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This is a small guide to ZvP scouting. Since Zerg is a reactionary race, it is obviously very important to have good scouting information. This guide is to SEE what your opponent is doing, not to interpret them. For example, this guide will help you see that your opponent has one gas and lots of chronoboost saved up, but won't tell you that it is a 4-gate.
My credentials are that I was a 3.6k masters Zerg before the ladder reset on NA.
Early Game (Pre-Lair)
Overlord Scout Patterns
On four player maps (Shattered Temple, Metalopolis), I like to send my first overlord to close by ground, and the second one to close by air. Both overlords will make it safely to those bases and into a safe position before a stalker can be chrono'd out. Why do this?
- It allows you see the incoming probe from close by ground early enough to change between a gas first / pool first / hatch first build
- Protoss can scout your overlord and block your hatch first attempt (or scout early pool if you're cheesing) if you send it to close by air first
- Gives you two chances to have an overlord in your opponent's base (if you send close by air first, you cannot send your second overlord far). Also both overlords will reach the opponent base at the same time. The drone scout can be sent to cross positions.
- If your opponent is in cross positions, you can send both overlords towards them which results in one overlord at third/natural, the other by the main.
The only time I would not scout like this is if I want to hatch first. In that case, I want my second overlord over my building hatchery to spot for cannons.
Overlord Placement
On certain maps, you can hide your overlord in your opponents base to gain vision even after a stalker/sentry has spawned.
- Shattered Temple: there is high ground along the edges of the base that allow you watch the nexus/gas. Position the overlord near the gas they haven't taken yet to see if/when they take it.
- Tal'darim Altar: If your opponent has fast expanded, there is high ground by the choke to their natural to hide the overlord. You can keep an eye on their forge, how many cannons they build and whatever else is around.
Drone Scout
The drone scout is absolutely crucial IMO. You should not be greedy and leave the base. You should keep it alive as long as possible. I usually open gas/pool (or vice versa) and send my drone scout after those two buildings are down. It will still get the Protoss base in time bfore a zealot pops. It serves two purposes:
1) Spot tech or delay it. If Protoss makes a sentry first, you can keep your drone alive for a long time in their base. Protoss will be hesitant to throw down any structures until your drone has died. This will delay them. Or they might just throw down their structures while your drone is alive and you will have gained vital information.
2) Discover pylon placement. If Protoss has a proxy pylon, you will notice a missing pylon in their base. However, more commonly, you will see where all the pylons are in his base. This allows you to intelligently sack an overlord after your drone dies.
Ramp Poking
Send one and only one ling up the Protoss ramp to see what's there. You should be able to see what their first ranged unit is (sentry or stalker). If you're lucky, the Protoss may be terrible and build additional structures near the ramp. They may also be lazy and just show you their entire army (e.g. zealot and three sentries). Also take note of any chronoboosts used on the gateway or cybercore. Do not send more than one ling up the ramp as they may just forcefield and kill all your lings.
Overlord Sacrificing
If it's not entirely obvious to me what Protoss is doing, I will sack an overlord at aroudn 5:00-5:30. The important thing here is to send the overlord to the pylons you scouted earlier with your drone. Most of the time you should see some of their buildings. At the very least, you will see what killed you (e.g. two stalkers or a bunch of sentries).
Ling Scouts
Unless my opponent is opening forge fast expand, I find it's important to make two sets of lings (four lings total). One ling is sent to the front of the protoss base to see what comes. One or two lings to the watch towers to keep vision over the entire map. The rest of the lings should be sent individually around the map looking for the scout probe or pylon. It's important to find the scout probe because you don't want them scouting you later on. It's also (obviously) important to find proxy pylons/hidden tech. Also, three lings will kill a pylon in a reasonable amount of time.. one ling will do nothing and the Protoss will just warp units in. Remember to check your base for pylons as well. I usually just shift-queue the lings around the map so this is not very APM intensive.
Worker Sliding (Drone Drill) (credit: mr_tolkien)
If your first worker didn't see anything valuable as he was killed by a fast stalker, you can send a drone with your 4 lings, poke up with your lings and slide your drone through the zealot (by clicking on the minerals in the opponent's base), usually giving you a little more scout than an overlord. You can also draw the stalker/sentry away from the ramp by showing an overlord somewhere else in the Protoss' base (and then running it away after they start chasing it). This will let you get the drone in with more health.
Post-Lair Scouting
Overlord Speed
I always get overlord speed as soon as Lair finishes. This allows me to see what the Protoss is doing (5/6 gate, stargate play, robo play, etc). Send in an overlord and have a look around the protoss base. You may be able to skip this if Protoss builds their new buildings at their natural as part of the wall. For example, they may build a robo as part of their wall.
Overseer
I rarely use overseer to scout (personal preference). I find that losing an overseer is very costly (100 gas). An overseer is faster to make than overlord speed research, but in most cases it's better to scout with overlord speed. A fast overlord and a slow overseer both have the same movement speed. The one time I may use an overseer to scout is versus a fast-expanding protoss where I don't have an overlord nearby to sacrifice. The time saved by morphing an overseer may allow you to spot a stargate and react in time. Changelings are more or less useless; good Protosses will kill them instantly. The same effect can be achieved with a 25 mineral ling.
Different opinion from stichlasser:
+ Show Spoiler +I would suggest a small change for the Overseer (for I love to use them ). I think they are very usefull for some reasons.
1. Scouting at the main: Either just use the "pure" Overseer, normally the Toss doenst have his main army in his main so you can fly there very safely, especially in earylier parts of the game, just after lair tech.
2. Changeling for base-scouting: Just fly to the edge of the main and drop a changeling. Im not spotted there most times.
3. Changeling for army-scouting: Drop a changeling and let them run towars the main army, you can get at least a little guess of what/how much they have.
4. Contaminate: nice thing to do, you can eg delay a colossus for 1minute if your timing is good and you are lucky.
Overlord Spread
You should have an overlord at every expo spewing creep as soon as possible. This allows you see when Protoss takes their third, and delays it slightly (it takes a minute for the creep to disappear after the overlord dies). Position extra overlords around your bases/protoss main spotting for drops. Also keep overlords by each of your expos to morph into an overseer for emergency DT defense. If your opponent has opened stargate, you will instead want to clump your overlords around your queens/spores.
Burrowed Lings
If you have burrow, you should have burrowed lings around the map. I like to keep one at the third to delay their expo until they have an observer is out. If a probe comes to build a nexus without an army, unburrow, kill, re-burrow. It's also useful to have a burrowed ling outside the natural of the Protoss. When they move out, you can see their unit comp and whether or not they have an observer with them (your ling will die).
Sacrificing Lings
Zergs don't use lings to scout enough in the midgame. If you take one ling (25 minerals) and suicide it at the enemy natural, you can get a good idea of the unit composition/upgrades. Sacrificing a ling is much cheaper than an overlord (25 minerals vs 100 minerals). I like to do this pretty frequently. Zergs are good at doing this in the early game, but forget about this entirely in the mid/late game.
Burrowed Lings in-base
If you ever get lings into the Protoss base, burrow one by their key tech building (robotics facility or stargate). Protosses rarely search their base with an observer. You can use your ling to see how many void rays or how many collosus they're producing.
Unresolved Scouting Challenges
There are certain situations where I find scouting extremely hard still. Below are some of them to which I have not figured out an adequate solution:
- On maps where I can't get an overlord nearby at the beginning (e.g. cross positions on Tal'Darim Altar), I find it impossible to scout versus a fast expand protoss. In order to keep up in economy, I get my gases really late which means the Lair is late. This leads to a guessing game as a response to a 6 gate is very different than a response to a stargate. I've been getting an overseer ASAP, but this hurts my gas.
- Against good Protoss, I find scouting in the mid-game tremendously expensive. It's not uncommon that I lose five or six overlords throughout the game scouting (500-600 minerals). Good protoss will leave stalkers in base to kill scouting overlords. Constant scouting is required to find some vital information, so it can't really be skipped:
- Robotics bay timing so I can throw down a spire in response
- Dark shrine timing in the late game. Protecting each expo costs 275 minerals (one spore + one spine). With four bases, that costs 1100 minerals. Doing that blind really really hurts if I'm not ahead. Not doing it could be gg.
- Transitions in tech in the late game (robo into stargate play, robo into templar tech, etc)
- Against a stargate Protoss, I find it impossible to scout their base with overlords. This leads to a guessing game regarding their unit comp. How many stargates do they actually have? What ratio of voids to collosus do they have?
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Thanks,
I have been searching Zerg scouting techniques for a while now and this seems pretty good. I am a low level player and have queries. You concentrate on scouting a Toss in this guide. Does your scouting change at all when playing vs. Terran and Zerg? Did you make other threads for scouting them, or intend to do some?
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On April 06 2011 17:19 ZedraC wrote:
Thanks,
I have been searching Zerg scouting techniques for a while now and this seems pretty good. I am a low level player and have queries. You concentrate on scouting a Toss in this guide. Does your scouting change at all when playing vs. Terran and Zerg? Did you make other threads for scouting them, or intend to do some?
Against Terran you have to be more weary because Marines are so common, against Zerg you can be really aggressive with overlords because it will take a while to get anti air for both players.
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Yea in a ZvZ you can quite literally park your overlord on their ramp because the only pre-lair antiair are the queens and they move quiet slow off creep.
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You could add a very useful trick for the ladder, where 4 gates are quite popular at all the levels :
Worker sliding
If your first worker didn't see anything valuable as he was killed by a fast stalker, you can send a drone with your 4 lings, poke up with your lings and slide your drone through the zealot, usually giving you a little more scout than an overlord
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I would also add: looking at the nexus energy in the early game, as a sign of 4 gate aggression (if it piles up) or not (if it is low because it is spent on probes).
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I thank you very much for this compilation of scouting techniques for Protoss. For some reason or another it never crossed my mind to have a zling or 2 try and tank the damage so a drone can run through the zlot/sentry enough to scout.
Is it possible to give sugguestions on Terran? Things like tells and such, For example no expansion on the first rax with a few unupgraded marines.
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On April 06 2011 18:39 mr_tolkien wrote:
You could add a very useful trick for the ladder, where 4 gates are quite popular at all the levels :
Worker sliding
If your first worker didn't see anything valuable as he was killed by a fast stalker, you can send a drone with your 4 lings, poke up with your lings and slide your drone through the zealot, usually giving you a little more scout than an overlord
Add this, as it is the most awesome way to scout. (:
Also, if you're afraid of late game DTs, just park an overlord on top of every expansion. If you're quick enough, it won't do so much damage.
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Nice guide, really helped me. I would suggest a small change for the Overseer (for I love to use them  ). I think they are very usefull for some reasons.
1. Scouting at the main: Either just use the "pure" Overseer, normally the Toss doenst have his main army in his main so you can fly there very safely, especially in earylier parts of the game, just after lair tech.
2. Changeling for base-scouting: Just fly to the edge of the main and drop a changeling. Im not spotted there most times.
3. Changeling for army-scouting: Drop a changeling and let them run towars the main army, you can get at least a little guess of what/how much they have.
4. Contaminate: nice thing to do, you can eg delay a colossus for 1minute if your timing is good and you are lucky.
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I've updated the op with the drone drill and overseer suggestions.
I focused on ZvP in this guide because there are many interesting tricks possible. In ZvT standard play, you have mutas that do most of the scouting. Overlord scouting is also very hard early game due to marines. In ZvZ, it's less about seeing your opponent's base and more about knowing what's going on based on his army size/drone count.
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Regarding using overseers:
IF you decide to scout with an overseer, since overseers are pretty slow and will quickly die if you try to scout the protoss base with them, many players will drop a changeling at the edge of the base, and send the changeling off a different direction than the overseer. This lets you scout more of the protoss base before the overseer dies.
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On April 06 2011 18:39 mr_tolkien wrote:
You could add a very useful trick for the ladder, where 4 gates are quite popular at all the levels :
Worker sliding
If your first worker didn't see anything valuable as he was killed by a fast stalker, you can send a drone with your 4 lings, poke up with your lings and slide your drone through the zealot, usually giving you a little more scout than an overlord
This is an awesome, potentially game-winning little trick imo. It's not done very much until probably high-masters (and even then I'd wager not awfully common), but once you know what the P is doing it's so easy to defend and get an advantage.
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On April 09 2011 00:53 archangel2 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2011 18:39 mr_tolkien wrote:
You could add a very useful trick for the ladder, where 4 gates are quite popular at all the levels :
Worker sliding
If your first worker didn't see anything valuable as he was killed by a fast stalker, you can send a drone with your 4 lings, poke up with your lings and slide your drone through the zealot, usually giving you a little more scout than an overlord This is an awesome, potentially game-winning little trick imo. It's not done very much until probably high-masters (and even then I'd wager not awfully common), but once you know what the P is doing it's so easy to defend and get an advantage.
You can improve this by baiting the stalker/sentry away from the ramp with an Overlord somewhere else in the base. Once he starts chasing, pull the overlord back and send your drone/ling escort up the ramp.
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On April 09 2011 02:13 dasnor wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2011 00:53 archangel2 wrote:On April 06 2011 18:39 mr_tolkien wrote:
You could add a very useful trick for the ladder, where 4 gates are quite popular at all the levels :
Worker sliding
If your first worker didn't see anything valuable as he was killed by a fast stalker, you can send a drone with your 4 lings, poke up with your lings and slide your drone through the zealot, usually giving you a little more scout than an overlord This is an awesome, potentially game-winning little trick imo. It's not done very much until probably high-masters (and even then I'd wager not awfully common), but once you know what the P is doing it's so easy to defend and get an advantage. You can improve this by baiting the stalker/sentry away from the ramp with an Overlord somewhere else in the base. Once he starts chasing, pull the overlord back and send your drone/ling escort up the ramp.
You don't even need to bait the zealot away. Use the 4 lings to soak up the 1st zealot attack, and send your drone to a mineral patch in his base. The drone will simply walk right through the zealot, and once your on the other side you have a free scout. A stalker won't kill you fast enough to see a 4 gate if a 4 gate is coming.
EDIT: Sorry didn't read that correctly, you meant to bait the stalker/sentry so as to keep your drone scout alive for longer. That's a good tip.
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Just one correction, but Both [Overlords and Overseers] have the same movement speed. isn't entirely accurate. While it's true that a speed overlord = a slow overseer, speed overseers are faster than speed overlords.
There's an argument for getting an overseer first, then later speed so that you have the potential for detection/contaminate/changelings right away and later on you have a super speedy scout you can use. You also can get +1 drone by getting the overseer.
@Mineral walk...
I've known this trick, but have yet to try this because it doesn't um make sense to me. If he has a ranged units waiting there what keeps him from just picking off your drone as it walks through? The overlord bait makes sense I guess, but it does kinda rely on you being able to show the overlord while it's still close enough to a cliff to make it away from the stalker/sentry. What's your average success rate with this sort of thing. I'm also nervous about running up 4 lings at once because it makes a worthwhile forcefield target to trap the lings and kill them with a sentry.
Also on ST there's high ground on the edge of the map near in the water pocket area between the nat and the rocks. It's a good place to leave an overlord to spy on the natural and the rocks because you can float in from a better angle than if you were hovering on the land above the rocks. It also keeps the overlord alive when he does knock down the rocks.
Another overlord position you may want to include is the fact that the pocket between main/nat on Xel'naga is wide enough so 6 range (maybe 7) units can't hit the overlord. So you can put an overlord there and be safe from Protoss ground.
edit... Also wanted to point out that speed overseer is one notch slower than a stalker (2.75 vs 2.9) so speed overseers also help your mid-game scouting problem out by letting you pull back your overseer if you see stalkers (provided he doesn't have blink). The overlord, by comparison, is 1.8ish speed which makes it much more vulnerable.
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I always wondered why people don't do mineral walk
Since I am zerg, I always have to keep my eyes open for 4 gate push
So by the time when 4 gates should finish, i send 2 lings and 2 drones and slide them 2 drones in and see the base.
Or is it because I am in lower league that this works?
Does anyone do this in higher league?
Apparently it works in bronze, silver, and gold
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On April 28 2011 04:29 DrunkApple wrote:
I always wondered why people don't do mineral walk
Since I am zerg, I always have to keep my eyes open for 4 gate push
So by the time when 4 gates should finish, i send 2 lings and 2 drones and slide them 2 drones in and see the base.
Or is it because I am in lower league that this works?
Does anyone do this in higher league?
Apparently it works in bronze, silver, and gold
Sending 2 drones is probably a little excessive, as you are doubling your mineral loss against someone who isn't 4 gating and is getting econ/tech instead. However, I imagine 4 gate is common enough in the lower leagues that this is worth the risk to you.
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On April 28 2011 05:02 Shadrak wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2011 04:29 DrunkApple wrote:
I always wondered why people don't do mineral walk
Since I am zerg, I always have to keep my eyes open for 4 gate push
So by the time when 4 gates should finish, i send 2 lings and 2 drones and slide them 2 drones in and see the base.
Or is it because I am in lower league that this works?
Does anyone do this in higher league?
Apparently it works in bronze, silver, and gold Sending 2 drones is probably a little excessive, as you are doubling your mineral loss against someone who isn't 4 gating and is getting econ/tech instead. However, I imagine 4 gate is common enough in the lower leagues that this is worth the risk to you.
Is losing 2 drones losing a lot?
I normally take their gas with one and get other killed, but I can clearly see the picture of what they are doing, so end up saving my ass.
I always thought I can quickly replace my drones, so didn't think of it as a great loss.
Even if he doesn't do 4 gate push, are two drones not worth the risk since there won't be early push?
Am I making sense? anyone?
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On tal darim, if my opponent is opposite positions I've been sending my overlord, well, if I'm top left, I send my overlord to the right side. If I scout him in the top right or bottom right, I move my overlord into a good position. I send my second one straight down. Now I will have at least one overlord in position for each location. I normally send my second overlord to sit over my natural hatch, but not having an overlord in position on this map has cost me games because of the size of the map makes it really easy to hide a probe.
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On April 28 2011 05:31 DrunkApple wrote:Show nested quote +On April 28 2011 05:02 Shadrak wrote:On April 28 2011 04:29 DrunkApple wrote:
I always wondered why people don't do mineral walk
Since I am zerg, I always have to keep my eyes open for 4 gate push
So by the time when 4 gates should finish, i send 2 lings and 2 drones and slide them 2 drones in and see the base.
Or is it because I am in lower league that this works?
Does anyone do this in higher league?
Apparently it works in bronze, silver, and gold Sending 2 drones is probably a little excessive, as you are doubling your mineral loss against someone who isn't 4 gating and is getting econ/tech instead. However, I imagine 4 gate is common enough in the lower leagues that this is worth the risk to you. Is losing 2 drones losing a lot? I normally take their gas with one and get other killed, but I can clearly see the picture of what they are doing, so end up saving my ass. I always thought I can quickly replace my drones, so didn't think of it as a great loss. Even if he doesn't do 4 gate push, are two drones not worth the risk since there won't be early push? Am I making sense? anyone?
Doesn't matter how fast you can regain lost drones, a loss is a loss. Instead of thinking it's just a lost drone, think of it as a lost larva. The larva you waste making those drones again could be offensive units (or even more drones). In this sense, letting an opponent pick of drones is not just making your economy weaker, it weakens your army as well.
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EPT
