This is one of the latest commentaries done by husky, and even tho the terran lacked something, the toss was able to muscle out 1(maybe 2 at one point) bases down aggaisnt the T(as in 2vs3[4] bases) in the mid/late game.
What the guy did is really mass up those archons. Sure strom comes in handy with the usual chargelots/HT combo, but this guy really massed up archons which made me think.
The terran didnt have enough ghosts, so it often had to chose to emp Chargelots(bad idea), the archons or the upcomming HT's.
As i see it, if they EMP the HT's, those will just become archons, and if they emp archons thei will prolly get storm-raped.
Some times the guy would just skip out storms and always have atleast 2 archons up front withough even using storm before.
So what you guys think? Is it really worth getting early archons to try to avoid HT emps?
All in all, i still think that if the terran went heavier in the ghosts he wouldnt have had that problem, but then, if you see a lack of ghosts, is "mass archon" viable?
I think it was a great job getting feedback on those Ghosts. I think that's what won him the game in the end. So many P's, myself included, under-use feedback.
On August 24 2010 09:34 TheJet wrote: marauders + emp > mass archon
'nuff said
getting HT's for the sake of getting archons is a fucking waste.
This^. Even with out the EMP, stimmed marauders move far too fast and out range archons by quite a great deal. There's also the unit size to consider when heading straight towards a marauder ball, archons will take too long to get a decent concave to inflict maximum damage.
On August 24 2010 09:34 TheJet wrote: marauders + emp > mass archon
'nuff said
getting HT's for the sake of getting archons is a fucking waste.
Marauders only deal 10 damage to archons, and chargealots will rape them if you waste shots trying to focus down the archons. EMP only removes 100 sheilds from archons. Getting HT and using archons straight up is not bad at all. There comes a point late game where you will have too many HT and not enough area to storm. Those HT them become a waste. Therefor,e you morph some into archons before the fight and just use warp in refinforcements to provide storm as required.
It's not optimal but totally legit, because the build time on the archons is much shorter than other high teir units like void rays or collossi.
On August 24 2010 09:34 TheJet wrote: marauders + emp > mass archon
'nuff said
getting HT's for the sake of getting archons is a fucking waste.
Did you even read the post or watch the game? The OP isn't talking about mass archons for the sake of having mass archons like some noob would think, and it seems like you just saw "mass archons" in the title so you replied with "marauders and EMP will murder archons" without reading the post.
It's archons + HTs + speedlots. That's what the OP is talking about. Speedlots destory marauders quickly and archons are a great EMP sponge given their size to absorb the EMP radius and considering it takes 3 emp shots to lower the shields of a single archon.
I think it's ok to make archons from EMP'd or completely stormed out HT IF the battle is still going on after they have no energy. They will help the immediate battle more than the HT, as the only thing HT can do after that point is take a pitifully small amount of damage before dying. However, preemptively merging archons seems like it wouldn't help at all unless you forgot to research storm or something.
On a different note, I would absolutely love an archon buff; they were one of my favorite units back in the day and want to be able to use them without feeling bad about myself.
Sure, after you have 6 or so templar with energy you may as well make the rest into archons, they're pretty damn good against bio and are amazing for eating tank fire (their models are so big it hardly splashes). Once you're on a few bases you have the gas to spare.
Actually if you have storms, getting archon for the sake of getting archon is pretty damn good. It pushes the enemy back, that's for sure, so you can probably get an expansion up while doing that.
If you're going down the High Templar road, they're much more effective as High Templar than Archons. Well placed storms are much more brutal than a few archons. A smart terran will already have ghosts if he sees HTs, and one EMP on an archon and fare thee well. If you look at them more as providing use of an out of energy caster than they're very effective, more so than a HT chilling with no energy.
*edit* Husky needs to change his intro. "H to the usky Husky..." is lame.
If Archons were massive (immune to concussive shells) they would be awesome against terran bio balls . ATM zealots do a good job at absorbing the concussive shot and allowing the archons to move in, however I think stalkers (esp. with blink) do a better job at fighting the terran kite than archons. EMP doesn't 1 shot archons like it used to... I think tanks/thors would be the soft counter if Archons did become too popular. I think the big issue is better options for the gas. The P might have been better massing void rays as opposed to archons. (10+ charged void rays = invincible)
On August 24 2010 11:17 Techno wrote: Archons get a huge damage boost against biological units. I have never seen one used. I think P should try it against T Bio Balls.
Marauder concussive shot might limit their effectiveness in this situation. Archons are already slow enough as is. Although i do like to see Archons being used as they are awesome looking units. Shame they aren't so useful in most settings.
Archons are underused. Going for archons is not good in every situation though. I usually do them when I am going templar tech and my opponent has a push timing earlier then I can get storm out. I usually skip storm for a while and go for 2-4 templars, feedback medivacs and morph archons. While archons are morphing you can go back and chrono warpgates and get a round out pretty well timed with the archon spawn.
Archons by themselves are pretty bad or in a "fresh" with a bio blob at full health ready to stim to get massive DPS on whatever dare get in front line but they are great for one thing.
In those game the most income damage taken by the Terran was from 2 sources: storm and stimpack. A well placed storm will kill a stimmed marine whitout shield upgrade in 2 seconds so it's death for them and le'ts say a stimmed marauder hit a full 80 dmg from a storm will be at 25 hp.
Zealots really are meatshields they keep the front line and force some stimpack to keep the bio blob on his toes but really never commit into a fight unless they are lots of ht ready to storms all over the place while they get decimated by the stimmed MM. And it's at this time that the morphed archons gets into play the bioball is largely weakened with al the stormed unit either dead or with less than 30 hp.They hit for 35 on bio target which means they could kill the weakened remaining forces if not overwhelmingly outnumbered..
I really see them more like the last defense after going allout in a battle for the P not to get just countered after running low energy and gettng rolled on by a bioball at 30 hp. they really are more of a dissuassive after battle forces when the T doesn't want to stim again his marauders just to be able to kite those damn electrical balls.
The 3 games that nightend won were really awesome to match live. Nightend did a really great jobs on his 3 victories in his feedback, storm and phenix micro. he never engaged a fight without having enough storms to damage enough the ennemy forces whitout risking a lethal counter-attack. This playstyle in this matchup when done right keeps bringing close fight and lots of actions until the late game knowing that a win or lose can be decided on either the 2 remaining archons can keep you safe after a big battle.
If you have a lot of archons, I think you should get a fleet beacon and mothership asap. Using the Mothership's vortex ability and a lot of archons, you can come ahead from a 50-100 food deficit, by marching all the archons into the vortex with the enemy army, due to their splash damage.
I mean, obviously it's not as simple as that, but working a mothership into your games when you have a lot of archons is definitely a good idea if possible.
Archon really isn't good against much versus Terran (I don't think they were in SC1 either). I guess, like, mass reapers if someone did something like that.
That said, it's better than just running your Templar away... but not always better as if your Archons aren't going to finish the army, then you just lost tons of resources. It's a much better unit against other races, but really the only situation where they are ideal against Terran is if you can get them to their mineral line which is possible with DT at least.
Not specifically about archons, but I really liked the protoss's play in the game, engaging with zealots, and then using storm to provide "cover" so they don't get WTF kited as they retreat. His storm and feedback control was also on the ball. In addition he was also very good at making sure his hts quickly morphed into archons after storming, before they get sniped.
Did any of you even watch the game? He never once (edit: very rarely) made templar for the sake of making archons. He warped in templar, stormed, then made archons with the near 0 energy templar. Stop making worthless comments.
I really like nightend's play. It's a pretty original PvT style, and I'm definitely going to try it out more. All 3 of the games in that series were pretty good.
The protoss was using all of his gas on getting templars for the purpose of softening the MMM ball. Notice that the protoss kept attacking and then retreat when the terran stims, and then waits out the stim before attacking again, all the while trying to get as much storms as possible. Building archons are just another way of getting the most out of your HT's as possible, so you really should look at it as a byproduct of the main focus which is a chargelot/storm build. The reason he got so many archons was that he always retreated at good timing to save his units, and he just happen to be able to save a lot of archons from HT's that have used up their purpose. Waiting for the HT to recharge would've taken forever and it is more effective to turn them into archons and just make more HT's since ALL of his gas was focussed on storming.
Not sure if this is a nightend replay or not (no youtube at work), but he recently had a series available on sc2rep.net... three games of speedlot+HT (basically) against another top player going heavy bio. Nightend won all three games, but its important to note that he does this by having a force strong enough to defend his expansions and good map control. Just getting the units wont be enough, all of the games really looked like a map control tug'o'war. If you are a player who is reluctant to push out and take control of the map until you have this really powerful army, you'll probably get crushed. His play isn't a timing push or anything. Its constant skirmishes coupled with decent economy to basically send a never ending assault, often attacking into an entrenched terran just to kill a couple tanks and soften the bioball. The unit comp is simple, but the play is very aggressive.
I regularly incorporate archons into my mid-late game composition against terran. (800 diamond) They are such massive damage sinks, and they do so much damage to bio (44 damage per attack, AOE, with level 3 upgrades - which you should have by the late game). So many terran units do extra damage to specific armor types - archons NEVER take extra damage from units, which makes them particularly strong against units like marauders, unseiged tanks (or seiged tanks since they are so large there is minimal splash damage), hellions, ghosts, etc.
You want to keep a healthy composition going; don't ONLY get blink stalkers and zealots, or ONLY get chargelots and templars. I get a couple archons, a few stalkers, a couple sentries, a lot of templars, and a LOT of chargelots. This way they don't overly bulk up or block one another, and I get the benefits of guardian shield, forcefield, storm, ranged attacks and melee. Since stalkers are the last units targeted down, you really don't need many of them since they will just get stuck on one another and block units trying to get within range.
Ghosts are not particularly effective against archons - I would love if the ghosts used emp on my archons, since it means they're wasting important battle APM on them instead of on important units like sentries and templars, allowing me to get my forcefields, storms and feedbacks off.
As for marauders, they auto-target the closest units - chargelots. If your opponent specifically targets archons with his marauders, then he is retarded since he is staying within range of your chargelots, sentries, templars etc.
The better balanced your composition is, the harder it is to micro against, and the more tools you have at your disposal. Archons are a great fit in a protoss gateway composition because of their huge damage, their AOE attack, their huge health, and their range (which fits them nicely between the front line and the sentry/stalker/templar back line).
They tank awesomely because of their HP and size that denies AoE damage, but they block the frontline and so require ranged damage dealers. But for toss those are collossus and immortal, that eat up gas and don't need tank.
The toss on the OP won because even though the terran had early advantage with his rax FE, he didn't manage to switch from mass marauders that suck royally against chargelots.
Archons are good tanks, but not much else in PvT. Even in those games you can see Archons didn't really do much damage due to all the kiting and being affected by concussive shells. If they were massive units and weren't effected by marauder's slow, and possibly up their range to 3 as they have a lot of problems shooting over zealots, then I think they'd be a lot better.
But while you can say archons are underused, honestly I don't think many players play at a such a tight, high pace like these pro gamers where it's worth it to make archons very often, e.g. that there simply aren't enough skirmishes throughout the game where you absolutely needed the extra firepower immediately, rather than let your HT recharge their energy. Sure you'll make an archon every now and then like when your HTs are getting focus fired or after a storm drop or something, but that doesn't mean it's worth it to make an archon for every depleted HT you have, at least not for your average diamond player.
I've noticed that Terran players will often overestimate how much of a threat archons are and try and focus them down. This is the worst thing you can possibly do: low level diamond players, i'm talking to you. Stop focusing my archons down. You are getting murdered because of it.
EPT![[image loading]](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_JxhWi_UAWXc/SHcChY-21aI/AAAAAAAAAho/TV6u5yBX1eE/s400/ghost.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://starcraft-2-strategy.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/starcraft2marauder.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Mystlord/PL_Playoffs/BisuvSnow19.jpg)
