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I'm just a lowly gold, but when I watch high level ZvP streams, it's frequently a Roach/Hydra/Corrupter mix vs a Stalker/Sentry/Collosi ball w/ an obs overhead. The toss ball very frequently wins by trapping the zerg with tons of forcefields, and killing the corrupters w/ stalkers or even Void Rays.
The Zerg usually has burrow, but that's nullified by the obs.
Time for some theorycraft.
What if the zerg brought along an overseer to kill the observer w/ the corrupters as soon as the engagement begins? When the million forcefields come down, forcing the Zerg army into a terrible position, the Zerg can burrow, pull back the corrupters, reinforce, and wait out the forcefields. If you have tunneling claws, you can even close the distance to point-blank to take down the Collosi even faster.
So yeah. Why not bring an overseer? Seems like a 100 gas investment to help negate the terrible power of the forcefield would be a good idea.
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Yeah I always wonder why Zerg players don't get an overseer for their armies. Especially since Protoss like to have an observer watching their army many times
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Its not really not "bad" to bring one, but its situational.
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Well, it's 150 mins, 100 gas, 8 supply and a lot of time traded for 50 mins 100 gas of an observer, plus the observer is permacloaked. There are definitely disadvantages for swapping them 1 to 1.
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It's really hard to snipe the observer if the toss keeps it in the back. It's also hard to target fire it, since corruptors won't autofire it if there are collossi around. Also overseers can be counter-sniped if you get too aggressive looking for a defensive observer. But I do think zerg players should try it - burrow is, IMO, underused and could completly change the PvZ game.
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you can, but your army moves much faster than your overseer usually (although this situation should work fine), so its harder to have it in battle with you.
also, the overseer isn't cloaked, and is thus very easily sniped and you effectively haven't achieved anything with it.
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Zerg needs every bit of gas.
Could lose overseer before observer goes down.
You can bring one if you want. Not a bad idea.
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Theorycraft answers:
Overseer w/ speed upgrade can definately keep up.
If you go primarily Roach, you'll have some extra gas.
Sniping will be hard, but Corrupters can take some punishment to get to it. You won't need so many corrupters if the roaches can close the distance to the Collosi and target fire, something they can't do if there are forcefields.
This is late game stuff only. 8 supply and 100 gas should not break a Zerg that should be on 4 base. I'm sure all of us know how meaningless the Zerg econ advantage is once the Toss gets up enough Colossi and sentry energy.
Plus, as Machine just said in Bitter's stream, if you kill the obs, you tie up their Collosi production for a bit. That's a plus.
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They're assuming the Overseer will get sniped every single time, I suppose.
Zerg players should definitely do this, especially since many Protoss get kind of careless with Observers grouped into their main army and even if they try to micro it away, a shot from the Corruptor ball will take it down in an instant.
Also, matters of 1 to 1 cost viability matter very little if losing some gas means winning an encounter you would have otherwise been crushed by.
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Even if the observer is not sniped it is beneficial to burrow move the roaches to a safe place. This will put the battle on hold until the force fields wear off. Doing this repeatedly decreases your Roach count, but sentry energy goes down even more dramatically. You can do war of attrition with toss like this and you are eventually in a situation where Toss has no energy to forcefield giving you a huge advantage.
Hydras rarely get caught in the forcefield since they have a range of 6. Only Roaches get stuck behind the forcefields, so burrow movement is very important.
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It never made much sense to me when Zerg never brings out a Overseer with their army out. It baffles me even more when a Terran player stubbornly refuses to get a Raven and instead insists on using scans (which means a loss in mineral income).
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On January 14 2011 09:24 Harbinger631 wrote:
I'm just a lowly gold, but when I watch high level ZvP streams, it's frequently a Roach/Hydra/Corrupter mix vs a Stalker/Sentry/Corrupter ball w/ an obs overhead. The toss ball very frequently wins by trapping the zerg with tons of forcefields, and killing the corrupters w/ stalkers or even Void Rays.
The Zerg usually has burrow, but that's nullified by the obs.
Time for some theorycraft.
What if the zerg brought along an overseer to kill the observer w/ the corrupters as soon as the engagement begins? When the million forcefields come down, forcing the Zerg army into a terrible position, the Zerg can burrow, pull back the corrupters, reinforce, and wait out the forcefields. If you have tunneling claws, you can even close the distance to point-blank to take down the Collosi even faster.
So yeah. Why not bring an overseer? Seems like a 100 gas investment to help negate the terrible power of the forcefield would be a good idea.
um... protoss can't get corrupters
but anyway I think that it would just get sniped before the obs, The corrupers auto-fire on the...other corrupters...not the obs and the obs is pretty small so good mouse accuracy is needed
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i always bring in overseer. It's not that big of an investment and some toss players like to hallucinate extra shit. Also it's nice if dt's come out plus sniping obs makes it worth it since you are using up robo build time and resources.
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Shouldn't have an overseer anyway? You should be checking his front pretty consistently for any sort of opening or sign of an attack. Why sac lings or overlords all game long when you can poop out a changeling and do the exact same thing. I'd also really like to see some zergs using contaminate more. Two contaminates = one colossus that didn't get to be made.
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The problem I always have with keeping an Overseer on hand is that when the Protoss notices, if he's smart, he will drop my overseer...even if it's not a MAJOR concern, he will still do it. The only option is to have 2, but if they die (which is inevitable in 90% of cases) you end up losing 8 food per Overseer...for Protoss, their Observer is cloaked, and that makes it more efficient in this regard.
On the other hand of this...you can 9 times out of 10 off his observer before your overseer is downed, so it nulls that spotting effect on both ends. It's a bit of a difficult situation to predict, but it's a valid point. I typically see what's going on and bring an Overseer situationally...same for Observers.
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this is not to say that bringing an overseer is a "bad" idea, but there are 2 very glaring items that no one has yet mentioned.
1.) Ob without speed is slower than army - this is beneficial entering a battle with Z because it will be in the back for me, That overseer will not be alive long enough to A.) find the ob amongst my entire army while lazers and spit is flying everywhere and B.) get units in range to focus.
P.S. that little bugger observer is hard enough to find when it is on your side! i always hotkey mine so I can get him where i need, else i tend to lose him.
2.) Should you successfully pull it off and burrow while FF wears off, im not sticking around. Im pulling my army back and reinforcing, hoping your corruptors follow just enough to pick a few off. Im also taking those precious 8-10 seconds to chrono more colls&upgrades, and do general upkeep that I am too mortal to do mid-battle. This is not a "loss" for you, you even gain some temporary map dominance and get to heal up. Its just not a significant gain and i think you waste an overseer 8 times out of 10 without killing that obs.
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I find it incredibly hard to pick off observers in large engagements. If this were not the case this could be very effective.
Does anyone have a reliable method or trick to spotting an observer amidst a large army/battle?
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Very good question indeed, even if it may be hard to pick off observers, isn't it worth a try? I mean, an overseer doesn't cost you a larva, maybe can do some scouting beforehand.....so simply: why the hell not? If it doesn't work, well then it doesn't, but having an overseer will hardly cost you the game because you would've needed the extra ressources for an extra unit.
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EPT
