Nerfing widowmaker will

General Discussion
1

… solve 99% of the balance problems in this game

1.nerfing widow makes widow less bs to deal with and stops her from consistently creating more space than most tanks do

2.nerfing widow gives the devs an excuse to nerf sombra

3.nerfing widow gives the devs an excuse to nerf winston

4.nerfing widow gives the devs an excuse to nerf d.va

5.nerfing widow gives the devs an excuse to nerf barriers

6.nerfing widow gives the devs an excuse to nerf immortalities

7.the game will be more fun if widow can’t instantly kill you practically for free (stop pretending hitscan headshots are hard to hit. it’s 2024. if you have a bad computer that gets less than 90fps consistently or you’re on 200 ping maybe you can argue that but otherwise that is a massive skill issue especially with overwatch’s generous head hitboxes AND season 9’s projectile changes.) with a faster ttk than most other dps at any range and a similar ttk to tankbuster dps on tanks with objectively less skill requirement than most other dps (would you rather hit 26 headshots as soldier to kill the orisa or play widow where it takes 4? would you rather hit a dash+fan+melee as genji to kill the ana or just shoot her once with no spread, negligible damage falloff, and faster ttk as widow?)

8.the game wont be an instant loss if your tank doesnt swap to winston or dva and hardfocus the widow all game so she can’t ruin the match for everyone else

9.the game wont be an instant loss if your tank DOES swap to a dive tank but the enemy team melts them before they can do anything every time they go in while the widow is killing you and/or your backline for free

10.snipers massively slow down the game and make it less fun for everyone involved (no-one peeking = no-one shooting = no-one playing the game and if you do peek and aren’t a tank you die instantly for having the audacity to want to play a hero shooter instead of call-of-battlefield 2077 or valor-strike where every weapon is hitscan, everything one-shots you, and the only skill expression is who can flick to the enemy’s head the fastest.)

11.cheaters on widow will be less impactful as they will now have some degree of counterplay as a solo dps or support

12.really good widows will be less impactful as they will now have some degree of counterplay as a solo dps or support

So, obviously because i’ve talked my way this far i have to suggest some nerfs, right?
OK, here they are …

Widowmaker

  • Health increased from 200 to 225

Widow’s Kiss

  • Falloff range reduced from 20 - 40 to 10 - 30 meters
  • Spread reduced from 3 to 2
  • Ammo increased from 35 to 40

Widow’s Kiss (ADS)

  • Precision multiplier reduced from 2.5 to 2
  • Damage reduced from 12 to 10 ( 120 to 100 at 100% charge )
  • Projectile radius reduced from 0.05 to 0.01 (pinpoint)
  • Charge time reduced from 0.9 to 0.8 seconds
  • Recovery reduced from 0.5 to 0.4 seconds
  • Zoom in/out time reduced from 0.32 to 0.2 seconds
  • Movement speed penalty reduced from 65% to 50%
  • Now has reverse damage falloff instead of normal damage falloff (damage linearly decreases as you approach)
  • Falloff range changed to 0 - 30 meters
  • Cannot be damage boosted

Venom Mine

  • Cooldown reduced from 15 to 12 seconds

Infra-Sight

  • Duration increased from 12 to 15 seconds
  • increases the precision multiplier of Widow’s Kiss (ADS) from 2 to 3
  • bypasses tank headshot reduction multiplier
  • removes reverse damage falloff
  • Widowmaker is revealed to the enemy team during the cast time
  • Ultimate cost increased by 40%

And a few accompanying balance changes for other damage heroes :

Ashe

The Viper

  • Reload time per bullet reduced from 0.25 to 0.2
  • Now fires continuously when you hold primary fire

The Viper (ADS)

  • Damage reduced from 75 to 70
  • Recovery increased from 0.65 to 0.7
  • Now fires continuously when you hold primary fire

Hanzo

Storm Bow

  • Draw time reduced from 0.87 to 0.8 seconds
  • Movement speed penalty reduced from 30% to 0%

Storm Arrows

  • Cooldown increased from 8 to 10 seconds

Sombra

Machine Pistol

- Damage reduced from 8 to 7.5
- Falloff range reduced from 15-35 to 10-30 meters

Hack

  • Hack goes on its full cooldown when interrupted regardless of what caused it

Virus

  • Impact damage reduced from 35 to 25
  • Damage over time increased from 75 to 90
  • Radius decreased from 0.5 to 0.3 meters

EMP

- Ultimate cost increased by 10%

Let me know what you think of these changes and if you have any questions about things that need clarifying then feel free to ask!

Also if you have “bad aim” consider uncapping your ingame framerate and capping it externally with Rivatuner (don’t worry it’s explicitly allowed) so you can get consistent frametimes because the ingame fps cap sucks and doesn’t work and gives you what is effectively randomized input lag every frame which makes every weapon feel like you’re missing when you shouldn’t be. Also lower your DPI to 800 and make sure enhance pointer precision is off in windows mouse settings. Happy headshotting!

8 Likes
To the people saying Widow isn't broken in 6v6
Buff Widowmaker
5 alternatives to make Widow less oppressive
Characters That Need Nerfs and BUFFS
Addressing Widow's Desgn
Season 14 Widow nerfs
No Significant Widow Nerfs in S14
Snipers every match, hope you are happy
2

Hey I didn’t read that but that’s great man I’m happy for you/I’m sorry that happened (depending on the context)

7 Likes
3

Why bother commenting to say nothing? (legitimately asking)

7 Likes
5

THIS would be awesome, and not only she wont be a problem anymor but she can have changes almost every patch bcs it would be very easy to balance her kit. BLIZZARD, WE NEED A WIDOW REWORK

2 Likes
6

Even if widow was completely deleted from the game these changes are awful. Statistically Sombra is an under performing hero so this basically makes her F tier. What she needs is a rework away from invis altogether.

1 Like
7

In that case, let’s buff Widowmaker to make the problems worse.

6 Likes
8

She is definitely not underperforming. She maybe doesn’t have the best winrate in the world but that’s because she’s commonly played, not because her kit is bad. She’s decent at applying pressure to the backline and Virus allows her to blow up a support (especially 225hp supports) unless they burn a cooldown or two. She can hack heroes out of ults and prevent dive tanks from un-diving, her EMP is basically a guaranteed fight winner, and one of the best and fastest charging dps ults in the game. She also has the advantage of being incredibly annoying to some players, which means they’ve lost before the sombra even unstealths because of their mindset (similar to moira) (i cant believe i just said that unironically). Also she apparently absolutely decimates in the metal ranks and the new player experience is currently being ruined by her as well i’d imagine. As much as I do enjoy playing Sombra her skill floor being as low as it is right now and how annoying she can be to fight (especially for support players whos teams don’t know they exist and never peel for them) is a good way to prevent this game from maintaining/growing its dwindling playerbase.

Now what do you think a rework that removes stealth would look like?

9

She’s not really commonly played. Sombra has a 2.6% pickrate last month which is 6th among dps. It’s more than average but she’s not even in the top 5 most played dps. All this while having a 47% winrate too btw.

If she has the right matchups sure. But pick supports like Moira, Kiri, Bap, or Brig and watch how useless a Sombra solo diving the backline becomes. In a proper dive setup Sombra is great but even still heroes like Tracer, Genji, Echo are better. I’d even put Venture ahead of her as she’s seriously underrated.

Plenty of heroes can canel ults with cc. Idk why hack is seen any differently. To play anti-dive Sombra you have to play pretty defensively. You’re wasting a lot of her value and are better off just going a more brawly dps.

I agree. Invis breaks people’s brains which is why she’s never allowed to be good. I’d rather the devs just remove invis and give her some other mobility.

I had this idea:

1 Like
10

They won’t nerf Sombra because of Widow, she’s underperforming because she’s a cheese pick that most get rolled on once the enemy team swaps around her.

They won’t nerf any of the tanks because everything else is a far bigger concern for them than Widow is, 5v5 necessitates the ludicrous giga-tank balancing for all of them.

Grip won’t be touched whatsoever because Weaver is the personification of underperforming, plus it’s just the most fair one of the immorts.

Suzu won’t be touched because rarely is a Kiriko going to perfectly time suzu against Widow so the interaction isn’t affected by a Widow nerf.

Lamp has already been nerfed hard over the years, can’t nerf it any harder. It’s received a lower duration, lower health, longer cooldown and less minimum health for those in it’s radius.

11

widow is simply a skill issue.
can’t beat her? you don’t belong in her games.

1 Like
12

Nothing will “solve 99% of balance problems in the game” outside of just shutting off the servers.

4 Likes
13

Widow is an issue but not THAT big of one. Can’t blame her for tons of unrelated things

2 Likes
14

Ah yes everyone knows there’s just so much counterplay to a consistent hitscan oneshot like checks notes having more than 300 hp and checks again never challenging the widow ever at all unless your full team is diving her. “Skill issue” goes out the window when she deletes you for free at any range with a faster ttk and less aim requirement than you unless you mirror her.

You saying this lets me know you don’t play in a high enough elo to encounter a widow that hits all of their shots no matter what. Obviously if you’re in bronze (like you seem to be) you can challenge the widow and get away with it for free but in higher ranks she has little to no counterplay short of the tank swapping to a dive tank or if that doesnt work the whole team swapping to a dive comp.

1 Like
15

A little harsh, but yeah. Not to say Widow can’t be a problem in lower elo lobbies, its just far, far more prevalent outside of metal ranks. For obvious reasons.

I would even say switching to full-on dive comps still won’t work on long range maps. Someone has to move the payload, and widow typically can just put herself so far in the backline, diving her would be incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Not to mention all that attention generates insane value for her teammates.

That all being said, a widow rework isn’t fixing 99% of the balance issues in this game. You can’t pin literally everything on her, no way.

2 Likes
16

maybe they should make her not a cheese pick. requiring a bunch of swapping to manage is bad hero design

1 Like
17

Maybe you should stop making excuses that an underpowered hero keeps beating you. And just step it up and play better.

1 Like
18

Yeah, it is.
They don’t care about what’s considered effortless or cheesy though, they only care about winrates. And Sombra’s winrates are consistently bad.

19

The “99% of balance issues” was a bit intentionally exaggerated and click-bait-ey i will admit but a lot of the issues in the game were and are caused by widow, both directly and indirectly.

From what i remember off the top of my head, widow and other hitscans kickstarted double barrier, widow got massively buffed when the 2nd tank was removed in ow2 because that’s 1 less barrier and/or player diving her to worry about, then she got gigabuffed again during season 9 with the health and projectile changes, which were later toned down slightly but still increased the ttk on her and removed some one-shots while buffing her ability to one-shot consistently with the damage falloff buff she got even though the entire point of season 9 was to remove one-shots and raise ttk across the board (it did raise her ttk on other heroes slightly but not enough to matter because even if she doesn’t hardscope she has a faster and more consistent ttk than most other dps and less range restriction). Sombra and other flankers remain as potent as they are partially because of widow, dive tanks remain as good as they are because if they nerf them widow becomes even more dominant, sigma + widow wouldnt be nearly as strong of a combo if widow couldn’t oneshot, certain maps are made significantly more difficult to play if a widow is present and there’s probably more.

1 Like
20

No. Sombra doesn’t need nerfs. She is already bad. She needs a rework.

Winston is strong against everything, not just Widow. Nerfing Winston doesn’t all of a sudden make Widow unkillable.

Nerf barriers? Barriers last only a few seconds already with some focus fire. We don’t need barrier nerfs especially considering you can only have 1.

What?

21

If she’s so “underpowered” why is she consistently played in t500 every season, and why do people consistently COMPLAIN about her in t500 every season?

2 Likes