Recently, my friend has been utilizing the overseer contaminate to delay production and upgrades. After thinking about it for a while, I have found some pretty detrimental uses with it.
Many zerg players will research pathogen glands right when the infestation pit pops and will make infestors when the upgrade is about 1/2 done. This works and your infestors will have the extra energy; however, if you use contaminate the infestation pit at the correct time, you can delay pathogen glands long enough that the new infestors pop without the extra energy. This would mean that your infestors would have more energy which can allow you to win the next fight.
2.Delay Injects/Stop Hatch From Making Larvae (ZvZ) + Show Spoiler +
When you contaminate your opponent's hatchery, they can no longer inject larvae and their hatchery won't passively generate the larvae. This can give you the larvae advantage and help you have a bigger army or increase your economy without falling behind in army. Also, you can use this when pushing into their base to minimize reinforcements that they can make.
With contaminate, you can delay many upgrades which can mess up many timing pushes allowing you to have a slight advantages. Also vs protoss you can contaminate their upgrade facilities right after they used chrono boost which not only will delay their upgrade, but also waste a chrono boost.
These are some of the main things that I think contaminate is very useful for. Sadly, I do not see many people use contaminate a whole lot. If you guys have any pros or cons to contaminate or other uses for it, please reply!
Also, I might add some replays here to show the impact contaminate can have.
I remember Destiny using some 2 base quick lair build a couple of months ago, where he contaminated the warp gates research of FFE builds to delay any gateway timings. It was quite awesome, but it's obviously not really viable with the current meta of 3 base against FFE.
@VirtuousUK very nice, I really like that idea, especially since many protoss will wait to make units from their new warpgates until warp tech is done, since usually you end up with more units faster, however if you push in right before that finishes, you can easily win. Which that is what you did. Well Played Sir!
People don't use it because it's bad. And it HAS TO BE BAD. If contaminate were any good, adding it to a cheap unit like overseer that doesn't require supply would be overpowered like hell.
125 energy is alot, and all you get is a minor dellay for a waste of an apm on your side. ofc if you have an overseer you shuld be useing it, why not, but not the other way around.
That said, contamination is a really fun thing to do.
@Sapp you can't simply say it "HAS TO BE BAD" because it is on a cheap unit. You see it isn't a spell that does damage or helps directly in team fights.
The idea of this thread is to think of the pros and cons. I posted 3 pros in my original post and if you think it is bad, please explain something other than it is a waste of APM. I do agree that 125 energy is a lot. Since it is a cheap unit, you can make maybe 4-5 of them to contaminate buildings around the map or to chain contaminate(like VirtuousUK posted with Warp Gate Tech). Also look at #1 in the original post, such a simple thing to do that you only need 1 overseer to do and can give you an edge in the game since your infestors in theory should have more energy.
I'm still waiting for people to use it as a late-game gas sink when they bank 2k+ gas and their opponents get to make vikings/gateway units after every fight..
It definitely seems like something that should be used in big numbers, and the 125 energy cost is REALLY punishing to the 'timing' aspect of it.
@yeastiality yeah, it does take quite a while to generate that energy, but like you said, late game you can make a ton and when you have a big broodlord/infestor army, you can constantly contaminate the starport to keep the terran from making nasty vikings
I will try it just for kicks and see how effective it is.
If you are to contaminate a building continuously, you will need more than 6 overseers (30 sec spell requires 125 energy (0.5625 energy/sec)).
Or you can have 2-3 overseers to keep rotating on contaminate. The problem is that with all my cycles larvae injects, droning, creep spread, upgrade, build units etc...to add contamination into the mix...worth it?
Also the cost for Overseers need to be considered.
Being said, this is all theorycraft. Dang now i need to play a few games.
Contaminate is so underused. Its nice to delay production and upgrades and stuff, just having 2 outside your opponents base on equal economic footing can allow you to squeeze out a couple roaches or push before they have fungal or cause some of their infestors to pop without the upgrade making them much less effective for that time period. It takes a lot of finesse, scouting info and knowledge of your own game plan to make it work though. If you just contaminate and wait 2 minutes it really didn't do much- its a short term delay.
I don't see contaminate as a spell to continuously delay something, but rather to delay specific things once or just poke in every 2-3 minutes and contaminate, this can slowly put you to advantage. However there are many timing pushes or like i said in #1 that you can use contaminate that can actually give you a pretty big edge.
Hahaha, that build was love at first sight for me.
Unfortunately Contaminate costs 125 energy now, meaning it takes soooo long to recharge. Since there's a lower cost for Overseer, however, it might even it out enough to make D.E.R.P. relatively viable.
Even so, D.E.R.P. is a bit of an extreme example. Contaminate as a nuisance is nice, especially when you're delaying something like stim, extended thermal lance, or a robo (facility, not bay) in order to ruin a timing.
Even so, <3 ovie creep drop and burrowed ling combo to deny an expo. So how about denying the third this way until you scout an all-in/2base timing, then upgrade to Overseer to delay the timing? Better yet, both at the same time. One Ovie and ling to deny the third/fourth and one or two Overseers to contaminate whatever looks delicious.
It's even viable in macro games very nicely, especially if you contaminate the ebays/forges/evos.
I think it has legit potential in ZvZ and hope ppl will experiment with it more. I was excited when Nestea used it against Losira on Dual Sight during the GSL finals really well, unfortunately it hasn't been used a whole lot since.
edit: i just remembered. it got nerfed after that didn't it...
125 energy is a long time it takes to regenerate the rest of the time it will float around somewhere near the opponents place. So a high chance to forget about this unit, like some prisms banshees etc are forgotten sometimes. Also i wouldn't say contaminate got nerfed. Gas cost was halfed on the overseer, energy cost for it only was increased by 66%. While mineral-wise the cost per contaminate got increased, gas-wise it got reduced. Its well worth it still, but it is a bit harder to use, especially since you have to wait some time after the morph to actually use it. And the scout overseer usually doesn't have enough energy. In ZvZ it's something nice to use as always, but you need around 7 instead of 4 to be really annoying.
Maybe because the Oracle is faster, the mineral field barrier is cheaper energy wise, you know EXACTLY where mineral fields are (unlike techbuildings), denying minerals is always useful and stopping an upgrade obviously is always useful es well, but its much harder to catch the right building at the moment of upgrading.
I've been doing a relatively fast 3 overseer strat after a protoss 4gate-ish push to delay any robo-sentry play by a ton. It's been doing really well since I can delay any follow up pushes and make sure there isn't that huge blob of immortals or collosi raining down into my natural.
It isn't as powerful versus a gateway army, but against teching opponents it is great .
On June 22 2012 08:08 Morrok wrote: Recently, my friend has been utilizing the overseer contaminate to delay production and upgrades. After thinking about it for a while, I have found some pretty detrimental uses with it.
Many zerg players will research pathogen glands right when the infestation pit pops and will make infestors when the upgrade is about 1/2 done. This works and your infestors will have the extra energy; however, if you use contaminate the infestation pit at the correct time, you can delay pathogen glands long enough that the new infestors pop without the extra energy. This would mean that your infestors would have more energy which can allow you to win the next fight.
2.Delay Injects/Stop Hatch From Making Larvae (ZvZ) + Show Spoiler +
When you contaminate your opponent's hatchery, they can no longer inject larvae and their hatchery won't passively generate the larvae. This can give you the larvae advantage and help you have a bigger army or increase your economy without falling behind in army. Also, you can use this when pushing into their base to minimize reinforcements that they can make.
With contaminate, you can delay many upgrades which can mess up many timing pushes allowing you to have a slight advantages. Also vs protoss you can contaminate their upgrade facilities right after they used chrono boost which not only will delay their upgrade, but also waste a chrono boost.
These are some of the main things that I think contaminate is very useful for. Sadly, I do not see many people use contaminate a whole lot. If you guys have any pros or cons to contaminate or other uses for it, please reply!
Also, I might add some replays here to show the impact contaminate can have.
-DivineMORROK
My buddy got absolutely WRECKED by a contaminate rush shutting down his warpgate research. Yes, contaminate rush lol, he'll send me the replay later and I'll upload it. Against FFE it actually seems like a very viable strategy.
Hahaha, that build was love at first sight for me.
Unfortunately Contaminate costs 125 energy now, meaning it takes soooo long to recharge. Since there's a lower cost for Overseer, however, it might even it out enough to make D.E.R.P. relatively viable.
The energy cost upping pretty much just puts it in line with the cheaper overseer. The costs not that different, in fact as you don't need to morph the extra overseers at the same time its kinda better in some ways, it spreads the gas out so you can get the first one out earlier and have more time to bank up for the others possibly affects teching less. Even if it takes 6+ to continously do it, you don't need to continously block to get a big advantage. If 3 can double the time and waste those chrono's it's all good. One thing, does chronoboost reduce the time the contaminate is active? I thought it did from one game I played but I might be imagining it. It sorta feels like it should...
On June 22 2012 11:19 Morrok wrote: @Sapp you can't simply say it "HAS TO BE BAD" because it is on a cheap unit. You see it isn't a spell that does damage or helps directly in team fights.
The idea of this thread is to think of the pros and cons. I posted 3 pros in my original post and if you think it is bad, please explain something other than it is a waste of APM. I do agree that 125 energy is a lot. Since it is a cheap unit, you can make maybe 4-5 of them to contaminate buildings around the map or to chain contaminate(like VirtuousUK posted with Warp Gate Tech). Also look at #1 in the original post, such a simple thing to do that you only need 1 overseer to do and can give you an edge in the game since your infestors in theory should have more energy.
Ouh, be realistic. You didn't posted any proses, you posted uses and that's all it can do. dellay something for 30seconds. And you want me, in a real game make 4~5 of them for 250 gass? In what MU can I spare 250gass to permacontaminare? And what would be a target? RoboFac comes to mind, but WAIT! robo costs 200/100 and NOT require apm to use, waste of efforts? hell, that is a waste. In reality, there is no single bulding in this game worth spenging 250/250 to perma contaminate. And even if there was, you need to do it manualy, so it sux even more.
Contaminate was bad before the patch that nerfed it even more. Sorry, but no. This spell isn't worth bulding strategies around it, flat out.
As I said earlier, if you have an overseer you shuld be useing it, why not, but not the other way around.
In roach v roach zvz when people switch into infesters they usually start pathogen glands and then then make 4 infesters timed to finish right after the upgrade.
Using 1 contaminate to mess up that timing so the festers finish without glands and then making a huge roach attack right as those first 4 infesters pop but before they get enouph energy to fungal seems like it would be very strong. Otherwise using corruption doesn't seem cost effective for the amount of gas.
On June 23 2012 00:58 General_Winter wrote: In roach v roach zvz when people switch into infesters they usually start pathogen glands and then then make 4 infesters timed to finish right after the upgrade.
Using 1 contaminate to mess up that timing so the festers finish without glands and then making a huge roach attack right as those first 4 infesters pop but before they get enouph energy to fungal seems like it would be very strong. Otherwise using corruption doesn't seem cost effective for the amount of gas.
okay, I'll play. You are talking about 30s long window of oportunity, on a bulding that you have no fricken idea where in his base may be, or even if is there on a first place until you scout it(Infestation pit is not a Cyber Core, there is no such thing as standard timeing of infestation pit). And then you never know if he started infestor production already or not yet. And then, you would have to be doing the same roach/infestor timeing as he is to have that gland ready for push while his is not. And then, Attack into another, this time 50seconds long window before his infestors gain that 25energy..... and that is not even a half of a problems that you would have to solve trying to make it work.
just... just f**k it and contaminate a hatchery already -.-' plzz, for crying out loud..
Assuming that you see them going roach, isn't the typical followup roach hydra or roach infestor? Also I am pretty sure burrow is a fairly common upgrade to get. combined with killing creep tumors to deny vision, i don't think it is wrong to assume quite a few ZvZ's include at least one overseer.
Furthermore, overseers move fast enough that they can survive running over a base or two assuming they avoid spore crawlers.
So I don't see anything wrong with using your overseer's energy on a contaminate if you happen to see the infestation pit and it is already researching something.
It does not require a perfect window where they can't fungal, it does create a x infestors short 25 energy. even if they can fungal they will have one less IT each
@Sapp please calm down. this is a disussion thread. In startcraft II, generally you should know where your opponent's building are located because you have just SCOUTED with the overseer you just made. If you are constantly scouting, which you should be, you should know whne that infestation pit goes down and when it pops, about 40-60 seconds(watch the time in the lower left corner) after it pops(pathogen glands should tsrt right when it pops) go and contaminate. And it takes very little APM. select overseer, press contaminate hotkey, click on infestation pit that you scouted. Simple and Easy but very very very effective. It adds up when your 5-6 infestors have 25 more energy each. That means you have more fungals and more infested terran and it also means that you have an edge. I mean that is what you try to do in this game, get an edge over your opponent. If you don't want to use contaminate, nobody is making you. We are just trying to see if it could become useful in certain situations.
EPT
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