Why can widowmaker one shot someone every 720 milliseconds

General Discussion
81

If I start shooting you with a character that has a 0.72 second TTK, you have 0.72 seconds in which you can fire back, escape, receive healing, etc

If I start shooting you with a character that insta-kill every 0.72 seconds, none of those are options

The difference is that a character with an extended TTK allows proactive and reactive counterplay. A character with a time-gated instant kill (that’s to say, there’s a delay between shots) only allows for proactive counterplay, other things being held equal.

Lots of your responses concerning Widowmaker are pretty disingenuous, but this one really takes the cake.

1 Like
82

That completely ignores the fact that even amongst pros, the average accuracy is still roughly around 50%. Crit accuracy is between 10-20% (with Taimou and Kephrii being amongst the highest of padded stats at 22%).

That’s one in ten shots that’ll be a crit, not even necessarily a one-hit-kill.

Probability is on your side and you can increase your chances through zero move accel strafe and crouch spam for a brief instance.

That’s still 0.72 seconds for you to do something. And with half a dozen characters that have mobility abilities, and a solid third having tanking abilities that allow you to survive – movement abilities disable favor the shooter, and if you properly coordinated, 0.72 seconds is enough time to call out for help to a teammate who CAN protect you – pre-emptive actions can and DO enable you to avoid being killed. Nevermind boops and aim-punch.

If you have all of these options available to you, and you still act all defeatist about it, you’re doing something wrong.

83

…no, it is not. I shoot your character in the head. 0.72 seconds later, I can shoot again. Tell me, while your character is dead and waiting to respawn, can you do any of the things you list during that 0.72 seconds to avoid being killed? No. Your character is dead. Congratulations, you blinked across the spawn room. Fat lot of good that did.

The principle difference between Widow and, say, Soldier is that she kills instantly with a refractory period. That’s to say, if she lands her shot, you cannot do anything after the fact because you’re dead. So, no, there’s no 0.72 seconds to do anything.

You’re correct. But, when a character is subject to proactive and reactive counterplay, and another is more principally affected by only proactive counterplay, guess which one will generally be a bigger issue to deal with?

What really strikes me about these Widowmaker arguments is how the ardently pro-Widowmaker side usually boils down to this statement right here: “it’s your problem [ignoring that lots of people from lots of ranks have claimed she’s a problem], git gud.” Or, as you more elaborately put it above, but it’s the same statement.

Here’s the deal. I know you probably don’t care enough to regurgitate anything other than your prescriptive self-congratulatory snarks derived from some ill-conceived notion of healthy game design due to your mastery of a mechanically-demanding hero, but I’ve not once claimed to personally have an issue with Widowmaker. I’m Platinum. Good Widowmakers here are not particularly common, but that feeds into my criticism of Widowmaker. You have this character who exists in a very binary state alternating between “Diamond and below: she sucks” and “High tier play: she’s oppressive.” There is an issue of balance in which she renders many other DPS picks irrelevant in high tier play (which, you can thump your holy book of Widow about how exploitable and counterable she is, but the objective and anecdotal evidence from the ranks where people are most capable of doing this suggests it’s not really true), but also the issue of game design in which she is practically useless and a tantamount throw pick in low ranks. She’s extremely polarized in terms of game value, with very little in-between. That’s bad design. It’d be more understandable if she were like, say, Hammond, who goes from niche to sub-meta, but she isn’t.

When you, as a DPS, are one of the top DPS picks in and out of metas, even in metas that purportedly counter you, then you’re probably an issue. When you, as a DPS, outclass pretty much every other DPS and are only really rivaled by options that many people feel are overpowered (i.e. Hanzo), then you’re probably an issue. If you look at that, and somehow conceive the notion that Widowmaker is not a problem that needs address, then you’re realistically just biased.

1 Like
84

And the ones that don’t are less able to do their job, meaning we trend between snipers/flankers being too much or tanks. Because heroes that should discourage the kind of grouping needed to turn tanks into dps such as Pharah, Junkrat, Bastion, etc.

Snipers are just a tiny bit worse on console and that lead to no GOATs.

85

Time does not start 0.72s after you’ve fired. Time starts at 0, before you’ve fired, meaning if you’re both equally aware of each other’s presence, you as the non-sniper have 0.72s to respond and react.

I didn’t say that as a remark on any individual player’s skill.

I literally meant what I said.

Widow has many counter-balances in her kit alone that no one ever seems to recognize, which include but are not limited to;

  • roughly ~1.83s windup on escape ability
  • escape ability still being bugridden (though it has gotten a few bugfixes, half a year ago)
    • escape ability able to be bodyblocked
  • aim punch, which scales with received damage/increments on top of itself on repeated hits
  • anti-quickscoping mechanic by way of charge rate
  • lack of proper movement acceleration ramping forces instant frame-one movespeed penalty on scope
  • descope-rescope penalizes DPS
  • hitscan truncation – where an enemy’s arm/shoulder/leg hitbox can block a would-be headshot (and yes, legs can block a head if Widow has to snipe upwards)
  • jumping forces descope, forcing a very specific jump-then-scope technique
  • map destructibles absorbing shots
  • map environments can cause shaky aim
  • favor the shooter disabling on movement abilities
  • no reliable fallbacks like claymores, explosions, stun/flash/area denial grenades, 1 or 2 tap/shotgun secondary weapons like in other games

This is BEFORE any option within the enemy’s control. When enemies can have barriers deployable on demand/for cost with wall/rectangular/spherical/quarter-sphere/personal shapes. When her specific counters can have both high health pools + gap closers + no aim requirements. When the game has no movement acceleration strafe-spam turning sniping into a literal quicktime event that not even pros themselves can hit reliably.

When you have abilities like on-demand single Rez that have for months undone all benefits that Widow could do, and metas that have made getting any value out of her at all a god-forsaken chore lasting over a year…

When you have all of the, quite-frankly-generous, above tools offered to you, and you still somehow believe Widow is some sort of unstoppable force, when other players who exist in just one rank above yours have no issue employing those tools (you’re Plat, I’m Diamond, and we routinely handle Widow here) and reducing Widow’s effectiveness to zero (even if the gameplay itself feels more like babysitting than actual counterplay), that’s indicative that it’s more of a personal taste that you don’t like sniping. This is no longer a problem about a character being unbalanced. You just don’t like them, or have not practiced enough to properly counter them.

86

Why can doom oneshot someone every 4 sec

87

I’d say too much defense. Snipers should be glass cannons in the extreme sense.

88

there is possibility to one shot someone every 720ms but realistically no one is able to perform to that level unless they are hacking

widowmaker has no ultimate that does damage, teams rely on her constantly getting picks to get as much value as another dps with valuable ultimates

i think her damage is fair