Is Widow OP or No?

That’s literally what the AWP is.

It depends on what you are referring to. At the highest levels? Yes, she is genuinely broken. She dominated OWL in virtually every stage and it is one of the most consistent characters at top 500 and whatnot. To virtually anyone else, she is a bit of a joke.

…but the capabilities of the AWP is available to anyone who saves up the cash to purchase it and other guns don’t have their range severly limited by design.

Likewise, the utility that Widow has is wholly dependent on the enemy team not being a bunch of potatoes and not using barriers.

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Though Widowmaker has better mobility and damage at further ranges than any other dps, so your statement applies to and effects several other damage heroes more than it does Widow. Not to mention how small the barrier is relative to FoV at longer ranges.

Better mobility? Last I checked she didn’t have a reset on elimination, or a 3 second cooldown, or an instant reload in omnidirectional cast. Widow, by far, does NOT have the same sort of mobility as other heroes, and it’s being made worse even though it’s already one of the buggiest (if not the buggiest) ability in the game.

Everyone continues to overvalue the hook and look at it in a vacuum. They don’t realize it takes about 1.833+ seconds longer than the advertised cooldown to actually go on cooldown.

Everyone conveniently ignores that these happen;

Because suddenly everyone is an expert when it comes to Widowmaker’s balance and they totally know everything there is to know about Widow, and routinely ignore actual Widow players and their feedback, arguing that it’s not buggy and the hook is fine and it’s completely user error when it so clearly is not.

As for her damage, she’s still combating recoil, aim punch, a net code bug that literally turns hits into misses, and her clean up kill potential has been made worse with her SMG no longer dealing full damage at range.

Or the fact that her counters have been continually buffed to fight engagements against her (Winston barrier buff, D.Va Defense Matrix on rightclick + Micro Missiles)

Or the fact that people abuse the crap out of the strafe spam making shots a literal quick time event that, if you have a 60 fps monitor, you CANNOT reasonably predict and time, but everyone says that you can and you’re just bad if you can’t.

Or the fact that Widow’s average damage is consistently lower than most other DPS heroes – her average damage doesn’t even beat out a Pharah.

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Yes, omnidirectional mobility. Last I checked Tracer can’t blink to a ledge 20m above her head regardless of the cooldown on it, nor can she use her mobility to create a sight line that she can convert into a OHK from 50m away.

I’m not looking at it in a ‘vacuum’ I’m actually looking at it in a way where she might use her grappling hook to bypass the space a shield affords to the enemy team. In direct response to your assertion that ‘Widow is mitigated by shields’ and my counter point that she’s far less impeded by them than other damage heroes with a common example of how Widowmaker can use her mobility to effectively decrease the space a shield grants.

You are still viewing it in a vacuum.

Those barriers can be rotated (or are shaped to give 180/360 degree coverage). Repositioning doesn’t have any inherent value unless the barriers themselves are completely static, and they aren’t.

No Rein is just going to let you deal damage to them. If they see you, they’re going to block you relative to your position. Same goes for Brig, and even Sym way back when she had a barrier to cast. The advantage you gain from being able to reposition is balanced out by the barrier repositioning, so it’s not a pro or con for Widow.

Meanwhile, you expending your cooldown means you’re stuck standing still to enforce pressure, opening yourself up to countersniping, counter-snipers, and dives.

I have to say this again, her hook is buggy. It’s not reliable. With the exception of Hammond’s physics based movement, no other hero has this much inconsistency with their movement abilities. No other ability requires course correction to attempt to fix a failed hook and turn it into a successful (late, but sort of successful) reposition.

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I’m looking at it in a vacuum, then you proceed to give me an example where the other 5 members of her team aren’t concerned with the enemy tank rotating their shield and exposing their team? Ok.

She’s not OP, it’s only a matter of what the game has became recently. A lot of her counter play was removed cause of the new Brigitte meta and with all the CC the game has right now, her job has become pretty easy to do.

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You realize that enemies aren’t static pylons, right? That they move?

And that if you try to reposition to a spot, every single reposition (even with teammate pressure) can be accommodated for simply by backing up a bit and splitting the difference?

If you can draw an isosceles triangle, you can block all of her shots. And any team comp that can be used to hard counter shut down Widowmaker (without explicitly engaging her) is coincidentally also really effective at fighting other heroes.

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She’s a lot like Tracer. Balanced in the lower ranks, but her infinite skill ceiling makes a good Widowmaker insanely hard to play against. There’s very little counterplay when she’s played to her strongest. I think she deserves a hard counter for those instances where she’s insanely oppressive, but nothing so absurdly easy to play like Brigitte.

If there was a support who could place a barrier around an enemy that had to be destroyed to shoot outside of it, it would be a great way to counter her and give your team time to move about without worrying about being one-shot from across the map.

So, the enemy team is attempting to hold an objective and the Widowmaker’s at a range where counterplay is severely limited and creating space for her team and that’s an example you’re going to give in an attempt to convince me she’s not inherently too powerful? This is like one of the most oppressive Widowmaker situations you could cite.

So teams need an A in geometry and teamwork, and are expected to play a specific comp to shut down 1 hero that can OHK at ranges that 90% of heroes can’t even interact at. Good point.

No hero with pinpoint accurate hitscan’s first contribution to a fight should be a OHK from 50m away, while you’re having to contend with a south american DJ wall skating 10m above your head. It’s a disgusting and absurd addition to this game.

So, we could continue or I’ll just say that I’m against what this hero can do, in contrast to other heroes in principle. I’m principally against inf range OHK hitscan in this game.

That’s not inherently powerful. That’s wholly contingent on her teammates not being potatoes. Which is the case on the ladder up until about Diamond.

The space that she creates is still within the enemy’s line of sight, and she’s wide open to countersniping/countersnipers from an enemy that’s in completely safety until her team decides to engages them.

This community just got used to the idea of Attack Widow, they’re barely acquainted with the idea of Widow creating space. If it’s powerful and oppressive, then every single game with a Widow should be a win… and they aren’t.

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I don’t think she is. IMO if a hero is broken it’s because their kit is broken, and if their kit is broken it would be felt across the board. Mercy 2.0 for example. Didn’t matter whether you were bronze or T500 or OWL, the first iteration of Mercy post Mass Rez was objectively broken.

Widow on the other hand only feels broken when facing off against a highly skilled Widow player. An average Widow player isn’t oppressive. A poor Widow player is 100% a liability to her team. A broken hero with a broken kit would never be a liability to their team at any rank IMO.

I guess I’ve just never felt the urge to have a hero nerfed solely as a consequence of highly skilled players who have mastered that hero.

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So the heroes capabilities don’t make her inherently too powerful because Timmy and Laurie in Bronze aren’t very good at the game, but as players become competent enough to play the hero to its full capabilities it’s a different story? I see, good reasoning.

For better or worse this is a game where you can stomp on your opponents head and still lose. But most importantly it’s a game, Overwatch… not Widowmaker’s point and click adventure… and it’s counterplay that makes this game fun.

She’s not inherently powerful. She’s bad if you can’t aim, she’s useless if you don’t have a good team to capitalize on her picks, and she’s equally useless if the enemy team has half a brain cell.

Gameplay at the top of ladder is different, but for the remaining 99% of players, competence IS her balancing point. And people aren’t competent in general, but everyone is always an expert at heroes they don’t play and they’re completely faultless, and every loss is someone else’s fault.

For the record I don’t even play Widowmaker anymore, so I don’t see what sort of bias you’re pushing about “point and click adventures”. She’s in a bad spot, has always been in a bad spot, gets finally enabled by a meta team comp, and everyone’s screaming for nerfs for no apparent reason because she hasn’t changed.

I keep track of her bugs and challenge bad arguments when I see it. That’s all the attachment I have to her now.

It’s not hard to counter her, yet people keep saying it is. She’s going to become even more useless in the coming months, except from the 1% that just wants to complain about anything good.

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The AWP has it’s strengths and weaknesses, but Overwatch isn’t counter strike and all guns are waaaay more lethal in that game.

What makes Widow so broken is the lack of answers to Widow, rather than Widow herself.

I myself love playing tanks and healers (until the recent meta, where I have to quit after a few games out of frustration). But particularly early on and its recently come back, I’ve had to pick Widow. You see I grew up with FPS games and sniping is one of my strong suits, which makes me a competent Widow and I excel at counter-sniping.

I don’t like playing Widow, I find her to be really boring to play and she lacks engagement with me as a player in a game where lots of crazy stuff happens. But yet she is my most played hero, by a factor of several hours. This is because for me, the answer to reliably shut down an enemy Widow is to play Widow myself. Other anti-widow characters are too easily shutdown or dissuaded from pursuing her. Winstons try to dive me frequently, and I give em a good shot as they dive, and hook away. If they pursue, I get another shot and can finish him with some MG fire. Genji’s are my biggest threat, but he has to spend such a long time flanking out of sight of myself and my team so that he isn’t intercepted that the entire fight is a 5v6, or 4v6 if I manage to take their Widow down (which happens most of the time) and his team loses the team fight in the end so it works out for me as Widow.

What this game could use is a hero that prevents long-range damage. I’ve always sat on a hero idea that has a special shield that is massive, nigh indestructible, but blocks every attack, including his own teams forcing close engagements.

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What makes Widow so broken is the lack of answers to Widow, rather than Widow herself.

Exactly. What’s she’s capable of is inherently powerful due to so many other heroes being completely incapable at those ranges. I’m glad someone gets it. The falloff damage change was presumably because of this.