PvZ--How do you beat baneling/speedling?

Protoss players--how do you beat the baneling/speedling combo? Thankfully, I haven't seen this too often, but every time I have, I've lost.

What beats banelings? I assumed they were an anti-zealot unit, but stalkers don't fare much better. Plus, when you mix in speedlings, the stalkers are toast.

The only success I have had is in throwing 1 zealot out to try to absorb all of the damage, but I think this strategy would only work against someone who didn't micro them. Am I missing something?

 

add photon cannon and block your ramp wwith 2 gates or 1 gate and a forge.

 

siege tanks are pretty good i guess

 

Sentries are easy to micro and combined with stalkers make short work of banelings and zerglings. Also, getting a single attack upgrade makes zealots kill lings in two hits instead of three, which is a big deal. If you're getting cannons anyway it makes sense to make use of the forge

 

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I appreciate the feedback. I am going to push back, though, because I don't see how any of these ideas will work.

I understand that the +1 zealot attack is a huge boost against the lings--that was a favorite strategy of mine in BW. But +1 attack doesn't help me when my zealots have been decimated by the banelings. My questions for this counter are:

1. How does the timing work? Will I be able to get +1 zealots before I am overrun? Have you tried this counter with success in an actual game? In what league?
2. If I get +1 zealots, how am I going to handle the banelings?

I like the sentry suggestion because my gut tells me the answer is there. I just don't know what it looks like. I don't play zerg, but if I did, and I brought speedlings/banelings on zealot/sentry/stalker, I think I would bring the speedlings in first to surround the stalkers/sentries, and then bring in the banelings to take out the zealots. Once the zealots are down, the speedlings will finish off the stalkers/sentries without any problems. If I am the Protoss player in this scenario, what is my micro strategy?

Blocking the choke with my buildings and a couple of cannons may keep the attack away, but what do I do if he expands? Cannons aren't helping me there. Am I screwed?

How does the baneling attack work? (I have never played zerg in SC2.) Do they work like scourges from BW, where you just hit "a" and they kamikaze into whatever is closest, or do you hit "e" to explode them when you want to?

 

build a void ray., or use collosus with range 11 along with zealots to just soak damedge

 

You have a few options, but against a dedicated speedling/baneling build collosi are your direct defensive counter.

Banelings actually aren't that great against stalkers, but speedlings will destroy them. And as you noted, the banelings soften up your zealots a lot.

Choking off your ramp can help keep them out until you get collosi, but just choking it off won't save you in the long run. Banelings are also anti-structure and the zerg player will just use a few to open up your "choke" and then flood the speedlings in.

You can also use sentries forcefield to buy some time/do some damage, but you need to be careful how to do it. If you just block out his units, he will simply fall back right away until the ff drops. It won't take that long until either you run out of mana, or miss one of his rushes back in and he gets inside.

What you WANT to do is trap a half-dozen of his units on your side of the force field, so you can pick off his army a bit at a time and make him fall back (hopefully).

Still, if it is a committed speed/baneling build and well timed attack, my experience is relying on sentry blockades alone won't pick off enough units to prevent him from overwhelming you.

Banelings do non-friendly fire splash damage. They are like ground-based scourges from BW (will detonate on first target if told to attack move or something gets close, or can be given a specific target to go explode on), except they can also be manually detonated at will using "e". The advantage of that are two fold:

1) if you are trying to focus fire down a baneling before it reaches its target, but it is already withing the outer AoE range, the zerg can detonate it to do some damage; and,

2) They can be detonated while burrowed, thus turning them into effective land mines.

A disadvantage of banelings it they do not have very intelligent AI. Thus it is often possible to force multiple unattended/controlled banelings (or poorly controlled banelings, e.g. attack-moving an entire group of them without assigning targets) to detonate on a single target.

 

the simple and elegant solution is to just have sentries early on.

What you do is have a mix of sentries, zealots and stalkers (enough sentries to give you a good amount of force fiends (less if on D more if moving out) enough zealots to juuust handle the zerglings and the rest of the way go stalkers.)

Once you have your army ready, and you see them going in, trap his banelings on your ramp once they are near the top block it off and have your stalkers fire away. Repeat untill there are no more enemies and you are good to go.

Then scout and transition as you see fit

 

Just signed up, but already reading a lot of these strat. threads.

I play Terran, so I know nothing about a PvZ matchup, but I played Protoss a bit before, so my 0.02 would be..

Chock the entrance -1 tile, sit a single zealot in the 1tile, and pump out zealot replacements/stalkers behind him, send in a new zealot to block everytime the single one gets low, and let your stalkers handle any harass to your buildings at the choke by zerglings. That would be my first guess about how to micro it. Then macro wise, tech up to colossi asap behind that wall, because he'll be sitting low and with nothing but mass t1 bio units for you to eat up.

 

this is what i initially thought would work but banelings will just blow up your building in the choke and create a bigger opening.

the only way i can see is to use your sentries and forcefield to split their army into smaller groups so they are easier to handle.

colossus with upgraded range

void ray or even phoenix

 

Sentries with force field early, Colossus late. If you get enough Stalkers, Blink also works great. Stalkers actually stand up fairly well to Zerglings and Banelings if you get Blink and especially if you get +1 armor upgrade. Stalkers already have natural +1 armor and most Zerg players will upgrade their carapace rather than armor. You can easily out-armor Zergling/Baneling especially w/ a few Colossus thrown into the mix if they pursue that build late into the game.

Void Ray is not a good "counter" IMO to tons of zergling/baneling because then it is just a base race. Void rays don't kill zerglings fast enough since the void's attack charges best off a big hp unit.