I’ve heard a lot of really good points on this topic. If I didn’t list any, or you have counterpoints, please feel free to reply. I’ve wanted to talk about widow since day 1, and I think given how big the topic has gotten recently, I thought it was time.
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I wholeheartedly agree with like 99% of your video except the fact that the current dev team undestands the game they’re developing and cares about game balance above all else.
This is the same dev team that buffs heroes for their mythic season and nerfs them after to sell more skins. This is the same dev team that literally admitted in a blog post that they balance heavily around community perception, saying how they learned it wasn’t “acceptable” for certain heroes (Roadhog was mentioned in the post as the example) to have high winrates and to be good because the community didn’t like it and emergency hotfix nerfed one of the worst heroes in the game (symmetra) after she got a minor parity buff for s9’s health changes (+15 dps on Photon Projector) because people were actually playing her. This is the same dev team that balances heroes like Symmetra around pro coordinated plays with her TP happening constantly in low ranks, and heroes like Widow and Ashe like they never hit a single shot the whole game. This is the same dev team that hasn’t bothered to change Widow at all up until this point because doing so would jeapordize the revenue from the mythic skin, as stated previously. This is the same dev team that saw Ana at a nearly 8% pickrate across all ranks and thought “yeah lets buff her healing and damage back to 75, clearly a buff is what she needs right now.”
I would not be surprised to learn that none of the dev team are t500, or gm, or diamond, or even play the game at all because their balance decisions are genuinely baffling.
Oh, and the video was cool ig, you went over a lot of the points that I usually use in forum discussions while teaching me a few new ones, so thanks for that. I might give you some free advertising if i’m too lazy to find old posts of mine to quote and copy into discussions and just link your video instead if you don’t mind lol.
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first of, props to making that video and a very good point at the end with “not wanting a hero be unplayable” (a sentiment more people on here should share).
overall a good video, even is multiple point absolutly do not resonate with my since im a Widowmain and have a different view on some things (like game sense and positioning) but one point really irritates me and its the comparison to other games and the weaknesses of snipers in those.
I just repost my comment from the video:
“Widow does not have downsides of snipers in other games”
she also does not have:
- Bodyoneshots
- quickscoping
- collaterals
- a game with Movement accelaration
- being able to oneshot everbody
Slow movement is also not a sniper perk in that sense. Ofcourse slow movement with a scope is common and Widow, Ana and Ashe have this but then Snipers have more or less the same movement as everbody else in the respective game. Games like CS or Val have a penalty when the wepons is active, but that is true for any weapon an the reason why the players always move around with the knife, when not engaed in a fire fight.
Titanfall 2 gives you insane mobility with any wepon (inkl. the kraber) where even hammond looks slow.
R6, CoD, Tarkov, BF etc everybody has basically the same mobility.on Scopeglint, unsteady aim, flinching, limited ammo etc.
- we have playeroutlines while the Widows usual spots should be well known. The only thing that would chang is knowing when she is looking at you or not.
- & 3. go against Overwatches philosophy in terms of giving the player the most agency as possible over his own character. eg. removing RNG spread and using spread patterns (Reaper or Hog) or a very simple and controllable recoil (S76) instead, reducing Hard cc etc.
about a rework. the problem is that the rework would still need the one shot since its a integral part of her identity and we saw what happend with Hanzo when he lost his.
What I am currently thinking of is making her more mobile like black Widow in MR or like the Kraber in Titanfall 2 (of course adjusted to the game)
I think that this would quite handily solve most of the problems that most players have with Widow while still keeping her hero identity and adding a cost and counterplay to her one-shot. She will still remain the strongest hero in the game at extreme ranges (ideally this rework would be shipped with a minor fire rate nerf for Ashe’s scoped shots, something like 0.65 → 0.7) (additionally the rework will add a mechanical weakness at close range for obvious reasons) but will hopefully not put as much of a choke-hold on the game as she does currently when the widow player possesses even a modicum of mechanical skill and consistency.
They 100% make balance changes with a marketing and numbers perspective.
Like they won’t do much to Ana ever because a TON of people play her, and are too scared that if they make a change like antinade only being 50% effective, that a lot of Ana players would quit and hurt their numbers.
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I’m going to address one point in the video. Said it in the comment section, but I wanna say it here too.
“Other characters have to aim just as much”
Widow does not have easy abilities like literally every other hero gets, tho. Yes, I said it. Most if not ALL abilities that either affect enemies or yourself are get out of jail free cards for when you can’t win with your own aim. This isn’t a bad thing, but most if not all heroes do not need to use their aim nearly as much because they can just cheese it with either ridiculous projectile hitboxes, easy abilities, literal invincibility, or self healing. I’m not going to say whether this is bad or not. This is just objectively how it is.
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