Why archons have more utility than Immortals

Archon vs Tempest: Crushes it
Archon vs Voidray: Crushes it
Archon vs Pheonix: infinity crushes it
Archon vs Oracle: crushes it
Archon vs Observer: Infinity crushes it
Archon vs Warp prism: infinity crushes it
Archon vs Collosus: trades poorly
Archon vs Zelot: crushes it
Archon vs Stalker: crushes it
Archon vs DT: Crushes it (with detection)
Archon vs HT Crushes it
Archon vs Immortals: Fuck, we found a unit it does really bad against

Immortal vs Tempest: Cant even hit it
Immortal vs Voidray: Cant even hit it
Immortal vs Pheonix: gets raped
Immortal vs Oracle: cant even hit it
Immortal vs Observer: cant even hit it
Immortal vs Warp Prism: cant even hit it
Immortal vs Collosus: does pretty good.
Immortal vs zelot: gets raped
Immortal vs stalker: crushes it. so long as he doesnt go blink. then it goes either way
Immortal vs DT: crushes it
Immortal vs HT: crushes it
Immortal vs Archon: crushes it

Im calling this a utility table. The more units you crush the more utility you have.

Ya know how tempests only crush against massive units? that means they have low utility

Theres other factors to utility, but we're sticking to these for now.

i came to a realization immediately after posting this

Both archons and immortals are very good units

Many units are very powerful

And theres a wide diversity of situations where immortals are the correct choice
and theres a wide diversity of situations where archons are the best choice

Theres always going to be ways to criticize each unit as being bad or good
There's always going to be an infinite regression of situations in which you can envision a composition beating another composition due to critical tweaks
I.e. a critical tweak that makes archons work against immortals is adding in zelots (archons melt zelots/stalkers infront of immortals and zelots kill immortals)
i.e. a critical tweak that makes immortals work vs archons is adding in collosus (colossus kill the zelots in front of archons and immortals kill archons)

Its far more important to recognize truth in both than failure in either
Because doing something because you believe in the reasoning behind it is always better than not doing something because you believe in reasoning against it.
One leads to action. the other to indecision.





That being said: fuck immortals. archons way better.

Huh. It suddenly makes sense why Protosses are going for 8-gate archon sentry all-ins

Achilles.42 wrote:

Archon vs Tempest: Crushes it
Archon vs Voidray: Crushes it
Archon vs Pheonix: infinity crushes it
Archon vs Oracle: crushes it

Immortal vs Tempest: Cant even hit it
Immortal vs Voidray: Cant even hit it
Immortal vs Pheonix: gets raped
Immortal vs Oracle: cant even hit it

First of all, going immortal agains a toss that goes stargate is silly, only because immortal cant hit air, this is what i was saying before, the meta has most toss going stargate so getting immortal is usually a bad idea as its weak in the current meta (and hence archons are stronger)

People get archons as a counter to the stargate meta (this is how shifts happen, people counter the meta and the counter becomes the new meta) i dont know if its fully shifted to archon yet or not but even if it has void rays are so strong that a shift to immortals as a counter to the archon meta isnt a safe option with the fear of void rays always there so you cant do it blind like you can archons, this is more due to stargate utility then it is with immortal or archon utility though, everything you listed against immortal is a utility of stargate units

Second, archons dont crush voids or tempest voids can easily kite away as archons arent that mobile (or during a full army engagement they can hide behind the rest of the army where archons cant reach and focus them down, once they are dead the rest is easy to deal with) and tempest tear through them with just a few of them with focus fire, archon splash doesnt help and dmg vs bio doesnt help, and just because immortals cant hit tempest or oracle doesnt mean they wont absorb a bunch of dmg for you (im assuming if you have immortal vs stargate you will only have a few from earlier in the game since going immortal against stargate is a bad idea like i said and those immortals are dead to you anyway)

Achilles.42 wrote:

Archon vs Observer: Infinity crushes it
Archon vs Warp prism: infinity crushes it

Immortal vs Observer: cant even hit it
Immortal vs Warp Prism: cant even hit it

Prism is fast enough to basically be untouchable by archon if its just flying around on its own so its really not much better than immortal
But this isnt really relevant since youll have stalkers for these either way and they arent even attacking units, also if you focus obs/prism with archons during a fight youre doing it wrong
The one thing archon is actually better at is stopping zealots that come from warp prisms, but thats more of a zealot thing then a warp prism thing and ill talk about zealots below

Achilles.42 wrote:

Archon vs Collosus: trades poorly
Archon vs Zelot: crushes it
Archon vs Stalker: crushes it
Archon vs DT: Crushes it (with detection)
Archon vs HT Crushes it
Archon vs Immortals: Fuck, we found a unit it does really bad against

Immortal vs Collosus: does pretty good.
Immortal vs zelot: gets raped
Immortal vs stalker: crushes it. so long as he doesnt go blink. then it goes either way
Immortal vs DT: crushes it
Immortal vs HT: crushes it
Immortal vs Archon: crushes it

Archons arent that good against stalker especially against blink stalker, since they can blink micro away and archons cant focus the blinked stalker since they have to walk and will be taking a bunch of dmg while trying too, immortals are far better than archon in every way against stalker
Immortals do better against everything but zealots when it comes to ground, but if you went heavy on immortals youll probably have collusus too (since if you go heavy immortal your enemy wont have gone heavy stargate) and with collusus support zealots arent an issue

Archons ability to hit air and deal extra to bio makes it decent vs air (toss has no bio air so the only thing it has going for it is its ability to hit air) and decent vs ground (again only zealots are bio for toss), where as immortals inability to hit air makes it amazing against ground, with the exception to both being zealots where its flipped, so everything balances out and hence why i said neither is more broad or narrow

Achilles.42 wrote:

There's always going to be an infinite regression of situations in which you can envision a composition beating another composition due to critical tweaks
I.e. a critical tweak that makes archons work against immortals is adding in zelots (archons melt zelots/stalkers infront of immortals and zelots kill immortals)
i.e. a critical tweak that makes immortals work vs archons is adding in collosus (colossus kill the zelots in front of archons and immortals kill archons)

Adding zealots to archons isnt really comparable to adding collosus to immortal, zealot/archon vs zealot/immortal is fairly even because while archons kill zealots the immortals can focus archons and in the end all thats left are the zealots from the zealot/archon side which isnt that hard to deal with, where as zealot/archon vs immortal/collusus the collusus side will rape face
We could keep tweaking it back and forth but no matter how many tweaks we make the immortal side will come out on top or about even when archons are involved simply because immortal beats archon, archon heavy armies should never come out on top when immortals are involved

So in chat i was just saying, if that guy in your game added immortals (if he spent his money on immortal instead of the archon he had) he probably wouldve won that battle or traded then all you had in the back was dt for more archon and a few left over zealots which the few left over void ray he should have would clean up along with reinforcement immortals/zealots to deal with your archon reinforcements, he probably assumed you had stargate units because of the meta and got archon as a safe option
The tweak i was making for him was specific to your army composition and what he couldve scouted and couldve easily afforded/done

Also he wouldve done better with what he had if he moved his voidrays away from the front (out of range of archons), and didnt get carriers and if those hts he warped in when you attacked were morphed into archons and if he had his archons up front, also if he had msc and overcharged the nexus you guys fought near, he may have been able to trade with those mechanic tweaks (or possibly forced you to back off), although i dont think he was in a position to win even if he managed to trade, it was too late to tech switch and his upgrades sucked

I feel like your argumentation is flawed. In my opinion every unit has its own utility in the death ball, but if you take them apart, alone they are not great. Consider the colossus, one of the most important toss unit, if it fights against any amount of units equivalent to its cost it would likely lose (ie 1 colossus vs 5 zealots). Also archons are far deeper into the tech tree than immortals. But thats just my noob gold player opinion

So we've managed to start a whole bunch of subsections to this discussion. so im going to summarize everything i've been saying by making a more concise point.

Archons  are a stronger, more diverse, better unit in late game compositions than immortals. They deal with low coast units, they deal with stargate tech.
They also have a wide variety of styles, ht, dt, heavy upgrade, etc.
This makes them a very adaptable unit.

Strategies based around archons will tend to be used more often and be correct in more situations because of these factors.

You can disagree with this if you like, but that just means you have a different style, if you're able to win with that style, thats fine. none of what you've said in anyway contradicts what im saying, styles are not mutually exclusive, and all styles can be picked apart hypothetically.

This is a play style, a philosophy, a approach. Pointing out flaws and situations where immortals do better doesnt matter since in real gameplay most of these situations dont arise and archons are always ontop.
If theres hypothetical situations where the meta can shift and allow for immortals to be useful, thats an entirely different discussion.

The way the game exists right now from diamond - GM, immortals (late game) are only relevant in specific situations which you honestly havn't even been mentioning.

--
Im not trying to say immortals are never good, but i realize it probably seems like that. Its just how i tend to present my ideas.


My first post:

Spoiler:

EDIT: i shouldn't' call it a plays style. But 'approach' is still a good term i think. It falls in the same category of subjectivity as 'play style.'
You can make archons work, and you can make immortals work.

The definition I've heard of the late-game toss deathball is as follows: colossi, void rays, archons, and high templar. Subsequently, the only late-game use for immortals against Zerg is to counter an ultralisk switch. Other than that, immortals have no real role that can't be better filled by a colossus. An immortal costs 250-100, does 20 base damage(+30 armor), and has that BS hardened shield. On the other hand, one colossus costs 300-200, does 15 splash damage against a group of targets, and has a range of nine.

The most gas-efficient way to make archons is with dark templar, which costs 250-250, the exact same resource-magnitude as a colossus. They do 25(+10 bio) splash damage, have 350 shields, and attack ground and air both. Thus, they're incredibly good against zerg and terran bio.

Archons rule, immortals don't.

Yeah, even though we're only talking about pvp. thats still a very good point

in pvp its still true that if you're making immortals you're not making collosus, and in a normal game where no1 is doing anything weird, late game you wont want to sacrifice collosus for immortal production. Whereas archons obviously use warp in cycles.

Most of the pro macro pvps I've seen have colossus, zealots, and archons. Obviously, the colossi are the primary damage dealers of that army. The zealots and archons tank. Out of all these, the archons are the best at tanking the damage. Archons have 360 health, and as colossi do 15 damage a shot, that's more than 23 shots from a colossus to kill an archon.

yeah. collosi very much common in late game compisitions. Because of that, archons also serve the very important function of allowing you to deal with a tempest switch.
They aren't ideal cus it takes micro and you dont actually kill the tempest. but they stop you from losing, and give you time to figure out how to deal with them.

Do tempests do their bonus damage against colossi? If so, I don't know why more tosses don't build them in pvp.

yeah. Its vs all massive units, not just capital ships.

Its not uncommon per-se, but i think we dont see it more cus it can be easy to get roll'd by heavy ground mix. Especially if they dont commit as much to colossus as you think they are.
Tempests are such an investment that its a big risk.
Just having 1 or 2 doesn't do anything, cus you need to have enough to snipe down all the colossus before they effectively deal much damage.

Achilles.42 wrote:

So we've managed to start a whole bunch of subsections to this discussion. so im going to summarize everything i've been saying by making a more concise point.

Archons  are a stronger, more diverse, better unit in late game compositions than immortals. They deal with low coast units, they deal with stargate tech.
They also have a wide variety of styles, ht, dt, heavy upgrade, etc.
This makes them a very adaptable unit.

Strategies based around archons will tend to be used more often and be correct in more situations because of these factors.

You can disagree with this if you like, but that just means you have a different style, if you're able to win with that style, thats fine. none of what you've said in anyway contradicts what im saying, styles are not mutually exclusive, and all styles can be picked apart hypothetically.

This is a play style, a philosophy, a approach. Pointing out flaws and situations where immortals do better doesnt matter since in real gameplay most of these situations dont arise and archons are always ontop.
If theres hypothetical situations where the meta can shift and allow for immortals to be useful, thats an entirely different discussion.

The way the game exists right now from diamond - GM, immortals (late game) are only relevant in specific situations which you honestly havn't even been mentioning.

--
Im not trying to say immortals are never good, but i realize it probably seems like that. Its just how i tend to present my ideas.

Im just saying immortal is more useful then youre saying, even outside those specific situations, you made them sound useless in all cases, even against archons
And youre making archons sound uncounterable by toss

Achilles.42 wrote:

Im really not certain what your argument is based on pat, cus you're right about the immortal being good in a lot of the ways you're talking about. But im right about the archon being good in the situation that im taing about. 2 units can both be good. Whats relevant is what are the real game situations that arise and which is generally better

I never said archon was bad, when i said "immortals are better than archons" i meant it as "immortals counter archons"
When i said they have their utility balances out i mean that archons are in general good, decent against most toss things and amazing vs zealots, where as immortal isnt good in general but the things its good against its really good against and even the things its bad against still take awhile to kill them so they will most likely survive no matter what so as long as you can deal with what they are bad against youll come out way ahead

If it helps you can think of what im saying as archons having active utility and immortals as having passive utility

Achilles.42 wrote:

however, as you've admitted. the archon tends to counter the current meta.  And my point from this, is tat the archon counters the meta for a the reasons i've been saying (more utility, tanky, splash damage, ability to use templar as templar before turning them into archons, counter startech etc.)

Yeah and if archons become the new meta immortals will be up for countering that
How would you counter your archon/stalker/zealot composition from that game, would you really not even consider immortals, cause thats how it sounds
I assume youd do colossus/archon but immortal/colossus is more cost efficient, sure its different styles, but 1 is objectively more efficient than the other in various situations, and in this situation, the one that i was originally referencing from that game, immortals are better for him

Achilles.42 wrote:

i see you've never tried focus firing with a group of immortas in a game wit more tan 10 units.
The day you effectively focus fire down my archons in a late game composition and your immortals dont run around out of range being useless, you'll win the best prize ever. Please try putting them in the front so that they'll melt to everything else in the composition.

The trick to using immortals to focus fire is to put them in front of stalkers, since they have the same range and since immortals are slower then stalkers they act all derpy when attacking with them since the stalkers wont move while attacking to make room for the immortals, they can easily snipe archons, the only issue would be against colossus where the range is too far, but again youll have your own colossus if they have colossus (more than just a couple) which will clear the zealots so its fine

Achilles.42 wrote:

Thats not the meta. most people do not open stargate. its common, but less common than other openings
If you open robo vs starate you're completely fine, but you do get a slight build order disadvantage. tis forces you to tech up to either templar/archons or starate before being able to go heavy robo production.

I used to open robo in PvP and it puts you way too far behind if your enemy opens stargate, thats why i started opening stargate, stargate puts you behind someone that goes straight to archons, but using voids against archons is better than colossus against voids, even if you scout the voids before you get colossus you wasted so much gas getting to colossus that all they would need to do is attack with what they have before you switch and you cant hold it off with stalkers/overcharge
Blind robo opening is never a good idea with how common stargate opening is even if its not the most common opening, robo is much better later to get later in PvP, if you see they went heavy on ground

Achilles.42 wrote:

plox link game of voidrays beating archons. i've never seen this.
I've seen incontrol and other streams where they deal with mass voidray the same rough way that i did.
Archons are super effective partly because it doesn't matter if you try to hide behind other units, the only unit you can make with MASS void is zaelot, which melts since its bio

I dont have a link, but i know they can beat archons with proper micro and/or fighting in a good spot on the map where archons cant walk to
I never said what you did was incorrect, i just said they arent as good against them as youre saying they are, they are just better than stalker and toss doesnt really have any other units that shoot up, pheonix is the only other viable option (without just getting your own voidrays) and its not good either, so archon is the best of the worst
I feel like you think i said that you shouldve gotten immortals instead of archons (that would be insane), when i meant that your enemy shouldve gotten immortals instead of archon, you did the right thing, your enemy didnt

Achilles.42 wrote:

Tempests can kite, sure, but what tends to happen is if someone overcommits to tempests (they're kinda expensive and dont do any damage vs non-massive) they just get rolled by a normal army without collosus.
Grubby is really good at kiting with 20ish tempests, but it goes very badly for him a lot of times. Generally because archons. You can only kite up to you're base, then you're fucked.

As long as you dont over commit its fine, you dont need 20, thats just crazy
Also im not saying you should use tempest to counter archon, just that they can counter archon and that archon isnt as good against them as you said

Achilles.42 wrote:

If comparability were important in this discussion than bacon has the winning point that immortals and archons are completely different on teh tech tree and arise through completely different situations

Yeah, obviously they are for different situations, you wouldnt get immortals against voidray and you wouldnt get archon against immortals
That doesnt mean you cant compare them, now if archon could only hit air, then i would say you cant compare them since they cant even attack the same targets, but since they hit ground too they are comparable to each other in many situations, including the situation from that game where your enemy got archon instead of immortal

Achilles.42 wrote:

the only point was that archons are able to shoot up, i just wanted to list every unit that could fly cus you still dont seem to be looking at this as a major short coming.

It is a major short coming, but its just a fact of what they are, ive said before that i wish there was a way for them to shoot up, but they cant, it doesnt make them have less utility though
By your logic anything that can attack air and ground has more utility than something that can only attack ground or only attack air, which isnt true, things that can attack both are more versatile, but this isnt just about versatility

Achilles.42 wrote:

In almost every situation, archons are better in compositions than immortals. it doesn't matter that immortals do better one on one, they do not function effectively in mid and late game compositions. they kill units far too slowly, they do no splash damage. their only strength is focus firing which they stop being able to reliably do after the early game.

If youre going heavy on immortals youll have colossus for splash on zealots (better splash) so that doesnt matter, they kill archons and stalkers very quickly, stalkers just melt to them

Achilles.42 wrote:

Yeah archons dont beat immortals. for the 10th time: in any late game composition you're not going to be able to effectively micro immortals against archons. and while your immortals fail to focus fire, the rest of your composition will die, and all that will be left is zealots ripping apart immortals.

Achilles.42 wrote:

i like how you make a point, then also make the point that counters your own point.
Immortals aren't going to be do anything against archons like ive said, since they're going to be shredded by my zealots. I wont have "left over" zealots, my zealots are going to be infront and the first thin he has to deal with, which makes immortals useless.

Yes if i put all my high tech units in front, immortals are great. in reality, when low coast units are infront, immortals are useless. have you ever forgot thermal lance in a game?

I didnt counter my own point, and archons have to be in the front, since, you know, they are basically melee units, its easy for immortals to snipe them as long as they are infront of stalkers, only thing they cant hit is colossus, which is fine since archons cant hit them either
In a fight with evenly matched archon/stalker/zealot/colossus against immortal/stalker/zealot/colossus the one with immortals should win as archons will die to immortals, all the zealots will die to colossus, stalkers die to immortal and all the archon player has left at the end is colossus where as the immortal player will have a handful of immortals/stalkers and all his colossus
And archon/colossus is too expensive to even do properly so immortal/colossus should come out on top

In that game, since he had voids instead of colossus he might have traded if he had immortals rather then being being crushed with his archons (like he was)

Achilles.42 wrote:

EDIT: i shouldn't' call it a plays style. But 'approach' is still a good term i think. It falls in the same category of subjectivity as 'play style.'
You can make archons work, and you can make immortals work.

I think playstyle works



The bottom line is this:
In that game, do you think archon was the right choice for your enemy, or do you think if those archons had been immortals that he wouldve done better against your army?
If you still say archon was the best choice for him (then youre wrong) then ill stop arguing because theres no way to change your mind about immortals

MrJoe223 wrote:

The definition I've heard of the late-game toss deathball is as follows: colossi, void rays, archons, and high templar. Subsequently, the only late-game use for immortals against Zerg is to counter an ultralisk switch. Other than that, immortals have no real role that can't be better filled by a colossus. An immortal costs 250-100, does 20 base damage(+30 armor), and has that BS hardened shield. On the other hand, one colossus costs 300-200, does 15 splash damage against a group of targets, and has a range of nine.

The most gas-efficient way to make archons is with dark templar, which costs 250-250, the exact same resource-magnitude as a colossus. They do 25(+10 bio) splash damage, have 350 shields, and attack ground and air both. Thus, they're incredibly good against zerg and terran bio.

Archons rule, immortals don't.

I agree that immortals arent needed in late game vs zerg, other than immortal switch for ultas, but archons arent needed either since colossus does splash dmg too, and at a much greater range, so it fills the same role as archon
That said archons are still good to have in PvZ, better than immortals in late game, but we were talking specifically about PvP
Also immortals ability to counter ultra like that is in favor to my point about them having utility, when you need to kill ultras you go to immortals to do it



Both of you seem to have confused utility and versatility

I agree with most of what you're saying.
I agree with select parts of what you're saying

To summerize:
1:you cant transition out of triple stargate into heavy immortal production (without having a period of low army where you die very easily.
2: Immortals were hypothetically the correct choice, but archons were his only realistic option
3: Once collosus are added to the discussion the critical factor becomes collosus
4: Archon collosus > immortal collosus, because archon collosus inherently allows for far more collosi to be produced

pat1487 wrote:

Yeah and if archons become the new meta immortals will be up for countering that
How would you counter your archon/stalker/zealot composition from that game, would you really not even consider immortals, cause thats how it sounds

Yeah, i'd do Collosus. But i ideally also want templar tech, not necesarly to have mass archons, but so i have the potential to mass them if i sense tempests. My zelot/archon gets rolled sometimes by heavy collosus production, even when i've mixed in voidrays a lot of times. And adding tempests is awkward and takes so much time and money, so its not 100% reliable, even though it works.

pat1487 wrote:

and in this situation, the one that i was originally referencing from that game, immortals are better for him

In that game immortals are hypothetically better for him, but we were only in that situation because he went tripple stargate. If someone goes tripple stargate they can rarely commit to also heavy robo production. So archons were his only choice since he had gateways. So i had a unit that was safe because it was almost impossible for him to have the counter for it.
But yes, if the game had gone differently and he had the econ for it, immortals could have worked.

pat1487 wrote:

I didnt counter my own point, and archons have to be in the front, since, you know, they are basically melee units, its easy for immortals to snipe them as long as they are infront of stalkers, only thing they cant hit is colossus, which is fine since archons cant hit them either
In a fight with evenly matched archon/stalker/zealot/colossus against immortal/stalker/zealot/colossus the one with immortals should win as archons will die to immortals, all the zealots will die to colossus, stalkers die to immortal and all the archon player has left at the end is colossus where as the immortal player will have a handful of immortals/stalkers and all his colossus
And archon/colossus is too expensive to even do properly so immortal/colossus should come out on top

I dont agree with that thought process.
firstly, in this situation of zealot/archon/collosus vs zealot/immortal/collosus. The limiting factors hear are the collosus count and who's zealot wall melts first (which is contingent primarily on the collosus). And the person with archons is going to be able to have more collosus because they havn't been spending production cycles on immortals.

Thats just objectively true. with econ and production choices completely even, (i.e. 2 robo vs 2 robo each on 3 base with equal macro skills) if you make immortals you will have less collosus.

And because the collosus are the biggest factor that determines how fast the zealot wall melts, the immortals aren't going to be able to get free reign on the archons. (archons will also speed the demise of the zealots. so its even more in favor of them)

secondly, so long as archons are behind the zealots it will still be very hard for them to be focused effectively (remember we're talking about armies with over 100 supply). 1 or 2 will be focused, but you cant just spam shift click them all and have immortals 1 shot everything. 1 or 2 will go down, but the rest wont have a good movement path to be hit by.

you might say, ''ahh ach you're forgetting stalkers"   In my experience stalkers have specific functions. if you made stalkers and blink with the specific intent of blinking them to focus down arcohns or collosus (i think collosus are a far higher priority in this situation) then that could turn the tide. But as a muscle unit in the composition, i think the gas and minerals is far more effectively put to use making more collosus, archons, and even zealots.

pat1487 wrote:

I didnt counter my own point, and archons have to be in the front, since, you know, they are basically melee units, its easy for immortals to snipe them as long as they are infront of stalkers, only thing they cant hit is colossus, which is fine since archons cant hit them either

They've gotten a range boost since beta, ya know
They're only infront if you dont have enough zelots and too many stalkers.
In a heavy stalker composition archons are terrible vs immortals.
but like i said. i view stalkers as a waste unless you've made them for a purpose. If you micro zealots infront like you always should, then archons will be solidly behind the zealots.
And yes, 1 immortal will be in range of 1 archon, but all 8 immortals will not be in range of the same archon, so maybe you focus 1 or 2 like i said, but the pathing will rarely allow for efficient sniping.

pat1487 wrote:

In a fight with evenly matched archon/stalker/zealot/colossus against immortal/stalker/zealot/colossus the one with immortals should win as archons will die to immortals, all the zealots will die to colossus, stalkers die to immortal and all the archon player has left at the end is colossus where as the immortal player will have a handful of immortals/stalkers and all his colossus
And archon/colossus is too expensive to even do properly so immortal/colossus should come out on top

Reiterating the points i made above
The limiting factor in this situation i believe are the collosus, due to the necessity to kill the zealot wall.
And in this situation the person with immortals HAS to have less collosus with all other things equal.

You're right about the economy thing to an extent, you cant have both lots of collosus and lots of archons. but not binary. i think the correct choice is to chrono out collosus, make mostly zelots with warpgates, and only use the excess gas to make archons. cus i think you can definitely get a healthy number.

You can also make archons RIGHT as you're attacking, since you'll have the gas for another round of collosus, but would have to wait a full minute. whereas archons can be morphing at a forward pylon as you move out.
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pat1487 wrote:

In that game, do you think archon was the right choice for your enemy, or do you think if those archons had been immortals that he wouldve done better against your army?
If you still say archon was the best choice for him (then youre wrong) then ill stop arguing because theres no way to change your mind about immortals

Like i said, immortal was the correct hypothetical choice.
But his only option due to opening tripple stargate with gateways was to go archon.
Which makes my choice of archon very safe, because he's physically not capable of getting immortals out unless i make a mistake and give him more time than i should.

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In terms of PvZ, i actually think archons are terrible to open with. im sure theres an effective all in, cus zelot archon can be strong. But they're horrible at dealing with SH (like the worst unit you could have short of pure zealot)
I think archons function in PvZ is to reinforce your army as late game fights are happening.
i like them more than stalkers in this situation for reasons i wont go into right now, but a lot of games by reinforcing with archons instead of just collosus/voidray/zelot, has saved me from losing to muta switches. and muta switches tend to happen more than ultra just because the tech is easier to have, but ultras are something you need to be careful of.


and you're right about the utility point. i was using the word to mean ''utility in more situations'' which isn't quite the same thing.

Achilles.42 wrote:

To summerize:
1:you cant transition out of triple stargate into heavy immortal production (without having a period of low army where you die very easily.
2: Immortals were hypothetically the correct choice, but archons were his only realistic option

You can easily switch to robo, just drop 3 robo and cut all stargate production once he scouts and sees what you are doing, there was plenty of time before you had too much stuff for him to deal with
Chronoed immortals dont take that long and robo is shorter then getting twilight counsel and shrine or archives
Getting archons probably took longer for him in that game then 3 robo and chronoed immortals

Achilles.42 wrote:

3: Once collosus are added to the discussion the critical factor becomes collosus
4: Archon collosus > immortal collosus, because archon collosus inherently allows for far more collosi to be produced

The gas cost of colosus and archon is too high to make a lot of both, so while you can theoretically produce both faster since they are produced from different buildings, you cant actually afford to do that
1 archon is 250 gas (with dt), 1 colossus is 200 gas, so 450 gas for them together, where as immortal/colossus is 150 gas less for each of them together allowing you to afford more upgrades faster (you can easily get 3/3/3 before the archon guy) and more total colossus
The guy making immortal/colossus should have more robos then the other guy since hes producing more robo units (not having more is stupid, so you dont HAVE to have less colossus, you should end up with more), 2 robo for immortal and 2 for colossus is ideal on 3 base (you can switch the distribution to 3 robo for colossus every couple of cycles when you have spare gas for extra colossus), the archon guy can only support 2 robo to make colossus on 3 base (barely)
The archon guy would be behind on upgrades and behind on army so if the immortal guy attacks right as he hits 3/3/3 he should win, and holding the archon guy back until then should be fairly easy in the mid game
And if the immortal guy attacks first (like he should) the archon guy only has 1 round of archons if you do it the way you said so he will be super behind

Achilles.42 wrote:

Yeah, i'd do Collosus. But i ideally also want templar tech, not necesarly to have mass archons, but so i have the potential to mass them if i sense tempests. My zelot/archon gets rolled sometimes by heavy collosus production, even when i've mixed in voidrays a lot of times. And adding tempests is awkward and takes so much time and money, so its not 100% reliable, even though it works.

Thats incredibly inefficient, colossus take forever to kill archons, archons are less effective vs tempest than blink stalkers the only reason archons work is because tempest are so expensive you can afford to be terribly inefficient against them, being effective with blink stalker instead can put you way ahead, and adding tempests to counter colossus is the same kind of thing, but youll lose out with tempest eventually because of the cost, especially if they go blink stalker

Immortal is better in all those situations except the colossus one (where void ray heavy with some immortals mixed in is the best choice, honestly you could mix in a handful of archons instead of immortals here, it doesnt really matter either way as long as youre void ray heavy, idk how you could get rolled even with voidray production, the only thing i can think of is because you committed to much to archon and couldnt afford enough void rays (which immortal production doesnt suffer from)

Achilles.42 wrote:

They've gotten a range boost since beta, ya know
They're only infront if you dont have enough zelots and too many stalkers.
In a heavy stalker composition archons are terrible vs immortals.
but like i said. i view stalkers as a waste unless you've made them for a purpose. If you micro zealots infront like you always should, then archons will be solidly behind the zealots.
And yes, 1 immortal will be in range of 1 archon, but all 8 immortals will not be in range of the same archon, so maybe you focus 1 or 2 like i said, but the pathing will rarely allow for efficient sniping.

They have a range of 3, half of what immortals have, 2 rows of immortals can hit archons while still being behind zealot wall and out of range of archons, they arent that hard to micro as long as you keep your stalkers from getting in the way

pat1487 wrote:

you can easily switch to robo, just drop 3 robo and cut all stargate production once he scouts and sees what you are doing, there was plenty of time before you had too much stuff for him to deal with
Chronoed immortals dont take that long and robo is shorter then getting twilight counsel and shrine or archives
Getting archons probably took longer for him in that game then 3 robo and chronoed immortals

This was a summery, maybe you responded more appropriately later on, but you should have revised this or removed it.
if you're adding on 3 robo all at once you're not going to be able to also produce off of gateways and stargates while making immortals. Switching to archons allows you to continuing utilizing stargates, and makes gateways more adaptable by being able to choose either templar or zealots.
This stops their being as much of a gap in production which stops you from dying instantly. i.e. why i said immortal switch was impossible later on.
this sentiment comes to mind: "if you still say archon was the best choice for him (then youre wrong) then ill stop arguing because theres no way to change your mind about immortals"
If you still dont understand why a full switch to immortals in this situation is so wasteful and risky theres not much point in me continuing to try to argue.

I wasn't willing to read past this point which was a little hypocritical of me since i criticized you for the same sort of thing. But this wasn't labeled as a summery, so i dont feel bad.
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This is just a basic principle in starcraft. You see it everywhere.
i.e. when a terran goes  3 rax he cant ALSO be going early factory.

If he's commited to bio, he cant suddenly commit to mech.

Yes a immortal transition is easier than these examples, but its risky and normally unviable for the same reasons.


These sort of switches are more viable in gold and lower where players aren't as consistently aware of how big their opponents army is, but 80% of the time against platinum and above when you create a big gap in your production by taking a risk like this you just die cus your opponent pokes or scouts you and sees you havn't been keeping up.
Yes it ''can'' work
But so can going triple nexus before gateway.

I consolidated everything to the main points since i would just be repeating what i said in response to the summary, but my response to the summary accounts for everything else you said about it below your summary, i just only quoted the summary as quoting the rest of it is pointless, i see no reason to change what i said as you can switch to immortal as fast as you can switch to archon from his position and you didnt say anything to counter that fact

And it is a fact:
3 robo = 600 mins, 300 gas, 65 seconds before you can produce 3 immortals at a time
Getting to your first 3 immortals takes a total of 1365 mins, 600 gas, 110 seconds (with 1 chrono on each robo, 100 seconds with 2 chronos on each robo)

Twilight council + templar archives (like he did in that game) = 300 mins, 300 gas, 100 seconds before you can start producing your first cycle of archons
Getting your first 3 archons (the way he did it) takes a total of 600 mins, 1200 gas, 117 seconds

In the case of robo you have to cut gas stuff earlier but for a shorter amount of time, in the case of archon you have to cut it about a min later to have enough to start warping in your 6 templar but for a longer amount of time

300 gas up front for all 3 robo is easier then 900 gas up front for 6 templar for 3 archons, and in the worst case scenario for robo add 30 seconds to the total time for immortal (since you wont build up gas like you can while archives builds), so 140 with 1 chrono (worst case would still have 1 chrono for each since youd save energy for it), you can still make zealots during this time for harassing or just to have in your army later
The extra 23 seconds that archon is out for in the worst case scenario isnt enough to convince me archon is more viable, and it costs the same total gas with future immortals costing you less gas in the long run
So both are big hits to your econ, 1 comes in the form of 300 gas earlier and one comes in the form of 900 gas about 2 mins later, and both take about the same amount of time

Immortal switch is mathematically cheaper in gas, the only thing that really matters, and can be about the same timing, so if you think archon switch from stargate is viable then you have to think immortal switch is just as viable
I will admit archon switch has a better flow to it, since you can ease your way up to archons gradually, but immortal switch still works if you saw what he saw you can plan abrupt immortals, 600 gas isnt that big of a deal when he had those voids (a bit less voids would be good) and was relatively safe (msc over charge locks it in to work if you attacked before he was ready, since you didnt have enough until after he wouldve started immortal production)

Even if he went dark shrine (like a sensible person) it would be a total of 1050 minerals, 1000 gas, 167 seconds (dark shrine builds slow) to first 3 archons with a 750 up front gas cost on dts for 3 archons, so again, immortal switch still viable

TLDR: Immortal switch from stargate is objectively no more risky than archon switch from stargate in general (and in this situation i would argue his ht archon switch was significantly more risky than an immortal switch)

Read the rest of my post

600 vs 300 mins, then 750 mins per cycle is going to translate the cut in production. Which is part of what i was talking about.

Also he really should have had a twilight council already going for him. Its the sort of tech you want regardless, because upgrades obviously, and also charge gives you the ability to harass more effectively. But also, if 1 person has charge and the other doesn't, the one with charge is able to force engagements more, and disengage more effectively, which isn't a position you want to be in.
So i think in a lot of situations its JUST the templar tech you're placing.

You're also always warping in archons directly with your army at the beginning of production cycles, as apposed to at the end like with normal immortal production, so there's also that boost to their speed. And since he had 8ish gateways (which is basically the minimum for that stage) You're also producing more archons than immortals with each cycle. 4 vs 3, but sometimes 5 vs 3.

If you're thinking about going archons and you havn't even started your twilight council, then maybe a robo switch makes more sense.

But in this robo switch situation we're now not making a twilight council, we're cutting zealot or voidray production, we wont have charge, and we're going to be behind on upgrades. I dont like it.
If the fact that immortals are a counter are all the reason you need to make up for everything else tahts fine, but its not how i like to play. I'd rather have fewer gaps in production, more ability to harass and pick engagements with charge, and have stronger upgrades.
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The other issue in this situation is that you're committing a lot of minerals to immortals, so you'll have fewer zelots. What exactly are you making to deal with zealots? its basically voidray/immortal/zelot vs zealot archon. the person with archons should have more zealots which means the immortals are going to have a hard time engaging anything but the zealots.
And the person with archons has the ability to continually remake zealots. but 750 mins per production cycle for immortals gives you less of an ability. It seems very easilly delt with so long as you avoid directly engaging the archons to the immortals. and with a zealot wall that hsould be easy.

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pat1487 wrote:

Even if he went dark shrine (like a sensible person)

Lol, i know right? so chobo of him. (my new word)

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I'll read the rest of your previous post later today
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TLDR: Immortal switch from stargate is objectively more risky, less stable the longer the game goes due to upgrades, makes it more difficult to engage, and gives less potential for harass due to  charge.

The archon guy will be using warp in cycles to make templars/dts so he wont have more zealots, and the mineral cost of all this for robo doesnt matter once your at 3 base, your desperately looking for something to disprove me here if your using mineral costs, the gas cost is much more important
4 archons for every 3 immortals is fine too, since by that point the immortal guy can be making voids again, i was talking about getting to the first 3 and comparing the costs of those, if you really want to add the cost of an extra archon to what i already did then go ahead, it will just make the gas cost even worse for an archon switch

Your basically saying the ability to warp in archons makes them unstoppably fast to create, but their gas costs stops you from doing that so the speed you get is balanced out by the time you have to save gas in order to do that (unless you arent spending your gas properly or have 5 gas collecting bases)
If archons were only 100 gas then youd be right, but they arent, so youre wrong

The only upgrade you wont have is charge which doesnt matter since his zealots will charge into yours (his archons will take a bit longer to start attacking your zealots since his zealots would move up giving you a bit more time to soften up the zealots) the important thing is youll have 3/3/3 first so even if his zealots get the first hit its fine, it does make it more difficult to harass but id have made and hopefully kept an oracle which ill talk about a bit below (id still try zealots for harass too, can still work without charge)
Youll be 1 ground upgrade behind temporarily, since you got 1 air upgrade, but you should still hit 3/3/3 first with the gas you save with immortals

Im not saying immortal/zealot/voidray is a good counter to archon/zealot, in fact ive said many times that he might have been able to trade (not come out ahead) and that he wasnt in a winning position even if he did trade (to win he wouldve had to do more dmg with his cheese and if he did that he wouldnt need immortals), im just saying its a better counter then archon/voidray/zealot

And yeah my example is a robo switch before you get the council, at about 13 mins when you attacked into his cannons at his natural and ran away was the best time to do it, though he already had the twilight council at that point, but he built it a bit earlier then i wouldve (i would rely on voids for a bit longer since i saw you had immortals)
I also woulve got 1 oracle after the cheese fail to harass a bit (which would probably do nothing but hopefully keep you from moving out) but its mainly for scouting info to see that you had 3rd going and no stargate, that would be enough to tell me its immortal time, id try to get to colossus too, but i wouldnt rush too it, after the first 6 immortals i would get robo bay with spare gas if i had it while upgrades were going cause i would know im not in a winning position with zealot/immortal/voids

Ive never actually been in his position before though as ive never cannon rushed in a 1v1, but from what i can tell he seemed capable of doing the things im saying since he had those cannons to delay your attack for so long and to push it back when you attacked, making that 1 oracle would probably put him with 1 voidray less in that engagement, which should be fine as he had a void ray coming up as you ran away which would be enough to make you run away (he probably wouldve lost that 1 cannon that survived in this case)

And your TLDR isnt true, you never said anything to prove that immortal switch is objectively more risky, you just took what i said, looked at the higher mineral costs and gave a different interruption based on data that has no relevant effect
The only part thats true is the charge part, which is relevant, but not required to use zealots to harass, and actually helpful to the immortal guy not to have so the archon guys archons take longer to get in range of immortal guys zealots like i was saying above

Charge gives a speed boost, pat. The actual charge part of charge isn't whats important here, its the fact that one person can force engagements and the other cant, which is very powerful. One person can retreat, the other cant. (if you lose all your slow zealots retreating you'll prolly die to a counter attack)

Second, i think you're underestimating how much gas you get on 3 base, and making constraints seem more draconian than they actually are. Going archon collosus doesn't cripple your ability to get upgrades.
you just cut an archon to make it happen. Remember, you're already only making archons when it doesn't interfier with collosus production (something that cant be said of immortals)
In either case since the archon guy is the one getting TC sooner they're the ones that have the ability to get 3/3 first
Part of why i had an upgrade lead in that game
How gas heavy a build is doesn't actually impact upgrade timings. Either upgrades are a priority and you're willing to cut something for them, or you'd rather have units.
If you're not spending all your gas on your production cycles, and theres gas lying about for upgrades. then you can probably afford some other form of tech. Some other form of tech like archons.

Now, if you're argument was that going pure collosus vs collosus archon would favor pure collosus, i'd agree with you. pure collosus beats any semi-realistic average ground composition every day of the weak.

You keep saying that archons are too expensive, but the problem is that you're only making them when you have extra gas. so that cant be valid.
Yes someone can add on more robo's and out produce you on collosus to overcome the fact taht you cant produce immortals and collosus at the same time. But the problem with that logic is that now you're on 5robo or something, and if that gets scouted then you're opponent is going to easily hard counter you.
Out producing collosus archon by just making more robo is just a coin flip. if it doesn't get scouted, great, you won. If it does get scouted, you lose. you committed too much to robo.

So, back to the real world where archon vs immortal is on equivalent numbers of robo facilities, the person making archons has more colossus since they're not wasting production cycles on immortals, which are the limiting factor, immortals dont end up playing much of a roll, and archon player wins.
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Getting back to the point about archon collosus vs immortal collosus

Think about these two compistions that we have:
1 with archons 1 with immortals
What function are the immortals serving? the only thing that i believe you've identified is that they're great at killing archons

Now remember that we were never sacrificing collosus production for archons, so we've ended up having more collosus. The collosus are the limiting factor so archon composition should win

What was the point of getting archons at all then? The point of getting archons is they give you a buffor for most situations:   Early tempests? helps buy time for stalkers or whatever else.  Pure collosus? at least you have a meaty army to buy time for tempests. Mass voidray? make more archons.

They're a safety blanket. Immortals are just a hard counter to archons that doesn't actually matter since collosus are the limiting factor

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I also think you need to play a few games making immortals in the late game and then try and tell me that "they can easily hit archons behind zealots"  You're not going to be able to effectively target fire in a million years.  Last game i had immortals with the only way they were even able to hit buildings was by stutter stepping my whole army forward, which is wonderful micro to have to employ vs AoE, running straight into it.