Widow was at a 20-25% playrate during the original dive meta in OWL stage 1-2. At a time with Tracer, zen, winston, d.va being at 70-95% pickrate. Hardly a “Hard meta character is she”, in fact she was used equally to Junkrat during stage 1 and soldier 76 during stage 2.
Now when Mercy got a rework, became a 100% mustpick at the meta was now called Moth meta, Widowmaker rose to 41% playrate in stage 3, while she in stage 4 with Brigitte as well then went to 65-69% during stage 5 and 6. With far more tank comps like orisa/hog, rein/Zarya, than pure dive comps.
Also the thing that killed Dive was brig, litterally no dps in the game has touched or affected dive, even hanzo is completely useless in the core concept of dive, where D.va absorbs all incoming damage and, healing ont the enemy, while the team kills the priority target.
The thing that killed dive was CC, Healing and defenses that otherwise couldn´t be blocked or counteracted like it was back in the day, many instantaneous healing abilities (or near instantaneous abilities have been added) and a lot of defenses as well, it is impossible to employ dive, cause it is too easy to keep things alive through those hard aggressive compositions.
Last 3 months overall pickrates
only picked more than Torb, Bastion, Sombra, Soldier, Symm, Pharah and Tracer. So no she wasn´t.
In GM it rose by 0.6% to 2.34%, which was still less than
Mei, Mccree, Reaper, Hanzo and Doomfist.
Her use in GM was behind 5 other DPS and she still had a “High pickrate” yeah sure dude.
She was just getting along the meta, like so many other characters, cause Double shield killed nearly all characters that had no way of doing something againts the shields, which all the characters above her had.
Cause counters in Overwatch aren´t hard counters (Except few that were changed afterwards), she has always had a mobility cooldown that allows her to still slightly function in a dive setup, yet her problem is still getting it to CQ combat or getting caught while scoped resulting in near 100% death with no help.
Also Widow outclasses Hanzo as well at long range, problem is that the game has nearly no long range at all, none of it is so long that his projectile speed matters that much and his strengths lie in Medium range, where he is decently good at close range.
And “Changes” could be a rework or buffs as well as it could be nerfs.