i searched and could not find anything on this i find it a bit strange to build the dark shrine, a building with nothing to research, is required to make 1 unit i think it should have something researchable like recall which would be an ability for dt's that would let it teleport back to the darkshrine when it was in trouble, it would have a long cooldown, it could cost maybe 150, 100 and you could only have one darkshrine at a time i would also like a 50,50 upgrade that would cloak the darkshrine i know this wont happen by release but i think it would be a good idea for an expansion
yeah, the building itself seems kinda pointless. i'm hoping for a return of dark archons, though. dark shrine would have upgrades for them. seriously, there should be dark archons, twilight archons, and regular archons. maybe in the expansions...
yeah i agree they could make dark archons not useless and i thought twilight archons were normal archons?
Twilight archon: Made from a mix between dark and high templar. Dark archon: Only dark templar. Normal Archon: Only high templar.
i'm thinking something like twilight archon = dark + high templar, no attack, heavy damaging spells (some variation of psi storm?) dark archon = 2 dark templar, no attack, powerful effect spells (like BW's maelstrom, maybe some new ones) high archon = 2 high templar, essentially the normal archon. right now it seems like merging 2 DTs into an archon is a total waste. you probably get more damage out of the 2 DTs, and you get to have free cloaking! and it's not like the high templar, who can run out of energy and you just want to put them to good use before they die...
Merging DTs could be a last resort against air threat, and although it's not as good a bargain (if at all) as merging two injured, energyless(?) HTs, they still provide AA. I agree that the 3 combinations of an archon should not result in the same unit, but I see no chance of Blizzard giving Protoss 2 additional units and ~4 additional abilities. Maybe in the expansions. Regardless, this should be taken to one of the existing archon threads As for the building... I didn't play the beta but from what I saw, DTs are strong enough to warrant a useless prerequisite. Isn't that the case?
I hadn't messed around with it too much, but, DT's seem to take to long to get out for an effective rush. Sure they hit like a truck; like a truck that turns into Optimus Prime, but are they really worth it? You can take out a costly DT with some cheap tier 1 units. Or better yet, micro with a ranged unit. It's been said before; but, cloaking (the DT's main strength) is really easily countered. Terran- You have access to comstat so soon these days and everyone knows the upgrade is a must for SC2. If you don't blow all your energy on mules immediately that is. Also with the upgrades in the engineering bay now, it seems silly to me to not build one or two missile turrets at a mineral line. The raven is out late game, never got that far as Terran though. Protoss- You're gonna have observers before the DT's unless you ignore the immense usefulness of cloaked/air-based scouting. Zerg- I've yet to see a single spore crawler built and people do seem to forget to morph their ovis. So, I'd go for DTs, but only in lower league games. I'm not saying DT's are useless... but seem like such a gamble for a unit that needs a BS tech building. That's all my own personal thoughts on it based from about a week of beta play. I could just be ousting myself as an idiot. EDIT: Huzzah, 666 posts! There should be a "Satan" rank for this one post count.
Well, the Dark Shrine would in that case serve as a research center for Dark Archon abilities, so the topics are quite connected.
yeah, DTs themselves don't really have anything to upgrade. you'd need something like a dark archon for the dark shrine to have other uses. actually, i just had an idea. first, dark shrine takes way too long to build. building one is pretty much an all-in strategy and you have to make sure your opponent doesn't see it building. second, DTs can one-shot workers right off the bat. that's its main strength. why not make that an upgrade ability? DT-workerline rushes won't be as powerful, but DTs can remain useful for battlefield purposes. 1. reduce dark shrine build time to 50 (equal to templar archives), reduce cost slightly. 2. reduce DT damage to 25+4, increase attack speed to compensate. 3. Dark shrine can have an ability to upgrade the attack to 25x2 with same attack speed (and gain the double-bladed scythe character model). this upgrade should take about the same time to research as psi storm (110). 4. give a slight HP/shield buff to DT. - DT rushes can come earlier, BUT they kill workers much more slowly. - 1-hit-worker-kill arrives later, which gives opponents a chance to get detection before they suffer really heavy losses - cost of dark shrine + upgrade should cost slightly more time and money than just the dark shrine now. in the end, DTs are also more powerful and are more viable as a standard army unit. with upgrades, they are effectively 50+8 damage. much more useful. so yeah, right now DT's are an all-in unit. by building a dark shrine, you're gambling on using all that time and resources investing in something that can simply be countered by detection, when you could be investing in high templars or colossi or immortals. not really worth it right now, IMO. make them a stronger army support unit, and a decent worker assassin, instead of being just a worker assassin and kinda crappy army unit.
Actually been playing a **** ton of toss lately in phase 2. I never realized how effective DT's are with warp in. You need to have pylons placed well around the map or some good use of prism... wtf are those things called?Flying unit that generates pylon power. Anyways, pretty valuable to be able to warp in one or two DT's around various points on the map. Even pretty good players have trouble detecting everything if you are poking small holes all over the place. A nice way to keep his/her army outta place or to simply distract him/her enough to hurt his/her macro. I take back what I said about not being able to get them out fast enough too. My build order just sucked. I just wouldn't try it on a Terran player unless you can sneak a ..."prisim" close enough to warp 5-8 DT's into their main and hit the orbital command. one or two DT's at your choke with some lots will prevent any counter attack; thus reducing the risk.
You don't rush up to DTs. Once a game is underway (like, nearing tier 3 phase), you sneakily build a Dark Shrine and use a warp prism to warp them into his expansion or main. This way you don't kill your eco because you built a dark shrine with all your remaining money, and you'll have the warp gates up to take advantage of massive warp in. Spread them out and terran players will waste scans killing one at a time, and you can run the DT away out of scan range with good micro and planning. Eventually they will run out of scans. If your enemy has observers, overseers, ravens, etc..Guess what? You should have scouted before using DTs to see if they would be effective or not.
