Dark archon (StarCraft)

The dark archon is a "spellcaster" with no regular attack, unlike the archon. Like the archon, it is well protected by shields but has few hit points underneath; it is vulnerable to the science vessel's EMP shockwave. It is neither biological nor mechanical, and is immune to many abilities, such as Lockdown and Spawn Broodling. It is also a hovering unit and does not trigger spider mines.

Mind Control may be used to instantly deprive the enemy of an expensive unit. It may also be used to enhance the flexibility of the protoss army. s benefit from medics as much as s. Enemy workers may also be stolen, opening up the terran and zerg tech trees; each tree uses its own pool of supply and control respectively. It is typically infeasible to fully exploit another tree in multiplayer due to the time and resources required.

The dark archon may deprive enemy spellcasters of energy and life with Feedback. The ability can instantly kill a high templar, ghost, medic, Wraith, science vessel, defiler or a queen that was at full health. The amount of damage is not affected by armor or unit size.

Zerg are vulnerable to Maelstrom, which disables groups of biological units for a short time. For protoss players, Maelstrom has a lot of potential benefits when fighting the zerg. From preventing precious from being sniped by s, to saving a group of dragoons surrounded by large group of zerglings with the Adrenaline Glands upgrade, Maelstrom can be used in many ingenious ways. Large group of mutalisks, held at one place by Maelstrom, can be slaughtered by corsairs or Psionic Storm, or several group of zerglings and s trying to rapidly close in to kill s quickly, only to be held at one place by Maelstrom and sustain two or three scarab hits before getting annihilated, are only few out of many examples of Maelstrom's proper usage.

Quotations

 * See: StarCraft Dark Archon Quotations