Rework Idea: Widowmaker

General Discussion
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For this idea, I wanted to make sure to preserve Widowmaker’s backline-oppressor kind of playstyle, while also stopping her from one-shotting people or dealing devastating amounts of damage to tanks. So right off the bat I can say that she’ll no longer be able to charge her rifle for more damage (also was thinking she could use some future version of a bolt-action rifle, cause they’re cool). I also want to “try” and preserve the high skill ceiling.

Smaller Changes:

Damage ramp on rifle removed
Damage reduced from 60-120 (max charge) -> 90
Rate of fire is now always 0.7 (for reference, ashe’s rate of fire is currently 0.65)
Crit multiplier down from 2.5 to 1.5 (135 damage on headshot).
Smg unchanged

Abilities:

Shift - Unchanged

Passive / "Sixth Sense"

Widowmaker can detect enemies that come near her.

There’s a short delay before she can detect enemies that have gotten close to her. Added to make up for her loss of venom mine.

Ability delay: 0.85 seconds
Detect Range: 11 meters

E / "Noxious Shot"

Widowmaker primes her next two shots with poison.

Damage over time ability. My thought process on this was to make a way to force people out of a fight without needing to 100 to 0 someone. So this ability will reduce healing and deal damage over 5 seconds. So for 5 seconds, and a potential 10 seconds the target will have to be wary of their health.

Damage: 75 over 5 seconds (15 per second)
Heal reduction: 50% on targets with no armor or shields / 25% on targets with shields / 0% on targets with armor.
Cooldown: 13 seconds (starts AFTER both shots have been expended)

F / "Venom Drone"

Widowmaker throws a reconnaissance drone at the target location.

The drone will slowly turn 180 degrees continually. So to elaborate… If widow launched it on the ground in front of her, it would turn in a half circle facing her direction. Or maybe it could be that she can choose which direction it’ll face or survey (similar to moira orb). Facing her or not. But that option could only be done before deployment. After deploying the drone, it’ll become invisible. Everything that comes into the drones scanning range will be highlighted red, much like her current ultimate. If someone is within 13 meters of the drone, it will slowly become visible and emit a distinguishable sound.

Launch distance: (drone travels until it comes into contact with surface)
Scanning range: 10m (180 degree rotation of 10m)

Q - Unchanged (WIP)

Notes:

So, with Noxious shot, I wanted to give Widow a way to still impact the battlefield by removing someone from the fight without sending them all the way back to spawn with every shot. That being said, with her damage changes, she won’t be able to one-shot any longer. But one well placed headshot and she can then land a body shot to kill most enemies. However tanks should feel even just a little bit more tolerant of widow. Additionally, once tanks or other heroes lose their armor/shields they heal reduction will then be 50%. I suppose it’s slightly more tolerable than current Widow.

Venom Drone sounds good on paper imo. But there are some specifics I didn’t mention. Like how long someone would have to be near the drone for it to be revealed. Or how big or small it was. If it’s placed on a wall however, it would still rotate horizontally. Ideally, it should ALWAYS be rotating horizontally.

Her ultimate is just a better version of her venom drone, or alternatively, her venom drone is just a worse version of her ultimate. So I want to change her ultimate into something else that can help her out. Or maybe rethink the venom mine into a different ability.

Overall, I think just the changes to her rifle alone probably would’ve been enough, but I was having fun thinking up stuff, and spawned the other two abilities. So take that with a grain of salt.

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It wouldn’t make sense, neither lore nor gameplay wise.
It would be a gigantic nerf and it would make Widow the weakest hero ever and not a fun one either.
I’ll go through everything individually:

gladly, it’s just useless and stupid anyway that it exists for widow and was only introduced after several years.

We can talk about reducing the basic damage in order to raise the skill floor. Would actually be one of my suggestions. damage to 100 but with x3 Crit.

would actually be a nerf at first, as the muscle memory first has to adjust to 0.7, witch can take some time (weeks if not months).

Why to 1.5? that’s damn little and doesn’t make any sense.
the standard Cirt multiplier is x2. the current 2.5 is only a compromise. Initially, widow had 150 basic damage, which was considered OP. The devs have lowered this, but really wanted to preserve the 300 Crit dmg. Hence the 2.5.
The 1.5 doesn’t make sense. Just as a giant nerf or what? Especially in combination with the DMg nerf.

Are you serious? Nerfing her primary in the ground and then not buff the SMG?

Interesting and would also work with the lore, since her visor should be able to enable 360° awareness, like in “Alive”.

Interesting concept. But not suitable for PvP. In PvE or in RPGs / P’n’P as stun or weakening ammunition it would work but in PvP it would be 1. very annoying (for both sides) 2. only a modification of Anas shots.

Also interesting, but it is even less useful than VM. May be useful for PvE with multiple charges.

In summary, it is tantamount to a Delete from Widow.
You weaken widow enormously in the few areas where she is good, but you do not give her any real compensation.

Ashe can do more damage than Widow in less time. Ashe does 80 (160) damage with an slightly faster rate of fire and more mobility in the scope.
Furthermore, Ashe also has more HP, a dynamite stick with 900 potential damage on 12s CD.

Noxious Shot and Venom Drone are practically just the venom mine divided into two abilities, which makes the whole thing even more ineffective than VM already is. Widow also becomes weaker in close combat, as VM can help enormously in close combat.

There would be absolutely no reason to play Widow instead of Ashe or Hanzo.
Both are not nearly as vulnerable as Widow, both have a higher damage output. Hanzo has Widows ult as Ability, a Delete Button, a good Ult and most importantly it can still Oneshot all 200 HP targets.

You don’t preserve the skill cealing but increase it massively, including the skill floor for beginners, and at the same time you make Widow the defacto weakest hero in the game.

You forgot a lot of things (175 HP, -65% Movement, VM in Closecombat etc.) Also your ideas don’t really bring anything new, because everything (except for the passive) already exists in the game in a certain way.

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Oh my lord he actually did it…

Welp!

Just gonna grab this popcorn and wait for the shish-storm… :popcorn:

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