We get so many posts about widow being this OP unflank-able monster, but I never see it in game or when I watch pros play. I’ll admit this could be a specific rank thing; maybe widow is dominating in gold and I just don’t see it because I steer clear of comp and never was gold when I did play comp.
Still, the chatter I hear about widow is weird. People allege she can somehow watch BOTH flank angles and also can’t be dived because of some other nonsense that keeps her alive. Like her hook that’s on a longer cooldown than most other mobility options so, if she does escape, she can only escape once.
The way people on here talk about her, you’d think she was literally invincible. Can I get some footage of these giga widows?
I hear conflicting reports about this. Some say she’s not OP because she’s playing at ranks with high coordination and skill, and others say she’s OP WHEN she’s playing at ranks with high coordination and skill.
And then people say she’s OP because she’s playing at low ranks where people don’t have high coordination and skill. These can’t all be true.
Idk what to tell people, especially the people that thought pre-patch Sombra was the “only” answer to her.
As tank, I just poke her out and annoy her via Face Barriers with Rama.
As Damage, I’m actually rarely the one that engages her directly, but I just keep a mental note of where she is play around her sightlines. If I’m ashe then I make sure to regularly chuck Dynamite her way.
If Widow can’t shoot you, or more specifically, Headshot you, she can’t do much of anything, and every map update seems to be expanding your options to avoid engaging her. She doesn’t necessarily need to die to be on the losing team.
Well, here’s my interpretation of Cadwell/Walker’s work. (I.e. Riot and Valve)
“After you make your Choice, your Opponent should have the capability, to respond with their Choice, which includes the awareness that a Choice exists, and enough time to understand and react with their Choice”.
But you can take your pick:
Like are we violating Tom Cadwell’s principle that counterplay should not just have the capability to counter, but the time and obviousness that a counter should be used.
Or are we violating the Sid Meier and Soren Johnson, style “Optimizing Fun out of Games” design issue? Where “Technically possible to defeat” was absolutely not sufficient by itself.
Or Robin Walker’s “We literally designed the character Widow is based on, and we empirically measured that onesided counterplay lost significant amounts of players”
Given what’s just happened to Sombra, it doesn’t matter if Widow is OP, just whether she’s obnoxious to play against for most people. I guess we’ll find out!
That’s normally what I see. Widow is usually only a problem when too many people decide someone else should be countering her. Many complaints from people who refuse to switch off Hog. I had a tank explain once that it’s DPS’s job to counter Widow. No idea how he got ranked so high.
Play enough games and you start getting into patterns or start slacking off because the effort required can be taxing. Keep repeating these same habits and you’ll forget to do smarter things that once made you good at dealing with a variety of situations.
So for a lot of players - mostly low-ranking or less-skilled - falling into familiar habits means getting punished for those habits and being unable to adapt to situations that you could once do (or never did). Widowmaker tends to capitalize on those bad habits, and lots of players who were used to how Sombra used to play are struggling to adapt to the new situations.
Only one I can find is from 8 years ago, back when Widowmaker could flick into scope and her scoped shots did 150 damage (fun times). Outside of that, haven’t really found one that’s so godly that managed to consecutively kill the enemy team without cheating.
They can be. We do have a lot of ‘smurfs’ running around this very old game.
Widowmaker was running around without Sombra for a solid year and Sombra back then wasn’t her counter.
Some maps do still favor her, but there are still plenty of routes to avoid her sightlines.
Yep. Basically.
Players complain about that turret that’s killing them, but don’t want to deal with it directly.
Players complain about Pharah sniping them from the air, but don’t want to deal with it directly.
It’s always a re-direct to get someone else to do it, either because they themselves lack the skill to do it, or because they can’t get support or teamwork to help them take it down.
On one end, I can sympathize by the lacking teamwork (because it is really bad when your supports refuse to do their job and support you), on the other end, you have the opportunity to switch and try another approach to killing the target. It is everyone’s job to deal with troublesome elements, and not brush it off to someone else.
Widowmaker is similar to Pharah or Sombra where everyone refuses to acknowledge their presence and desperately hopes someone else addresses it when in reality they force the team to play entirely different once they are present. So… Yeah. Pretty much.
I don’t care what the reality is (which is, she’s broken, she was played even in dive metas, dive does not counter widow). What’s important is that she gets reworked.
People didn’t care about what the reality was with Sombra, people made it seem like one of the worst performing characters in the game was uncounterable and invincible and look what happened to sombra, complete identity assassination over the years to the point of them literally trying to change what kind of damage character she is.
So screw Widow, hope the complaints keep coming so she can get changed, her changes are actually warranted and they’ll probably keep her as a long-range burst dps if they do change her instead of what they did with Sombra.
Sombra stopped being a Widow counter as soon as people played in games where everyone on the team could simultaneously think about the game and remember to breathe irl.
Widow’s best counter has always been herself and is a testament to how she was always broken on a fundamental level.
To preface, im not saying she is unflankable or undiveable, but she feels darn close to those at times.
Sometimes I can take a flank rount to kill widow, sometimes I cant, just depends on the map and where she is, and if she is near her team or not.
My issue is there there are only a few heroes who can dive her effectively. The vast majority of heroes either lack the kit to deal with a widow without putting themself at risk of getting 1 shot by her.
Widow on the other hand can shutdown a vast majorty of the heroes. So i find it a issue when a hero can shut down so many heroes but only a small few can shut her down.
Also this is not new, these complaints people are making about widow can be traced back to OW1 launch. Its not some new thing, widow has also been found problematic since OW1 launch.
Its just in OW1 we had more ways to deal with widow, a second tank, stronger and more shields, overhealth abilites, no regen passive, no hitbox sizes on hitscan, ect
Widow has always been a issue, its just before we had tools to deal with her, but the devs keep on removing those tools.
Even now with the sombra changes, its removing/nerfing something that kept widow in check.
Counter with what? They nerfed the only decent counter left against snipers. Sombra was the only one in the dps roster that was single handedly keeping all the Widow’s and Ashe mains at bay.
The irony of all these losers lamenting for Sombra nerfs only made widows virtually unstoppable now.
widow is extremely weak in close range and easy to kill, so this criterium is true for widow
everything else? Irrelevant because there is no “one size fits all”. LoL or Civ are completely differente rules. Again: building a racecar while strictly following a aerodynamic book about planes.
All of this are just theories and experinces, that do not make them the Law.
1. Counteract with the Sniper through them being easy to kill
check, Widow is easy to kill 2. Counteract the Sniper through damage blocking their ability to Snipe
check, We have tons of shield, immoralities and cover 3. Retroactively counteract the Sniper with Heals/Damage Mitigation
check, we have Rez and dozens of heros cannot be oneshoted. 4. Make the problematic counterplay exist a lot less, by making the hero exist a lot less
check, problematic maps just got reworked.