How so though? Her counters can still move way more often because they have lower CDs on their mobility abilities. It’s a buff don’t get me wrong but it wasn’t a nerf to her counters. A nerf to her counters would be if Widow’s hook went down to 4-5 seconds.
Taking it from effectively a 14-second cooldown to effectively a 10-second cooldown is huge, though. Her hook is bugged an unreliable as hell, but there’s no denying that 4 seconds off the cooldown makes a big difference.
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It makes diving her trickier, and it gives her counters a smaller window to secure a kill if they’re chasing her (and Widow a better chance to kill them before they can kill her). They still have superior mobility and an advantage when diving her, but decreasing the difference by 4 seconds is significant.
10+ seconds still doesn’t hold a candle to;
- Winston - 6 second Jump Pack
- D.Va - 5 second Boosters
- Tracer - 3 seconds per Blink
- Genji - 8 second Swift Strike with an instant reset on any assist within the last 8 seconds + wall climb
- Hanzo - 4 second Lunge + wall climb
Might I remind you that Widow players are typically already on a perch and have to abandon a perch and find a ledge to escape to.
If they are deep into her perch instead of on the edge (which you should be deep to avoid splash damage at her feet), that’s still another 1+ second of jumping off that perch to a new ledge, where she’s still within the cone of close-range fire on a diver. Divers are also attacking Widow as they are inbound to her position, and peppering her with damage.
4 seconds shorter is a buff, sure, but the only way Widow survives any sort of dive is if a Mercy decides to abandon her post in the teamfight and fly to Widow to pocket her.
Hanzo’s Lunge doesn’t have long enough range to be considerable here, nor does a single Blink from Tracer.
As somebody who has actually played Widow primarily and regularly before and after the buff, I can tell you that, in practice, I’ve had more success kiting and killing people who think they’re free to jump on me and kill me than I did when I had effectively no chance of getting away from them, and more important, I way less frequently get caught by a diver with my hook still on cooldown.
10 seconds isn’t 6 seconds, but it sure as hell isn’t 14 seconds, either. Her counters maintaining (a smaller degree of) superior mobility doesn’t make the benefits of the buff less considerable.
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This sort of condescension is completely unnecessary. I’m literally THE person keeping track of Widow’s bugs and issues. You don’t think I played Widow both before and after the buff?
People citing ad nauseum that an 8 second cooldown lets her escape every single time doesn’t mean that it’s true.
The fact that OWL pros (and trickling down the ladder more and more) literally AIM AT THE GROUND to escape instead of using the ability as intended shows that her movement isn’t good.
Her movement is improved, sure, but it’s not hard to improve on garbage. Garbage movement that still retains a 1/3 to 1/2 failure rate, showing up 4 seconds earlier, is still garbage movement. That doesn’t mean she’s suddenly in the running for best movement, and it certainly doesn’t mean that she’s uncounterable.
I know this, and it’s really cool and appreciated. I know you’ve been outspoken and passionate about Widow for a long time.
But I also know that, based on the few times I’ve glanced at your career profile over the past year or so, you haven’t played nearly as much Widow as you did early in the game, unless you’ve been playing her on another account. Between that and you mentioning “non-Widow players”, I thought it was worth mentioning that I am a Widow player, and probably a more experienced one than you.
You’ve made a lot of posts talking about how she needs help, and it seems like you might be better-versed with her on paper than you are in practice at this point. Like, no offense, but if you put more energy into improving with her and less energy into complaining about her (not that most of your complaints aren’t warranted), maybe you’d feel less need to complain. Plenty of us work her no little problem despite her bugs.
It’s not true.
It’s been established that her hook is unreliable af
but if you’re pulling a 1/2~2/3 success rate with her hook, then that’s you doing something wrong, because it’s not that bad.
It sure doesn’t. I doubt anybody with a functioning brain and a clear head believes it does.
It doesn’t. It does make her harder to counter, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Widoe has lower dps than heros like junkrat.
I have a Widowmaker alt account named “Widowmaker”.
Whether or not the hook can be corrected by using a slingshot doesn’t impede the failure rate. If I have to compensate for it by using a slingshot to dismount early, it’s still a failure of the hook’s auto-aim.
I main Widow on console, have like 60hours on her and half of my games feel like so random. Either I’m a god or I miss a stationery zenyatta 3 times
console widow is so joke
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Sometimes my mind goes blank and when i look around everyone is dead.
Other times i can’t hit the backside of a Reinhardt shield.
Same with when i play Bastion… O-o
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Of course you do.
I guess it has an absurdly high fail rate on paper, but if you’re using it the way we all know by this point is the most effective way to use it, it’s not as unreliable as you’re presenting it, and it’s disingenuous to say it works only half the time without that context.
If I have to compensate for the hook doing something I didn’t want by slingshotting, that’s a problem.
If I end up in an unfavorable position because of it, or it delays my intended next course of action by a few seconds, that’s a problem.
It’s not disingenuous to recognize the tradeoffs that happen as a result of compensation, as a failure.
In the ideal world, where the hook goes where I want, I would recognize the mistakes I make, and be perfectly fine with those failures.
But when pros literally have to use the slingshot technique every single time, AT THE GROUND, that’s clearly evidence that the ability isn’t consistent. They’re sacrificing the maximum potential and usefulness of the hook, by compensating for it every single time, 100% of the time.
Think of all of the split-second opportunities that are missed because of this. How is that anything but failure?
Look, it’s fine if you are able able to stomach these bugs, but for me, I literally can’t.
I’m the kind of player that physically shuts down when there’s a piece of dust, or a crumb on my mousepad that grazes my wrist. I literally let go of the mouse and spend a good two seconds brushing whatever interrupted me away.
If a fly buzzes in my ear from in-game sounds, I literally throw my headphones off because of the ASMR. In real life, I have to swat it and get rid of it entirely.
I’m the kind of player that doesn’t do well with aim punch when it happens, in any game. I find it to be obnoxious, and it’s utterly crippling to me to experience an interruption like that, whether it be in-game intentional mechanic, or a bug in the moment.
If misprediction happens, I just can’t continue sniping. When it happens part of my inability is an engrained habit to spam F9 to get the replay to see if it was a mispredict, the other part is that I just missed a headshot and that player is now looking at me and I can cognitively, objectively no longer continue sniping in that location. I play it safe. There goes my practice.
And when it happens, I’m at the complete mercy of what is essentially RNG. I can’t know when it happens, until it has happened. The only way to compensate for it, is doing some crazy CS:GO-style spray pattern movement from every shot. Which, isn’t ideal for my wrist.
Suppose I can continue sniping in that location… the bug happening still impedes me further by suddenly ruining my transition to the next enemy entirely. My computer isn’t the best computer, even with an overclocked 6600k and a GTX 1060, I still get abysmal framerates and framerate dropping. If a no-reg happens while I’m not expecting it, and I’m already halfway into transitioning to the next enemy to shoot at, and already trying to compensate for the already existing frame-rate drops, there’s no way I can go back to my last target that should have died.
These factors utterly ruin my ability to play the character unimpeded. I personally can’t handle these distractions and compensate for things outside of my control.
I recognize I might have some sort of weird higher-functioning autism in that respect, but it’s something that utterly ruins me. Here are very obvious barriers that I have no hope to overcome unless Blizzard actually fixes it, and they haven’t.
Is it really so bad that I complain more regularly than play her?
Is it so bad that I demand for some actual damned communication? No one else has stuck around this long to do it.
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Nah, man. Just understand that most of these problems are little more than annoyances to most of us. I think everyone who plays her can agree it’s ridiculous that her bugs haven’t been fixed after 2 years of patches, but it does seem, without knowledge of your particular challenges, like you’re overreacting.
I get where you’re coming from, though. Sorry for being harsh about it.
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you can play with mouse and keyboard on console so it dose not really matter
Or you can do what i do, and play with a Controller on PC And still get accused of aimbotting. 
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according to wiki it actually takes .75 seconds to get full charge my bad. so its fairly easy to hit 2 shots to a body and kill someone. mercy heals 60 damage a second and zen orb heals 30 a second so with both you get 90 health a second. and she would still out damage the healing with just BODY SHOTS . if she hits 2 full charged ones in a second which she can she can still kill someone. and yeah there is a red trail thats generally far away and if they have any thought process at all on a hard to reach ledge. and she has a grapple to get her to safety after she hits a couple of body shots on that winston first and then she can easily take him out. she isnt hard unless you have a crappy computer or simply cant follow fast movement easily. but the reward for the amount of difficulty is ridiculously large
0.75 seconds, plus 0.5 seconds cooldown between shots. 0.33 seconds for scope animation.
First shot of a fresh zoom-in takes 1.58 seconds to reach all max damage. All shots after the fresh zoom-in, 1.25 seconds.
No, no, all the comments about needing to nerf widow are correct!
Thats why all the masters, GMs, Top 500s, streamers and OWL players are asking for those nerfs!..
…wait, no they aren’t LOL