I actually used to do something very similar before patch hit in PvZ (at a low masters level so don't blitz me for the validity of my bad play).
<-- video to prove i'm not lying xD
Basically I would open DT harass into +3 weaps asap, then just crush through Zerg, even then with 2 range I found it to be really strong, since everything of Zergs is Biological. Haven't had chance to do it with 3 range but I bet it's epic.
My current standard for ZvP is ling-infestor and I've had a couple people try this unit comp when their DT rush failed. I can definitely see the strengths of the build but it definitely has some holes if you engage purely with zealots and archons (against ling infestor anyways).
The lack of ranged units means you aren't going to be able to snipe Infestors that use NP on the Archons...and Archons do pretty well against clumped Zealots.
Somewhat off-topic but I wonder if a phoenix lift would interrupt NP and if so, zealots and archons with a couple phoenix tossed into the mix could work wonders against ling infestor.
I'm not sure what a great counter to this is after it gets up. The zerg probably does have a timing though where they can overwhelm with drop or nydus if the toss is spending that much res cannoning his front.
Mass neural parasite would do pretty well as 5 or 6 archons with neural on would tear through the chargelots, it depends on the map architecture. The toss is going to be low on range units here too so if you had 10 or so fungals to spare coupled with hydra dps that could be good. Of course if they're going templar with their army they can just feedback to their heart's content.
The archons one shot broodlings + splash so that really hurts the utility of the brood lords though the tech is obviously still viable. Broodlings to soak damage while hydras or roaches attack sounds good.
If you try to roll a ton of banelings into this (like 50+) what are the results? I think you would probably need 15 or so banes to kill one archon but if they're splashing everything there's a tipping point. The toss is going to be low on forcefields but the archons should one shot the banelings and the banelings don't do any bonus damage to them obviously. I'm not sure how big the baneling splash radius is. If you think about it 12 banes is 300 gas which is around the same gas cost as one archon so that's not as unreasonable as it sounds. Baneling drops would be ideal but as the OP mentioned the archons kill overlords so fast. This build doesn't spare gas for robo tech though so baneling landmines would be really good here.
It's just one of those builds that's ridiculously silly but at the same time it looks to be really hard to stop, at least for zerg terran should have no problem as they can go mass ghost + emp. It seems like a very easy build to execute too which makes me qq lol. I wonder if a variant of this unit comp is viable pvp.
On May 14 2011 12:24 MrBitter wrote: ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuu, now I have to see this crap on ladder too.
I was facepalming at State of the Game tonight when everyone wrote the archon change off as inconsequential.
This is a very frustrating kind of thing to deal with for this reason:
Everyone knows a Protoss deathball is hell to deal with. Corruptors suck! Seriously.
Against this unit composition, the deathball is just as effective (if not more so) and now Zerg doesn't have a unit (even a bad one) capable of really challenging the major damage dealer: the archon.
Pure upgraded Roach does pretty well vs Zealot/ Archon. Gonna be tough with stormers and immortals mixed in though. Muta's might be good too, but you'll be really vulnerable to a timing.
Watch replays thx
Watched your winning replays, the one vs MrBitter was kinda inconclusive since you were ahead the entire game, so I'm not gonna say anything about that.
I think Gerbil did a pretty good job, but he had Infestors and Hydra's mixed in which is not useful vs this imo. I forgot Archons got some extra range though, which is really helping them in large scale battles. Plus they're so supply efficient that they just run through everything once they hit a critical mass, which is the roach's weakness. It think it's the fact that all zealots die for Aiur while the Archons survive and replenish all their shields what makes this strong. In the engagements I watched your supply dropped about equally to Zerg's but your expensive Archons survived most engagaments, becoming exponentially stronger every time.
Against Shoey, he kinda went ling baneling into roach hydra, didn't like it particularly, but he had you on the ropes with the baneling bombs killing all your zealots. Had he not gotten hydra's he might have won that big engagement decisively. Plus 2 Archons 2-shot hydra's and Zealots slaughter them as well, I think hydra's are just really bad overall unless Toss goes heavy Stargate.
I think all games clearly exposed vulnerability through not having observers, which your opponents unfortunately didn't really cash in on. Really need to get a Robo in there somewhere, sprinkling some immortals isn't gonna hurt either since they do fine against banelings, roaches and infestors and they have higher range than the zealot archon.
About not getting Storm, do you feel it is useless against Zerg mobility? Or were you just experimenting with spending all your gas on Archons? Nvm: just read carefully
My friend and I have been trying this composition in teams over the past few days just (t)rolling people. It's absolutely so devastating it got me thinking that this could be a viable 1v1 composition - even in PvT or PvP, though this is to say nothing regarding what viable builds exist to get to there.
Ive been playing around with something similar to this. Basically double robo immortals with zealots stalkers and Archon/DTs off 3 bases. But i will warn you:
The easiest way for Zerg to win is with broodlords and roaches. Or broodlords with hydras if they have the gas. There is no way Toss can shoot the broodlords w/o Stalkers w/ blink or Viods because the brood lings will prevent the Archon from getting close enough (BW did not have this problem with Guardians). High Templars may be able to storm the broods but its unlikely. Basically the composition is strong but it tends to stagnate if you don't outright kill the Zerg econ. There needs to be a tech switch to 2-3 Viods and/or Mothership to protect your army from the Broodlord range advantage.
Sure the only real pressure early is timing where you get +1/speed/first couple archons. For scouting hallucination, or even stargate. Besides that all you have is probes or units.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner! How did you find it though? I couldn't find it using the search function on the replay section so I had to ask Ares[Effort] to go look for it for me. He gave me a link from another website.
On May 14 2011 12:24 MrBitter wrote: ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuu, now I have to see this crap on ladder too.
I was facepalming at State of the Game tonight when everyone wrote the archon change off as inconsequential.
This is a very frustrating kind of thing to deal with for this reason:
Everyone knows a Protoss deathball is hell to deal with. Corruptors suck! Seriously.
Against this unit composition, the deathball is just as effective (if not more so) and now Zerg doesn't have a unit (even a bad one) capable of really challenging the major damage dealer: the archon.
Pure upgraded Roach does pretty well vs Zealot/ Archon. Gonna be tough with stormers and immortals mixed in though. Muta's might be good too, but you'll be really vulnerable to a timing.
Watch replays thx
Watched your winning replays, the one vs MrBitter was kinda inconclusive since you were ahead the entire game, so I'm not gonna say anything about that.
I think Gerbil did a pretty good job, but he had Infestors and Hydra's mixed in which is not useful vs this imo. I forgot Archons got some extra range though, which is really helping them in large scale battles. Plus they're so supply efficient that they just run through everything once they hit a critical mass, which is the roach's weakness. It think it's the fact that all zealots die for Aiur while the Archons survive and replenish all their shields what makes this strong. In the engagements I watched your supply dropped about equally to Zerg's but your expensive Archons survived most engagaments, becoming exponentially stronger every time.
Against Shoey, he kinda went ling baneling into roach hydra, didn't like it particularly, but he had you on the ropes with the baneling bombs killing all your zealots. Had he not gotten hydra's he might have won that big engagement decisively. Plus 2 Archons 2-shot hydra's and Zealots slaughter them as well, I think hydra's are just really bad overall unless Toss goes heavy Stargate.
I think all games clearly exposed vulnerability through not having observers, which your opponents unfortunately didn't really cash in on. Really need to get a Robo in there somewhere, sprinkling some immortals isn't gonna hurt either since they do fine against banelings, roaches and infestors and they have higher range than the zealot archon.
About not getting Storm, do you feel it is useless against Zerg mobility? Or were you just experimenting with spending all your gas on Archons? Nvm: just read carefully
This is completely wrong. We spent the entire day testing it against random compositions, and the two things that worked were muta/ling/baneling and roach/hydra with a good number of hydras (you need to be able to pick off some archons) -> broodlord if engaged in favorable positions. What didn't work was: Mass roach (archons don't die to roaches) Roach baneling (again, archons don't die to roaches) What we didn't try yet was mass infestor with NP.
Its there, search pvz on Arcadia and only 3games come up
Main thing I'm interested in is seeing someone fit the build components together for a strong timing attack 10-12min 2-4archon maybe +2wep even with boosts. Then possible transitions.
I would think hydra/roach is the way to go vs this, but it actually looks close.
On May 14 2011 12:24 MrBitter wrote: ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuu, now I have to see this crap on ladder too.
I was facepalming at State of the Game tonight when everyone wrote the archon change off as inconsequential.
This is a very frustrating kind of thing to deal with for this reason:
Everyone knows a Protoss deathball is hell to deal with. Corruptors suck! Seriously.
Against this unit composition, the deathball is just as effective (if not more so) and now Zerg doesn't have a unit (even a bad one) capable of really challenging the major damage dealer: the archon.
Pure upgraded Roach does pretty well vs Zealot/ Archon. Gonna be tough with stormers and immortals mixed in though. Muta's might be good too, but you'll be really vulnerable to a timing.
Watch replays thx
Watched your winning replays, the one vs MrBitter was kinda inconclusive since you were ahead the entire game, so I'm not gonna say anything about that.
I think Gerbil did a pretty good job, but he had Infestors and Hydra's mixed in which is not useful vs this imo. I forgot Archons got some extra range though, which is really helping them in large scale battles. Plus they're so supply efficient that they just run through everything once they hit a critical mass, which is the roach's weakness. It think it's the fact that all zealots die for Aiur while the Archons survive and replenish all their shields what makes this strong. In the engagements I watched your supply dropped about equally to Zerg's but your expensive Archons survived most engagaments, becoming exponentially stronger every time.
Against Shoey, he kinda went ling baneling into roach hydra, didn't like it particularly, but he had you on the ropes with the baneling bombs killing all your zealots. Had he not gotten hydra's he might have won that big engagement decisively. Plus 2 Archons 2-shot hydra's and Zealots slaughter them as well, I think hydra's are just really bad overall unless Toss goes heavy Stargate.
I think all games clearly exposed vulnerability through not having observers, which your opponents unfortunately didn't really cash in on. Really need to get a Robo in there somewhere, sprinkling some immortals isn't gonna hurt either since they do fine against banelings, roaches and infestors and they have higher range than the zealot archon.
About not getting Storm, do you feel it is useless against Zerg mobility? Or were you just experimenting with spending all your gas on Archons? Nvm: just read carefully
This is completely wrong. We spent the entire day testing it against random compositions, and the two things that worked were muta/ling/baneling and roach/hydra with a good number of hydras (you need to be able to pick off some archons) -> broodlord if engaged in favorable positions. What didn't work was: Mass roach (archons don't die to roaches) Roach baneling (again, archons don't die to roaches) What we didn't try yet was mass infestor with NP.
I'd love to see more replays, but I really don't see how hydra's would work against this. I realize that it's imperative to actually kill the Archons since they quickly regain all their HP, but +2 archon/ zealot rips through them SO fast. Then again, maybe it is more efficient for the Zerg to trade armies as much as possible as gas is the limiting factor with this composition.
yeahhhhhhh neural parasite can hurt, fungal's annoying too so you definitely ought to bring some HTs along for feedback as well as psi storm.
I'd also recommend throwing in a robo and a couple observers, I know that's wasted gas but it's nice being able to kill creep and I don't see any other way to deal with roach/infestor burrow.
and yah broodlords are real good vs archon/zealot, the archons just have no way to get through the broodlings and hit the broodlords
Also obv mutas melt to archons, but archons aren't mobile enough to stop muta harass. The answer as toss is to just go attack and kill the zerg, but if some clever Z can figure out a way to both muta harass and survive the attack, that might be useful.
The archon chargelot composition is pretty thought even from one base protoss after a fail DT rush if the zerg makes roaches as they get demolished really fast by this.
I have been very interested in this and have been trying and testing it a lot, and i've come to realize that the strength of the build is the super supply efficiency of archons when compared to roaches or hydras (for example a single archon easily beats 2 roaches or 2 hydras, especially with the attack upgrades of this build). So I don't think the zlots here play much of a role except to fill up supply and be a mineral sink, and what the true goal is is a 200/200 army of pure archons (which isnt practical or feasible in an actual match i dont think).
So while this is extremely strong, its only weakness is if the zerg forgets roaches and hydras, and instead simply masses banelings. As stupid as this may sound, the idea for the zerg (who will be on many more bases than you) is to simply trade armies, which roaches and hydras cant accomplish here. While banes might not seem great against archons, they evaporate the zlots, and in enough numbers will easily eliminate the archons too, thereby winning the game. (This is the only way my relatively high masters zerg friend has beaten this, but he won easily with it).
I would suggest in this case to research storm and include maybe 5 HTs with enough energy in your army, that way when you see banes you can carpet storm them, save your archons, and steamroll through any reinforcements the zerg makes and win.
I was watching MrBitter's stream like, the entire time this was going on and it was awesome. I've been trying to do it on the ladder ever since, so thanks for the timings.
It seems like the Zerg compositions that are most effective against this (in particular muta/ling, but also hydras) have a lot of units that exploit your total lack of armor. Have you considered buying shield upgrades, maybe before +3 weapons?