Widow was one of the original characters that actively prevented OW from degenerating into a linear dps vs. heals tug of war. When she had her life totals dropped to make her less survivable, sustain started to get out of control. This is why the DEV’s reworked the DPS passive to a 20% heal nerf, and everyone received both a life boost and passive healing. Widow got back to 200hp in S9, but there were too many maps lanes where the new 46m max kill range was causing inconsistent head shot kills despite the bigger bullet size, so Blizz shrank the bullet to 0.05m but returned the max kill range to 53m to compensate.
Teams do not need all three suggestions – any one of them would be fine.
Unfortunately returning the Widow genie to the bottle is no longer an option. However, Dive is once again very strong in S9, and Widow tends to have problems when multiple characters are diving her together. The latest Top500 character counts in another thread shows Tracers players out-numbering Widows by over 3-1.
I enjoy high TTK, it means you actually have to think your way through fights and engagements. Widow is the antithesis of that.
Which they’ve already said they’re gonna walk back, because it was a mistake.
The health drop is a band-aid because it doesn’t address her unfair 1-shots and getting free value on tank headshots. It’s a nice band-aid, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t address the issue. The range nerf actually forced her into more reasonable ranges (eg. 2-leaps on Winston instead of 3, amongst other things).
Let her shoot trucks for all I care so long as she has a 30m range. She shouldn’t have the privilege of being able to interact with the game while most heroes can’t interact with her, that’s inherently unfair. To allow to her to 1-click after that (at a longer range) displays how bad this dev team actually is.
Widows that know how to position/play well or supports that know how to play with Widow peel for her. I was in a game earlier where you simply can’t just solo dive her. If you take the cover required (good positioning, as you claim) for your engagement on her you make it a 4v5 all while giving her the full time and space she needs to get her picks. Unfair.
So she needs multiple heroes to deal with her one? Hmm. Dive also isn’t back in the metal ranks yet (where most people play). I’ve been playing since OW1 but I asked for a dive comp on Flashpoint the other day and someone legit asked me what dive was…
Just because Tracer is good at Top 500 doesn’t mean Widow is bad, nor does it have any bearing on any tier but Top 500. Tracer can’t even reach certain Widow perch points.
Widow is simply an unfair hero in OW when she’s like the way she currently is, and I severely doubt you can change my mind on that, but I invite you to appeal to any unbiased logical argument you could make (warning, it probably doesn’t exist). Obviously your icon, profile, and takes at minimum imply you’re a Widow enjoyer/heavily biased towards her, and that’s fine. Just don’t come here trying to justify that Widow even minimally deserves all the game donates to her, or that the game isn’t outright easier for players who have piled their time and skill into Widow compared to something like Junkrat.
For some transparency, people playing Widow don’t bother me. I main Ball, Winston, Sombra, and Moira. I know how to use Mei to mess up same-level Widows. My argument isn’t that I don’t know how to/can’t deal with her, it’s that nobody should have to in her current/historic state (and that she’s bad for the game of OW as a whole).
Also, the OP hasn’t been in here in a while but the thread is supposed to be about Hanzo, not Widow.
Haven’t seen that official post yet. Got a URL available?
Snipers are inherently long range characters, so capping them off at 30m makes no sense. Besides, there are plenty of hypermobility characters, CQC maps, and one stealth character to challenge Widow before she can land a precision head shot.
I agree – I am biased using Widow after spending many hours learning her. Yep, I had to endure quite a few 1-10 games trying to learn how to aim, and even now I still find her difficult to use against Sombras, Tracers, and Winstons. Solo-diving her is difficult when she has good supports, but even a 2nd diver makes her life a lot more difficult, especially when you are not a T500 player.
My preference is fast paced games, not slow, methodical shoot outs – for that I play the old Division / Division 2 titles and Cyberpunk 2077. OW2 is better when fast paced competition keeps players on edge. Chess matches, not so much.
I just had a game as tank against hanzo+mercy+zen. I’ve never felt so run over in my life!! I died in under a second on more than 1 occasion. This is so busted. No idea why they gave him such buffs to storm arrow.
He lost a whopping 10 damage on primary which is a bonus for squishes but no impact on tanks. Then they mega buffed his storm arrows which were already broken against tank, especially with discord or damage boost. Now they are just stupid against tank.
Oh, I wonder why nobody is playing tank any more? Perhaps because of stupid changes like this.
Get a Mercy pocket. Problem solved. Also if you’re hitting 4 headshots in a row, there’s no way the enemy team is healing that off without transcendence. 240 to the dome plus the dps passive is still a death sentence unless your team has zero followup and you’re waiting a long time before you hit your next shot.
I don’t play ball but we just had a game on King’s row defense where my team had 0 kills on their mercy who was keeping their team alive (my team basically had 2 kills by just before 2nd point). Switched to ball and stalled them 6 minutes where they gained about 40m into point 3 then c9’d. I still only had 2 kills and their mercy had 1 death. But we won
He still can one shot Widow though, as well as Tracer and Baby D.Va. As far as 250 hp squishies are concerned, he still can instantly kill them, 1 charged headshot does 240 dmg, so with a follow up arrow, that target is dead.
With a Mercy Dmg boost, he can one shot most of the squishies or if the target is discorded, along with his dps passive.
I only just started using Hanzo in the past month – I have 23 played hours total on him despite having played OW since the 2016 game launch. I now use him to hard-counter Bastions, Tracers, and big hit box targets in general. Storm Arrows FTW!
No, and who can keep track of all the different places they choose to communicate? It could’ve been a blog post, could’ve been a 3-hr stream discussion in which I wouldn’t be scrubbing it to find you the one sentence where they said ‘20% probably needs to be toned down but we’re keeping an eye on it’. I believe they’ve said it, but I’ll be honest it’s of next to zero value to me to memorize when and where the devs say things.
If you think about it, one Widow spray, Reaper long-range shot, or Tracer pee shouldn’t activate a 20% healing debuff. It should have a damage threshold and they’ve said for sure there’s an issue knowing when it’s applied on you and when it isn’t and they’re working on that.
Which is why the first part of that sentence was ‘let her shoot trucks for all I care’.
There are a total of 3 dive DPS. Of those, Tracer can’t get to everywhere Widow can get to without her throwing. How is Tracer meant to counter Widow on the near-spawn Acropolis structure on Ilios Ruins, for example? Is that a fair interaction? Is there enough cover for Echo or Pharah to get to you before you blast them out of the sky? What about Widow’s attacker’s spawn on King’s Row A? Yet again, when you claim ‘hypermobile’ DPS can counter you, they are throwing if they are spending time trying to run to the enemy spawn just to deal with you, if they even recognize they need to do that before you can one-tap someone on their team.
Don’t bother saying a tank should dive you, as a tank, diving Widow to open a fight is often wasted time until she proves to be a problem. On 1st fight, you’re rarely the priority.
Name me a single map that has zero sightlines over 50m-70m. Excatly zero maps are fully CQC. Where you always have space to work, I will always have space to complain.
You get any peel, and Sombra can do nothing to you. You know that. For her to reliably win and live it has to be a 1v1 and you can’t have Hook up. Which you will have if you’re off in Narnia and Sombra has had to use 3-4 Trans just to find you, to say nothing of good Mine placement. Burning both DPS to come get you or a DPS and tank or DPS and support at the start of a fight (which never happens/is inefficient) means Widow dictates two resources need to be blown on her while she is only one person. Unfair/too much advantage.
I believe you’re implying she takes hours to master, (like literally every other hero at a high skill level) Is that correct? Again, what value do you get for your effort put in compared to a Junkrat player (or God forbid, Sym) at your tier? Would you ever admit Widow players are boosted because of how much value Widow gets, by direct comparison to Junk and Sym mains? How does a Junk with a Mercy pocket compare to a Widow with one, and how wide would you personally say that gap is? Is that fair?
I’d argue, as I have before and will have to again, Widow deserves nerfs for this game to be healthy instead of more fun for decent-aim Widows and nobody else.
That’s fine, but OW is meant to be for everyone, not just hitscan+Hanzo players. Their last major changes patch was meant to mitigate burst, however it’s still too strong/things die too fast to actually play an objective-based game.
To bring it back to the topic, Hanzo isn’t bad and hasn’t been ‘bad’ for a very, very, very long time. Both snipers deserve their 1-shot gone and I’d be moderately ok with it changing to a cleanseable DOT instead of an instakill. That adds in interactivity instead of just burst deaths. It would also do things like bait immorts which people also seem to take issue with, so it feels like a simple win-win-win.
The 15% heal nerf reduction from 20% is perfectly acceptable as opposed to a complete “walkback.”
I get that you don’t like 1-tap snipers… moving on…
DPS are not the only dive characters, and you can take away her lanes via barriers to mitigate her threat. At some point, large maps do require players who can aim, so if your side has none, then I don’t know what to say.
I recommend avoiding long lane locations vs. Widow unless you have a counter-sniper. You can still use the rest of the map to choose your fights.
You do what you must. In many rando games I play widow, the 2nd DPS has half my elim numbers, so the enemy team ends up ignoring them and just focuses me, at which point I have to switch.
I guess I’m glad Blizz does not agree with you.
All I can say is that you have to convince Blizz, not me, about returning Hanzo’s 1-shot to the game. I will still play him either way.
