I'm having trouble thinking of how to actually counter this.
I open stargate with 5 or so phoenixes, do considerable damage (pick off queens, overlords, drones), and my opponent decides to 2 base all in baneling rush me.
I see it coming.. and try to hold off with forcefields as long as possible (im on two bases, so there is no ramp, multiple forcefields needed).
My army composition consists mainly of stalkers/sentries and a few zealots. My plan befor ethe game started was to open with stargate, and eventually go into a 6 gate +2 blink stalker attack.
After watching the replay, and just thinking about it, I definitely couldve gone robo into colossus.. However, I don't think I would have had it in time. Besides, he had several baneilngs with baneling speed, and he could have just baited forcefields.
I was thinking trapping half the banelings with like 6 forcefields, but i dont think i had the dps to even kill all of them before the forcefields ended, and that's a lot of forcefields, i wouldve ran out soon after.
I think that is the only viable strategy, and hoping you have enough forcefields to not be damaged by the banelings.
How do you counter this? I'm honestly stumped. Replay is below if you're interested.
as a zerg player that does it every game heres my opinion
heres an option. Go for a timing push with a heap of sentrys and high templers with storm.. You need a shitload of DPS to handle it before the banelings completely wipe out your army, especially if he's upgrading them.
Going air doesnt work cause he'll just kill you. Collossus doesnt work unless you have ridiculous numbers of them And you have a heap of sentrys AND he built no ultralisks.
If you want to engage the army you need to out DPS him and the only way i've found that will beat it in a straight up fight is pure collossus, archon with Max upgrades. But if you dont want to play suicidally turtle in your base with collossus behind walls and force him to use most of his army on your buildings rather then your units, then immediately all in counter attack.
yeah, I was thinking also to just wall off both chokes with gateways, and have him waste half his banelings on the wall.. but i also think half of his banelings wouldve been enough to wipe out my army. The thing is, I opened with stargate.. i did a stargate expand and i dont think i couldve had HT with storm in time before he all inned, It wouldve been close. But yeah I like your suggestions. It just cuts things really close. HT with storm i like the most, but i dont think i can squeeze storm + ht before he attacks.
1) Simcity your natural to make the banelings/lings run around your buildings rather than straight into your forces; you want a wall between your ramp and your nexus. The most common way to do it is with a combination of pylons/1 forge/1-2 gateways, like so
(cecil you are awesome) 2) If he's still on 2 bases that late in the game (which you should scout with your phoenix) he's pretty much all-in as you said, so go ahead and make 4 cannons at your nat. Those and accurate forcefields will defend his bust. 3) In general vs ling/baneling colossus play works out great actually, you just need really precies ff to trap the banelings while not letting them detonate. The most dangerous thing is an ultra switch, so either stop colossus production at around 4-5 (at this point, lings are completely useless anyway) and make immortals, or just kill him off before he has time to tech to ultras.
Well first off, thats a tough map for protoss imo... I flag it down.
Anyway, he hatched 1st and you opened 3 gate before expansion... no idea why you did this... Poor scouting by you, when your probe died you had no idea what he was doing until 7:30 when your phoenix arrived. When you moved out with your phoenix, he was 47 drones to your 27 probes. Thats kind of game right there regardless of what he wanted to do. TBH this cost you the game more than his (stupid) use of mass baneling.
On countering this, having a normal amount of PvZ sentries would have gone a long way (7-8 at least, especially on this atrocious map) plus a wall off at your nat with cannons. Cannons really are a must in PvZ. Robo bay into colossus is quite standard after stargate opening, this would also have helped.
Plus your phoenix sat there with quite a lot of energy over his banes, I know its not cost efficient in the slightest but banes cost a bit of gas, you could have lifted and killed a good 10-15 before his attack commenced.
On August 16 2011 18:00 LtLolburger wrote: Well first off, thats a tough map for protoss imo... I flag it down.
Anyway, he hatched 1st and you opened 3 gate before expansion... no idea why you did this... Poor scouting by you, when your probe died you had no idea what he was doing until 7:30 when your phoenix arrived. When you moved out with your phoenix, he was 47 drones to your 27 probes. Thats kind of game right there regardless of what he wanted to do. TBH this cost you the game more than his (stupid) use of mass baneling.
On countering this, having a normal amount of PvZ sentries would have gone a long way (7-8 at least, especially on this atrocious map) plus a wall off at your nat with cannons. Cannons really are a must in PvZ. Robo bay into colossus is quite standard after stargate opening, this would also have helped.
Plus your phoenix sat there with quite a lot of energy over his banes, I know its not cost efficient in the slightest but banes cost a bit of gas, you could have lifted and killed a good 10-15 before his attack commenced.
Yeah, my main problem was that I shouldve walled off and placed cannons down. I actually never stopped probe production, I just used my chronos on phoenixes instead of my nexus, So the fact that he was up that many drones is just cause of my build order (something that I just tried once, obviously it was pretty bad) I shouldve had 2 bases after stargate instead of stargate then 3 gates then expo (i wouldve had more probes that way on two bases).
And the fact that i got pylon blocked.. that really fucked me over.
As stated, pick off some banelings with your phoenix, the effect is exponential: You kill some early banelings, you not only reduce the amount of damage you have to do to kill his army, but you reduce his dps which affects the rate he kills your army which affects the rate you do dps etc, so killing them before they get to you has a huge effect. Also, why the hell, when you saw he was going literally pure baneling, did you not pre-split your army a bit? stalkers split up properly and then a couple of splitting (not blocking) forcefields would have wasted a lot of banelings (20 damage per baneling, 160 life per stalker, 9 banelings per stalker (taking armor into effect) when split properly = 450 mins 225 gas to kill a 125 mins 50 gas unit) plus would have allowed for shield regen to take effect. You cant afford to have 1 big battle with blings, you need multiple small ones. I admit, the only time I remember facing this was back in diamond, and was not on this map, but thats what I did and I just absolutely crushed him (oh yeah also had some buildings at natural but not many)
PS getting pylon blocked, yeah that screwed you over
I've actually been going for forge FE's on that map. Its a bit of a meta-game choice, because nobody 6 pools on that map because they don't expect you to forge FE
With my building placement and fast tech to blink after the voids hit, I think I'd have been able to hold off that all-in fairly easily. Worked pretty well for me!
Building placement isn't the only key, however. You could have definitely held this, if you just started suiciding stalkers into the banes 1 at a time. Also, your forcefields were not efficient at all. You need 3 forcefields to block off one of those sides, you were using like 5 of them at times. If you were more efficient with the forcefields, you could have bought time for blink. Blink stalkers would take that apart, if you just suicide 1 at a time into the banes, and spread the rest out, the banes aren't very effective.
If you are going air you should be able to scout such baneling nest, thus scouting you should easily be able to scout the mass amount of lings in the base of the zerg, thus meaning that you can only make cannons and sentries (2-3 cannons at most) and a ton of sentries. Once you see him move out with his lings thats when you pull your pheonix back and pick up dem banelings.
Forcefield the rest (pretty much works on any map on tal' just be more focus I guess).
Banelings are actually pretty bad against well placed forcefields and micro.
look guys alot of you are just saying get buildings, use pheonix harrass and forcefields arn't quite understanding how to play against pure banes. Theres absolutely nothing stopping the zerg taking a third or a 4th base with that play style, and the force fields will only save you close to your base or close to his. The entire style is specifically designed around killing an army, NOT killing an opponent. theres a huge difference. Play passively, take base's when you can and use buildings + FF AND collossus or storm to crush his attacks, because if he try's to bust you he'll severely cripple himself. Stockpile money and get as many gateways as you can to remax faster then him and warp in your units as close to his base as possible.
Banelings arnt like regular units and as such have a maximum damage that they get every time you hit their army. if he's getting upgrades he will hit your army with banelings regardless of perfect FF, because if you split his army the ones on your side will connect, and if you dont the ones on his will just fall back. their not like any other unit in the game, where if you split the army they become infinitely worse.
On August 16 2011 23:41 Bodzilla wrote: look guys alot of you are just saying get buildings, use pheonix harrass and forcefields arn't quite understanding how to play against pure banes. Theres absolutely nothing stopping the zerg taking a third or a 4th base with that play style, and the force fields will only save you close to your base or close to his. The entire style is specifically designed around killing an army, NOT killing an opponent. theres a huge difference. Play passively, take base's when you can and use buildings + FF AND collossus or storm to crush his attacks, because if he try's to bust you he'll severely cripple himself. Stockpile money and get as many gateways as you can to remax faster then him and warp in your units as close to his base as possible.
Banelings arnt like regular units and as such have a maximum damage that they get every time you hit their army. if he's getting upgrades he will hit your army with banelings regardless of perfect FF, because if you split his army the ones on your side will connect, and if you dont the ones on his will just fall back. their not like any other unit in the game, where if you split the army they become infinitely worse.
He was asking how to defend a specific build in that one specific situation, which was in fact pretty all-inish, not how to play in general against ling-baneling.
On August 17 2011 00:49 alaug wrote: You said u had Phoenix. Couldn't you use them to lift up the banelings. I thought the explosion damages other banelings on the ground?
I don't know how you lose to a bane all in... It's so easy to defend, you sac units in to the banes so they blow up like 5 on each unit. like sending 1 zeal or FF donuts around banes so your stalkers can pick them off while trapped between buildings and what not. If you where phoneix you could have just make a few voids and just raped his whole army.. alos you don't need FF to block putting up a pilon to block a pathway works... that gives you the time to make units run away and makes him waste banes on buildings that are making.
On August 17 2011 00:49 alaug wrote: You said u had Phoenix. Couldn't you use them to lift up the banelings. I thought the explosion damages other banelings on the ground?
On August 17 2011 00:49 alaug wrote: You said u had Phoenix. Couldn't you use them to lift up the banelings. I thought the explosion damages other banelings on the ground?
you dont play Protoss or Zerg do you?
you dont even play Starcraft do you?
lol haha. Lifting banes with phoenix is hardly viable, but I suppose it's something to do if you're in a pinch.
Firstly, pick off as many banelings as you can with phoenix. You will probably be able to get at least 10 free kills.
I would recommend some kind of wall off in your expansion. This is very important in nearly all strategies. At least a partial wall off is a good idea. Standard follow up to an expansion in any protoss build (with the exclusion of some blink stalker and HT builds) it a lot of sentries. Standard is around 6-8. You want to build this asap so you can have more energy later. At the time of first engagement, you only had 3 sentries with substantial energy and you were VERY wasteful with your forecfields. In situations where you could have thrown down 2 forcefields, you threw down up to 5. If you only have 3 sentries, this is an enormous mistake.
If you decide to go for a robo followup, which I think is very good against ling baneling, you could absolutely have an immortal or 2 for the engagement. This would make a huge difference, as immortals can absorb more baneling shots than any protoss unit, including the archon.
In the situation you were given, I think you have successfully held it off with good forcefields. Your aim is to block the advance of the banelings, then sandwich them with forcefields from behind. This leaves them sitting doing nothing for 15 seconds and you can kill off a ton of them.
For the future, however: I recommend
replacing your buildings so as to block your natural a bit. Picking up as many banelings as possible with phoenix make more sentries earlier. If you absolutely refuse to do this, you must ABSOLUTELY practice your forecfields. You can't be wasteful AT ALL. Try different tech routes against it: I woudl recommend robo into blink. If you can get out an immortal or colossus, you will be in great shape for a followup.
EPT
