Banshees are Way too powerful!

[Typhon]

holy crap.
Banshees are insane.

just plays as toss vs them.
I had sentries and Stalkers. Couldnt stop them.

What do you guy sthing?

all he did was mass bansees and i saw that so i built stalkers and sentries... still lost.

Shouldnt stalkers be good against them

[Aryxymaraki]

I tend to fight off banshees with Void Rays as toss.

The banshees can't fight back, and I'm pretty sure they're armored so the void rays do bonus damage.

[Shinosai]

You can get way more stalkers than banshees. Chances are he just had a bigger army than you. BCs are a different story.

[Typhon]

i think its just that Stalkers really suck.

i hate them, but for some reason i need them.

[Nolnemesis]

1 phoenix will scare away all banshees because banshees cannot attack air. They do alot of damage though, yes.

[Gokanjin]

I tend to fight off banshees with Void Rays as toss.

The banshees can't fight back, and I'm pretty sure they're armored so the void rays do bonus damage.

They're actually light armored units, Phoenixes works better against them and can outrun a banshee.

[Spi]

it's not that banshee are TOO strong. They are a bit unbalanced. But the truth is that STALKERS just STINK!

I had a game against terran. Me three nexus. He was two CC. Guess who won? BANSHEE + viking
I had a few void rays. quite many phoenixes. and a lot of STALKERS WITH SENTRY. But u see.
u can stack banshee and shot hit and stalker dead. With Korean micro they can kill all the stalkers without losing any banshee. It's like muta with guardian range killing marines without medics.

[Shinosai]

it's not that banshee are TOO strong. They are a bit unbalanced. But the truth is that STALKERS just STINK!

I had a game against terran. Me three nexus. He was two CC. Guess who won? BANSHEE + viking
I had a few void rays. quite many phoenixes. and a lot of STALKERS WITH SENTRY. But u see.
u can stack banshee and shot hit and stalker dead. With Korean micro they can kill all the stalkers without losing any banshee. It's like muta with guardian range killing marines without medics.

Have you tried using blink?

[Spi]

Have you tried using blink?

Of course man.... Also my micro was not bad, Given that we had to fight next to my nexus and those Banshees can destroy all my probes if my stalkers run.

[Spi]

holy crap.
Banshees are insane.

just plays as toss vs them.
I had sentries and Stalkers. Couldnt stop them.

What do you guy sthing?

all he did was mass bansees and i saw that so i built stalkers and sentries... still lost.

Shouldnt stalkers be good against them

Decreasing the range and damage just a little will be good.

[Enraged]

Decreasing the range and damage just a little will be good.


Had some problems with banshees as toss. I was building pheonix + stalker to counter them but the cloak made it real easy for him to take my stalkers out. The range on them makes it so they can snipe all of your pylons and deactivate cannons + observers are really damn slow.

Any other tips?

[Primoris]

banshees are powerful, certainly not "too" powerful since they are easily countered, especially since both toss and zerg have pretty easy ways to counter their cloak ability. I find them most effective in a surprise banshee rush. If i see a toss going templars early and skipping robotics i will get 4 banshes and harass econ, knock out key pylons if they didn't cover themselves properly. Its highly effective, but requires good scouting. Against terran they are harder to counter but they won't outright win it for you since most terran structures can lift off and negate the attack. But if you force that and have a ground force capable of staving off theirs then its a win.

[Code]

holy crap.
Banshees are insane.

just plays as toss vs them.
I had sentries and Stalkers. Couldnt stop them.

What do you guy sthing?

all he did was mass bansees and i saw that so i built stalkers and sentries... still lost.

Shouldnt stalkers be good against them
hey have you noticed that banshees are AtG only??
hmm let's think what is air and has AtA....O I KNOW, the phoenix!

[Comtrav]

Not a "Banshees are too powerful" problem, this is a "Protoss AA sucks" problem.

[Jpgreatone]

Proper scouting and stalkers stop banshees cold in its tracks.

If you fail to spot a banshee rush you got no one to blame but yourself. You technically can build observers just as fast as banshees

[Chung]

I play Terran, p9 right now I think.

I always go banshees against Protoss. What the OP said is spot on. Stalkers and void rays will not deal bonus damage to banshees, they are light.

You say phoenix but you're not going to want to make this commitment because if they rush with marauders, you will lose without an immortal out. So you have to scout first. The earliest you can get an observer in your opponent's base is about 5:30. I can get my two banshees out at 7:00. Meaning, you needed a phoenix 15 seconds ago. Two hits (actually four hits since banshees attack with two projectiles at a time) kills a probe. Half your probes are now dead. Your phoenix is out but I scouted your stargate and have two vikings at this point. Believe it or not, this describes about 90% of my TvP matches.

Now, if you take a chance and go straight for a phoenix, you have a good chance at defeating fast banshee Terran. But remember Terran can scout your base, either by worker (most Protoss don't wall off) or by comsat. If I comsat an early stargate, I don't need to bother building banshees, I will just build marauders and we all know what happens with zealots and stalkers (and a lone phoenix) against M2. You can get a phoenix out by 5:30, I can get 10 marauders plus 15+ marines with stimpack before you can get your first immortal out AFTER a phoenix.

Alternatively, you can just go immortal and get a timing for a rush. Earliest you can get an immortal is about 6 minute mark. On small maps, you can realistic push in through their barricade before the first banshees are out. But good luck trying to down two banshee with 20 SCVs repairing them with anemic Protoss AA after you break their defenses. On larger maps you're simply out of luck. Your best bet is sacrificing your ground game to get a phoenix out while they're trying to kill stuff in the Terran base. Now if I rush with marines, marauders, and banshees with repair SCVs you're out of luck. This is like nearly the other 10% of my TvP matches.

I've analyzed a lot of replays, and there's no way one can beat fast banshees unless the Protoss outplays me severely. Photon cannons are too much investment, stalkers don't do enough damage, sentries can't take enough damage. Terran will always be able to change their infrastructure to M3 on the fly (fast banshees is very light on minerals, so you build extra barracks while building banshees), while you won't.

My best sparring partner plays Protoss. The only way he beats me is with either 1) 6 minute fast immortal or 2) teching straight to stargate, and pretty much throwing the game if I rush with M2 instead.

My suggestion? 1) Cheaper or faster stargate or 2) either sentries or stalkers need a very slight AA buff. I think that might fix the problem or maybe cause other problems, at any rate, they're pure speculation.

[lee]

Banshees are one of the highest tech units in the terran army, requiring the same time to tech up to Thors and almost as much time as a BC (the same amount previously since their cloak req. a fusion core.

my point being that any player who goes all banshee needs to put all of his effort into it, and any player who scouts and correspondingly builds air to air (or even better air to both) will easily defeat a banshee using player.

[Chung]

I forgot to add, building stalkers is what Protoss will sometimes try to do. This doesn't work very well in practice, even with blink researched. First of all, banshees are way stronger than stalkers, AND stalkers are much slower. That means I can suspend your army indefinitely and maybe even hurt your infrastructure with a sizable banshee force. I can easily match your stalkers 2 to 1. And as soon as your stalkers leave, I can kill all your workers in 30 seconds. And let's not forget comsat/viking observer snipe and cloaking as you let my banshees accumulate. A fast banshee build is mineral light so I can expand early, and you can't attack me.

But you are right, maybe it is the right answer. By taking the game longer, you allow your advantages and my mistakes to accumulate--provided you are the better player. At any rate, fast banshees will still put Protoss at a distinct disadvantage early game no matter what they do.

[Chung]

Banshees are one of the highest tech units in the terran army, requiring the same time to tech up to Thors and almost as much time as a BC (the same amount previously since their cloak req. a fusion core.

my point being that any player who goes all banshee needs to put all of his effort into it, and any player who scouts and correspondingly builds air to air (or even better air to both) will easily defeat a banshee using player.

Those things are all true. However, Protoss can't scout Terran until observer comes out. Fastest a Protoss can scout Terran base is at 5:30 on most maps, and stargate takes 60 seconds. I have looked at lots of replays, most of them my own but also of other TvP, and it's difficult to prepare against banshees.

And by the way, barracks, factory, starport, tech lab is 195 seconds. Gateway, cybernetics core, robotics facility is 180 seconds. Banshee tech is ROUGHLY on par with immortals or phoenixes. Except Protoss doesn't know if you're teching or not until 5:30.

[Lendari]

Is this really about banshees being OP or about the general lack of early-game anti-air for zerg and protoss?

[Mnijykmirl]

Stalkers to 8 damage vs. Banshees. Banshees are light, Stalkers do more damage against armored. Sentries have obvious restrictions as a support unit. Try using Phoenix.

[Gokanjin]

Psi storms and stalkers. It essentially comes down to micro.

[Shrapnel]

Psi storms and stalkers. It essentially comes down to micro.

Feedback works too, depending on how long they've been around you can do some strong damage to them with it. Granted psi storm is better, but for cleaning up the remaining/retreating forces feedback can be terrific. Also Sentys do bonus damage to light and have very nice range as well as guardian shield. Still Banshees are a bit hard to deal with as Protoss, but like most things scouting is important, knowing they're coming can be a great help.

Now good use of Banshees + a couple vikings with a Raven would be difficult to counter as they could just snipe your observers and use turrets to mess with you. Still feedback would rock the Raven. As well.

But all that tech isn't cheap or fast, it wouldn't be a rush really and you'd have time to prepare for it.

[Idkanything]

Banshee's abilities are VERY map dependant

They cannot "stand and fight" they require quite a bit of micro and they're not really all that strong (defensively - offensively holy @%@% they tear things up)

basically 2 stalkers >> 1 banshee. 2 banshee + correct terrain > 4 stalkers. Its a strange ramp up effect of banshees but stalkers do hold their own pretty well.

Plus if the terran player has devoted to going banshees (particularly quickly) he'll be pretty much weak as hell otherwise. Thats usually a good time to counter rush with any sort of ground force and kill just about everything he has.

Oh and phoenixes counter banshees since banshee's are light armor type

[Stratosspear]

Decreasing the range and damage just a little will be good.

Make Stalkers good against air instead.

[Shadowmaim]

I think banshee's are fine. Its one of the only units terran can make to counter collosus. If you know they are going banshee, just make some Phoenix and use them to pickoff other ground forces the terran have in the meantime. It forces the terran to make something else besides banshee also.

[ghost]

I just got out of a game playing as Toss against a Terran that went Banshees. I decided to counter with High Templar. I wasn't counting on storm however, I used Feedback instead. Holy crap it worked great. I only needed 3-4 HT to Feedback his entire force of Banshees (6-8). They all exploded in mid-air and he was like WTF. Smartcasting with a group of HT and just hold shift and click on each of the banshees while after hitting the F key for feedback. They have a range of 9 for that spell, so he almost didn't even see what got him. I had observers to give me sight of course. There were a few banshees left, but I had enough Stalkers and Sentry to deal with them... not to mention a few Archon in the oven after the HT served their purpose.

[ghost]

Psi storms and stalkers. It essentially comes down to micro.

Forget Psi Storm, use FeedBack instead. Unless you see they are all out of energy, then proceede with Storm. Each HT can take out 4 Banshees if they are good on energy. FeedBack only costs 50 energy to cast.

[Munashiimaru]

holy crap.
Banshees are insane.

just plays as toss vs them.
I had sentries and Stalkers. Couldnt stop them.

What do you guy sthing?

all he did was mass bansees and i saw that so i built stalkers and sentries... still lost.

Shouldnt stalkers be good against them

You mean to say stalkers an anti-armored unit isn't good vs light units?! Say it ain't so! Sentries are better vs light units, but really pheonixes are tosses counter to light air. They do particularly well vs banshees too. Stalkers suck in general though even vs armored units so I can kind of see where you're coming from; it has more to do with stalkers being bad than banshees being too good though. Try using banshees vs mass hydra or marines and see how it works out.

All the PvT games I've played involving either me going banshees or my enemy going them, The observer usually arrives just as the first banshees are coming out. It's pretty easy to throw up some cannons to hold them off till I can get a stargate up.