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First of all, I need to say that I am strictly a Zerg player and know absolutely nothing about playing Protoss other than just watching tourneys.
It occurred to me today that archons cost 100/300 if you make them out of high templar. I never really realized how cheap they were in minerals, and the first thing I though was "wow, that could free up a lot of money for zealots..." It seems that the Archon may be an extremely potent weapon against zerg, for the reasons I will list here.
I've always wondered why archons were considered so weak, considering they have 350 shield (which can be regenerated insanely fast), and 25 (+10 bio) damage attack that hits ground and air. Everything the zerg has is biological, including structures.
Compared to the immortal, they can take more abuse from zerglings and kill them faster, since they have a 35 damage attack. They can take the same amount of abuse from roaches - once the hardened shields go down, an immortal will have absorbed 60 damage, giving it an effective health of 360.
Compared to the colossus, they have roughly the same HP, and are not vulnerable to anti-air attacks. They do slightly less damage, but they are much cheaper and available slightly earlier.
Unlike both the colossus and the immortal, the archon can attack mutalisks. It takes 4 shots for an archon to kill a mutalisk, and 40 for a mutalisk to kill an archon (bounce effects aside).
So I started experimenting with a build that would go for fast gas, a few warpgates, and a templar archive. Using what limited knowledge I have of protoss early game (9 pylon 12 gate?), I made several attempts to mass an early army of zealots and archons. After several trials just against the computer, I was able to get an army of 8-9 zealots and 2 archons with an expansion on the way and charge just beginning at exactly 8 minutes. I realize things are different in a game with an opponent that will be harassing and whatnot, but with a zealot-blocked wall that shouldn't be much of a problem anyways.
If anyone has any thoughts on how this could be used effectively, please share. It's a shame these awesome units aren't ever seen on the field.
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An army consisting of melee units PLUS melee units doesn't seem really well balanced to me.
Well, you never know... but I sure miss Archons  I hope this (or another) strat will work, since you definitely can't use them at all against T...
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Interesting, i think this would be an effective timing push if you could get charge. Might be better if you used dark templar instead of high templar too, that way zealots can tank, dark temps deal lots of damage, and archons do splash. hmm i gotta try this.
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Ya...plus that big ol' ball of energy just strongly reminds them to get a ghost...which for some reason a lot of T players forget about when going vs P. But seeing that boy rolling toward them tends to spark that reminder of the old BW days of "Crap! Where's my Sci Vessel? I need to EMP these marshmallows!!"
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On May 02 2010 06:56 Nouar wrote:An army consisting of melee units PLUS melee units doesn't seem really well balanced to me. Well, you never know... but I sure miss Archons I hope this (or another) strat will work, since you definitely can't use them at all against T...
If you're going against ling/roach, what's the problem? Melee/melee vs melee/melee. Archons have a range of 2 and can attack air, so I wouldn't even really classify them as melee anyways, just "really short range."
On May 02 2010 06:58 Morayfire73 wrote:
Interesting, i think this would be an effective timing push if you could get charge. Might be better if you used dark templar instead of high templar too, that way zealots can tank, dark temps deal lots of damage, and archons do splash. hmm i gotta try this.
The idea behind getting the HT is to warp them into archons immediately. An archon built with DTs costs 250/250, which defeats the purpose. Also, the HT tech builds in like half the time that the DT tech does.
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On May 02 2010 07:01 Dookie wrote:
Ya...plus that big ol' ball of energy just strongly reminds them to get a ghost...which for some reason a lot of T players forget about when going vs P. But seeing that boy rolling toward them tends to spark that reminder of the old BW days of "Crap! Where's my Sci Vessel? I need to EMP these marshmallows!!"
Ghosts? I'm talking about PvZ here. I specified that in the introduction.
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played a game against the AI, this seems like it might work, i was able to do a good timing attack with 2 archons and charge lots.
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problem I think is that they are just so much worse than BW archons lol. no splash (and really vs zerg you NEED splash)
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they have severely decreased splash a lot slower attack speed and vs mostu nits lower damage output. Combine that with all the godly ranged units in SC2 it makes the archon useless unless your tempalrs are out of energy.
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On May 02 2010 07:18 Morayfire73 wrote:
played a game against the AI, this seems like it might work, i was able to do a good timing attack with 2 archons and charge lots.
Ive tried archons before, and they just arnt viable vs much of anything anymore, they cant attack and move at the same time, and HTs with storm are much more useful. They really are only there to help a push once your HTs are out of energy, so you dont have fragile units that are dealing 0 damage.
the AI isnt anywhere near a challenge it builds no units or does anything at all really, this will get smacked down by anyone with a bit of knowledge about archons.
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Against a relatively fast roach mass you would have to get cannons since you neither have immortals nor alot of stalkers in this build. But yeah if you do get past the early game I imagine it could be quite nice. The only problem is that roaches/hydra will probably demolish it and even just pure roaches. I think it might be worth trying to go for this without the zealot charge as its expensive.
I'm gonna try this on ladder a couple of times (random player bout 1500 plat europe) and see if it holds up against a decent plat player.
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I do share your feelings towards the archon. I'm actually very happy when my HTs run out of energy, I still survive the fight and I haven't won the game outright - I might even field 3-4 archons as a supplement to my ~150ish army and they look quite cool there (even if they barely do anything  ).
I doubt that what you described is viable at all on higher levels of play, but since this is the first theorycraft topic that sparked my interest as a P player, I promise I'll give this a go in customs when I have the time (tomorrow perhaps), and get back to you with the results.
I have a feeling that any roach-centered build will crush this, as you have to attack and they'll have creep to help ezmode micro. However, let's hope I'm wrong oin that regard 
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Sweden33719 Posts
I would imagine that in addition to not being as strong anymore, the new way gas works (basically, when a geyser is out, it's out, unlike in SC where you could still mine one or two gas per probe even when it was depleted), probably hurts them a lot.
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they have no range and compared to most sc2 units archons attack really slowly. like ultralisks they just aren't very good at anything... gas is extremely difficult to acquire in sc2 compared to sc1 and because of that roaches are >>> archons. minerals are mined so much more quickly in sc2 that mineral cost by tier 3 is almost moot below 300 whereas gas is everything and actually limited unlike in sc1 where depleted geysers still gave you gas.
main problem vs zerg with archon zealot armies is that archons are too slow in sc2 to work at all against mutas as anti-air when you also need them to fight roaches which devour zealots.
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ah yes, i would love to see the 4 gate 2 archon push in sc2. however, didn't the archon splash get reduced? itsn't that why they "suck" now?
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I don't see this working.. first, archon is very slow. Put that in combination with creep, and that means that Z can move out roaches/hydras with minimal effort and spank your archons as they please.
They are big, which makes them easy to surround with lings. He's supposed to counter them, but the splash is so small it's barely noticeable. I think despite of his +bio, anything zerg can throw at archons is cost effective.
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They are still good against mutas, splash and all.
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Archons are simply not effective combat unit's for their costs. Against terran they obviously have huge flaws, and against zerg sentries are simply much more effective for anything. 3 sentries can do a ton of usefull stuff with their abilities and almost have a similar damage output.
From what I've heard blizzard intentionally made archon's a 'bad' unit as the HT and the colossus already fit the role of 'splash' unit in the protoss army. The archon supposed only serves a role in niche situations which 99% of the time is a couple of high templar being out of energy while in combat. Even this use isn't that fantastic considering they take quite a lot of time to merge.
Merging dark templar into a archon seems totally bad actually as even with detection around it feels like the dark templar do more.
I guess their coolness factor kept blizzard from removing them completely but they have virtually no uses.
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How does 350 shield get regenerated insanely fast? They have to be out of combat for 10 seconds, then its 2 shield regenerated every second. That's almost 3 full minutes sitting there recharging if they get low.
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pretty sure the bottom line here is that dustin browder is a piece of shit. and the idea that a game's concept should start with "we'll make a bunch of cool units and go from there" is not nearly as blizzard's pre-browder era concepts.
don't get me wrong, sc2 is still fun and i will continue playing it, but things like intentionally shitty units just because they overlap with other units is stupid.
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EPT
