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On August 14 2012 16:59 Morfildur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2012 16:38 Xapti wrote:
Man... there's still so many idiots who aren't reading any (or enough) or the explanations/answers as to why contaminate isn't being used.
Summary:
— Can't be used until maybe 11 minutes into the game for economical builds, maybe somewhat earlier for 2 base tech builds (which never really occurs at high level though)
— Delays production of something (no cost to the opponent) for a cost of the user of 50/50.
— Reduces the number of transporting and creep-spreading overlords
Looking into the 2nd point into more depth, it takes 222 seconds to regenerate enough energy to disable a building for 30 seconds, so slightly over 7 overseers to disable one building constantly. 7 overseers obviously costs 350/350. Mathematically/logically speaking it's almost never in a zerg's best interest to be using an ability that is so inefficient.
— The opponent will find other ways to spend their money — upgrades, other unit production, or maybe just wait it out (which is viable since the zerg has 50 less minerals and gas that he could use in an attacking army)
— The opponent will likely catch on to the overseers during or after the first one is used, making loss of overseers and/or inability to contaminate much more probable after doing it a few times. If they have defense vs mutalisks, they may not need to build any more defense at all to deal with overseers. In games where the opponent gets medivacs and stimmed marines, phoenixes, blink stalkers, or even vikings, getting overseers will put the zerg in potentially pretty deep trouble. Yes, delaying the normal unit production is not that useful but contaminate can seriously disrupt timings. ZvP: If you scouted that the opposing protoss is building up for a timing push, a contaminate on his immortal/colossus production or even the range upgrade can delay his push by 30 seconds, giving you another 30s to get units to defend and maybe finish some critical upgrades. He won't attack without the units he is waiting for, even if he replaces them with warpgate units. You pay 50/50 and get a lot of time in return. ZvT: If it really denies repair (i haven't seen that and haven't tested it) then yes, it can be great to snipe Planetary Fortresses, but it's too situational. ZvZ: Contaminate on hatcheries is so extremely strong in the matchup where every larva counts. Contaminate, build lots of Units and attack 30-60s later for an big timing and he doesn't have the larva to defend. The reason why it's not used is because there are so many other areas where progamers still have to improve and there was no noteable pro who used contaminate regularly instead of just as a 1-game gambit. Think Ultralisks, noone used them except to lose won games until one pro started using them properly and suddenly they are a common sight and are now considered viable.
It's not that simple. Overseers aren't some purely beneficial unit built for free that can be massed at no cost or expense to the rest of your build.
Even just examining the ZvP example, flying into a base risks losing your overseer. If you do it once he's gonna leave a stalker or two for the second time around. Which means, do you use only one overseer, or three? Or four? He can commit resources that are less important than your gas for the builds you both are going.
The all-in's you mentioned arrive between 10-10:30. In the case of standard 3 hatch into roach, your lair doesn't finish til 8-8:30 giving you less than two minutes to scout the all-in (assuming you didn't before). To build the overseers IN time, you have to start them right away to gain any benefit in delaying his timing within the minute and a half they're able to contaminate, and also having the appropriate amount of energy to do it. Now your upgrades and roach production are delayed as well.
Then theres the possibility that if you undercommit to the overseers (ex: you built 2) and he deflects them only being able to cast one contaminate or less, well, then you have now just committed 100 gas that delayed one of your upgrades and costed you 4 roaches for the push putting him ever slightly more ahead. Committing to any amount of overseers, especially early on requires you to wrap your build around them and make trade-offs in resources elsewhere i.e., less roaches, slower upgrades. If you get a slightly faster gas/lair, then you'll have less drones which ultimately slows down your production and probably adds up to losing the same amount of roaches/slower upgrades.
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125 energy is just too much
contaminate is only really useful for stalling upgrades and timings, but it takes a long time to get that much energy. For example in zvp, contaminate will not come in time for a standard 2 base push unless you rushed to lair for some weird reason
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wtf are you talking about? Half of your points dont even work mechanic wise and the other half wont hit any worthwile timing.
Contaminate was used when it was 75 energy, that meant you could actually delay a toss 2 base timing, or even a crucial terran upgrade (stim, CS, siegemode) or "just" upgrades.
But with 125 energy, all this is already done when you have enough to contaminate.
Besides that the changeling is far superior. Thats like saying "why do you feedback the medivac? Storm it!". Its not the overseer is not used (it is), its contaminate thats underused because it becomes available too late and is inferior to the other spell
Thanks, that's a much better answer.
To kinda state my overall point with the post, i will just say that contaminate, will probably see more use vs timings and in rare situations, rather than just doing it, because you can.
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On August 11 2012 05:30 Scrubwave wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 05:27 Forikorder wrote:
why do terrans not use Ravens?
much more important question Because it's very mediocre if not bad. On topic: I have a hard time understanding this as well. 50/50 for being able to delay siege tech, colo range, blink, storm or production in general seems like a great ability. But no one ever blamed sc2 zerg players for being too innovative and for right reasons.
Still 100 times better than an overseer ;-) Why the noob terran comment btw? Did you recently get smashed going mass thor?!?
People used to do overseer strats before the nerf. The math just doesn't compute anymore incase beginners are wondering. You also need lair so during the time it would be good, while opponent has few buildings, you cannot have it. Lategame you just have alot of more productive actions to take. Maybe there is some mid game timing to be found. However if it is found blizzard would just nerf it anyway ^^
If they gave the overseer a little bump it might be used for more than detection & scouting.
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People used to do overseer strats before the nerf. The math just doesn't compute anymore
Remember the patch also decreased gas cost from 100 to 50.
That means that gas wise, you can get more contaminates out of pr. 100 gas you spend.
But i see what you mean, it takes more time for the overseer to get to the contaminate.
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the answer is pretty simple. u need ALOT of overseers for contanminate to be effective, especially in the mid-late game. they are good for delaying tech and upgrades, but only for so long.
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The only thing I can think of where it might be usefull is if in ZvP you kill the mothership and have a few overseers left, you contaminate the Nexus building the new Mothership, so you can delay it even more.
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On August 14 2012 01:56 tehemperorer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2012 01:50 Chaggi wrote:On August 14 2012 01:46 Soohard wrote:
Zerg needs a good 300 APM, they already do so much, you basically need to be a top tier zerg in the world. If you are maybe masters league and try to use contaminate then you might miss tumors, injects, units, watching out for drops, and just other silly things. tumors and injects are repetitive things that everyone of every race needs to do, units/drops/etc are stuff that everyone needs to do. I don't understand why this makes zergs special. So true, Protoss gets shit on for being an easy race but I think it's a huge disadvantage to have to look at a pylon to build combat units while the other two races don't. Compound this with the fact that if you are in battle losing units you have to look away to warp in more while your opponent, if not Protoss, can focus just on the battle and spend a few thoughtless moments hitting a few hotkeys. I can't just hit a hotkey to build a pylon or supply depot, I actually have to look at a worker and place it. Zergs don't need to look at their base to do anything repetitive but injects/tumors.
Well if you camera hotkey your closest pylon to the fight you can recall that location warp in your unit hot key them while warping in then go back to your main army and continue that fight. I do agree that is difficult but Zerg has to do the same thing for larva injects, and Terran has to do the same thing for rally points
But I don't think contaminate is used as much just because the changeling can give you scouting info on possible tech or tech switches which in the current meta is more important, but I would love to see more contaminate
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On August 11 2012 05:27 Forikorder wrote:
why do terrans not use Ravens?
much more important question
Are you kidding me...? Cause they are terrible units? They move extremely slow, not aided by the fact that they have atrocious acceleration, and only really have one offensive spell which can be dodged with ease. PDDs are useful, and thats basically what you only use ravens for, but its usually not worth the cost. Auto turrets are nice if you enjoy the feeling of trying to destroy a aircraft carrier with ping pong balls.
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I'll tell you why... same reason I hate the Oracle's entomb. Because it's boring.  Sorry, but it's just not that fun to contaminate stuff. It's not fun to through a monkey wrench into the works. So while entomb may pay off enough that people will use it, I promise you nobody will fall in love with the ability.
Contaminate, definitely a good ability in the overall scheme of things. Same for entomb. But... no fun for either side of the fight.
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THe problem with contaminate isn't the ability (its good), its the fact that it isn't worth the apm vs army management, injects, spending larva, infestors, creep tumors, etc.
/thread
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WCS just had some contimanation going on in ZvZ. I think as the game progresses it will continued to be used more. Also if it did prevent repair, that might make it imbalanced, would be interesting to watch though.
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On August 14 2012 19:45 rd wrote:
The all-in's you mentioned arrive between 10-10:30. In the case of standard 3 hatch into roach, your lair doesn't finish til 8-8:30 giving you less than two minutes to scout the all-in (assuming you didn't before). To build the overseers IN time, you have to start them right away to gain any benefit in delaying his timing within the minute and a half they're able to contaminate, and also having the appropriate amount of energy to do it. Now your upgrades and roach production are delayed as well.
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Actually, it takes 2.5 minutes for overseers to gain enough energy to contanimate from the moment they've started morphing (133s for the energy plus 17s morph time).
There's really no timing to make an overseer specifically for contaminate until well into the mid/late game.
Sure, late game, contaminate the Nexus so the mothership doesn't come out, or maybe contaminate the starport(s) of a Terran when you go for Broodlords. But even then, it's 50/50 per extra overseer 2.5 minutes ago, those 30s better be something really crucial.
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On August 14 2012 00:02 Sporadic44 wrote:
Acritter pretty much hit the nail on the head. The majority of the time you move to overseer to do some scouting there just isnt enough energy accumulated because youre dropping changelings throughout the game so you do another fly over, drop a changeling or two and then leave the overseer alone for a bit. It rarely gets up to the energy needed to use the spell. In theory you could do something mass overseer late game, but there's already so much going on that it becomes a very trivial thing to consider on a very long to do list. Not to mention that late game you flat out have better harassment options anyway. Infestors, mutas, ling runbys all offer better pay offs for successful harass. The only edge the overseer has is it's free supply, but still making a bunch of overseers requires resources that you'd rather have banked, or invested into your current army or tech.
Why not make a few more overseers, it's not like they are very expensive. The cumulative energy that they will gain is worth the small expense. Especially if you know your opponent is going for a timing attack, a few early overseers may pay for themselves.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
On August 15 2012 22:27 zmansman17 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 14 2012 00:02 Sporadic44 wrote:
Acritter pretty much hit the nail on the head. The majority of the time you move to overseer to do some scouting there just isnt enough energy accumulated because youre dropping changelings throughout the game so you do another fly over, drop a changeling or two and then leave the overseer alone for a bit. It rarely gets up to the energy needed to use the spell. In theory you could do something mass overseer late game, but there's already so much going on that it becomes a very trivial thing to consider on a very long to do list. Not to mention that late game you flat out have better harassment options anyway. Infestors, mutas, ling runbys all offer better pay offs for successful harass. The only edge the overseer has is it's free supply, but still making a bunch of overseers requires resources that you'd rather have banked, or invested into your current army or tech. Why not make a few more overseers, it's not like they are very expensive. The cumulative energy that they will gain is worth the small expense. Especially if you know your opponent is going for a timing attack, a few early overseers may pay for themselves.
Because the Zerg are not getting the gas that early, and if they are, then you are setting yourself behind, if we're talking about metagame of ZvP then you are getting your gases at around 6 minutes, here is what you need to spend your gas on:
Zergling speed - 100 gas
Lair - 100 gas
2x upgrades - 250 gas
That's 450 gas spent only on upgrades, then you'd need another 50 gas spent for each Overseer you want to make.
Late game, they are useful, but once the opponent has shitton of production buildings, it is useless to waste additional APM on going around the Marines/Stalkers just to freeze 1 Barracks/Gateway, doing that on a Nexus would be great, but once you use it once, the Protoss will have defenses next time.
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On August 16 2012 04:30 grush57 wrote:
They don't need too.
I think this is the real reason as well. I have used contaminate but admittedly, I don't even need to do so to win games.
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Nestea used like 6 overseers to kill Losira in a ZvZ in GSL finals a while back.
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On August 11 2012 05:33 apm66 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2012 05:30 Scrubwave wrote:On August 11 2012 05:27 Forikorder wrote:
why do terrans not use Ravens?
much more important question Because it's very mediocre if not bad. Wait until pros start using it in every game, it won't be so mediocre then.
Yep, because after 2 years noone figured that out.
Keep waiting.
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EPT
