They lowered the health of all shields so this is less viable, expecially with how fast they can break now
except not every hero is a dive hero, so if someone picks window they force the enitre other team to play dive, which shouldnt be a thing.
Except you cant always play behind cover, you might get forced to move in a team fight, or while hinding from the widow they move now your no longer behind cover.
Its not that her design is bad its just that the game has changed and she still is back in OW1.
That’s a baseless opinion. Trashing entire playstyles that have thrived for years won’t bring in more players. You’ll just lose all the players who liked those playstyles but can’t play them anymore bc it takes 1% of the effort to counter it than it does to play it.
Count the shots, that’s the counter play you either lose count or you don’t when shes reloading thats your chance to attack/close the distance.
Also have a flanker stalk the widowmaker and tell when she’s getting low on ammo.
Personally, I think the value of how “easy” and time to line up shots and value in aim is the main issue. Whatever powerful sniper we are talking about, they are powerful in the sense that they have a dramatic value of aim at long distance and can do so with a lot of speed. Widow being the most egregious as theoretically they could easily wipe the whole enemy team except the tank from their range and damage alone. (So long as there isn’t a tank in the way, but wiping everyone but the tank is just about as good as wiping the entire team.) The consecutive shots are very strong without much drawback to their superior diplomacy over both range and damage. Even people like Soujorn, Hanzo, and Ashe have atleast the drawback that forces them to be best at mid-range mostly. Only difference is Ana who has the drawback that they CAN’T oneshot.
My main concern is “How” we nerf snipers and it isn’t directly. It’s always some kind of basic numerical change that doesn’t solve why they can potentially be so strong so we struggle with the issue they they are either really strong or they are so weak that other DPS just outperform said character.
It’s vague, but the assumption I get is lowering a sniper’s HP and this brings a dilemma to me. The problem is what it actually does and that either means they are easier to scare away when being peppered due to their health being decreased quicker or they can be oneshot easier. The problem is that this doesn’t address their strength: range superiority.
If a Soldier 76 and a Widow see each other at the same time, the odds are greatly in favor of Widow always taking the shot and killing them and eating 25 damage. Even flankers will still have the issue of having to dramatically travel a good distance to kill a Widow and, even when successful, it’s possible the Widow gets value purely for forcing the flanker to be apart from their team for so long.
This is also an interesting idea, but the problem is the sniper shot ALWAYS has the most value first. They had great value before this way, and it will still be so. Because there is nothing that is even close to the value it offers at that given long range on any DPS.
Part of me wants to say this is a good idea but also a part of me is worried about how this effects snipers. The thing about snipers is they offer their team ONLY by threat range and eliminations. A sniper has all their power budget in this and lowering it means they would need balance in other areas. If they don’t have enough power in other means of assisting their team, they are not worth value to play compared to other DPS and become more of a throw pick.
This is not a post to say snipers shouldn’t be a nerf, this is a post on what to consider in these types of changes if we theoretically wanted to rebalance snipers.
Even if they made it so that Widow has to reload after every Snipe shot, I don’t see how that would fundamentally change how you interact against a Widow player.
Not reload after every shot. Making it to where she can’t manually reload gives you a opening to attack her/get space from her. The fundamental change is you literally just stalk her.
Tracer says widows reloading, winston insta dives her they both go on her and kill her.
If they focus on shield you can just kill widow. But yeah, I’m an advocator for buffing tankiness and nerfing dmg for tanks.
Counter-picking has always been a thing. And yes, if tank changes everyone should change. Thank developers for that by making it 5v5.
It’s a shooting game. Like every other game you can play around cover and advance forward using different strategies. Think of it like csgo, instead of flashing to get advantage you use certain abilities. But yes, still more of a problam than when it was double tank.
If they get nerfed even more, just remove snipers completely.
You could literally say that about any hero. Every single one has more people not playing the hero than people that do. And like I said before, you can criticize other playstyles that are far more easy and oppressive in the same way.
Both your options 1&3 can be implemented in ways that don’t make Widow unviable. So would changing Widow to a variant of Ashe with limited windows of one-shot damage enabled via cooldowns.
If I were in charge and pushed Widow nerfs live today:
-Grapple goes on a 3s cooldown when Widow takes damage.
-Grapple is canceled by taking damage
-Visible laser while ADS.
And since that’s essentially pure nerfs despite Widow not having dominant win rates across most skill tiers (as far as I know), I’m inclined to buff her Ultimate do have doubled charge speed and/or add a second venom mine charge, subject to how her win data changes.
If that doesn’t calm complaints enough, or otherwise Blizzard has data to suggest Widow’s still driving players away,
-Convert headshot damage packet to DoT.
-Above grapple changes to stay
-50/50 on whether the laser is justified now, but scope glint not a bad idea
-Flatter venom mine trajectory.
-Second mine charge and reduced cooldown.
-Venom mine produces a debuff that causes DoTs from any source other than itself to apply immediately.
-Ult now additionally does one or both of restoring immediate crit damage, faster charge rate.
The backup or alternative to that is basically slower scoped shots, same damage profile as Ashe, Widow’s current falloff levels, similar grapple changes along with mine buffs and second charge, weapon swap button loads a few (3-5?) shots that restore her one-shot potential in some fashion, ~30s cooldown. And let Ult load the same effect, maybe an extra shot or two. Nanoboost-like aura on Widow when any of her one-shot effects are added.
That’s my thinking. I’m not fundamentally opposed to trying 150 HP either, and would be willing to at least test how the game behaves if she unscopes after taking something in the ballpark of 30-50 damage. Just not an unscope on taking merely a single point of damage.
You can’t run away mid shot especially if your being hard followed by a flanker like sombra. If your on the last bullet and you try to snipe you’ll end up dead.
Death isn’t the primary goal it’s taking the space in the first place. If widow doesn’t stay on high ground you don’t give it back to her.
You can’t smg with no bullets by the team you reliad you’ll probably be dead and extremely low on hp to where a light breeze will kill you.
If widow has to give up her positioning completely with virtually no way of getting it back that’s not good for her.
Oh, I left off something else I wouldn’t mind trying before we get to removal of “pure” one-shots.
-Change charge to have several steps rather than linear scaling. Step zero is enough to pop a Symm turret 2x head multiplier , step 1 at half charge time goes to 75body/150crit, final step at full charge time is either 120/300 as is today, despite the asymmetry with lower crit mods, or else 150/300 or maybe 145/290, I feel like one-bodying Tracer is something we don’t want.
Other small tweaks that can go along with any of the previous post’s options include raising scope in/out to 0.5s each, adjusting ammo economy, perhaps simply scope shot cost of 7 instead of 5. Throw in a longer reload time if needed.
Flankers don’t care much about the objective anyways that’s the supports job manly.
Also the most important thing is widows dead/pressured/space is taken.