Protoss Warpgate Trick to get a faster Zealot

First some general info: Out of Gateways: Zealots build in 33s, Sentries/Stalkers build in 42s, High/Dark Templars build in 55s. Since Sentries/Stalkers and High/Dark Templars have the same build time, I will simply refer to Stalkers or HTs.

The cooldown time for Warpgates depends on which unit was built. If a Zealot was made, it will take ~22s for the Warpgate to be ready again. For Sentries/Stalkers, it takes ~31s for the Warpgate to be ready again. The Templars take ~44s for the Warpgate to be ready. I used "~" meaning approximately, because I had to build the unit, and then check the remaining cooldown time to see what it was. Although my hand speed is very fast, I still want to allow room for potential error.

Note: s = seconds of build time.

Now let's think theoretically for a moment: Let's say I want to warp a Stalker, transform my warpgate back into a gateway, make a zealot, and then transform back into a warpgate. It takes 3 seconds for the Stalker to warp in, 3 seconds to transform my warpgate back into a gateway, 33 seconds to build my zealot, and then 10 seconds to transform back into a Warpgate. That's a total of 49 seconds! It would've been faster to have waited for my warpgate to cooldown, and then transform a zealot (3+31+3=37 seconds).

If we look at making a second zealot, with the warp method you would be able to get it immediately (no cooldown), so technically you would get 1 stalker and 2 zealots in 52 seconds. With the pure warpgate method, to get the same amount of units you would have to wait an additional 22 seconds of cooldown, and the 3 second warp time, which takes a grand total of 62 seconds.

So the take home message here: This warpgate trick is stupid if you are only going to make one zealot after your Stalker, but beneficial if you are going to make 2 zealots after your Stalker.

Generally speaking, however, the amount of APM committed to doing this constantly would be very wasteful.

That's when I remembered Chronoboost. Chronoboosts don't work on warpgates, but they make a zealot come out 50% faster from a Gateway (note: you will only need to chronoboost once).  So I tried warping in a stalker, transforming back into gateway, chronoboosting a zealot, and then transforming back into warpgate to make another zealot. Compared to my control group (stalker, zealot, zealot, all from a warpgate), the chronoboost helped a lot!

That's when I started to think about the implications. If there was already a slight benefit with Stalkers, High templars which take even longer should be even better! So I tried warping in a High Templar, transforming back into gateway, chronoboosting a zealot, and then transforming into warpgate. It was only my first zealot, and I already discovered how much faster this was! In my control group, there was still a good 4 seconds of wait time before I could even build my zealot (44 second cooldown after making a HT!), which made my second zealot come out unbelievably quickly!

Alright on paper, this was all very interesting, but how the hell are you supposed to use this in game? Cause honestly, by the time you have warpgates, you're not worrying about getting a unit out a few seconds faster. That's mostly really for rushes. However I propose this scenario:

Let's say you have HT storm tech upgraded (and I mean the full tech, having enough energy to storm immediately on warp). Your army is out destroying things, when your opponent went for a quick harass into your relatively undefended expansions/main. Immediately, you warp in two high templars out of two warpgates (this is just hypothetical, like you only have two available warpgates at the moment), and transform them back into gateways.

As your HT's storm the enemy units, you chronoboost your zealots (one from both gateways). ~19 seconds later, the zealots come out to prevent too much casualty loss. Hopefully his harass was damaged enough for him to retreat. If not, your newly transformed warpgates are making 2 additional zealots, plus your other warpgates are probably able to help at this point, as well as your main army.

Perhaps in the near future, Protoss users develop enough APM to be able to incorporate this frequently in games. Thank you for reading my guides! Please leave questions/comments if I was unclear about this concept.