty easily. It's all a matter of using the right units :) Here's how:
Top: Send your stalkers and archons. Have them attack the battle-cruiser immediately, then once it's dead just attack-move to kill the rest. No micro required.
Middle: Send the sentry and your collossi. Put all three collossi above the cliff (tell them to hold-position), and create a collosus-hallucination below it (run the sentry away so he doesn't die). When the hallucination dies, bring one of the collosi down to draw their fire away from the pylon. When it's nearly dead, bring it back up the cliff and bring another down. Before the third one dies, all the enemies should be dead. Very little, very simple micro.
Bottom: Bring your immortals, phoenixes, and high templar. Use the templar's storm on the marauders immediately (run him away so he doesn't die), then attack-move the immortals to the back so they kill the marauders then the tanks. Meanwhile, use all your phoenixes to graviton-beam some siege-tanks near the back. You'll only need a little micro to move some low-health immortals away (I only had to move one).
Note that I did not use the zealots at all - they died too easily.
The siege tanks on the final round were what kept getting me.
For that round in particular:
a) Spread out your immortals. Their hardened shields aren't worth anything if the combined volleys of the siege tanks are dealing damage to the shields of 5 immortals each attack. Spreading out the immortals means the siege tank splash damage isn't so deadly to them.
b) use hallucinate. I used my high templar on the battlecruiser for feedback, but you might also look into using psistorm if you think it'll help. You can spawn two hallucinated archons who'll easily soak up some of the damage.
c) move your troops up to the starting bubble. It means the marauders get obliterated by your zealots + immortals (they are armored, after all) and then the zealots immediately charge into the siege tanks, where the tanks start killing themselves with friendly fire splash damage.
If that wasn't understandable, try this video instead:
You can do this with good micro if you follow the in game hints.
With stalkers, as they take damage blink them up on the high ground. don't start off on the high ground. If the high ground is out of range, just blink it back. You can do this easily with 0 losses.
Use your immortals to counter the tanks and the zealots to counter the marauders. What you want to do here is time your attack just right. move in your immortals first from the south side so they get targeted by the first wave of siege attacks. then charge in your zealots from the north to take out the marauders. You may lose one or two zealots here but shouldn't lose any immortals. Back out any immortals that are getting low on health. Don't cluser them in a circle either because microing immortals that are taking damage from the front to the back will be impossible.
I used my sentry with the Arcons and Colossi which is a bit over kill but I had no use for my sentry. I just put all the colossi on the ridge and setup a forcefield between the arcons and the incoming wave of units to stall.
It took several tries to get gold on all challenges but I did it by following the hints and practicing my micro which i believe is the purpose of these challenges. (or macro depending on the challenge)
I'm answering my own question because i finally managed to get to gold level on this challenge by using some non standard tactics.
On the final stage instead of using unit compositions recommended in hints I decided to go with:
Against battlecruiser and vikings I used stalkers, zealots and hight templar. I feedback BC with HT and focus fire my stalkers on the BC while zealots got rid of any landing vikings.
Against hellions and reapers I used colossi and archons (colossi on high ground and a bit of micro with archons).
Against marauders and tanks I used immortals with shield from sentry and Phoenixes. I used phoenixes to reduce incoming damage by lifting 4 of the siege tanks.
