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At the risk of offending Day9, I recognize that everyone sees banelings as the counter to the marine ball, or in even bigger numbers of banelings, everything on the ground.
However, think about the other "counters" in SC2. Immortals vs. roaches. Marines vs. mutalisks. Speedlings vs. stalkers.
In all of these matchups, and many others, the "counter" absolutely destroys the unit it's supposed to, AND (this is the key) still retains many units at the end of the battle.
Fly a flock of mutas into a ball of 50 marines, the mutas evaporate and maybe 3 marines died. You get the idea.
But with banelings, you roll into the ball of 50 marines, evaporate it, and 95% of your banelings are gone. You need to reproduce them for the next wave.
This, in my opinion, makes banelings a fake counter.
In BW, you countered bio with lurkers, which could kill tons of marines, firebats and medics without incurring any losses.
In SC2, sure, Zerg can handle a marine ball, but when it's all over, Zerg has to try to do damage to the Terran economy or infrastructure with the remaining few zerglings/banelings and wait for the next round of reinforcements to arrive. Admittedly, this is not a long time, provided the Zerg has been macroing well, but it's a little annoying.
By way of contrast, if a Protoss 4-gate stomps your initial resistance, they can then roll into your base and win. No need to wait for reinforcements at all.
Is this just a matter of "Well, banelings are pretty cost-effective vs. what they kill, so I don't worry about it"?
Thoughts welcome.
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My other problems with banelings is that a-move vs a-move they don't do that well. If you micro them vs an a-move you do great. Then once the Terran's are good and learn to micro their back to being very difficult to make cost effective. It's so touch for noob players (like me) to deal with mass marine... very demoralizing :-(
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well, each baneling needs to hit 3 marines on average for them to be "somewhat" effective ( this is assuming a 1:1 mineral - gas value ratio, which in itself is skewed). banelings cost 50/25, marines 50/50 and it takes 2 banelings to kill a marine. Also, even without micro some Blings will die before they hit the marine ball thanks to the marines actually shooting at them.
In itself, Blings aren't really a counter to mass marine. They can become one, though, with the proper support. Both infestors and ovie drops vastly improve the capacity of the Bling, making them very effective
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That is the reason to why terran goes mass marine against zerg. There is no "real" counter to marines except for banelings which isn't cost-effective unless you have the better micro.
(no QQ-ing on balance, just sayin')
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If you had 50 banelings and amoved into 50 marines, you would still have many left over. How is that different to your other examples.
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On December 05 2010 09:39 skirmisheR wrote:
That is the reason to why terran goes mass marine against zerg. There is no "real" counter to marines except for banelings which isn't cost-effective unless you have the better micro.
(no QQ-ing on balance, just sayin')
Unless you have the better micro? You mean if the terran has bad micro? I don't recall seeing any baneling splits even in the GSL. Anyhow, I think banelings are only a proper counter if they're backed up by sufficient speedlings like a 1:2 ratio of blings to slings.
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On December 05 2010 09:35 Kelsin wrote:
My other problems with banelings is that a-move vs a-move they don't do that well. If you micro them vs an a-move you do great. Then once the Terran's are good and learn to micro their back to being very difficult to make cost effective. It's so touch for noob players (like me) to deal with mass marine... very demoralizing :-(
A touch disingenuous.
A-move vs banelings doesn't work if you run into a thor or marauder (basic micro: keep those in front of marines at all times. harder than it sounds!)
The corresponding zerg tactic is to use a little basic micro to not ram the thor. At this point, banes rock marines hard. Foxer splits are absolutely nuts to pull off, which is why we constantly see GSL pros failing to do so.
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50 marines = 2500 minerals
50 banelings = 2500 minerals and 1250 gas
they better kill all of the marines or you are in trouble.
In fact 25 of them would have to kill all 50 for it to be an even exchange in terms of non-time resources. That is assuming a 1:1 value of gas and minerals which isn't really true.
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I think the point is not to a-move banes into marines. The best Zergs I've seen have hidden banes and flanked and trapped marines. In that case, they're extremely cost-effective. It's not about micro really, but positioning.The problem is on maps with narrow chokes and hallway paths where you can't effectively flank with banes or lings.
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On December 05 2010 09:53 PirateGus wrote:
50 marines = 2500 minerals
50 banelings = 2500 minerals and 1250 gas
they better kill all of the marines or you are in trouble.
In fact 25 of them would have to kill all 50 for it to be an even exchange in terms of non-time resources. That is assuming a 1:1 value of gas and minerals which isn't really true.
Not really fair to make these cost-effectiveness comparisons across races.
A stalker is supposed to counter roaches, and it costs accordingly much more, but in equal costs and especially with upgrades, roaches will still rip stalkers to shreds.
Anyhow, 50 banelings a moved against 50 marines with shield on creep will result in 30 banelings living through.
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You need to understand the importance of army trade-offs. Almost always Terran falls behind because Protoss and Zerg have an easier way to warp in our instantly produce mass larvae for a new army while Terran takes time to get those 50 marines out.
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If your ONLY making banelings you're doing it wrong. The goal of banelings is to kill all the marines while spending half the resources that the terran player spent on making those marines. You should have some other units to finish him off when all your banelings suicide.
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I think the definition of a counter in the OP is deceptively insufficient, and is why there appears to be a problem. When my opponent attempts to enact a plan and I plan to specifically stop that, it is a counter. Whether it is successful or a good counter is up for debate after, but a plan to stop another's plan is a counter, even on a micro scale.
As such most of the successful counters are obvious things like mass marines vs mass muta's, the outcome is fairly obvious and so it's recognised as a successful counter. When a zerg player wants to prevent an enemies bio play with banelings it can fairly regularly be seen that that banelings are a good counter. Just because they may have all died achieving it is irrelevant. Even if there's no follow up at all, the banelings countered the bio play. The discussion after that is how to move on from that and whether there are better counter play's available.
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Banelings aren't a counter so much as a force multiplier against marine heavy compositions. Even if the banelings aren't cost effective (they usually aren't), the rest of your force is a lot more cost effective due to the fact that zerg units are best in small confrontations where surrounds are effective.
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This is being approached completely the wrong way in my opinion.
1. banelings will destroy a marine ball barring one of two things - poor usage/a clicking by the zerg or outstanding micro by the terran.
2. while you may have spent equal minerals but additional gas to have army traded; zerg rebuilds the ENTIRE army at once. Even with a reactor, Terran can't hope to accomplish that type of production
3. Banelings are not good against protoss. They are alright vs zealots, but for equal cost the roach is much more effective. Comparing to a 4gate is not appropriate. If you baneling bust and destroy the wall, you will win. If you don't, you will lose. If you 4 gate and do not do significant damage, you will lose. Otherwise, you generally win.
4. Other than for baneling busts, banelings are not an attacking unit. They are a morph on the staple attacking unit (zergling) into being a more defensive unit. How many times do you make 30 speedlings to throw at an army to help you surround, knowing full well that almost all the lings will die? Similar concept to banelings. I will take killing an entire bio push in split seconds any day of the week. There are few things more demoralizing to a terran opponent.
5. If you ONLY are using banelings, that is the mistake. Banelings are meant to be a part of your overall unit composition, not your only unit. Banelings are terrifying for terrans when they know there's a mutalisk ball to defend- since they can't possibly risk losing all the marines to a few banelings.
The baneling IS definitely a counter. I think the real problem here is your misconception of what a counter is. Not all units need to a-click and stomp the units they hard counter. Think Raven vs Stalker. Raven's cant shoot, but PDD wins games.
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On December 05 2010 09:32 Falcon-sw wrote:
In BW, you countered bio with lurkers, which could kill tons of marines, firebats and medics without incurring any losses.
did you even play sc1?
or terran for that matter? or even zerg?
its called micro T.T its not the marines just walk around the lurkers getting raped..
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In practical terms, the power of banelings is that they take out the versatile, high DPS marines very quickly, leaving the rest of the terran army vulnerable to other zerg units with favourable matchups against unsupported terran units. A baneling's combination of mobility and splash damage makes them perfect marine killers.
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You missunderstood the use of Banelings. Sure, they're no Game-Winning unit, but they aren't suppose to be one. Banelings exist to be a defensive "Landmine", sure, the mine is gone after someone walked over it, but the person is probably very dead too.
And like Durp already mentioned, Zerg has this huge mechanical advantage in Lategame, which normally kicks in after denying a push.
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If marines split to mitigate baneling damage, then there's tons of exposed surface area for zerglings to attack. A terran ball of marines is strong against lings; marines in trios or pairs are not all that great.
The Zerg plan is typically to outexpand their opponent while crushing their pushes. They usually don't need to completely crush their opponent's base; they just have to live. As the player with more expos and large potential drone production, it's generally up to the other guy find ways to hurt you, rather than you hurting them (not that you shouldn't exploit what vulnerabilities present themselves).
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EPT
