Improving Stukov: Infested Banshee (2 Pitches)

Some people requested that Infested Banshee should be improved.
I thought that they were fine as tanky and fast regenerating Anti ground air unit.
Surprisingly lot of people agrees that they need improvement. I asked the same question in a Korean Website Playxp, and 10 replies came up in 24 hours (which is a lot).

So how does one improve infested banshee?
I considered giving them a splash damage or a spawning an infested terran but I don’t want to make them too redundant.
And I don’t think they should be given an Anti Air either because they have to keep their anti ground theme as Banshees.

Can you give me suggestions how to improve them? Thank you.

1st Pitch, Tanky Snipers

More effective “Tanky Snipers”
Link: Starcraft 2 Stukov Improvement: Infested Banshee - YouTube (Be uploaded in 3:50 Brisbane time)
This is practically an improved version of what I think of the Infested Banshees.

  1. Rapid Hibernation now gives Infested Banshee to move while burrowed. it is quite useful to move around while regenerating as well as quickly running away from while healing.
  2. Braced Exoskeleton now coats Backlash rockets to deal 50% damage to armoured targets. It also increases +3 vs armoured units with each Weapon upgrade.

Result
They are now highly suitable to snipe powerful ground units behind army of the infested (Which I thought it was their main purpose).

2nd Pitch, Plague Terrors (Updated)

Infested Banshees into “Plague Terrors”
Link: Starcraft 2 Stukov Improvement: Plague Banshee (Part 2) - YouTube
Basically I gave the Infested Banshees the weapon of cloud plague which damages enemies over time.

  1. Plague Cloud Weapons are spells and cannot be mitigated by any means. These clouds are quite wide and effective crowd controllers.
  2. They emits clouds of stackable virus when they have Rapid Hibernation. They can make a strangely useful defense mechanism against enemies while burrowing (although not very effective).

Result
They are now highly suitable against multiple units. Although this idea was conceived from miscommunication and deviates very far away from original concept, I think the result has some promise.

Ok. Return old damage values before the nerf to them. That’s a start. Apocalysk from 3 : 30 again could be ok for Stukov too but it’s not the topic. If you are saying they are fine I bet you don’t play stukov alot. Play him as main commander for while and only then you are able to assume something about good are banshees for you or not. Because now even if you get suggestions, your personal opinion about banshee will twist the ending decision because you can’t decide which proposition is good, overpowered or non-impactful, by the reason you don’t have an image how banshee work, in your head right now, and it won’t appear from discussing topic because i personally, and many people stated that banshee is a very small niche (some people even exaggregate that banshee are useless) and you still don’t believe this people. So i suggest you to try this banshee yourself and get an image of how they perform in practice.

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The video looks fine. Even with only burrow movement, banshees will become much more useful.

The damage buff seem unnecessary, as their main issue isn’t damage but over damage due to projectile missiles.

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Thank you, just what I was aiming for. I hope moving while burrow can maximise their regen potential.

You don’t like it? They demolish armoured units as well as buildings much better.
I figured that since other Banshees have splash weapons, Infested Banshee can have a hard hitting weapon against single target.
I got the idea from LotV where you have to choose Colossus/Reaver(splashers)/Warwalker(hardhitter).

My main issue with Infested Banshees is they take too long to produce for what they do and the costs are a bit off. If I were able to adjust the production values, it would look like this for the unit’s current state:

Minerals: 150 > 125
Gas: 100 > 75
Build Time: 43 > 32

Maybe if they revert some of those nerfs then the price can go back to where it was, but the build time decrease needs to be the same.

How about…

  • Movement speed (Perhaps try the Hyperflight Rotors upgrade from ladder, while only enabled when cloaked)

  • Attack-twist

  • Deep Tunnel with something tentacle related (Maybe, just maybe like Lurking Arm).

Based on what I saw, they kill some objectives too well.

Given that they move while burrowed and can regenerate very very well already. It isn’t difficult to mass and snipe. I feel this will put them into a “too good” a position for most brutal games.

I don’t think the other suggestions are unreasonable. However, I feel we also don’t have to make everything fancy for it to work well. Simple changes often are effective and easy to implement. This simple burrow movement alone would allow higher micro potential to both save and attack with Infested Banshees.

Let your banshees fight 50 fully/upgraded marines with detection or a brutal wave and u will start to get an understanding about its issue.

Its damage and attack range were never the issue in the first place so your proposal is misguided.

I generally only ever use a ranged unit if they have
_ splash damage or
_ high-speed projectiles (marines are a good example) or
_ a way to redirect the projectiles or
_ at least extremely durable for its cost (dragoon is one example)

To me, this is literally the opposite of understanding the issue.

Infested Banshees are not designed to deal with mass low HP units. Moreover, no real Stukov player who’s worth anything would ever use Infested Banshees without any Infested Civilians as support. And moreover, not all units needs to be splash capable to function.

Know the strengths of your units/commander is a basic concept. It is no different than a Raynor player who rains down nothing but Marines. Does it work? Sure, but is it efficient against splash? Of course not. That’s why, in this example, said Raynor would/should use more Marauders/Firebats to tank that splash.

So in that same token, to make nothing but Infested Banshees against a pure AirComp or Swarmy, etc. without appropriate support is just asking to have a bad time.


The goal to bringing any niche builds to light isn’t to “make them the almighty powerful go to build that covers all maps/comps”, it is to allow them to function with appropriate compliment that is available within the commander’s tool kit. To me, this is no different than making Infested Diamondbacks without using any Infested Civilians… Can you? Sure. Should you? Well no, why would you leave free tanking units (with splash units) at home for no reason, and let your DBs tank unnecessary damage?

The issue with Banshee is the more enemies they have to deal with the worse they perform, not because they are designed to counter this or that unit. Any late game attack wave will always have more than 10 enemies. Therefore, unit that is expensive and too prone to overkill is not good against more 10 targets. So it’s not about banshee being weak against group of weak units, it’s more about banshee being unable to effectively deal with large attack wave which is every waves pass 15 min mark.

And yes, not every unit need to have splash attack. I didn’t even suggest splash at all. How you came up with that assumption is beyond me.

Now no Stukov attack with only banshee but a group of banshee ain’t cheap so at the bare minimum they should worth their pay price and not just being there snipping 5 or 8 units while Your marines kills 20 of those and contribute the most damage.

They were designed to be good snipers against hybrid or big ground units but even in this regard they are lacking behind. I feel extremely uncomfortable with their damage:supply cost ratio. They are tanky and long range but it is not enough to justify their overall cost. It is also very weird when i paid 2000 gas and up to 60 supply for 20 banshees that need marines to babysit them because they can’t kill a ground wave fast enough before the enemies evaporate a portion of my base.

I still use them because what else does Stukov have that can shoot down from the air? Queen? Good luck spamming those spells when they ran out of energy.

Yet, both r viable despite ur bias.

This is about how to improve them… and nobody is disputing their cost effectiveness. So no need to get so uptight just cuz u used a crappy example and was pointed out. Yeah?

If it is viable, then it is no longer need any further improvement.

It is only requiring improvement if it is not working effectively which is the opposite of viable.

Stukov doesn’t have anything except banshee to shoot down that’s why i use it ‘cause air unit does not take space in the ground and autoattack requires less micro than manual target spell. No where in this sentence do i said queen isn’t viable stop imagine your fiction and accuse people of thing that isn’t their.

That list have an “or” at the end of every bullet head and it is one of the characteristics of what i see as good ranged units.

I think i should ignore your comments from this point on. Apparently the rest of this forum know how hypocrite and troll you are.

Facepalm. Alright buddy. You do you.

Here we see yet another example of sensitivity to the max, who would rather debate about how perfectly he/she summed up (or understands) Stukov, rather than provide anything useful as solution to change.

Just to clarify all this. All I said was your example to portray Infested Banshee is inappropriate. Pitting a unit against their worst match up, in the context of change for the better, isn’t right. There is no need to start to call me trolling and get this upset over it lmao.

Lot of people thought so including from other forum.

So you are preferring Infested Banshees to deal with mutliple enemies yes? I’ll run an experiement later.

What FearrWhalin says here is correct and I agree that Banshees are probably meant to be snipers than crowd control but at this point when lot of people are demanding revamp of Infested Banshee, any measure of experiment is worthy (anything in susceptible range).

I have noted Cerebrate’s opinion on Infested Banshee having more power to deal with multiple enemies.
I will upload the result later.

And guys please relax.

For the 2nd time, i did not suggest splash damage for infested banshee. I suggested there is something done to infested banshee so that its overkill issue is mitigated.

Splash = countering mass of weak units

I did not suggest that infested need to counter a swarm of weak unit.

I posted for like 4, 5 comments and i still don’t understand why you keep referring to splash as if i am suggesting that.

I didn’t suggest splash at all because that would in turn make infested banshee into raynor banshee.

I said banshee perform worse the more enemies it has to deal with because its projectiles are slow. Thus, it is prone to overkill. Having 5 banshee or 50 banshees would be almost meaningless if all of their missiles target the same 10 units. Units with fast projectiles can mitigate this “overkill” issue because the missiles reach the target faster and kill it so other banshees can find a different instead of wasting it on that same dying unit.

Splash to mitigate overkill because even if it attack the same target, enemies surround it will get damage too but Splash isn’t the only thing.

Fast attack speed can help a little.

But more importantly fast projectiles can help and it especially beneficial when inf banshee has long range.

You can raise the damage or the range if all of their missiles target the same units, it means nothing.

Currently even without your damage and the range buff, inf banshee can be amassed and they did a superb job at sniping already but they are terrible to fight against even normal attack wave because they overkill far too often.

I don’t want them to counter mass of unit

I want them to deal better against mass of unit

Doing better =/= countering

That’s the issue i saw with inf banshee.

But you don’t have to do it exactly

These… are my thought. You take what you like. You leave what you don’t like.

I saw you overlook their Overkill issue so i popped in and told you that your fix ain’t addressing their problem. I made my general preference on how to turn them into good ranged unit. It is just my preference on what a good ranged unit is, it is not how to fix inf banshee. You can do it differently. You started this topic. I have no power to tell you what you should or shouldn’t but i will tell you that I don’t think your fix will fix it.

The guy i were arguing with mistook that and accused me of wanting to give inf banshee splash. Whatever he assumed about my opinion, you can forget because that’s what he thought about me, not what I actually said and wanted.

Ummm what? How exactly does any unit suppose to achieve this extremely confusing goal? What is better? You keep saying you don’t want splash but the only other way to remotely achieve that is exactly as you suggested:

But I mean you can’t really expect Infested Banshees to attack like Infested Marines while doing their high damage?

It’s just weirdly confusing…

Cerebrate, it’s my fault that I replied without reading the entire replies that you wrote in this post but I was confused about what you first said.

These two opinion was enough to imply you wanted IB to have better crowd control than sniping. I am at fault but FearrWhalins was of course confused because he/she was the one who replied to you firstly.
And understand that my mind was mixed because lot of people asked for splash damage and I mistook you for one.

But in actuality you wanted avoid them to go for overkill and wanted some improvement to justify their overall cost yes?
If you want so, fixing “IB to target others instead of one target at a time” is simple.

  • Increase Scan Range
  • Tick of Weapon Option to tick on “Continuously Scan” And
    This make them do better against multiple target

FearWhalins speculations are correct on IB.

  1. As he/she said IB is supposed to fight with Infested along side with them as that is the main battle tactic for Stukov. And besides they are “snipers” not attackers. They are more suitable to Cover OP to snipe vital units.

  2. In the Editor, the Weapon of Banshees are strictly designed to be Snipers not attackers. When I applied normal weapon setting for the IB, they attacked like any other units by targetting multiple enemies individually.
    So the Developers “intended” for them to be snipers, and they are very strict about that. Therefore, IB are not designed to deal with mass low HP units

But I do agree that IB shouldn’t attack one target at a time.

I took these into consideration but in the end, I couldn’t think of any better way than improving their armour damage Like I did with the first draft.

Apparently you two share the sentiment that damage increase is unnecessary.
Maybe +2 or 3 range would do better as sniper?

He/she put it in the confusing way first but later clarified that IB should attack enemies “evenly” not against “a single target” to avoid overkill.
Hope that I put it right.

Second Draft of the Infested Banshee is Completed. They are called Plague Banshees and are more geared to Crowd Control.
(The video will be uploaded in 4 mintues or 7:28 Brisbane time).

Actually, I have a qualms about Infested Liberators’ resources prices their performance isn’t too good for their price.

They are pricey, but they don’t die anywhere near as fast as the Banshees and when you do have a handful of them they kill stuff rather quickly.