Undocumented Widow change (PTR) - auto-slingshot

General Discussion
1

Making sure this doesn’t go unnoticed. Anyone who has played Widow for any reasonable amount of time, will probably enjoy this change. Widow’s grappling hook slingshot mechanic involves you manually pressing jump before you reach a target destination.

  • On Live servers (at the time of this post), if you hook a wall and you don’t manually jump before the reel ends, you’ll smack the wall and come to a complete stop.
  • PTR now has you automatically slingshot at maximum velocity any time you hook and finish reeling to a non-autoaimed wall.

Non-autoaimed means that it doesn’t proc the ability’s auto-targeting on a wall corner/doorway/ledge/map prop.

https://gfycat.com/AlertPreciousBlueshark

The hook just dropping you has been a major source of frustration since beta, so it’s nice to finally get some attention. It’s not perfect, however… some walls just don’t work at all. The entire glass panels on Horizon Lunar colony’s green room, for example;

https://gfycat.com/UnimportantFreeAsiaticlesserfreshwaterclam

Note;

  • This change does not impact the autoaim, which is still just as pervasive as ever

  • You cannot auto-slingshot off of floors

  • You still have full control over to manually disconnect the grapple from the wall, if you (for whatever reason) want to slingshot early.

1 Like
2

That’s nice.

3

So what if I want to hook to a ledge to get high ground, am I now just catapulted into the air? Its likely this is just a bug and will be fixed in a future patch

4

It’s not a bug. This is a QOL improvement that only targets a very specific error where the hook needlessly drops you instead of letting you reach greater heights.

If the auto-targeting doesn’t hiccup (as it does every so often) it will pull you straight to the ledge and swing you up-and-over.

Furthermore, people have already been using manual slingshots to get to higher ledges every time it does hiccup. That mechanic is still there – just slingshot mid-reel instead of at the end of it.

So really, nothing changed out of reaching high ledges.

5
1 Like
6

You say that, but Its isnt mentioned in the patch notes, and weird things with movement are common, so like it or not, there is a good chance this is a bug

7

The hook dropping you is a known issue.

This change ONLY impacts the hook dropping you, whilst also lowers the skill barrier for entry to do a slingshot, which can be often difficult in close-range castings.

See #10 in this thread here;