I give you the most game changing moment you will ever witness in a match. I give you The Archon Toilet (not my idea to name it that lol)
Apologies in advance for the crappy video quality. I really wanted everyone to see this and my computer kinda sux when it comes to recording (only 20 seconds long).
Enjoy!
Blizzard's Response
Archons currently lack good counters from the ground as well as the air. They are simply too powerful for their cost. With this in mind, Archons will no longer deal damage. + Show Spoiler +
Edit: Tozar is the player in the video using this technique (to give credit where its due). He's a 1100 diamond player so I'm sure if this thread gets big enough he'll see it .
Edit2: This has not been patched. I played this game yesterday (Sept 4th, 2010)
On September 05 2010 15:57 Leeoku wrote: yes it works for banelings too
Thats why you shouldnt get Mothership vs Zerg.. Neural Parasite + Vortex + banelings =
On September 05 2010 15:58 mufin wrote: but whats great about archons (instead of banelings) is that this can be done in a 1v1 and banelings can't hit air .
It can be done 1v1 but its the Zerg that benefits from it >_<
LOL I seen that happen vs zerg at a local tourney he had 4 archons a mo ship to zergs 30 or so mutas and lings he vortexed the whole army and put his archs in there to the zerg player got up out of his chair when his entire army died to that and raged so hard everyone LMAOED
Different FFA I did this in. Very long, and a much closer game.
anytime tozar , I almost fell out of my chair laughing when my stalker army got one shotted by that.
i honestly wonder when blizzard see's this if they would consider it "broken". I can't really think of any unit composition from any of the races that could stop that rofl. Though getting to a point where you have that many archons and a mothership would be fairly difficult .
On September 05 2010 16:19 TheToast wrote: I just can't help but think what if terran had just 3 or 4 ghosts. That battle would have gone completely in the other direction.
But still, archons are sweet and this is a good example that one just needs to learn to micro them properly to be more effective.
I hope you are referring to the fact that the ghosts could've EMP'd the mothership before it cast Vortex.... Contrary to the original Starcraft, EMP only does 100 damage to shields. This is just enough to remove all shields from an Immortal, but won't even take away a third of the shields from an Archon.
WHAT?! ^^ only like one baneling explodes? First banelingvortex had 19banelings, and after there were 17banelings. The other vortex was not as effective I think, all banelings lost, but I think only 6 of them entered the vortex. I will remember to always put my banelings in a vortex in the future :D
On September 05 2010 16:19 TheToast wrote: I just can't help but think what if terran had just 3 or 4 ghosts. That battle would have gone completely in the other direction.
But still, archons are sweet and this is a good example that one just needs to learn to micro them properly to be more effective.
I hope you are referring to the fact that the ghosts could've EMP'd the mothership before it cast Vortex.... Contrary to the original Starcraft, EMP only does 100 damage to shields. This is just enough to remove all shields from an Immortal, but won't even take away a third of the shields from an Archon.
I did this in a few matches. If nothing else, it's incredibly fun. I can't find the replay where I came back from a huge food deficit with it, but here's one where I did it:
On September 05 2010 19:01 The Touch wrote: My question is why is this so effective with archons in particular? I noticed during the long replay that it worked quite effectively against a mass stalker army, but shouldn't the stalkers have all been firing first, and thus killing off a lot of the archons?
Or am I missing something and there is no initial cooldown on any attacks, so the archons get their big bangs off at the same time the stalkers are getting their smaller puffs off? If so, this could be pretty effective with any high-hitting, or multi-hitting unit (immortals and thors spring to mind - at least against a ground army).
On September 05 2010 19:01 The Touch wrote: My question is why is this so effective with archons in particular?
Answer: Splash damage :D
Yeah I realised once I'd posted that I was being a little dumb
Also, archons' high health means that they would be likely to survive against regular units, even if they didn't have the splash damage. Very useful trick.
Easy fix if Blizzard wants this patched: have the units be thrown out instantaneously to a random location by the vortex so they don't end up clumped together.
I can't see how Blizzard is going to leave this in the game, considering they already removed the FF + Vortex interaction. Every unit with splash damage is abuseable with Vortex.
The gas + tech costs are horrendous for this kind of unit composition. The question is: Where is the point you have enough Archons to instagib an entire army?
On September 05 2010 19:29 Kantutan wrote: Easy fix if Blizzard wants this patched: have the units be thrown out instantaneously to a random location by the vortex so they don't end up clumped together.
why would they wanna patch this. this actualyl makes the vortex better which sucks alreayd cuz the enemy can just send all his units in it so not half his army is fighting
This is pretty old stuff; it's been a tactic known for a long time now, just that not many ppl know about it. Pretty much: one vortex + 4 archons > 100 vikings. The trick, tho, is actually landing a good vortex (which against a terran with 100 vikings is near impossible)
I had done this before with HTs ready to storm right after. It was more realistic too as you are more likely to have an army with some Hts than an army of Archons.
LOL (sorry... going with the trend) this is awesome... but, how long does a game have to go for you to get to this point (cuz i saw BC... you need HT's (and a lot of em).. and a Mothership)
unless you rush for mothership while getting Archons.. idk how "effective" this would be....
reminds me of the Ultra vs. 800 zerglings... just seems illogical
this seems really strong but at the same time i'd be disappointed if they patched this. vortex doesn't work as intended, people simply waltz into the vortex safely. this punishes that and i think it's a good way to make people fear getting caught in a vortex like you should be. this if the first and only time i've ever seen a mothership used, and thought to myself, "that worked well for the ridiculous investment it took."
and to Keitzer, yes it would take a long time to get. there's just no way getting around the fact that you're completing 2 tech paths to do this. it is a mid/late game tactic but it can fit. it isn't out of this world to go phoenix > chargelot > HT with expansions in between. now you just add a fleet beacon, and you're there.
One time I had a Mothership and a ton of Archons in an inhouse 1v1. I tried this against Roaches and Hydras but after the vortex ended the units just split apart. I still won but it was disappointing this didn't happen.
yeah this has been known fir quite awhile as the archon toilet. It's ultra gas and tech heavy and a decent opponent probably won't fall for it. Gives it alittle element of danger!
First off, this is incredibly old, secondly, this would never work against anyone that's like...Gold+. You know how long it takes for a Mothership to build? You know how much resources it is to get that many Archons? A long time, and a LOT. There's like, a 15 minute window of opportunity to be pushed where you will lose every time, with one scan, the Terran will laugh, move out with a MM ball and a couple of ghosts and roflstomp you. This is not even a little close to being viable.
The technique as demonstrated is completely unrealistic in a competitive game, however even on a smaller scale the relative strength of splash + vortex is undeniably broken. Gon' get nerfed.
I'm confused as to how Archons can insta-kill the bcruisers in the video provided. Does their splash work with distance in between enemy units? Still, how does that compensate for enough damage to GG everything in the vortex?
On September 06 2010 00:36 Demarini wrote: First off, this is incredibly old, secondly, this would never work against anyone that's like...Gold+. You know how long it takes for a Mothership to build? You know how much resources it is to get that many Archons? A long time, and a LOT. There's like, a 15 minute window of opportunity to be pushed where you will lose every time, with one scan, the Terran will laugh, move out with a MM ball and a couple of ghosts and roflstomp you. This is not even a little close to being viable.
I can actually see this happening in a late game situation on a pro level. Each player is on multiple bases and probably has multiple tech options. In PvT your already getting alot of high templar against MMMG so why not just get a mothership while your going back and forth with his ball, fall back and get your templar numbers up to make 10+ archons and then instagib his ball?
If theirs a strat that instantly destroy any army it encounters with little contest I don't see how players would not try to find ways to get to that point. Its more of a question of how to make a build that can eventually transition into this unstoppable juggernaut in the late game then if its "viable".
On September 06 2010 00:36 Demarini wrote: First off, this is incredibly old, secondly, this would never work against anyone that's like...Gold+. You know how long it takes for a Mothership to build? You know how much resources it is to get that many Archons? A long time, and a LOT. There's like, a 15 minute window of opportunity to be pushed where you will lose every time, with one scan, the Terran will laugh, move out with a MM ball and a couple of ghosts and roflstomp you. This is not even a little close to being viable.
Umm, why would this never workd? Templars are pretty essential against bioball Terrans. And.. you can make Archons with Templars. Who's to say that no one will get a mothership if it hits late game? The strat isn't tech straight to Archons and Mothership.
If you're in a game with a mothership out, wait til its at max energy, find a highly saturated base, mass recall a few archons and flush some workers :D
Not only is the strategy awesome, but it will give caster's an overwhelming amount of creative lisence when it comes to toilet puns when used in a game.
this is probably a completely noobish question but, how does this exactly work?
does the vortex itself do dmg ? or can the archons dmg the battlecruiser when inside the vortex ? if so, the battlecruiers are then unable to do dmg ? or so it seemed ?
On September 06 2010 03:48 Juvator wrote: this is probably a completely noobish question but, how does this exactly work?
does the vortex itself do dmg ? or can the archons dmg the battlecruiser when inside the vortex ? if so, the battlecruiers are then unable to do dmg ? or so it seemed ?
all the enemy units are in one spot archons have splash so they hit all the enemy units at once
On September 06 2010 03:48 Juvator wrote: this is probably a completely noobish question but, how does this exactly work?
does the vortex itself do dmg ? or can the archons dmg the battlecruiser when inside the vortex ? if so, the battlecruiers are then unable to do dmg ? or so it seemed ?
Archons do splash damage, and when the vortex ends, all the units inside the vortex are packed up in a very small area and then spread out over time. This is enough time for the archons to attack once, which splashes all the units -> they instadie.
I saw the original video for this awhile ago and I've been using it ever since in custom games. The problem is I can never get a big enough army trapped to make it truly hilarious. The types of people that won't kill you while you pour all your gas into Mothership/Archon are the same types of people that don't really have a huge army anyway by the time you attack. I think the best I've ever done was a zerg who had like 30 mutalisks in a 2v2. My dream is to do this in a long 4v4 and trap at least a 200/200 army in there.
That made me drop my jaw in Awe and then I smiled reminiscing of Archons of ye old BW when they could rape groups of Mutas, that's a really cool trick. If I ever find myself in that unlikely situation I will give it a go.
On September 06 2010 03:55 Juvator wrote: omg someone told me archon splash was removed -_- and I believe him and never really payed much attention to it so I never saw it lol.
is splash in some other way different then in BW then ? like less dmg or spread
Theorycraft warning !! Even though this is a very expensive strat on paper we could see this or some variations, like storm + vortex, coming into play in some long PVTs since templars are already made there against a very bio heavy army. SC1 PVTs usually saw arbiters get some action and the cost for that was arbiter tribunal (200/150), arbiter (100+350) with a total of 300/500. SC2 is slightly more expensive with fleet beacon at 300/200 and mothership 400/400 for a total of 700/600. If you count recall and khaydarin amulet research costs then its much closer. Vs zerg mindcontrol would totally kill this strat. If only they made mothership immune to neural parasite....
SC2 gameplay,players and maps needs to develop to SC1 levels though for this to happen. Most games at this stage tend to be very short for such far sighted stuff to happen.
I'm kinda surprised so few people knew about this. Could've sworn someone posted two youtube videos during the beta about it. Anyhow, I don't see Blizzard removing this until people start mass crying about it/abusing it like crazy.
On September 06 2010 04:35 WickedBit wrote: Theorycraft warning !! Even though this is a very expensive strat on paper we could see this or some variations, like storm + vortex, coming into play in some long PVTs since templars are already made there against a very bio heavy army. SC1 PVTs usually saw arbiters get some action and the cost for that was arbiter tribunal (200/150), arbiter (100+350) with a total of 300/500. SC2 is slightly more expensive with fleet beacon at 300/200 and mothership 400/400 for a total of 700/600. If you count recall and khaydarin amulet research costs then its much closer. Vs zerg mindcontrol would totally kill this strat. If only they made mothership immune to neural parasite....
SC2 gameplay,players and maps needs to develop to SC1 levels though for this to happen. Most games at this stage tend to be very short for such far sighted stuff to happen.
hmm? a ghost can emp the mana out of a mothership, and toss can counter it with their own archons, so all races have a counter
Just did a test in unit tester. 4 archon is enough to stop 30 1Aing void ray.
Take home message: if you are going to have a mothership get 4ish archon around and you just have something that will absolutely destroy their main force. this is huge. This is the protoss trump card.
Another test, 3 carriers, 19 stalkers, 5 colossus, 8 void ray, 18 zealot, 18 + 19x2 + 5x6 + 8x3 + 18x2, a 152 food army, when all sucked in, was destroyed by one mothership and 8 archons
when this big army was used to 1A the MS+ archon force, with micro from the MS + archon side, 10 stalker and 5 zealots are left.
When the mothership task force is used to pre-emptively assualt a static mob of army (very practical scenario in late game), 4 colossus and 2 carriers are left, plus 1 stalker and 1 zealot, but result is inconsistent due to the large colission size of protoss units.
To the people who don't understand how this works, basically this is how it is.
There are enough archons to quickly kill one unit, but since all the units are in the same place, they're all taking the archon's splash damage, so they all die at the same time.
I don't think it should be nerfed at all. Mothership is a huuuge investment, and it challenges the idea that vortexes are useless when you walk your entire army in there, cause you never know if they've got some cloaked archons under that mothership.
On September 06 2010 06:45 Ownos wrote: Seen something similar done before. Guy psi-storms a vortex as it finishes. Really any splash attack will do since units come out of it so clumped.
Although the psi storm would only be enough to kill smaller units like marines, since storms don't stack. With a lot of archons any army can be pretty much insta-gib'd.
testing against a terran ball of 39 marines, 10 vikings, 2 thors, 12 medic evas, and 27 marauders.
8 archon instagibed ANYTHING that was caught in the vortex. a mothership with full energy and 8 archon was able to throw down two vortex against terran army that was completely not microing
ALL terran army was destroyed with 5 archons left.
an repeat of the experiment, the forementioned terran army with 39 marines, 27 marauders, 10 vikings and 2 thors were 1Aing toward mothership and 8 Archon, the vortex was able to suck in almost all of the terran forces
result: terran troops elminated with 6 archon left.
This could be something that may be used in the mission "in utter darkness"
On September 06 2010 06:54 Grend wrote: Vortex is such a badly designed ability. If you do not abuse like this, its worthless, if you do abuse it is totally broken.
400 for the mothership + 8*300 for the archons = 2800 gas. yes, totally broken if u get something awesome out of the investment of 2800 gas.... in particular as it will pretty much mean gg if it fails.
On September 06 2010 06:54 Grend wrote: Vortex is such a badly designed ability. If you do not abuse like this, its worthless, if you do abuse it is totally broken.
400 for the mothership + 8*300 for the archons = 2800 gas. yes, totally broken if u get something awesome out of the investment of 2800 gas.... in particular as it will pretty much mean gg if it fails.
Summing up costs isnt an argument. Did I say anything about some kind of all-in rush for this as youre perhaps trying to infer? (If youre not your argument makes even less sense, so I`ll just assume that`s what you meant.)
I could list up hundreds, nay thousands of different 100 pop combinations that would far outweigh the cost of the mothership and archons, but I wont, because it would be a fucking waste of my time.
And there is no viable way of getting to have some archons in lategame without gunning for this right? It`s not like HT are EVER a viable or useful unit? The only actual investment could be the mothership.
And my point was anyway how badly Blizzard fucked up while designing the Mothership, but feel free to make it into some weird and stupid argument about gas costs that you extrapolate out of your ass.
K, so I had a couple responses, it wouldn't work, because even late game, if you have 10 Archons and a Mothership, the game should be over. And I think that most decent players know of this technique, a decent player would fall back and then once the vortex ends push in. If it's that late in the game macroing up that army again won't be too hard.
That was so sick haha. I've seen the videos of people vortexing units + then forcefielding them while hitting them with collosus, but this was even better & less work, hahahaha.
On September 06 2010 10:03 SC2Phoenix wrote: Surprised people didnt know about this. Their was a couple threads back in beta about this.
I saw the sentry/collosus/vortex insta-gib trick as well as the nuke one (which kinda requries 2v2 to be done effectively) back in beta. After reading blizz's patch note about ff unable to trap units coming out of a vortex I thought the "trick" was fixed. Even if the ff part wasn't nerfed, doing this with archons would be much more effective as it insta-gibs air units as well.
Maybe *crosses fingers* this might give blizz incentive to change the mothership up a bit. Wishful thinking is all it is for now .
I have been testing this strat with a zerg friend of mine in 2v2. We just get our normal build (i only tend to go to stargate istead of robo). We stop initial rushes and expand. I will start teching to mothership and he will get some banelings out. After we got both we can defend easily against anything bio. So we will go anti air and we are safe. Last night we had a league game against 2 zerg players they went hydra / roach. And they had 2 full 200psi armys. We had some muta's robo and bio. They attack I vortex and pull the one hydra army in the vortex. My friend puts about 15banelings in there. And BOOM about 160psi worth of hydra's destroyed by 15banelings. His noobish friend still attacks. So i put my second vortex down. And boom again 160psi gone. They rage quit
When you do this try to put your vortex on the end of the stream of units so if he tries to flee his units AI might sent them in the vortex.
Ofcourse we are only rank 2 silver so not sure if it would work in diamond.
But when you are in 2v2 as Zerg Toss. Just get a mothership when you can spare the money. And you will have the best defence against bio balls. You can go archon but it is so expensive i dont think its really viable.
EPT![[image loading]](http://images.whatport80.com/images/thumb/c/cf/Trollface.jpg/400px-Trollface.jpg)
. 
. ![[image loading]](http://www.gamereplays.org/community/uploads/repimgs/repimg-33-146310.jpg)
