[OW2] How to solve Widow/Hanzo

Widow has been nerfed/soft nerfed so many times. If its notna direct nerf, they add more sheild heros and buff other heros while stagnating widow. Winstons jump pack used to have around the same cd as widowmaker which made it a matter of skill and timing to out manuver each other when Winston is countering. They nerfed widow by giving Winston a 6 second jump as opposed to widowmakers 12 second grapple. This is an old narritive directed to please crybaby baddies who cant aim or counter properly.

If taking any damage resets the charge, it doesn’t matter what she’s doing, only that she’s doing something. If you have some kind of threshold that Sombra’s stealth doesn’t have, you didn’t mention it in your OP.

From bad to worse… DOT effects ignore armor damage reduction, so you make snipers even stronger against tanks.

She had 175hp in OW1. Before they removed a bunch of barriers, and dedicated offtanks that could focus on Sniper hunting.

So I don’t really see the point of your argument.

I liked what you said about 150 HP and buff their mobility a bit. I’d like to see Widow more like a vice versa of Tracer, in the sense that she becomes higher mobility while keeping her long range burst. Add a 2nd charge to her mine if need be.

Or just shoot the Tracer once or twice.

I mean, Tanks can shrug off most Sniper attacks, and worst comes to worst, they give Widow 125 base damage, with a 2x modifier.

And a DoT effect would just be a lot easier to deal with if the Tank has getting healing.

Except we lost 1 tank, and most shield heroes are tanks

Except they got rid of a tank so if a winston is diving the widow who is protecting the team then?

When going to 5v5 then got rid of a tank which was one of the biggest counter to widow, they reduced shield health in general, which once again was one of the biggest counter to widow. She was Soft buffed big time in OW2, hence why people are calling for a rework or nerf.

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I don’t know. Hanzo corner spam is the most annoying part about his kit, killing a player when neither could see the other. In those moments he’s rarely under fire. The Hanzo change to me feels like it would actively encourage this playstyle more that engaging in more risky mid-fight positions.

It can kinda extend to Widow as well. I don’t really mind dying to a Widow oneshot I can see (unless I’m in melee range, then “what was the point?”). It’s widows that hold an angle that feel most unfair to fight. They kill me before I see them. After that first shot, it’s not as bad as my team can already pepper her enough to retreat. But that’s the scenario where your change weakens her further.

Idk, just doesn’t seem to address my issues with snipers, and just makes them worse where they’re already more manageable.

I like the dot idea. Have the base damage be burst, and the additional headshot damage be a bleed. And have it back to normal during Widow’s ult.

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Well, here’s a few mechanics they could do that impact Widow’s survival, but not her health:

  • 50% less grapple cooldown, but descoping puts the grapple on cooldown
  • Taking damage adds up to 2sec extra cooldown on grapple

i would take 150 health if i could play old widow again. when her charge time was super quick and she could aim down sites faster. was a hell of a time as widow

8 second grapple would help too :wink:

How about 6sec grapple, but any time she descopes it goes on cooldown.

No, this is probably the highest friction way to try and resolve complaints about one-shots. Descoping or resetting charge in an environment where D.Va can just look in your general direction, poke for low but non-zero damage, basically makes the sniper unusable. You’d get an occasional surprise shot. That’s it. Everything else would be too easy to disable in active combat even at longer ranges.

So I strongly expect this would just flat out make snipers unviable. You’d probably just see snipers tried for a quick surprise poke from spawn or starting defensive position, and then swapped away from at next opportunity. Which, incidentally because I know OWL isn’t the reasonable focus point for balancing, is primarily how Widow was used during the Pro-Am tournament.

Base damage from Widow’s sniper shots is so bad it doesn’t kill symmetra turrets. So the only difference between descope and charge reset is basically the difference in animation times in&out of scope. Scope out is more immediately obvious; I don’t know how much this applies to higher skill tiers, but generally I don’t actually look at the charge meter and just get used to the timing and/or sound effect of full charge, so scope out instead of zeroing out charge isn’t a pure drawback.

So I think you’d have to set it towards something like 50 damage causes scope out. You might be able to get enough of the counterplay you want that way without just destroying usability entirely.

Well, what counterplay would you prefer?

  1. Easier to kill the Widow
  2. Reliably prevent instantkills by peppering with damage
  3. Convert the oneshot to poison, that doesn’t instantkill

Before she has 175hp in the first place she had 200hp since ow1 beta. It was a nerf, unnerf, and nerf again. It was Never a buff.

I don’t think this is a valid argument, and it borders on the edge of deliberately being dishonest.

If they buffed Tracer to 250hp in beta, then back down to 150hp, that wouldn’t mean she’s been overall “nerfed” since OW1.

This.

There is literally nothing op about widow or hanzo. They are the same as before. Hanzo also got nerfed removing his oneshot E. Stop trying to nerf the heroes. If you Don’t understand that the problem is the game itself, its on you. The game is still balanced around 6v6. Removing second tank destroyed the game. Just making 1 tank busted did nothing, just made some heroes counter others even more.

How to play vs widow and hanzo without double tank:

  1. get a shield tank and play around him.
  2. Get a dive tank and play around him.
  3. get a dive dps and play around him
  4. USE environment. Instead of tanks you can use cars, walls etc.
  5. play match up
  6. Mei wall
  7. Birgitte
  8. All dive comp and rush.
  9. Play open queue so you can play 2 tanks and have fun again
  10. make tanks tank again instead of 1v9
  11. make doomfist a dps
    12 etcetc.

Stop blaming champs for bad play and bad game design. Thanks.

Well yeah, I blame the devs for that, not a fictional character.

HotTake: Snipers are strangling Playerbase Growth

I don’t think that’s true at all. New players are going to be almost entirely Bronze-Gold. Widows there aren’t going to be accurate anyways, she is a throw pick there. If anything, they’d gain more players by nerfing dive/flankers. They are far more common and effective in low ranks, and have inherently frustrating playstyles that you can’t escape from.

Widow already is incredibly inaccessible, arguably has the most counters in the game, and has multiple severe drawbacks in exchange for the one shot. If anything, she needs buffs. Hanzo is the outlier with full HP, more mobility, and a more flexible one shot that is effective at all ranges. He just needs to be balanced fairly like Widow is and see how he is then.

When I played I just reported every widow and hanzo that I saw, my friends do the same.

Your not getting it. 200hp since ow1beta is her Original hp. Her hp is now 175hp is a Nerf. It sounds to me that rather than facts, you just want to be right.

I think it would be near impossible for them to lose more than 1% of the current players, and not gain at more than 1% from the nerfs/reworks.