Strange that even GMs are talking about how big a problem widow is, even the ones that excel at playing her. So “it’s the players not willing to contest them” would include GMs?
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Pretty sure the devs agree, too. In the last interview with KarQ they talked about Widow. They, too, are not sure whether to touch the hero or the maps.
Spilo being a chad as always.
There is no way they can actually adjust all of the maps with long site lines in any reasonable amount of time. Given the usual cadence it would take them 1-2 years to adjust every sniper biased map.
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And that’s assuming that approach would even work, at all.
By comparison, doing a change like this to Widow with a hotfix would take about 5 minutes.
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They would spend a year fixing perhaps 15 points across multiple maps or they “fix” 1 hero. It makes no sense to apply all those resources (and the cost) to map design changes rather than make some changes to 1 hero.
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Harsh nerfs with an unnoticeable 5 base damage increase under a 50 damage crit nerf.
Counter offer: Base health reduced to 150 and crit multiplier increased to 3.33x with a damage ramp that keeps TTK on sub-250 health heroes identical to the current multiplier. This makes sense in 5v5 context with giga-tanks but fewer players to heal making her easier to dive but more effective against tanks as a hero with an antipersonnel weapon should be.
That’s a realistic power shift, not just dumpstering a hero.
I really wish that sniper mains would stop trying to use arguments like “just flank” and “just use cover” because if they were options, then players would use them on the maps that snipers are broken on. Except that’s not the case. All of the problem maps that people complain about have at least one of the following issues that prevents that:
- Point has many long-range off-angles that bypass cover, leaving players exposed if they want to push the objective (i.e. Junkertown 1st)
- Long sightlines that completely cover points, forcing players to play in the sightline to progress (i.e. Havana 1st, CR)
- Sightlines whose only flank routes take ~30s just to use (i.e. Havana 3rd)
- Vantage points inaccessible to heroes without vertical mobility (i.e. Busan Downtown)
And that’s just map design, no bearing on overall hero design. Stop insisting it’s a skill issue when it’s not.
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I don’t think Snipers need a pickrate this high. There’s 17 DPS, and if a hero is going to maintain still frustrating game mechanics, then they don’t need to be that frequent.
I.e. Counter offer, Blizzard maximizes their playerbase size and profits, and you can deal with that or quit.
I’m quite happy atm, thank you 
And there’s a lot more people who gotta deal with Frustrating and Boring Sniper counterplay than there are Sniper players.
Which group of players do you think brings in more profits for Blizzard?
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Map issue or not, it’s much more practical to just change snipers than change or delete maps.
Nerf Widow’s HP, base damage or damage charge rate.
And rework Hanzo.
the difference is that you can interact with a sym on a map she’s good on. it might be a little annoying but you can still interact
while widow on a map she’s good on is completely uncontestable which in some situations can cause you to lose instantly.
hanzo compared to widow is balanced because widow has a hitscan 1 shot while hanzo has a projectile
we joke and call his arrows logs but its the smallest projectile in the game (the only thing smaller are uncharged rail gun and uncharged sym orb), its an arcing projectile and it moves fairly slow compared to some others.
yes hanzo is good at 1v1 but hes an overall “average” hero since he doesnt acel at anything.
where as widow is broken on sniper maps due to her long range hitscan shot.
hanzo’s arrow may not have dmg drop off (but it does have projectile drop), but you’ll rarely ever hit widow’s drop off range even on a sniper map.
You have nothing but speculation in that regard. The people, such as myself, that find facing Widow and other precision heroes fun aren’t making noise… only the ones that don’t are speaking out. Getting what you want could very well kill the game.
Don’t mistake an echo chamber for the majority.
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Pretty much anything a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of 8% of the players does, in terms of quiting or spending less money isn’t going to mess with the game much.
No, the problem is the snipers. The problem is specifically the design, frequency, and availability of their ohks. That’s the problem, it’s not maps, it’s not cover, it’s not their health, it’s not supports, it’s not flankers, it’s them and their ohks being designed for a game that doesn’t exist anymore. They were designed for an overwatch with the possibility of a full tank enemy team, shield generators and armor packs so that their ohks could be played around and their damage actually had room for counterplay (which is being able to react and respond to the initial instance of damage without instantly being dead).
It’s time people stopped lying to themselves, they have been changing things around snipers for over 6 years just to avoid nerfing the core issue and reworking the characters. It’s not even about skill, Lebron James has skill, however, you wouldn’t praise/acknowledge his skill if he was bragging about destroying high school kids in a high school basketball game.
Well, I can’t really answer you concerning OW1 since I have no knowledge of how the game worked back then (except for one more tank). I’m not opposed to snipers, personally. As I said in other posts, I used to play CS (the original one), and the Magnum rifle could OS even with body shots, so…
The difference was huge though :
- the gun was heavy and lowered your mobility
- there was no wall climbing or grappling hooks : you couldn’t hide somewhere and reposition easily
- at close range, the aiming was… mostly “lucky guessing”, and you didn’t have the option of an automatic rifle or storm arrows. You had a pistol, that you had to switch to.
- You could be killed by most guns with headshots too. It was just more difficult to aim at long ranges.
I think you can rework snipers (and some maps, not all) to keep the OS ability but make the sniper role more… “snipery”, with a lot more drawbacks (no mobility, no close range damage, for ex).
I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Mil-sim and Battle-royale type games are fundamentally different from Overwatch, which is much closer in spirit to a twitch shooter like Unreal or Quake. There aren’t any areas to truly hide and the maps are linearly designed. It’s a fast game, Widow isn’t going to be hunkered down for 10 minutes while everyone else slugs it out and gets a solitary final pick to win the entire match. She’s part of the slugfest, and needs to be able to contribute to CQB as needed and to have some sort of mobilty if her kit has no self peel or heal, otherwise she’s an utter throw pick at any rank where team peels aren’t instantaneous.
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Well, if so, if she keeps her mobility because of how the game is designed (ie, as a fast paced one), she has to have some other drawback. I don’t know what exactly, but she cannot stay in her current state. And neither can Hanzo, imo.
Lmao. And it gets better! A “coach” for a video game?? LOL
This community is hilarious!