An in depth explanation about why Widowmaker needs nerfs by a grandmaster

General Discussion
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NOTE: This post has the PC Widowmaker in mind, not the console

A good Widowmaker has a winning matchup against every DPS character (with a few exceptions) on the roster, even if a support is helping them. She profoundly alters the rules of engagement anytime you play against her, especially at the highest level of play.

At the GM level, you can learn every trick in the book to deal with her, and build your entire team comp specifically to counter her, and you’ll still struggle against her.

Blizz keeps nerfing the methods that the highest ranks of the game use to check Widowmaker’s power, specifically OWL players (Triple Tank, Dive, GOATS, FLOATS, Sombra Goats, Quad Tank ect.) in the hopes of changing the meta, when the simplest way to fundamentally change the meta is to change Widowmaker.

If you do not want to watch the current GOATS meta in the Overwatch League you should be advocating nerfs to Widow

There are counters to GOATS, but all of them can be quickly shut down by a swap to Widowmaker. And because of this it’s safer for OWL teams, Grandmasters, and Top500 players to just stick to GOATS instead of swapping to one of its counters and running the risk of losing a fight to Widowmaker.

Diving Widowmaker doesn’t fit the bill at the highest levels of play because the tanks or supports will get focused, when the tanks are dead, the dps and supports have no space to work with meaning the fight is lost most of the time, when the supports are dead your team has no healing, meaning it is safer to back up instead of continuing to fight and risk feeding ultimate charge.

At the highest levels of play, Widowmaker almost always determines the outcome of the match. Most of the games on the GM ladder are decided by what team has the better Widowmaker player, AKA, what Widowmaker can kill the other Widowmaker more times then the other

Her hitbox should be slightly increased or her charge time should be increased from 720 MS to 1 S so other heroes aside from another Widowmaker have a chance to hit her in the highest levels of play.

Oh, and i am not the only GM player that feels this way. Many of them agree: As a 3.9K player, I have a new level of hatred for widow
As a daily gm player. I hate Widow

TL;DR: the only counter to widowmaker at the highest levels of play is another widowmaker

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This is pretty spot on. Lots of games are decided by which team has the better widow.

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Widowmaker is overpowered because she does far too much dmg per shot, wich charge quite quickly mind you, while having pretty much zero weakness if played well and with her team backing her up.

She’s infuriating and too intimidating because she can instantly delete everyone in the game besides the tanks, in a game where the time to kill is extremely variable and when you die you have to watch a long killcam, then walk back from spawn to your team…

Let’s take counter strike for an exemple: in that game the time to kill is extremely low, as in, pretty much any weapon in the game can kill you in one shot to the head (more or less). So, people don’t care much about the strenght of the AWP when an AK47 kill you as fast with a bullet to the head anyway.
Same in call of duty, snipers can kill you in one hit yeah, but a 3 round burst from an assault rifle will do the job very quickly too. And you can skip the killcam and respawn immediatly and go pew pew again very fast.

That’s FAR DIFFERENT from overwatch where a soldier76 needs to hit widowmaker with so many shots and maybe a rocket to kill her while she can instant kill him with much less effort and boom, watch that long kill cam and get back to the spawn…
You starting to understand why she’s so oppressing and op?

Why can a sniper kill the tank supposed to counter her in 2 freaking shot?

Want to dive her with winston or D.VA? Her zen will put healing orb on her, she’ll escape and with support from her team (or just plain and simply her alone) will shredd you before you can do anything to her…

Want to counter her with a dps? you need to… use widowmaker to counter widowmaker…
When your only counter is yourself isn’t that a sign that you are overpowered?

There’s so many reasons why she’s op and the devs are so blind about it.
Hanzo is another story…

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BuT ShE NeEdS SkIlL…

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I love being one shot across the map by a character I can’t even see.

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Overwatch should be renamed Sniperwatch just on the amount of matches that are decided by a Widow vs Widow fight.

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What? How does that work?

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Widowmaker should be a Squishy/Pharah counter against team not using tanks (or only roadhog/hammond) and not freaking dominate the whole game.
She should do 200dmg max per shot.
Why can she instant kill mei, reaper, doomfist, torbjorn, and almost bastion (3hp left, GG)? Why can she do so much damage to tank?
The fact she can inflict 300dmg per shot so quickly is so unreal.

I couldn’t care less if they made her mine invisible and do instant 100dmg on explosion if they gave her sniper rifle a lower firerate and 200dmg max so that she can’t dominate everyone in the game anymore.

oh and i freaking HATE her ulti. I HATE when the ennemy team knows my every move and location. When i played call of duty a lot i would ALWAYS use the perk that made you invisible on the radar… You imagine how much i hate her ulti and hanzo’s sonar arrow…
as if these heroes didnt do enough dmg, they have abilities to know exactly when you are gonna peek that corner and insta kill you… freaking great.

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did you not read my post? lol

“There are counters to GOATS, but all of them can be quickly shut down by a swap to Widowmaker. And because of this it’s safer for OWL teams, Grandmasters, and Top500 players to just stick to GOATS instead of swapping to one of its counters and running the risk of losing a fight to Widowmaker.”

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They should really just remove the 2.5x crit multiplier on her gun, because being able to 2-shot Roadhog or Winston just feels cheap

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Here is an example of a team using quad dps to force others off of GOATs, only for Widow swap to ruin it.

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I don’t understand what you’re talking about. The counter to GOATS is GOATS. But widow doesn’t counter GOATS. GOATS uses a shield, and widowmaker can’t shoot through shields. So what is the counter to GOATS you’re saying widow has?

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It’s not that Widow counters GOATs. It’s that she counters anti-goats. So you can’t run those because you become vulnerable to the Widow swap. So you’re better off just using your own GOATs variant to win.

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Honestly when 2-2-2 comes from the OWL, it’s gonna be double sniper again. I guarantee it.

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Yeah unless some significant changes are made, it will be. Although maybe it will be with the bunker tanks instead of Rein Zarya now that the dragonball combo got nerfed.

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Orisa-Hog + Double Sniper is likely. People even ran Widow during dive.

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Okay, let me tell you something
You:Junk, soldier, Sombra, mercy(People who dive her)
3.9k guy:junk and Doomfist main (people who dive her, so he is justified)
Gm guy(the one who started the whole nerf widow thing): a bastion one-trick. A guy who one tricks a character who is countered by widow.
I will even bring more info. Don’t balance the game only for the top level of play. don’t balance for the 1%. it’s like bringing in tax cuts for the 1%. it punishes everyone below them.

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Yeah. They should never have buffed her to be viable during dive. She should have been dumpster tier against a team of 5 counters.

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“There are counters to GOATS, but all of them can be quickly shut down by a swap to Widowmaker."
The counter to GOATS is GOATS, so when it says “all of them(the counters) can be shut down by a swap to Widowmaker”. It’s saying that widowmaker counters GOATS, since she counters the counter, which is GOATS.

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I don’t even main McCree… I main Junk/Doom