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Short version first: What is the best response to a Terran player who goes for cloak banshees and then adds in 1-2 vikings and snipes your observers with a scan?
Long version:
+ Show Spoiler +I just played a PvT game on Jungle Basin in which I scouted a dual port banshee build from my opponent, and thus prepared myself with 1 observer at each of my 2 bases, + 1 for my army and + 1 more for scouting. I was able to easily fend off the first couple banshees, but then my opponent added in 1-2 vikings, scanned my obs at my natural, sniped it easily, and wrecked havoc until i could get another obs, which he then sniped as well.
My biggest problem however was that in any engagement of our armies, all he had to do was scan my army and his 2 vikings with their long range would just instantly snipe my obs (or multiple obs), and then I'd have no way of detecting his cloaked banshees.
I discussed this game with a friend and we came up with the following ideas, although I'm not sure that any of them are viable and I am wondering if you all have better ideas:
1) Add in some air units of my own. This way vikings won't automatically target the observers. Moreover, I can hunt any stray banshees if I have a couple phoenixes on the map.
2) Go templar tech, and just storm the cloaked banshees. Or, feedback them before he has time to scan and snipe the observers.
3) Have better micro and possibly add in blink (to make it easier), and keep observers back while killing the vikings with stalkers.
4) Don't go for an early expo -- just go kill him in the early game like oGsMC did to Jinro multiple times.
What do you all think?
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Best response to dual port banshees is definitely a starport. A few phoenixes shuts all this down. Observer speed upgrade might also be worth it.
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Well for your bases, don't undervalue cannons. Even if it is not enough cannons to fend off the banshees alone, they still provide detection for your stalkers when they come in to save the day. This still does not handle your pushing problem though.
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phoenix is definitely the best option while teching to HT
If it goes on to late game with thors added (1 scan will allow thors to target fire observers) i suggest going for HT+ carriers
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Don't allow vikings flying around near your natural?
I never got this strat, I mean, for it to work you need to have vikings near that spot anyway, which are easily killed by stalkers or phoenices what-else before they can even scan.
Another thing is feedback while you can still see the banshee, also works of course against thor/banshee.
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Versus any kind of obs snipe strategy, you must stagger the engagement of your observers. Keep at least one way in the back, and then bring it in near the end of the fight to clean up the banshees.
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The best response is to go fucking kill him. He only has marines, like seriously espicallly if he has banshees in your base just abandon it and go kill him. All of his gas is in expensive air units.
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On January 08 2011 18:26 OriginalBeast wrote:
The best response is to go fucking kill him. He only has marines, like seriously espicallly if he has banshees in your base just abandon it and go kill him. All of his gas is in expensive air units.
Someone watches Day9.
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On January 08 2011 18:31 KingSC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2011 18:26 OriginalBeast wrote:
The best response is to go fucking kill him. He only has marines, like seriously espicallly if he has banshees in your base just abandon it and go kill him. All of his gas is in expensive air units. Someone watches Day9.
As he should be, Day9 couldn't be more right. By this time you should be able to push bunkers filled with just marines. Too many people just give up when they see banshees. However, you are shut down if he makes more banshees in his main and snipes your attacking units, hopefully you just clear a path from his ramp wall and walk on by, let those weak marines chase your supperior stalkers. Take out his production, deny more banshees, macro up back at your main when he retreats. Continue on.
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So a month back i had a huge problem with 2 starport banshee. Especially when 1gate fast expand was my main build vs terran. After some practice sessions this is what i discovered.
The moment i scout it, i change everything im doing and drop a stargate and twilight council. (when i can obviously).
Phoenix/ zealot with legs is the way to go.
The more common trend in this build is to get a raven later on, Banshees force stalkers, raven uses PDD, gg. Marines are squishy tho, and zealots with legs counter them hard, where as the phoenix does full damage to light, aka the banshee.
So once i secure myself i get map control with the Phoenix to snipe any rallying banshees and start making my zealots heavy army, with w/e combination of sentrys or stalkers your comfortable with. (this is on 2 base.)
Phoenix makes great harass also! Mule snipes are so impact full.
When engaging i typically leave my observer out of the battle until i have the raven sniped, along with any couple vikings while the zealots chop through marine bodies, then bring in the obs once the raven is out of the picture. A cannon on each mineral line never hurts aswell mid game, can at the very least stall the banshee while you get units to defend. I also get plus 1 weapons to air and ground when i go this route. I do not have the exact build timings written down since its usually a reactionary process.
Also to note the PDD dies VERY fast to phoenix fire since its 2 shots, so that also helps immensely if they do go the raven route.
From here you can transition to HT's quite easily into the later game if it makes it that far but if i pull it off correctly usually this unit mix just demolishes 2 starport banshee rine. Only time i have had late-games when pulling off this counter was with them doing a tech change from banshee.
This is just from my personal experience. 
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P detection is most tech heavy and costly in game, you need to get at least 40% better than your opponent on average, then you'll be about equal. Patch is coming, but keeps getting delayed.
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On January 08 2011 20:37 NearPerfection wrote:
P detection is most tech heavy and costly in game, you need to get at least 40% better than your opponent on average, then you'll be about equal. Patch is coming, but keeps getting delayed.
Dont listen to this guy, if you blame everything on balance and expect a "fix" you will never get better at this game. The build is very beatable, dont blame the players faults on the game. Please direct yourself to this thread, and enjoy.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=182347
The Solution: Making the Game What It Should Be:
Stop crying about imbalance
Play the game to improve
Stop making stupid useless posts
If u think BW is better go play it
Treat the game as if perfectly balanced, play to beat the Strong builds (not IMBA Strong)
Don't talk about imbalance
Don't respond to someone talking about imbalance
Go play the game and have Fun!!!!
But i suppose i broke one of those rules didn't i? 
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make a cannon in each mineral line..... cannons have retarded detection range lol its like 10 at least, you wont need an observer to stop their harass. mass air like that is pretty much screwed if you have a solid econ advantage
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On January 08 2011 18:26 OriginalBeast wrote:
The best response is to go fucking kill him. He only has marines, like seriously espicallly if he has banshees in your base just abandon it and go kill him. All of his gas is in expensive air units.
versus terran basetrade is not in your favor!
if he gets a good number of banshees he can easily wipe your army out without taking damage.
that is the problem of Protoss.
His whole snipping strategy relies on you beeing blind after the observer snipe.
the best way to deal with it get at least some canons to cover the base 2-3 canons distributed covers most of the base so you don't have put all your gas into observers.
since canons are way more durable then observers, this buys you the time to react properly.
since he is heavy on Air, their shouldn't be a big risk by ground.
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banshees are not very good power and durability for their cost. cloak is their primary weapon. for the amount of cannons it would take to overcome them, you would be taking an advantage, along with the extra psi granted by the pylons. try also having an observer at the front, and observer at the back, a body of stalkers and a few phoenixes. When he engages, target the banshees with your stalkers and hit the vikings with your phoenixes. If he shoots your observer, take out his vikings and then move your next one forward. remember to press the advantage after repelling banshees. like i previously stated, banshees cost a lot and it will hurt his army majorly to kill them. push into his base and bring the fight to him, he will likely only have marines and some marauders. take advantage of high templar, they are very powerful versus both vikings and marines. perhaps try transitioning into void rays, they smash banshees and can beat vikings one to one. keep some stalkers and templar around to deal with marines, though. void rays don't fare well against them.
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I (Terran player) use the same build against protoss in any map without short rush distances. Generally the early stargate makes the banshee harass extremely difficult. Even then it's about execution; mass cloak banshees drive protoss crazy and my win rate with this build is probably around 90%, with most of my losses due to dumb mistakes or inability to macro properly.
DONT base trade. One or two bunkers with 1 cloaked banshee will tear down an early protoss army.
Most Protoss make the minimum amount of observers, which is not so good against mass banshees; all I do is split up my banshees into two or three separate groups to harass. When the observer comes, I fly away and attack with another group elsewhere.
A couple cannons around your base also shuts down banshee harass quite easily, but you should still tech to stargate since cloaked banshees are also great against big armies.
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On January 08 2011 17:46 Silmakuoppaanikinko wrote:
Don't allow vikings flying around near your natural?
I never got this strat, I mean, for it to work you need to have vikings near that spot anyway, which are easily killed by stalkers or phoenices what-else before they can even scan.
Another thing is feedback while you can still see the banshee, also works of course against thor/banshee.
Well think about the natural on Jungle Basin. He can have the vikings back behind the mineral line, and the banshees in front of them also behind the mineral line. All the vikings need to do is get one shot off, which is easy if the observer isn't positioned far back enough (I had mine near the edge so it could see the incoming banshees faster).
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Polt timing pushes are much scarier than pure banshee harass, if executed well. Staggering observers won't work as well as on a T who go for Polt push, because he will always have one raven with him.
An ideas against this? The existing threads aren't very helpful about Polt counters though..
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On January 08 2011 20:48 drewbie.root wrote:
make a cannon in each mineral line..... cannons have retarded detection range lol its like 10 at least, you wont need an observer to stop their harass. mass air like that is pretty much screwed if you have a solid econ advantage
Cannons are great but they are immobile. You will not be able to attack/move out of your base, and I think that's why the OP is asking us what the correct option should be.
@OP: Hopefully with the decreased cost of the observer, you'll just have to pump out extras. Plus, you should go air too and force him to snipe your observers instead of just a-moving. Air is the correct response if you see 2 starports off 1 base, IMO. A good combination of phoenix and voids will keep you safe
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well the idea of sniping obs has been around for awhile in bw with lurker contains and scourge. It is similar in taste as both scourge and viking can take out observers easily, you could argue viking is even easier.
But scan cost mules, so don't be afraid to make some more.
Also in bw in funny cases people will upgrade the observer sight range, that will be a good investment if you know your opponent is going heavily into the "sniping observer" mode.
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Whenever you see banshee play just go with an extra obs and stargate for phoenix right away.
Phoenixes are neccesary to stop the harass (as by just stalkers + obs you can still get harassed if he splits well) and help kill the banshee's in bigger fights. Stalkers don't counter banshee's effectively so always go with those phoenix.
The phoenix also help scout him out a bit while your obs stay near your bases to stop cloak harass.
Now if he goes to mass banshee / viking with the idea of sniping your obs with a scan you should go phoenix, templar and your regular gateway units. Have the observer a bit in the back of your army (let it follow your templar for example) and in a fight focus on feedbacking the banshee's asap while focussing the banshee's with phoenix as well. Even if the observer gets sniped the feedback should cancel the cloak already. Stalkers and storm can mop up the rest of his air when your phoenix and obs have died. Make sure to get +1 attack on those phoenix if you are really massing them.
This strat is annoying but only strong when the map or positioning favors air use a lot. Next patch it will be even easier to stop though as phoenix build time and observer cost both go down. Basically T is even more forced to go regular MM next patch
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You'll need a starport to deal with any banshee heavy play. Phoenix can engage banshees all over the map and even if they snipe your obs they can't cloak forever.
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On January 08 2011 18:26 OriginalBeast wrote:
The best response is to go fucking kill him. He only has marines, like seriously espicallly if he has banshees in your base just abandon it and go kill him. All of his gas is in expensive air units.
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Could someone be more specific about how to kill him? I am really bad in PvT and when i see hes teching to banshees it seems i can't kill him, even if i forcefield the bunker it still has 400 life and i only have like 6 stalkers 3 zealots and an immortal or 2. And if i do break it when he comes in with scvs and i end up with no army.
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also if i dont have an obs and couple stalkers or pheonix in my mineral line it comes an all in and i just never win those against terran, and flying buildings surely dosent help in some maps.
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On January 08 2011 18:26 OriginalBeast wrote:
The best response is to go fucking kill him. He only has marines, like seriously espicallly if he has banshees in your base just abandon it and go kill him. All of his gas is in expensive air units.
If he's sniping your obs and you try this you will lose. If you scout dual port banshee just get a stargate.
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On January 09 2011 18:42 Setev wrote:
Polt timing pushes are much scarier than pure banshee harass, if executed well. Staggering observers won't work as well as on a T who go for Polt push, because he will always have one raven with him.
An ideas against this? The existing threads aren't very helpful about Polt counters though..
I like to get blink, and blink in to snipe the raven. I then use some of my forcefields to prevent the terran killing me retreating stalkers. If he stims, it is worth wasting the forcefields, if he doesn't 1 forcefield is usually enough to scare them off. Not to mention this lends well to a later tech of HT and charge lots (charge is usually my second upgrade to deal with cannon contain).
Two cannons powered by two pylons behind your mineral line completely shuts down cloaked banshee play. Once they have invested all that gas into now nullified banshees, you can tech to robo for obs/immortal since they won't have invested their gas into any other tech.
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EPT
