I’d say start the falloff at 40m range, then somewhere between 40m and 50m it loses it’s oneshot.
take the tf2 route, just put a red dot where she is aiming. this would let players realize if they have a widow waiting for them to peek
The TF2 route would be making it so she’s basically dead almost every time if an enemy gets close range on her, and she isn’t hard peeled for.
you sir, play tf2 at a completely different level than i… the only thing to counter a sniper. is a sniper
but regardless. giving her scope a red dot that is placed on the wall would require widow to hide the dot to not alarm someone that she is aiming at them. making her ult a lot less “free headshots here”
shes fair in a the aspect that you have to be accurate. but unfair in the aspect of her ability to one shot from across the map while having mobility options and anti-flank tools.
even a bad widow is going to get a lot of value just through the threat of the possible one shot. and it only takes 1 pick to win a match
Only if we’re talking high ELO TF2 Comp.
Which is like 0.1% of the TF2 playerbase.
And even then that’s mostly because they are getting hard pocketed by a Medic and/or a level 3 sentry.
In the context of +90% of the playerbase in pubs with autobalance there’s basically nothing a Sniper can do about a Spy with a DeadRinger+Spycicle and their preference of Enforcer/Ambassador/DiamondBack.
Or just any sort of enemy rushing them at close range, like a Scout, or Blackbox Soldier on a flank.
That said, yes, I’ve put a bit of thought into this.
i am talking high elo tf2 comp, like adv+… ive played with and against some of the best in the game. and let me tell you… THEY DONT MISS TWICE. and they dont have to be hard pocketed, they just need enough heals to beat the other sniper. then its merc season…
widow in ow2… is the same concept, as soon as whatever can/would pressure her is dead… shes free to just reign hell onto anyone that is in the open. and you cant play cover forever, you have to play the objective at some point…
for the tf2 portion of what youre saying… a sniper can still duel a scout. an unscoped body shot is 40% of his damage, and his smg isnt weak. its just short range… a blackbox soldier is going to take some damage rocket jumping, and only has 2 rockets to kill the sniper, assuming that he doesnt surf out…
a good sniper, is only countered by a good sniper, which is why A LOT of sniper’s unlocks, are banned in competitive play. otherwise the class as a whole would have to be banned, and thats not an option, especially for HL.
if your widow can win the widow-v-widow… their ENTIRE TEAM… has to swap to something that can challenge you. im not the best widow, but ive forced swaps to winston just to be able to get close to me, after winning the sniper duels… and even was able to kill the winston by softening them with a headshot when they jumped in… thats 300 damage…
there is only 2 heroes in the entire game that can afford to ignore the widow (at the cost of your team)… ball and sombra, ball can remove his head hitbox… and sombra can just stay invis.
killing a good widow, requires coordinated attacks from multiple people. and thats banking on all of them surviving… if the widow’s team peels for her… shes quasi invincable due to the range advantage
April Fools Widowmaker changes
Make it a damage over time on headshot, hell make it deal a bit less damage overall on top of that and let it mark someone through walls for up to .5 seconds based on charge.
One shots shouldn’t exist in multiplayer games period. I one trick her because I have to, not because I want to. Standing at the enemy spawn by myself and denying people from leaving isn’t fun for me or them.
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turning the headshot damage into a dot… actually isnt a bad idea…
make it 125dps so its possible to save someone, but without giving too much time.
not bad SweetReverb… not bad
The idea is to make Widow viable still. You’re essentially relegating widow into not being played anymore, but that’s not good for the game. Every tool must be as viable as possible. And also, I’m just going to ask straight out:
Why do you feel like you can just decide this?
You absolutely do not have to one trick widow. Nothing is at stake. You can not play her and your life will continue as normal.
But it is because widow would never get another kill again. Either she choses to shoot low health targets, and you guys complain anyway because that’s basically still a one shot, or she shoots a person for DOT damage and they get healed.
I hate that I’ve shared this so much but until I’m told it’s not a good idea, I’ll keep doing it.
I genuinely believe that, if we were to agree that Widow is too strong, it’s the value she gets from aim and aim skill.
She has less cover to deal with since Double Shield can’t completely nullify her sightlines anymore. Mobility is not strong enough against her aim skill so zipping from cover to cover from her sightlines isn’t good enough and the counterplay to Widow takes either way too much coordinated team effort or team trust.
But I also think removing her oneshot or HP nerfs will be detrimental and, if we wanted to fix her as a character, doing it by those methods is not good. HP nerfs should be last resort and we only did it with Widow last time because there wasn’t a solid answer for how to tweak her.
If her rifle charge-up time exists simply as a tool to keep her from flicking and killing targets, there should be an extra incentive given to her to which makes it harder against teams that now objectively have less cover. If the devs have done things like increase Hanzo’s projectile speed which completely changed the way Hanzo players had to aim, surely they can make a change that overall would just mean Widows would have to adjust to the new aim and adjust her skill ceiling and possibly give the rest of the abilities of her kit a chance to maybe be balanced.
if you make the dot strong enough that it requires IMMEDIATE healing… then it offers counterplay, while still keeping it lethality. it devalues the pure 1 shot. while still keeping charged headshots viable for a damage source…
its still goign to do 300 damage, its just over time. meaning its going to require focused healing.
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Widowmaker isn’t supposed to just camp in one spot and open fire. There’s supposed to be a penalty for letting the enemy know where you are before you get a pick. She’s supposed to reposition every few shots.
If D. Va can find her and spam her to the point that she can’t take charged shots at all, that’s Widowmaker’s fault for being predictable/obvious.
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Well, you’re not wrong then. Sniper is kinda broken in that very specific context.
But fine for the other 99.9% of the playerbase.
Casuals kill everything they get their slimy hands on
I missed the days when Spy countered Sniper.
Then the casuals whined and gave Sniper easy options to kill him. Then also nerfed Spy’s best option to beat a comp sniper. I’ll never forgive the casual engineer mains for ruining Ambassador.
My hatred for casuals has been slowly festering for years now. OW2’s balance state was the final straw.
So what would be your preference for Widow?
- Easier to kill (I.e. 150hp, or taking damage messes with grapple cooldown)
- Peppering her with damage prevents Snipe shots in some way. (I.e. Inaccurate, Lose Scope Charge, Get Descoped)
- Basically can’t oneshot beyond 45m range
- Convert the snipe shot to damage over-time, so it’s a oneshot but not an instakill.
i think #4 is the healthiest for the game. when looking at balancing you have to keep a few things in mind
-does it force a complete gameplay change (#3 would force widow in the middle of her team. 45m isnt that far…)
-does it keep the spirit of the design alive (#4 does this quite well)
-is it healthy for both player (#2 isnt) a dva could jsut sit there and keep peppering you with shots most of the game, making it almost impossible for you to do ANYTHING.
lowering her hp wouldnt be a bad idea. but you want to make sure that she keeps a range advantage, if hitscan with falloff are able to instakill HER at range… what the point of playing widow…
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I’m still of a mind it could be wise to change the charge from a linear scale to a series of discrete levels. Basically, it gives them a lot more freedom to slide timings around for a particular breakpoint without having domino effects on other spots.
This isn’t intended as a replacement for making other changes to her, but just sets up better control for controlling how hard she hits and how quickly, so what’s basically a rough draft of specifics follows:
Keeping in mind that 45% is enough for a headshot kill on Tracer today, and 150 is the basically max practical damage we can push that won’t turn into kill vs 200 HP with a Mercy damage boost, I was thinking of something along the lines of
0-44% charge: 30 body / 60 head
45-79%: 75/150
80-99%: 100/200
100%: either 120/300, 150/300, 145/290, or something similar. There’s no particular reason the crit multiplier needs to be exactly the same for every level.
If that’s still too quick for one shots, they could easily slide the 100/200 level later or change it to 90/180. Or even omit the level outright, for that matter.
There’s no particular reason we need to have exactly this many levels, and opting for a lower crit multiplier offers some compensation, particularly at lower ranks, for the loss of one-shot frequency.
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Honestly, it is genuinely a very difficult conversation. Trying to balance Widow isn’t as easy as adding or removing a single second from one of her CDs; she is not that kind of hero.
but it is a wonder if her current design is too foreign to the point of Overwatch for the same reason Soujorn was: her most useful ability is pointless in low elo but scales the best with aim which mostly matters in higher elo where aim skill starts to get inhuman.
I just DON’T want changes that would net her into even more limited ways of playing the game to happen. I’m not a Widow main, I don’t play Widow, but I can imagine in my head how unfun it would be to be hard shove into a playstyle with less room for situational variety.
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I don’t disagree with you on this point at all. I just think keeping her existing linear charge has too much potential to get in the way of making precise adjustments to her rifle’s damage profile, and being continuous vs discrete levels doesn’t really add much when the focus is on break points.
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