Can't Widow in Comp (Help)

Competitive Discussion
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This account is a throw-away practice account. My main is in plat (2800) and I main hitscan DPS. Primarily, Ashe whom I play reliably in diamond when I queue with my diamond friends.

I don’t think general mechanics are an issue as I can get 1st place in Widow lobbies consistently but thus far, I haven’t had luck with Widow in Comp. The SR on this account is what I’ve honestly fallen to playing Widowmaker (I sometimes switch to other heroes out of pity to carry when my team has leavers or throwers).

My CP is open and stats are available with a decent data pool for Widow to make your theories. I’m also willing to add anyone in game to review my gameplay or submit vods.

I’d appreciate any advice or analysis to help me improve my play on Widow specifically.

PS: I’m not interested in anyone shaming me for not playing in my own rank or whatever else anyone is upset about. You can comment your remarks but they’ll be ignored.

EDIT: I should also admit I often arrogantly throw care for positioning to the wayside to rely entirely on aim at this Elo but I don’t think it’s the biggest cause for my overall performance.

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https://www.overbuff.com/players/pc/ŦŖǍŜĦƐ-1288?mode=competitive

Just looking at your overbuff stats…

Your damage and elims are very low. Your scoped accuracy is also very low. Meanwhile your crit accuracy is high. So my speculation is that you try too hard for headshots. But still aren’t taking hitting enough normal shots to put pressure and secure as many kills as you should.

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This was my thought as well. I tend to flick alot and can make pretty crazy shots doing so (Lucios, Mercies, Hanzos, etc) but I don’t think I’m consistent enough in general with them.
Watching Kephrii and Aimbotz today I saw they use a combo of flicks and tracking. I think I have difficulty deciding when to do which, though. Especially since I do well on Ashe with mostly flicks.

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Your stats seem very similar to mine, most likely your problem is something that can only be fixed by seeing it first hand.

Or in other words as many others are going to say…

POST A VOD

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Gad demit. Means I have to record. Will do, though.

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I placed an old alt in silver. I learned hitscan, went back, and 1-tricked Ashe on it to high gold in a week.

The following advice is 100% sincere and not a troll:

Just click heads 4Head.

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I’m not sure if you read the post. Clicking heads is not a problem as I play Ashe in diamond. I’ve already played Ashe from 800sr to 2800 on another account. Also clearly there’s a stark difference in between aiming with the two heroes.

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your scoped critical hit accuracy is good, but being in silver means you’re playing against enemies that don’t know how to strafe unpredictably to throw off your shots or engage with you properly so i would expect your stats on crit accuracy to be good there because of that + the fact you already play hitscan.

i can’t judge a lot without a vod to look at, but looking at your stats i see you’re getting 2.25 elims per life. this isn’t bad, but it’s not particularly good either—it tells me you’re still learning the very minimum basics of widowmaker.

i know you said earlier you don’t think you need to worry about positioning at this elo, but that’s a mindset you need to get out of. start thinking about positioning now and build good habits while you’re still learning widowmaker.

good aim can only get you so far, but good positioning sets you up for easy shots and helps you carry team fights. if you want to climb with widowmaker, the more your enemies close the mechanical skill gap with you the more you’re going to have to play smarter, not harder.

here are some tips that have really helped my widowmaker gamesense that helped me play her much more effectively:

  1. stop taking the same angle repeatedly. if the enemy team has seen you take one position they know where to expect you and you’re not as much of a threat. an unpredictable widowmaker is a scary widowmaker.

  2. always be thinking about what sightlines you want to control/apply pressure to. in silver, no ones going to respect your sightlines, and with aim like yours it’ll basically be a shooting gallery. sometimes you’ll want to stay closer to your team for a more passive playstyle, and other times you’ll want to take a flanking angle with an easy getaway so that the enemy rein has to choose between blocking your shots or dealing with your team at another angle. this really depends on what your team is doing tbh and you kinda get the feel of which style you should take the more you play her.

  3. as a widowmaker, constantly think about rotating your position. if your team is being aggressive, push forward with them and take aggressive sightlines. don’t hang back being too passive while your team is trying to build momentum.

  4. widowmaker is best played on maps with long sightlines. my favorite examples are anubis point a, kings row, havana, junkertown first and third point. however, this means regardless of how good your aim is there are some situations she’s better left in the spawn room. she’s not very good on most KOTH maps unless you’re playing with a good team that’s giving you the space you need to do work.

  5. if the enemy team has a lot of shields or a tanky comp, leave widow in the spawn and pick up a dps better suited for shield break like hanzo or junkrat. she’s not going to do much against these comps.

  6. while your headshot accuracy is VERY high, your scoped accuracy is a little on the low end. bodyshots are perfectly fine to get, and sometimes its better to scare the enemy support with a body shot that takes off half their health than to miss completely.

  7. your general target priority as widowmaker should be enemy widowmakers -> other snipers -> supports -> dps -> tanks.

  8. just because you’re getting picks doesn’t mean you’re helping or carrying. my favorite example for this is anubis point b. yes, you can get a few picks easily there, but unless you’re a veteran widowmaker i wouldn’t recommend it. the enemy spawn room is right there, so unless you get the right picks at the right time during a team fight, your contributions aren’t going to matter much there.

i went on a bit of a rant there, but these are honestly my best tips for you without seeing a vod. i hope you find them helpful, and happy climbing on the blueberry sniper!

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I appreciate the rant, actually. Thankyou!

You actually hit alot of what might be the issue here, I think. Out of frustration I would play her literally every map 100% and throw everything but aim out thinking I’m better than these nubz so its okay. I think that got me punished more than I expected.

I took Jacqui’s advice and started caring more about body shots and my stats have gotten a bit better I think. I do need to work on it though bc something about tracking with her zoom throws me off when I go back to make flicks. Feels like my reticle is in an odd position to start with or something.
I’m actually going to start playing with a bit more humility and mind positioning, maps, and comp. I think I know quite a bit about positioning and comps but I don’t think I’ve ever thought about rotating in advance with her so I’ll start doing that.

I think another issue might be like a sort of aim anxiety. Missing a shot on Widowmaker seems so much less forgiving to me than it would be with other hitscan so I get a little anxiety sometimes before a shot and it messes me up. This is more of a personal thing I have to work on, though.

I’m going to end up posting a VOD in the next few days. I have to see how incorporating this stuff in my gameplay affects it though, first. I don’t want to record a complete carry as a VOD since there’s not much to analyze there so if this all helps significantly enough I might do the VOD in plat instead.

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The most important thing is practice and playing with your sens. Play widow FFA lobbies. When I used to play for a team, we used to warm up playing these before every single match, and I went from being a plat level widow to a master’s level widow. You also need to know positioning in general like good sightlines and when to flank. Learning flicks and bits of widow tech can help too - watch some pro videos on YouTube or streams on twitch. A tip for 1v1 ones would be the jump scope (or whatever it’s called). Jump and then immediately scope in. You can’t jump without scoping out so this will help you be harder to hit, at the cost of you having to learn the flick required. I use it quite often against other widows. Just don’t spam it or they’ll catch on.

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I’m not sure you read the post. Aim is not a problem. I’m already used to my sens and can consistently 1st place in widow lobbies.

Enemy Widowmakers last absolutely 0 seconds in my games, however, I don’t find that Widow lobbies help in clicking the heads of any other character models.

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Oh right my bad, I must’ve missed that paragraph. It’s definitely a different skill, but I found that practising widow v widow helped me get better overall. I guess you just have to practise her in qp?

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QP on my main might be my next step so I can get enemies at my general skill level. Playing her at a low elo was my idea for practice but I feel it might be harming me more than helping now.

I’d prefer comp only on my main since I want to have only a bronze or silver border by the time I’m masters but… Whatever helps me, I guess.

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Just play her for like 200hrs. Since you already play Ashe, that should be easily enough for high plat at least. If you want to practice outside of ranked, “No Cancer FFA” is pretty decent.

The hardest part of playing her in ranked is the game sense side of things imo, because while the hours you need for such a good aim that you can walk around “normally” are simply ridiculous, at least that happens automatically over time.

The game sense part is very different. I kept repeating my mistakes for ages in low plat (bad habits from regular FPS). Things such as always trying to get away from Winston and Genji, rather than grappling into my team for help, or always trying to jump shot/fast peek corners, even when enemies have no clue where I am.

No idea what to do above diamond when you hit it with that account tho, I stopped playing at 3.1k

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Yeah I’ll try this. Part of me was also thinking it’s probably just a time put in kinda thing. That’ll take a while, though. I don’t yet have 200hrs on any hero on PC.

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Widow is situational and map dependent. Depends on your comp and depends on theirs. Also sometimes good on point A but if you don’t switch for B you get rolled.

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Glad I could help!

As for the scoped aim throwing you off, it could be that you’re accustomed to the way Ashe shoots, and that you’re unconsciously aiming the same way you would on Ashe. I actually have the opposite problem where my time on Widowmaker makes it hard for me to learn how to properly aim with Ashe.

On days when my aim feels off, I run through a mental checklist to sort of troubleshoot my aim, like the way my arm is positioned, if my mouse is centered, if my latency is stable, and if I accidentally bumped up my dpi on my mouse. 85% of the time it’s one of those culprits. However, sometimes it’s a small thing like just needing to take a break or getting something to eat so I can come back refreshed. Widowmaker, like most aim intensive heroes, can be fatiguing to play for hours on end—-moreso I would say than any other hero. She can be inconsistent for that reason even for people who have invested hundreds of hours playing her, and that’s sort of part of the whole package of playing her. By taking care of yourself and not overthinking your problems, you’re doing yourself a huge favor when playing her.

As for the reticle thing, one thing that helped me that might help you is changing the opacity on your reticle. Oftentimes I would get really distracted and stare at my crosshair instead of the target, which caused me to whiff a lot. Some would recommend just completely playing without a reticle, but I think that’s way too much of an over adjustment for a small problem. I play with a size 3 green dot, 45% dot opacity, and 75% outline opacity. This makes me focus more on my target, but if I need to re-center I still have a reticle on my screen to help me readjust.

Now the aim anxiety thing. It is very, very real on Widowmaker. It made the first 20 hours or so of learning her absolute hell for me. I kind of got over this by playing in ffa deathmatch and widowmaker headshot lobbies. You said aim isn’t your issue, but anxiety might be. By putting yourself repeatedly in high pressure, fast paced situations like you’ll see in ffa and headshot lobbies, you sort of get accustomed to high pressure situations, with the bonus of learning how to deal with characters in 1v1 scenarios you’ll often encounter in comp. I can’t stress how much this helped me with my anxiety on Widowmaker. I did get my stomped a lot at first, but eventually you stop caring, calm down, and focus on your own improvement instead of winning—which is really the goal here.

Going off the above tangent for aim anxiety I also highly recommend shooting bots in the practice range just to get your aim warmed up. Giving your brain something fairly mindless to do is a good way to get in your groove before playing.

I think that’s all I have for you now in regards to the things you’ve talked about. I would recommend watching widowmaker VOD reviews if you want a more in depth understanding of positioning and gamesense, but other than that everything with her comes with experience and practice.

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Thanks man, I really appreciate your advice. I’ll probably look back to this later when I’m actually playing lmao.

The stuff on anxiety sounds like it should help. I’ll definitely try it out.

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