Now that I have your attention, we need to consider the buffs that Widow would need if we were to nerf or outright remove her one-shot. I think there is a place for Widowmaker to have a one-shot in this game, but not as is where it’s value is so free. I propose the following changes to tone her max value down while making her more consistent at lower levels of play:
General:
Health increased from 200 to 225
Widow’s Kiss (scoped):
Ammo increased from 35 to 40
Damage increased from 120 to 125
Critical multiplier decreased from 2.5x to 2x (250 damage on a max charge headshot)
Projectile size reverted from 0.04 to 0.01 meters (its original size)
Falloff range decreased from 50-70 to 50-60 meters
Venom Mine:
Damage per second increased from 15 to 25 (125 total)
Cooldown decreased from 15 to 12 seconds
Infra-Sight:
Now resets Grappling Hook’s cooldown
While active, Widow’s Kiss scoped shots have an increased critical multiplier of 3x (375 on headshots) and no falloff
While active, all enemies now have the “Revealed” status on their screens
You can now run a full team composition of heroes who don’t get one-shot by Widowmaker. Additionally, in order to retain her one-shot on the majority of heroes, Widowmaker will need to fully charge her scope to 100%, increasing the downtime between shots.
If you think there’s a lot of compensation buffs, it’s because her shots’ max damage became a lot weaker, more infrequent, and less consistent, and till now her one-shot potential has been her whole identity. I hope these changes will keep Widowmaker a somewhat strong pick while powershifting her from being able to one-shot all non-tank heroes into a more well rounded sniper.
do me a favor and read through this whole thread :
then get back to me about myopically letting Widow keep her one-shot.
Your changes do literally nothing to her “free value”, they don’t add a cost or cooldown to her one-shot which contradicts what you implied that the changes would do and you buffed her ult for no reason. That version of Widow would be worse to fight against than what we have in the live game currently, since she exchanges +0.15s TTK on 250s and the inability to one-shot 275s and 300s (which is mostly irrelevant since most 275s and 300s aren’t able to contest a Widow anyways and even if they manage to get to her being instantly reduced to 25/50hp is basically a death sentence anyways, as she can quickly SMG them down after the scoped shot connects.) without damage boost for a bunch of microbuffs and a way better ult (without even something as simple as an ultimate cost increase).
The below changes are the actual solution that solve all of the problems Widow causes while still keeping her playable. :
If you want me to explain why I made the changes I made feel free to ask.
Frankly none of this matters too awful much as we all know none of this will be done, but I just wanna say how dumb I think no damage boosting is. Damage boost shouldnt be something you have to stop and ask “does this work with X?” its should be blindingly obvious and turning off damage boost for a primary fire is BEYOND stupid. Dont muddy up the waters for funsies, find a better answer. The instant abilities stop being intuitive all hell breaks loose.
And second, infra sight reveals widow? Make that make sense brother, whats even the point of having walls if enemy is also just granted walls of you? Thats a nerf that makes zero sense no matter how you argue it, an ultimate ability intentionally nerfing you? At least with the likes of Dragon Blade, Justice from Above, and Death Blossom its just unintentional nerfs
Whats even the point of her keeping walls then? just rebrand it as an empowerment to the sniper and remove the wallhacks since you obviously dont want walls in the game.
Would you rather her damage be reduced by 30% to compensate for damage boost instead? Because that would be the other option, but I doubt any Widow player would chomp at the bit for that change over just having damage boost not affect scoped shots.
Well then the game is already knee deep in hell because there are a ton of ability interactions that aren’t intuitive already. KarQ’s Mythbuster series wouldn’t need to exist if every ability’s interaction with every other ability was perfectly intuitive. Also this would be pretty simple to communicate, just don’t show the damage boost weapon glow on the Widow’s weapon so the player knows they aren’t recieving a damage boost.
Gladly. It gives her Ultimate some form of counterplay, seeing as I buffed it so she can one-shot while under the effects of Infra-Sight. It only reveals her at the start of the ultimate during the cast time, however, but judging by your tone here you didn’t read that part. Reading comprehension is a very important skill by the way, in case you didn’t know.
oh ho ho how little you understand.
Dragonblade not allowing you to Primary or Secondary Fire, Rocket Barrage locking you in place, and Death Blossom not allowing you to use any abilities, slowing you, and preventing you from crouching are all very intentional design decisions to give the ultimates mentioned counterplay options, the same thing I did for Widow’s reworked Ultimate to compensate for her increased Critical Multiplier while under its effects.
Calling me stupid when you don’t even understand something as basic as this was certainly an interesting decision on your part.
Nah. Seems like a mega-nerf for nothing burger buffs. I don’t mind the “not being able to kill 250+ HP characters” part, but that’s way too much lost for little to nothing gained. Not even health tweaks to make her not instantly countered by a single Sombra counterswap.
Charging up a shot puts her in an extremely vulnerable state with the movement speed penalty, while also limiting her damage output by making it a charge up ability.
Changing the one-shot without addressing these simply makes her a worse version of Ashe. Widow’s character is built around her one shot potential, but is ruined by the squishy-ness of her character. I have 0 drive to play her if she loses her one shot.
Love this : lets nerf skill based hero because it feels bad if someone has better aim but leave one shot archers because their one shot one kill are mostly just lucky headshoots and loosing to luck is ok
Ideally you would also nerf those two, for Ashe a scoped fire rate nerf and stripping the tank passive from B.O.B. and for Cass maybe a health nerf. Widow isn’t the only hitscan that’s had it too good for too long, she’s just the obvious pain point and once we get past nerfing her we can address other problems as they come up.
I do think Mercy should be able to damage boost Widow but would like it to be in such a way that prevents it from going back to a 1-shot.
Something like a scoped headshot deals 100 damage, and applies a 100 damage quick poison DoT. The DoT is equal to the pre-mitigation, falloff, and damage boost damage the shot would do. The DoT itself is not affected by damage boosts or reductions. This way Widow can still do more damge from a further range than Ashe, but Mercy won’t change it to a 1-shot. It could also allow for interesting moments where Widow is able to burst someone down through something like Cardiac Overdrive or chunk down someone that is nanoboosted.
… we’re looking at what Black Widow is in Rivals. Meaning: absolutely worthless hero since there are alternatives that deliver more consistent value, provide more versatility, have more survivability and require less effort all at the same time.
