Je vous fait partager cette (longue mais) intéressante analyse trouvé sur le forum de teamliquid.net sur pourquoi cela va rendre les archons viable !
NOTA : cependant, notez que la ligne de dommage, aka entre l’archon et le point d’impact du psi, n’existe pas. En effet, seul le splash est présent, la ligne de dommage a été retiré depuis longtemps.
The Archon is poised to get two fairly major buffs in the next patch: it will be massive, and it will now have +1 range. This, combined with a few other Archon features, stands to have a fairly substantial impact. Namely:
Archons are as fast as DTs. For some reason there’s a misperception that they’re “slow”, when in fact they’re tied for the 2nd fastest Toss ground unit. They’re faster than almost any Zerg ground unit off creep (except for ones with speed upgrades), they’re faster than unstimmed Terran bio, they’re faster than mech (both P and T) of all stripes. Without conc shells and forcefields to enable kiting, Archons are capable of chasing down most other units in the game.
Archons take no bonus damage from anything (except a very minor buff to Voids because they’re massive). When combined with the enhanced shield regeneration in SC2, this means that they are ideal “tank” units against anything reliant on bonus damage–Tanks, Immortals, etc. all take forever to kill an Archon, and once they start shooting it, they can’t stop, or the Archon will be back at full health in no time.
Archons do both line and splash damage. That is, they have a line attack (now range 3) that converges into a splash attack. This makes the upcoming range buff a big deal, because it not only lets them hit things further away, anything in between them and their targets will be taking damage too. They also get bonus damage vs. all bio, which makes Zerg absurdly vulnerable to them.
Archons are only 4 supply. For some reason, people want to compare them to units like Ultras. And maybe that makes sense in terms of tech time. But in terms of how much of your army they take up, its surprisingly little–meaning more room in a maxed army for other things.
So, given this, with the upcoming buffs, where does the Archon stand?
It already decimated lings and zealots. It will now also decimate unstimmed Terran bio.
Stimmed bio can still kite it–but forcing stims is itself useful.
It will also now have even range with mutas–and getting mutas in range of archons is a bad idea for Zerg.
Against Ultras, it will have range sufficient to attack past them, while still damaging them just as much via the line attack–meaning Ultras can’t just tank all the Archon splash damage.
Phoenixes can’t pick it up. Sentries can’t hold it back.
Off creep, there is essentially no Zerg ground unit that is cost effective against Archons due to how slow Zerg are off creep and that all their units are bio, until you tech to Roach speed, at which point Roaches can kite them even off creep–but only barely (.25 faster, 1 range longer…making kiting archons with roaches a risky proposition that could easily go badly).
Tanks suck against Archons, and while Immortals are better, they still take forever to kill them (plus, Immortals suck vs. chargelots, which will be the most common Archon accompaniment).
Banshees can be chased down (and are super vulnerable to feedback from HTs). Thors are now vulnerable to feedback as well.
Corruptors can’t attack ground, and Vikings have to land to do so, at which point they get their asses kicked (actually, Vikings in general suck will suck vs. Archons, as even in the air they’re slow and prone to clumping).
Colossi actually aren’t that great vs. Archons if you can’t use forcefields to keep them away. Archons are faster, have more health, deal nearly as much dps, and are so big they eat up most of the Colossi splash. They’re also cheaper in minerals and supply, and fairly close in gas.
So…what does that leave?
Capital ships of all kinds will still own an Archon.
Voids will be better against Archons than they’ve ever been.
EMP is more essential than ever, which fits in nicely with how cheap Ghosts are.
Engaging on creep will let Hydras kite and kill Archons…making both good creep spread and using Hydralisks more important.
As stated, speed Roaches will do well, and even non-speed Roaches can kite them on creep.
Stalkers can effortlessly kite them.
Reapers can theoretically kite them…but will die almost instantly if they screw up even for a second.
FG stills works, and NP an Archon might be suddenyl tempting.
Thats something…but its not a ton. Archons have gone from being a unit that any normal P or T composition can effortlessly deal with, to be something they will actually have to gameplan around, getting specific units or only engaging in specific areas in order to deal with them.
What I especially like, apart from making Stalkers even more important in PvP, is the way most of the solutions to Archons aren’t basic staple units. They’re things like capital ships or ghosts that take time to tech to, or units like Hydras which are otherwise not super popular. If Archons become more popular, it could have a secondary effect of making some unpopular units like capital ships or hydras more popular.
The other thing is that, due to how “tanky” they are, and how every non-capital ship anti-archon strat will rely on kiting, holding a position against an Archon heavy force will be nearly impossible. Your opponent will have to kite, and that will take a while due to their massive health…which means that even if the Archon dies, it has done its job of forcing your opponent to retreat and cede you some map control.
edit:
A few additional points I’d like to add on:
First, in addition to everything above, it is worth noting that the range buff will allow more archons to focus fire simultaneously, in much the same way the Roach range buff allowed Roach-heavy compositions to focus their dps much better. The difference is, of course, that Roaches were single target… Archons are line/splash. Meaning that when they focus dps, they are hitting a lot of targets simultaneously. So this range increase will exponentially improve their effective dps. Previously, 5 archons would do nothing but get in each other’s way. Now they’ll deal 175 splash damage over a sizable area to any biological target–enough to oneshot an entire force of chargelots. In terms of effective dps, this makes the Archon a lot closer to something like the Colossus than something like the Ultralisk.
Secondly, the overall effect of making Archons much more viable, is to make the entire Templar/Council tech tree more viable. Previously, it was a big problem that the twilight council was sort of a dead end–it gave two good midgame upgrades, but if the timing window for them had passed, it was a fairly expensive way to open up some pretty niche units, which overall had the effect of making going pure gateway not a viable longterm strategy. Now, the twilight council doesn’t just open up those upgrades and allow you to tech to HTs and DTs…it allows you to tech to HTs, DTs, and the new and improved Archon.
Archon build time is also very, very fast, in that they can be warped in (5 seconds) and then morphed in 12 seconds. No other unit that powerful can be created nearly as quickly, let alone anywhere on the map you have a pylon. Of course, there is a 50 second cooldown afterwards…but even that is no longer than it takes to build an Immortal, and faster than a Colossus.
And lastly, just to clarify…
This is not a QQ thread, or me crying imba. I actually think its great. Templar tech is so expensive and hard to tech to, and Archons take so much gas, that Archon/Colossus is never gonna be particularly viable–especially since any lategame air force could rip it apart. This will not make the Colossus play everyone QQs about stronger. What it will do is open up another viable tech path that isn’t reliant on gimmicky midgame timing pushes. Its not a buff to the traditional style of Protoss play–its an alternative to it.
Edit:
Apparently, I’ve been informed that the line into splash damage is no longer true. That makes this a still very notable buff, but not quite as insane as before.
c est pour ca que je dit que le matchup PvP va changer 
