I wouldn’t mind Widowmaker if OW had more emphasis on long-range combat and other characters that could threaten her (even you do make a detour against her, grapple hook haha). Widow-only custom games are actually a lot of fun.
But as it is, like 30 out of 32 heroes play in close- to midrange. It sucks to have to worry about instant death from outside it. The chokepointy map design doesn’t help either.
1 Like
Personally I think she just lacks counter play.
You can dive her sure, but we need more Damage heroes that are actually good about getting behind enemy lines and focusing the Snipers. If Reaper was buffed in a way that was actually good he could do just that. Or if Ashe did 3 more damage, and Widow’s health was dropped to 175 she could be one shotted without a boost, meaning it would come down to range and who shoots first.
1 Like
Aww, did someone get beat by an Ashe? 
1 Like
So this is the what 99,998th “I don’t like snipers” thread?
1 Like
it’s so weird to me that people still complain about snipers in a game like Overwatch… just because your positioning is terrible it doesn’t mean that the sniper is overpowered you’re just literally walking into a sightline, barriers exist too. dive characters which widow can’t do much about and so on. Also you said it yourself, a GOOD widow can hitshots and that is GOOD for the game… are you one of those whaa whaa this hero requires skills which I don’t have whaa whaaa nerf please whaa whaa I can’t counter them whaa whaa. yes you can.
1 Like
It’s worth noting that most games with one-shot snipers also either have one-shot headshots with assault rifles or just much lower TTK overall. Widow does not compare to snipers in other games because of this.
I’m not even a Widow player but threads like this piss me off.
I guess people want different things from Overwatch. I play Overwatch when I want to play a competitive game. I play COD when I just want dumb fun.
People that complain about 1-shots I assume are mainly from the casual crowd. They don’t want to focus too much on getting better at the game but just want to be able to jump in with any hero and have fun without getting completely destroyed by a 1-trick.
2 Likes
someone got killed by a good widow?
D:
so sad
1 Like
This is true.
The widow may not be killing you, but she can deny large parts of a map with half decent aim only hitting body shots, since their do a ridiculous amount of dmg (don’t worry I include Hanzo in that). She puts too much pressure just by existing. It’s like a Pharah against a Soldier, except the whole enemy team is Pharah and the soldier can one shot all of them.
People should never forget how much pressure hitscan characters put in a match. Say if a soldier isn’t killing the Pharah, that’s fine, as long as he is living and existing, that Pharah HAS to play in such a bad way, that you might as well switch.
I know you probably meant bullet travel time, but my opinion has been that Grappling Hook is the unbalanced part of her kit.
All of those other things you mentioned are very powerful, but it’s the fact that she doesn’t require much time to set up or displace that enables the whole kit.
If you had some reasonable expectation for where a sniper might be - either due to the mobility limitations of the hero or due to map geometry - then players would feel like there was some consistency to their interaction with snipers based on the map. But grapple makes almost any spot on any map viable, up to and including simply hurling the sniper into the air, and getting into position requires barely any travel time. The all-range one-hit hitscan kills are fine, but there are supposed to be checks and balances on that amount of power.
I totally agree with what you’ve said here, but unfortunately, you can’t change what 90% of the playerbase thinks the game should be like. I personally enjoy the idea of team fights and strategic, close-range combat, and obviously others do too. My arguement from earlier in the thread is based on the assumption that we’re talking about how the majority of the playerbase thinks the game should work. I love TF2 and its approach to combat, but Overwatch is a different breed of game, and we have to treat it that way. Snipers and long range spammers (Widowmaker, Pharah, old Junkrat, old Torbjörn, etc.) were designed for an Overwatch that no longer exists, and should be reworked to fit in the game we know today. Whether it was supposed to be a TF2 clone or not, Overwatch isn’t. It’s its own game now, and we have to balance it that way.
i do belive that ashe is inherently better designed than widow simply due to the fact that she doesnt have to sacrifice everything for a powerful weapon (which sadly is a thing that happens with way too many characters) or an ability
so in my opinion, ashe is way better designed than widow
You totally can counter Widowmaker, but the problem is, it takes too many resources to do effectively. You need a barrier tank to keep everyone safe, and you need a dive tank to jump her, and you need your dps and support to play evasive characters that are hard to kill, and your supports need to keep everyone above 120 hp, just in case that Widow does a grapple shot and body shots someone. You see? The pressure she puts on a team is immense, and you really can’t effectively deal with it.
I’ve won against Ashe and I’ve lost against her. But my opinion stays the same.
Widow is good because dive is weak. That’s the only thing wrong with Widow right now. Nothing else needs to be done.
1 Like
that is wrong in some sense since the person who died didnt expect it but the tracer of the shot points a direct arrow to her position so the said victims team can pounce on her… being a tank diver or genji, sombra, tracer or any super mobile hero that can really ruin her day
are there a lot of widow mains on the forums? i thought it was mostly supports
1 Like
Blizz can do what it wants, but if they take this path, they have a very long, very crappy road ahead of them.
TF2 isn’t about map control and sightlines because Valve just woke up funny one day, or even because they were smart and foresighted (maybe they were, but they didn’t have to be). It’s because that’s the natural style that powerful abilities—both movement and ranged weaponry—force you toward. Powerful ranged weapons make space very valuable (because you can shoot from it), and very dear (because the enemy can shoot anywhere!).
So it’s not just Widow. It’s everything. Doomfist is hated, and so are Flashbang and Hack, but the last two counter the first! Defang Widow, and suddenly Echo and Pharah are destroying everyone. Nerf them, and then Junkrat goes on a tear.
The only way out of this endless reactive balance-adjustment loop is to have multiple strategic layers. How do you balance Zarya vs Junkrat well, and how do you know you’ve done a good job? You don’t, instead you put Pharah in the game, who wrecks them both, but has her own weaknesses.
Ult management does this—adding another layer—to an extent, but in a boring, numbers-centric (“What charge are you at Zarya?”) way. You know what did it much better? Teleporter and shield generator, no joke.
The most powerful layer of all, though, is the hero select screen. Brigitte was one of my favorite releases, I was so happy to be able to actually protect my backline and lay down some pain, and complainers were whiners about a slow, melee hero in a shooter, but I can’t deny that GOATS was dumb. I’d have handled it much differently than Blizzard—an ability that projected an AoE slow/%damage field would have murdered it—but then you have the problem of having to pre-emptively counter five different things the enemy could do when you have no idea what they’ll bring out of spawn. (I’m excited for the new “Push” map mode for this reason, as both teams are on an equal footing this way.)
I was never a fan of hero bans, but writing this, I think they were the way to go. I like a diverse cast of heroes with weird abilities, and because I like them, I don’t want them removed from the game because players feel they’re too oppressive. Maybe 1-2 bans per team. Give me back OG Brigitte, Symmetra, Torb, and Mercy, then ban them if you want! I don’t care! I just want them back.
My point, though, is: I don’t think Blizz can escape the map control thing. The heroes are made for a very different kind of fighting than WoW, and the cracks are showing everywhere—no one wants to play tanks in a game with high damage and cc (and to be clear, it should have high damage and cc), 2/3 of players are restricted to 1/4 the cast, no one knows why the maps are so big, and of course, queue times. Bring back strategic counters (Torb, Brigitte, Sym, Mercy, something for GOATS), but add hero bans so people aren’t forced into blind counters every game.
You just lost validity to your argument.
1 Like
No he didn’t.
Anyone can spam. Even Especially Widowmaker.
1 shot per second. Just keep trying to click a head. You’ll get one eventually.
It’s not like you have to worry about running out of ammo or anything.