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Hello fellow member of teamliquid.
I recently started picking up 1on1 again and have started to have some real issues with zerg as of late. As I understand this trend has started to become a real issue for alot of protoss players as well as me. So can't we get to the bottom of this and try to see what we can do about it?
The ways of how the zerg get to the point where he have alot of banelings in overlords is limitless. So setting all that aside. When the battle accually comes, it totally destroys the army composition of the protoss player.
The real problem with the strategy your facing is that the protoss player is unable to kill the banelings. Period. The amount of overlords, their speed, and the sheer amount of overlords that can be used with them, makes the banelingdrop easy.
How do you want the army composition to look like is maybe the real question to face this?
One of the other major issues is that when you add infestors to the mix. Infestors prevent any sort of splitting and it also do a huge amount of damage to an already dying army.
Or is it just in the protoss best intrest to deny this strat at all means neccessary? As in possibly going heavy gate units and applying enough pressure to break the zerg?
I have a ton of questions but no idea what so ever in breaking the strat except doing heavy pressure builds. But in a macro game, i'm fucked. Teamliquid, what do we do?
2 poor replay examples:
Before checking replays, KEEP IN MIND; I probably did a shit ton of things that was bad. What I am mostly refering to with this thread is the accual battles. Not the ways of getting to the battles.
http://www.sc-replay.com/replay/26-05-11/47138-prOpKeX-VS-Amanitar.html
http://www.sc-replay.com/replay/28-05-11/48296-prOpKeX-VS-Titou.html
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The key to defend against baneling drop is to put down FF to prevent the ground army to go any further, then to back your main army to avoid the drop as long as you can while you keep sniping the OV with your stalker. Blink is very useful in that matter.
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it's usually dealt with blink splitting (works nicely as stalkers counter banelings)
although i am also curious about archon toiletting the overlords as an offensive measure
does psi storm hit things in the vortex?
FF is gimmicky if the ground isn't pure roach but more like ultra/ling
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I saw this get countered by high templar storming on the overlord as they approach + forcefields blocking the roach mass. But if you run out of energy on both you're fucked seriously
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Make sure you split up all of your units. You also need to spread out your collosi so banelings don't hit more than 1 at a time and get as many units as possibly out from under the collosi.
Archons are also really good at sucking up baneling hits.
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I saw Destiny dealing with this on his stream. What he did was he took his Stalkers and split them up, both blinking and right-clicking away so that the Banelings would be less effective. He was Baneling bombed twice in that game, actually. The first time, he wasn't prepared, didn't micro at all, and lost his entire army. The second time, he blinked and retreated and kept many more Stalkers alive. A significant improvement.
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On May 29 2011 00:42 Acritter wrote:
I saw Destiny dealing with this on his stream. What he did was he took his Stalkers and split them up, both blinking and right-clicking away so that the Banelings would be less effective. He was Baneling bombed twice in that game, actually. The first time, he wasn't prepared, didn't micro at all, and lost his entire army. The second time, he blinked and retreated and kept many more Stalkers alive. A significant improvement.
Wasn't he zerg  ?
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You know how Terrans do marine splits? Do a stalker blink using blink instead of stim.
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On May 29 2011 01:54 Aterons_toss wrote:Wasn't he zerg ?
He plays Protoss on a smurf account. He said, "lol baneling drops" and got blink. It's amazing how pathetic baneling bombs are if the enemy army isn't in a giant clumped ball.
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In my experience as zerg, the baneling drops never fail. Yea, in theory, you can cut off the ground force and stay away from the overlord death flying above you. However, a good zerg won't engage you at a choke with a composition of lings, banelings and infestors. Plus, he is likely to have ultralisks which will knock over any force fields. My only thought would possibly be mothership, if you can vortex the overlords and take the army 1 on 1. Just a theory though. Never seen it seen it used.
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Also there is always a possibility with baneling bombs paired with Infestors. Gotta watch them fungals aswell.
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Thing is, without banelings the zerglings won't be able to do anything against your forcefields. As soon as you scout a baneling nest research Blink quickly and micro out of it.
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Disclaimer: ~1k ML Protoss
What you're basically trying to achieve is to get your important units out of the way - Its okay to trade some Stalkers for some Banelings (Note: the word "some" is important in that matter), but its absolutely not okay to get your Sentries or Colossus bombed to the stone age.
There are basically two different scenarios:
1. You are stuck on Stalker/Sentry/Colossus/Immortal for whatever reason and have to deal with his army the hard way
2. You scouted his Infestation Pit and eventually his Baneling Nest, so you tech switched out of colossus into Zealot/Stalker/Templar/Archon with heavy upgrades
As Scenario two is self explanatory I'm only referring to scenario 1:
As soon as the Zerg is approaching me with whatever ground army he has + Overlords, I'm instantly sending my sentries and Colossus back without slamming some FFs on the ground - as soon as my Sentries are behind my Stalkers I'm casting FFs to cut the engaged Zerg Army off, catching 1/4 of them on my side - the times where I haven't done that the Zerg has always backed away - disgusting!
From here on everything else comes solely down to Stalker Micro as mentioned above - if you have blink, great - split away! If you dont have it stutter step your stalkers backwards for as long as possible to kill either parts of his army or a couple of overlords. When you're running out of running space you should try to box a couple of your Stalkers (4-5) and try to split them that way similar as terrans are splitting their marines against Banelings (That requires a lot of APM, don't worry if you're only able to split up bigger stalker groups, its fine).
As already mentioned its nearly impossible to kill every overlord and all the banelings, so you'll inevitably get some of the Banes into your face. Two options:
1. The Zerg starts to unload his (Speed)Banes as soon as he realizes that you're trying to kite him - Try to FF!
2. He keeps on flying and drops them onto your Stalkers as soon as you're running out of space. Well, now it only matters if you've splitted them up well enough ^^
tl;dr
* FF off the most part of the Zerg army (So he loses at least some units when he's backing off)
* Immediatly send your fragile units (Like HTs/Coloss/Sentries) back while your Stalkers stay
* Stupper Step your Stalkers backwards, firing either on units or Overlords
* Split your Stalkers as soon as you're running out of space to kite
* If hes unloading Banelings far enough from your stalkers - FF!
* Take the rest of the Banelings like a champ
(Note: If you get fungal'd while trying to retreat give that guy a "gg wp" before you leave the game and try to add HTs quicker and scout more actively if and when he's getting Infestors 
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On May 29 2011 03:00 Felo wrote:(Note: If you get fungal'd while trying to retreat give that guy a "gg wp" before you leave the game and try to add HTs quicker and scout more actively if and when he's getting Infestors
Hehe, that's basically it. It's a very strong strat for sure..
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I've been having troubles with baneling drops as well. I guess the things to do are these:
Fight in open areas where you can spread your army. If he has infestors, spread before they show up or snipe them with colossi. If you know he is going for baneling drops, spread your army even when it is idle so he can't sneak in fungals and then drop. As people mentioned, spread the colossi a bit as well so they don't get hit by the same banelings.
Fight in smaller areas IF you can force field away the ground army, enabling you to kite/snipe the overlords before engaging the main army. Obviously this won't work if he has ultralisks.
Always get blink.
And I guess that's it. For army composition, I assume the standard Stalker/Colossus/a few sentries works best. Some people tend to suggest throwing in an immortal or two since it takes a ridiculous amount of banelings to get through Hardened Shiels. But then you will have a smaller colossus count so I'm not sure if it's worth it. Might be worth trying though.
The first few times I faced it I had no idea what to do, but after facing it quite a few times on ladder now, it's becoming a lot of fun playing against since you have to micro a lot more and think about where you engage.
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This is undoubtedly one of the harder strats to deal with as protoss. What I see pros do, and I try to do (sometimes successfully) is forcefield the zerg army completely out of the picture and studder step backwards as best as possible to where you are hitting the baneligns and the overlords with your army only and try to blink stalkers into a line/arc formation as opposed to a ball. Sentries move so darn slow they usually die it seems like, and its hard to prevent that, so I just try to forcefield two walls (keeping the banelings between your created walls as they drop)
The bright side is if you can take down all these banelings and the overlords you potentially supply block the zerg, and it will be a while before you can expect another wave of bane bombs. In a best case scenario the zerg will be supply blocked and if you save the majority of your stalkers and collosus so you can warp in another round of whatever units you are lacking and push...
The two units I suggest to try and absorb damage are immortals and archons... Immortals in particular are good to have a few of since they take 10 shots before their shield falls that is a very effecient trade for you. These units are also larger in diameter so fewer units get hit in the splash. If you can handle the apm I would actually put your immortals forward a bit while studder stepping the rest of your army backwards.
Its incredibly difficult to make hallucinated units in the thick of battle, but if you can scout the drop coming in time to prep some hallucinated immortals, archons, or collosus that can really be a good strategy too.
I wish there was a better way to take overlords down, but sheesh they take alot of damage.
In essence the short version of how to deal with this is creating a couple artificial walls with forcefields and studder stepping the best you can.
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As already said, FF the main army out and just dodge the drops. Think about why zerg would do this in the first place: it's directly because of your FF that he can't run banelings in effectively, so of course the drops are meant to damage your units without allowing you to kill the banelings at a distance. FF out his main army and just micro up the blings. It's more frustrating on the zerg's end to get FF'd to the max (no possible micro can deal with massive FF) whereas you can deal with micro-able situations such as bomb drops.
Move your colossi significantly away from your units when you see the incoming drop. FF his main army out from engagement range for those few seconds to buy time. Once the drops occur, micro your units while the colossi focus the blings so all your stalkers/sentries don't get hit by the splash damage.
The most important thing is to make the zerg player initiate the baneling drop in your advantage through positioning. You want to have the most space possible on your side of the field that will allow you to dodge the baneling drops while being able to FF out the zerg army as much as possible as well. Keep in mind, in open fields it's easier to dodge the baneling drops, but it's also easier for the zerg main army to get through.
edit: In your rep you let him engage you with fungal. That's already gg if you can't micro your units away.
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Call me a noob but when I see zerg start making banelings I stop making sentries. Leave 1/2 with the army for GS and maybe a couple FFs, keep the rest well out of harm's way and hallucinate some archons or immortals to soak damage.
Works a little nicer if you don't use DTs, meaning he won't have overseers to spot which units are hallucinated. Even if he does tho, his units will still get stalled up which is nice to buy you a little time to deal with the bane drop.
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EPT
