Healthy ideas for Widowmaker nerfs/changes?

General Discussion
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So, I don’t mean to act like I’m the arbiter of what is and isn’t good game design. With that said, I think we have to agree that dumpstering a character just so we don’t have to face them is objectively bad design. A character is an option for us all, like a tool in a toolbox, and intentionally breaking a tool because you don’t like it with harm everyone who has to access this tool box. With that in mind, we should brainstorm changes for Widow that keeps Widowmaker playable, but reigns her power-level in line with other heroes. So, lets talk about that.

Personally, I’d say she should keep her one shot, but you don’t have to agree with that.

I’d like to try a Widowmaker rework where she has three shots per rifle load, no AR mode and her gun needs a higher percentage to one shot someone. As an upside but she have a pistol for up close engagements (and a good one, too), and perhaps even her hook would come off cooldown faster. Her health would stay at 175, but we could see about knocking it down to 150 if she’s too effective.

The idea here would be to introduce downtime on her one shots, so that people can count her shots and peek, or force her to reposition or swap weapons. Starting with the pistol, I want to explain something known as “intentional clunk”.

You know how LifeWeaver has to charge his healing, and watch his ammo count for his healing, and swap off if he wants to damage people? That’s clunky, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. With the clunky healing and weapon swapping, you could have that be a natural trade off for high healing AND damage on a character. We could do the same for widow.

Give her a pistol, and a strong one too that can protect her in close range. However, swapping off the rifle into it completely eliminates the possibility of scoped shots, AND when you hear her pistol firing, you know you can move out of cover or begin to pressure her team because she’s no longer able to hard scope your squishies.

A similar thing is true for her hook. Giving her the option to run would work as an extra layer of protection (and she’ll need it if she’s dodging hypermobile tanks and flankers with 175/150 hp), but simply running for her life will cause her to lose chances to snipe people.

And when it comes to downtime, I think we can all tell what 3 shots per load and having to charge to a higher percentage to one shot squishies would do.

If this comes off sounding like a giga nerf to you, I’d like to remind people that we can always tweak the numbers to help widow. With a bunch of downsides stacked against her, I’m more than willing to add ammo, or decrease the charge requirement for the one shot, or give her more health. At the end of the day, I want her to succeed, but I think she needs to be reigned in due to the change to 5v5.

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I think you need to make your posts more concise and precise.

It feels you start a topic and go all over that main point gets lost.

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I know what you mean. I usually use this place to just dump ideas, so I usually don’t do any extra formatting or checking. If the message is understood, or if some information falls to the wayside, that’s just how it is.

I’m used to people not really caring too much about my posts, but if you think I should put more effort into them, I will. Personally, I think each paragraph explains what I want to say clearly enough, but I’m an awful writer, so feel free to just pick out paragraphs and tell me where I could be clearer.

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My widow changes

  1. When she charges give a glow spotlight from her position showcasing her fov.

Something like in this code.
XVDXZ

  1. Increase charge time by 25%
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Simply i would have posted change then reason for change.
Then variations.

Could also use with a bit of formatting.

Mainly why i care about your posts is it doesn’t follow the mass hysteria that often engulfs the forum and some hero becomes the villain of the season, but rather you seem passionate about the essence of the game.

I’m also like that, to me what got me into overwatch was that tracer widow trailer.

Been playing tracer since, would be so funny to watch that trailer if widow loses her one shot.

I’m not even that good at the game nowadays but I’m pretty sad about the current state and how people are more interested in using patches as revenge than balance.

The state of hog is so sad however op and annoying he may have been.

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Widow needs 2 little nerfs, these 2 nerfs is enough to both balance her out while keeping her strong for all ranks.
#1: reduce her aim down speed
#2: increase her full charge rate to 1.3 seconds
Ill explain why

Reducing widow’s aim down speed means she cant react and do a 180 headshot on flankers or anyone that gets the drop on her. There is nothing more annoying than getting the drop on a widow and she just descopes, and then aims again and one shots you. This little nerf would suddenly make flankers like genji, tracer, sombra or even reaper a legitimate counter to widow.

Next we nerf the charge rate, anyone thats faced a god tier widow knows about the annoying bunny hopping. The reason a widow is able to even pull this BS is because her rifle fully charges a 300 crit damage shot at 0.9 seconds. For those that dont know, hanzo has a charge time of 1 full second, is a projectile and only deals a max of 250 in crit. Why does a hitscan have the ability to dish out 300 crit damage in 0.9 seconds? It just doesn’t make any sense. Having the fast charge also allows widow to bunny hop left and right and land one shots before she even touches the ground. By increasing her rifle’s charge time, widow can no longer bunny hop and get kills before she touches the ground.

Now pair both of the nerfs together and what do we get? An actual sniper lol. Widow will be forced to fully commit to hardscope lanes like a real sniper would. No more hyper mobile bunny hopping widows, no more 180 descoping one shot widows, no more BS. She doesn’t need to lose the one shot or even her damage output. she doesn’t need buffs or nerfs anywhere else apart from what I mentioned. Flankers would have an easier time taking her down and due to her nerfs she could even potentially go back to 200hp.

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While Widow doesn’t have to swap weapons, her rifle already is a tad unreliable and uses the same ammo as the secondary fire. She may have to start engagements with a reload when her gun is already meh on non-sniper shots and she has no other real offensive tools.

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The issue with Widowmaker is not something you can solve by only changing Widowmaker.

Of course, she needs an actual meaningful nerf to either her oneshot or her free escape. I dont care if her other gun and her mines get buffs.

But the truth is, Widowmaker cant keep her oneshot in 5v5 as it is. Not with removed and nerfed defenses to the point they have been.

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Like, we just had a match where having Sigma didnt do anything. Dva didnt do anything.

Snipers are straight up busted and individual picks outside snipers dont matter against them.

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Apparently blizzard doesn’t agree because they did it to hog

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It depends entirely on the character.

In Hog’s case, Kiriko being a thing means there was basically none of the real actual drawbacks he had in OW1, while enforcing snipers and making any close range DPS practically useless.

In Widow’s case, she should be dumpstered until her diehard fans are broken and willing to accept a non-oneshot rework, because she breaks OW2 as she was designed around 2 tanks and several DPS heroes having things like barriers and team overhealth.

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Reduce her damage falloff range to 50m and make it harsher so she can’t just sit miles away in an uncontestable spot, and make her rifle charging non-linear so she actually has to charge her shots more. Kinda ridiculous that you’ve got less than a second to react to her even if you manage to close the distance.

Make her better defensively, give her the 200 HP back and reduce her M1’s spread to 2.25 degrees (Similar to Sombra wep). There, she’s less oppressive on maps like Havana but also shouldn’t absolutely crumble like wet paper if enemies do manage to close the distance.

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Just rework her regardless of what they accept, just don’t make her play immensely different from how she does now. She can still be a fun sniper hero without a one shot kill.

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  1. Nerf base level headshot damage to not be a 1 shot.
  2. Re-enable 1 shots through an ability that gives the target a warning

I’d imagine the most efficient way to do this would be to remove venom mine and add an ability that lets her “mark” a target for death, i.e. 1.5x damage on that target. That target would get a warning a little like when you’re discorded.

Her ult would additionally mark the entire enemy team.

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I’d still like to see Widow lose aim charge % when taking damage.

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I’ll just post this again to appease the 150HP-ers.

Perhaps there may be a way to nerf Widow HP to 150, that makes sense in the context of 5v5. I think what makes sense in the same context as mega-buffed mini-boss tanks is a higher crit damage, so her headshot multiplier should be increased to 3.33x for 400 damage crits in order to maintain parity with new tank health pools. The damage ramp can be adjusted so that TTK on sub-250 HP heroes remains the same as it is right now, meaning that only Bastion and tanks are affected by the new damage and squishies get a 150 HP Widow to duel/dive.

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I think scope sway when shot would help a lot. That way, even a tiny bit of damage could throw her aim off. The only issue with that is a character like D.va just spamming in her direction to ensure she never ever gets to shoot. That wouldn’t be too fair at all.

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This is precisely why it is morally correct to bully and harass casuals into leaving

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I’ve always wanted her reload time to be significantly increased. This would give larger windows for dive tanks/DPS to attack her, and also decrease the amount of time she completely locks down sight lines. Her reload speed is 1.5 seconds right now, and I think something in the range of 1.8-2 seconds would great. This would give her a very lengthy reload that fits her incredibly powerful primary weapon well, and just give her longer periods of vulnerability. It would also decrease her overall damage output and cement her role as a hero that gets picks rather than one that can actually deal fairly high damage over time if she’s landing her shots.

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I am a Masters Sym player.

Widow isnt even an issue below gold or even in QP outside smurfs and famous smurfs. Try again.

But also? ‘‘Bullying away casuals’’ is what killed OW1 in the first place.

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