Widowmaker is a very lovely character who is difficult to master, which is okay (high risk, high reward). What is NOT okay is her lame “Venom Mine”. It does very little damage and no ill effect to the opponents caught on it (apart from making them briefly visible through walls).
What I strongly suggest is to buff Venom Mine! How?
Increase its damage or at least add increased damage received of the foe(s) caught on it (similar to Zenyatta’s “Orb of Discord”).
Add ill effects to the affected character(s) such as: heavily dazzle their vision, slow them down, increase a lot the recoil of their weapons (making harder to hit opponents), decrease the damage of their attacks… only for some seconds of course. 8-15 seconds should be enough.
Increased range of the Cloud.
The duration of Venom Mine effects becomes proportional to the exposed time and proximity to it.
These changes will help make Widowmaker the balanced very dangerous foe she is supposed to be. Otherwise she’ll just remain this “one-trick pony” with this extreme dependency of her Sniper Rifle to make her effective.
That’s exactly what she’s supposed to be. She’s the sniper. Every character in the game even calls her “sniper” when they see her. Every design decision made around her has been about making her a sniper.
The mine was buffed some time ago to provide vision through walls on the poisoned target, which is a very powerful effect while also playing even more into the Snipey McSniperson theme.
The “Venom Mine” is supposed to serve as a trap, especially against characters who get close to her. I get frustrated with characters getting caught on Venom Mine and only being “tickled” by it. Cool to have vision through walls, but it is very little buff.
Blizzard should and must make more of “Venom Mine”, and my suggestions are useful for the devs. Hopefully they actually read this topic.
The venom mine does a damage over time AND it marks the player who triggered it for your teammates. Pretty useful as is, IMO. Oh, and the whole thing about if you can aim, she starts deleting enemies pretty quickly.
My point was not to demand her to be more than a sniper, but to have all of her skills useful. Venom Mine, as it is, is crap. Only barely useful when tracking hit enemies, nothing else.
People get very triggered and low-key terrified when someone asks for a buff.
she is fine dont make widowmaker thread you will get nothing but people frothing over her one shot and asking nerfs, last thing i want for her is to get attention or buffs which will inevitably lead to nerfs.
She doesnt even need venom mines to be honest, Its just a nice genji tracer alarm.
I would argue to get rid of its damage altogether and only keep the wallhacks it gives. It’s pretty dumb to me that she is supposed to be the epitome of skill in this game, but it is very easy to just…venom mine and smg a flanker to death.
Maybe even remove the smg as well. It’s never felt necessary in her kit, it’s just there.
It serves as warning, and nothing more. It hasn’t been intended to be a trap since internal closed alpha, where they nerfed it because an actual trap would do too much.
8-15 seconds is insanely high compared to any other ability. The mine detonation cloud is big enough for doorways. It’s best defensively as a warning, not offensively. Stop yeeting it into their backline. I think it needs a buff, but when they’re going out of their healers LOS, and getting 75 dmg, it’s enough. They trigger mine, you redeploy near you if you’re taking the fight, and that’s 150dmg on them. If you’re using it to do dmg. It’s best for scouting though. Hard pass on this suggestion. Snipers do sniper stuff, not aoe big dmg, we don’t need another dynamite.
I personally think the wall hacks should be available to the team, like sonic arrow, so the team can aid against the dive.(or does it? never seen it in my 1k hours.) And make the duration of the wall hacks longer, because sometimes that reaper coming to get you dilly dallies.
“all skills useful”? Venom mine is great. Practically a mini wallhack ult for her, since she gets to see the enemy before they get to her.
If you want a dangerous trap, go play junkrat. He’s the high risk high reward you say widow has(from 60m away???).
You say that like Information isn’t the best thing a widowmaker could ask for.
That and 75 HP is already plenty strong. in a 1v1 when every bit of HP help, it turns Widow’s 2 bodyshots for a kill into 1 bodyshot + 1 assault rifle shot for a kill.