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[Q] How to Micro Marines against Banelings?

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 Strategy
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1 2 Next All
Pl4t0
Profile Joined August 2010
United States103 Posts
November 27 2010 01:07 GMT
#1
I've been trying out the Marine/Raven build that's been posted here on TL, with moderate success - the only real wrench in the works is Banelings, and large numbers of them. Since all I've really got to work with in that build is the exact unit that Banelings counter, it's sort of a no-brainer that they're the biggest problem.

Microing a small group of marines (<15) is no problem - just shoot and scoot, or stim if they've got speed researched, and the banelings won't ever touch them. The issue is that unless ALL he's got is banelings, you usually don't have the liberty of simply sprinting away from the battle.

So the question is, besides kiting, what's the best way to minimize banelings' damage against a group of marines? What techniques do you employ? What's the rhyme or reason to it? All responses much appreciated.
"Chess is the greatest game ever made, but Starcraft is a worthy successor."
Vaporized
Profile Joined July 2010
United States1471 Posts
November 27 2010 01:16 GMT
#2
maybe consider making something besides marines if he is massing the counter.
TrueZerG
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
43 Posts
November 27 2010 01:16 GMT
#3
send one marine out to confront the group of banelings, if hes just A-moving youll be tradeing the marines for banilings 1 for 1 (basically he loses 25 gas, and thats very bad for zerg because they are an extremely gas heavy race
Savior: Quite the Irony there <3 all the same
iAmJeffReY
Profile Joined August 2010
United States4262 Posts
November 27 2010 01:18 GMT
#4
K, he won't be a moving most likely. Got medics? Does he have AA? Do what I do. Pick up, and run around in medics and drop around the map as you expo.

Force some anti air, or you can continue to run around, stim pick and pick up.

Enough time to churn out some tanks to focus fire down the banes
Unbiased biased terran abuser Jeffrey. Sorry for the rage, friend!
lyAsakura
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States1414 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-27 01:27:24
November 27 2010 01:26 GMT
#5
Stim, then box-select parts of them away really quickly to make a quick spread. It isn't easy but makes banelings one of the least cost effective units against marines. Remember, positioning is key. If you are fighting in a small area, like the two strips of land outside of Xelnaga Caverns, then you can't spread and you are fucked.

And I don't think stutter step micro works on banelings on creep.
WeMade FOX would be a deadly SC2 team.
Panoptic
Profile Joined September 2009
United Kingdom515 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-27 01:39:09
November 27 2010 01:30 GMT
#6
Stim, run them away from the banelings, grab half and send them left, grab the other half send them right, rinse repeat. If you have tanks/thors then they should kill a good portion of the banelings.

I wouldn't bother kiting, and I wouldn't bother trying to bate them.
"Crom laughs at your four winds!"
ghanjamon
Profile Joined October 2010
22 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-27 01:39:56
November 27 2010 01:38 GMT
#7
I would probably switch the tech lab to your factory and crank of siege tanks with siege. once the A-move banelings cruise in, just stim and run your marines behind your tanks while targeting the banes . If the zerg doesnt micro correctly, he'll just run his banelings into your tanks. Also, a good spread is pivotal against the mass banelings as they will take out less of your rines with each baneling. It is also not the best idea to "shoot and scoot" your entire marine ball. Once you have a good spread only move the parts of your marine spread that the blings are going after. This will allow you to not only minimize damage by moving the selection rines away, but your tanks and other marines can go to town on the blings that are pretty much chasing down stimmed marines they cant catch. It takes a lot of practice and micro but this seems to be the only way I can micro against mass banelings effectively.

As a reference, watch the boxer/foxer/marineking vs kyrix series during the gsl season 2. foxer revolutionized the MU when he showed that the banelings aren't much of a counter to marines when microed correctly. Hope this helps
VinTeK
Profile Joined September 2010
United States18 Posts
November 27 2010 01:53 GMT
#8
Siege tanks definitely help against banelings. Take position with the tanks by spreading them out, then try to lure stray banelings into fire. I would scan ahead first. Or just use your Ravens.

But you're caught in a situation w/o tanks, but you at least have stim, I found that the best method for spreading marines is
- to immediately stim,
- pull the majority of your marines BACK but keep some in the front line to absorb banelings,
- quickly spread your selected marines to the BACK whilst creating an effective CONCAVE.
- Finally, immediately focus fire as many banelings as possible.
Takes a lot of practice, difficult to pull off—try to avoid the situation all together.

The marine spread technique works usually, unless your opponent has 30 banelings+infestors. Then you're fucked.

Note that if Z has baneling speed upgraded, stim-kiting isn't very effective, because as you stutter-step, the baneling splash damage kill your clumped-up marines.
vaLentine88
Profile Joined August 2010
United States61 Posts
November 27 2010 02:10 GMT
#9
You gotta be quick with those hands!

1. Stim
2. Running backwards, split into several chunks

ex: Marines @ 12 o'clock, banelings coming from 6
1 Group goes 10 o'clock, one runs 12 o'clock, another runs 2 o'clock

3. Select all marines again
4. Shoot and scoot clicking on a point behind 12 o'clock.


That should do the trick. Adapt clock positions as necessary.

Go Celtics!
lichter
Profile Blog Joined September 2010
1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
November 27 2010 02:11 GMT
#10
Select all your marines
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back

This will leave one marine at every stop. The banelings will either blow them up, making them cost inefficient, or leave them alone, which will allow them to keep shooting at the blings. This is the least APM-dependent micro technique to split your marines, I think.

Or you can just be like Foxer and split them with control groups and 500 APM. I hate it when people do that.
AdministratorYOU MUST HEED MY INSTRUCTIONS TAKE OFF YOUR THIIIINGS
lyAsakura
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States1414 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-27 02:36:59
November 27 2010 02:33 GMT
#11
On November 27 2010 11:11 lichter wrote:
Select all your marines
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back

This will leave one marine at every stop. The banelings will either blow them up, making them cost inefficient, or leave them alone, which will allow them to keep shooting at the blings. This is the least APM-dependent micro technique to split your marines, I think.

Or you can just be like Foxer and split them with control groups and 500 APM. I hate it when people do that.


Cloning everything is quite possibly one of the most apm intensive things in the game. Besides this will let the other units, speedlings or mutalisks, kill that one marine and is pretty much useless.

+ Show Spoiler +
Maybe this guy is a troll.
WeMade FOX would be a deadly SC2 team.
vaLentine88
Profile Joined August 2010
United States61 Posts
November 27 2010 02:35 GMT
#12
On November 27 2010 11:11 lichter wrote:
Select all your marines
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back

This will leave one marine at every stop. The banelings will either blow them up, making them cost inefficient, or leave them alone, which will allow them to keep shooting at the blings. This is the least APM-dependent micro technique to split your marines, I think.

Or you can just be like Foxer and split them with control groups and 500 APM. I hate it when people do that.


Don't like this- a good zerg player will keep his banelings on move command towards your ball while a-moving zerglings eat your single marines.

The mouse movement needed to do this will also take away from your attacks, which are necessary to avoid getting hit!
Go Celtics!
Danze
Profile Joined September 2010
Australia219 Posts
November 27 2010 02:45 GMT
#13
In my opinion, this is where having high APM shines in Sc2 as opposed to it being scoffed at in this expansion.

Although my main race is Toss, I've practiced this exact scenario in a million times for fun. Essentially, the faster you can split your marines into individual groups the better. If he's A moving, the blings will attack the closest target. So obviously you want to use the smallest amount of marines possible to be the bait and kite the banelings around; preferably away but ideally not out of range of the rest of your marines.

It's all over very quickly if you have stim. Stim and split, either you split well and his blings die reasonably fast without you taking too many losses, or you fucked up and there goes most; if not all of your rines. I suggest practicing on a unit tester map.
Accidentally pissing on toilet rolls since 1991.
Antisocialmunky
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States5912 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-27 02:49:09
November 27 2010 02:46 GMT
#14
The best way is to spread your marines out whenever they are stationary(http://day9tv.blip.tv/file/4367178/). This also really helps against infestors but it allows your brain to figure out what to move where, gives you some reaction time, and most importantly does not clump your marines.

You should also not shoot and scoot/kite, you should instead stim and run your marines small clumps of 4-6 instead in multiple directions. Marine DPS is really high and you lose a fair amount of them when you stutter step the whole group. It is better to have the marines in the way of the banelings to run while the ones not in the baneling path pop the ones rolling by. Most of the time only a few of your marines are running away from the main body of the banelings while everything else is shooting the banelings.

I mean, most of your marines are going to die anyway so maximize their DPS and force Zerg to split their baneling ball in multiple directions. You don't even need to have great APM to split if you keep your units spread out when they are sitting.
[゚n゚] SSSSssssssSSsss ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Marine/Raven Guide:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=163605
sas911
Profile Joined November 2010
Canada113 Posts
November 27 2010 02:55 GMT
#15
Just theory crafting as I play protoss and not terran, but I was wondering..
Considering that you're going mass marines, couldn't you (b4 setting off to attack) hot key small groups of them, and make a hotkey for the large group?
Because then when blings come, you can literally 1 click 2 click 3 click 4 click 5 click and whatever amount of groups you have hot keyed would be practically perfectly split up. Not to mention the zerg player can't do the same split, and that means the large group of banelings will have to go to each tiny ball of marines exploding them on at a time.

Is it viable though? I understand it'll take up a lot of hotkeys, but I mean considering you're going mass marines, you only need 1 hotkey for all of the barracks, the number of your orbital commands, and starport assuming you've got medivacs. You'd still easily have more than 5 hotkeys left for seperating marines... and it sounds like it's worth it. Doing drop play is also pretty wise, blings are hardly viable against small groups of marauder drops.
charlie420247
Profile Joined November 2009
United States692 Posts
November 27 2010 02:59 GMT
#16
yeah as a zerg player i would agree with the those on the thread that advocate tanks. tank marine is just so powerful. the tanks kill the bane and the marines kill everything else.

the best counter to this composition that ive found to be successful is burrowed banelings in pairs and then infestors and then broodlords.
there are 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who dont.
Antisocialmunky
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States5912 Posts
Last Edited: 2010-11-27 03:00:31
November 27 2010 02:59 GMT
#17
You can definitely do the control group thing but many times you want to split portions of your marine ball depending on where they are when the banelings roll in.
[゚n゚] SSSSssssssSSsss ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Marine/Raven Guide:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=163605
Genome852
Profile Blog Joined August 2010
United States979 Posts
November 27 2010 03:04 GMT
#18
On November 27 2010 11:46 Antisocialmunky wrote:
You should also not shoot and scoot/kite, you should instead stim and run your marines small clumps of 4-6 instead in multiple directions.


If you have enough tanks, or if the Z doesn't have enough banes, you're better off not even splitting your MM ball and just stim run them away instead since you'll have 0 losses to banelings (all dying to tanks).
Antisocialmunky
Profile Blog Joined March 2010
United States5912 Posts
November 27 2010 03:08 GMT
#19
On November 27 2010 12:04 Genome852 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 27 2010 11:46 Antisocialmunky wrote:
You should also not shoot and scoot/kite, you should instead stim and run your marines small clumps of 4-6 instead in multiple directions.


If you have enough tanks, or if the Z doesn't have enough banes, you're better off not even splitting your MM ball and just stim run them away instead since you'll have 0 losses to banelings (all dying to tanks).


You can do that but you risk losing your tanks which kinda kills your whole composition.
[゚n゚] SSSSssssssSSsss ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Marine/Raven Guide:http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=163605
junemermaid
Profile Joined September 2006
United States981 Posts
November 27 2010 03:27 GMT
#20
On November 27 2010 11:11 lichter wrote:
Select all your marines
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back
Shift click one marine out
Move back

This will leave one marine at every stop. The banelings will either blow them up, making them cost inefficient, or leave them alone, which will allow them to keep shooting at the blings. This is the least APM-dependent micro technique to split your marines, I think.

Or you can just be like Foxer and split them with control groups and 500 APM. I hate it when people do that.


This is probably the worst way to do it.
the UMP says YER OUT
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