People are sick of Sniperwatch, and she’s the star. That’s about 90% of it.
And, as the game is getting better balanced, her excess as a one-shot becomes more apparent.
People have been saying since launch widow is overpowered.
She has either been in every single meta, or has been the cause of every meta since the games release.
People play goats now so that widow has nothing to shoot at. Sniper mercy meta was dependant upon the better widow. Dive comp was to specifically shut down widow and healers. Everything before that was just widow pounding out headshots relentlessly.
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Pro metas are the way they are because they are inhuman. Pro widow is a headshot machine with 360 degree perma walls and a clutch tleport 100% of the time.
Imagine writing a novel when you don’t understand that all I said is that if there’s a shield, you should use it.
And Widowmaker has 200 hp. It melts in fractions of seconds. All you need is the shield to protect you from the first peek.
Oh I didn’t know you were playing in the OWL. What team are you in? Dive wasn’t even close to its prime in the last stage. The sole fact that Reinhardt has almost the same pickrate as Winston should tell you that. Dive in it’s prime was Winston, D.va, Genji, Tracer, Lucio and Zenyatta, with some of them having nearly 100% pickrate. Widowmaker had a good reason to be played as it wasn’t pure dive anymore. Stage 4 was very experimental as Brigitte was just released as were the op pre-nerf Hanzo who completely messed up dive. The finals had lots of double sniper simply because Hanzo could turn a jumping Winston into mincedmonkeymeat before he could land and ZaryaHanzo combo could take care of Brigitte and even go through Zen’s trans if Mercy boosted. Widowmaker was used a lot to counter him (and also because dive wasn’t gatekeeping her).
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Isn’t it then smarter to focus on those instead of adding another nerf/buff on the table that will likely have its own myriad of indirect effects?
I can’t say I’m in touch with those communities as much as I am with other ones, but I’d imagine in less gimmicky games Snipers wouldn’t be that much of an issue.
TF2 Sniper can’t just run away from the Scout if he closes the gap on him, and the Medic is too much of a premium to dedicate solely to pocketing the Sniper (plus healing is much weaker in TF2 IIRC?).
In games like CSGO, there’s a significant economy cost tied to the Sniper rifle, especially the more famous ones like the AWP. They’re expensive as hell, and so are bullets for them.
From what I remember playing Halo with friends (granted, this was like 10 years ago) Snipers are hard to find and even harder to keep stocked with ammo.
Classic games have a much better handle on Snipers, even if they’re strong, they have drawbacks in other ways. Low clip sizes, extremely slow fire rate, high risk cash/bullet economy and so on. Overwatch Snipers don’t really have those drawbacks. They’ve got strong vertical mobility, unlimited ammo, solid fire/reload rate and a decent clip size. They’re supposedly balanced out by the fact their counters are just as strong, fight OP with OP and all that, but in reality, they’re not nearly strong enough to deal with a slippery Sniper with any sort of peels or heals being given to them.
Plus it REALLY doesn’t help that losing the first pick in a fight in OW means you lose it like 60-70% of fights, and there’s nothing that Snipers do better than get the first pick in OW.
That’s only an issue if the widow is very good, and even then only because her counter doesn’t normally exist. As for other games, i’m just using them as examples of places where snipers are not hated. Lessons can be learned from them.
Not if those things are balanced and Widow is the outlier. For example adding an extra second to grapple hook because divers have it much harder getting to her now, greatly weakening counterplay.
That kind of fine-tuning isn’t what Blizzard is known for though. So I can see you would be wary. They always overbuff/nerf things.
Widow took over Genji’s place in stage 3, prior to the release of Brigitte. Widow becoming such a top pick had nothing to do with her. It was her grapple buff.
Widowmaker is very good. Maybe not in pro play because GOATS is still extremely popular (and a comp that rose because a tank deathball that doesn’t offer ways to get easy picks is the best answer to a comp like Double Sniper), but on ladder? Absolutely. And even in pro play, if 2-2-2 ever comes back into vogue, whether forced or through balance changes, I’d be extremely surprised if Widow didn’t simply reclaim her position as the most impactful hero in the pro scene and teams rose or fell in the standings simply by how powerful their resident Widow was.
Even as low as Diamond she outclasses most, if not all hitscan DPS.
In other games Snipers aren’t hated (or at least to a lesser degree) because the drawbacks and counterplay are more pronounced, or their reward isn’t nearly as extreme.
The AWP can OHK, but it’s rate of fire is about half of Widowmakers and it isn’t semi-auto.
In Fortnite, Snipers are among the few weapons that AREN’T hitscan, because long-range hitscan is inherently extremely powerful.
In Apex, the one weapon that’s comparable to the AWP’s level of power (Kraber) is also projectile, has a slow fire rate and is bolt-action.
Widowmaker has drawbacks, but they’re mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, especially in context of her competition, while her strength in everything but sustained damage blows them out of the water.
Widowmaker is hated because she’s quite possibly the worst designed Sniper in any FPS that would dare call itself competitive. At least the worst that I’ve ever seen.
Lower her max charge to 225, set initial charge at 175, increase her charge speed slightly and lower her health pool to 170.
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That would allow her to bodyshot OHKO too many heroes with the various damage boosts.
Personally I’d go all-in on the fragile aspect of Widow.
I’m not sure you can change the actual problematic aspects of her kit (zero drop-off hitscan weapon, 300 max damage), but you can make those have an equally significant trade-off.
I’d massively reduce how fast her weapon charges and make it scale exponentially. Something like 60% for a OHK on a 200 HP hero is silly, especially since it takes a fraction of a second to fully charge giving her the option to simply try, try again. (Which is what makes her truly frustrating. She doesn’t have to play well consistently to get value, unlike other hitscan heroes, she just has to land 1 impactful shot and she can almost auto-win the fight).
Make it so she has to charge about 1.2-1.3s for her to kill a squishy and maybe 1.5s to fully charge her weapon. This gives her both increased periods of vulnerability while she’s ADS’ing as well as far more breathing room for her victims if she doesn’t land the shot.
170 HP is a good change, it puts her in range of quite a few thresholds, like a boost Mei/McCree headshot, or an unboosted Ashe headshot, but to make her more vulnerable to Dive, I’d also increase her grapple CD again by 2s.
She should fear being dived, and the period between them jumping her and her grapple being up again shouldn’t be nearly as short.
The forums hate everthing.
You have to play around every hero on the enemy team. Widow cannot just be an exception…
Especially since she is a hero, who is highly aim dependent, and thus anyone can play around her.
Because a bastion main got salty and posted about widow in GM. Imagine a bastion being upset about Widowmaker. Never happened before right.
Completely agree with you.
Some just have larger implications than others for what you have to do to play around them than the rest due to the various heroes own agency to respond to the threats that other heroes can impose.
Speaking of which… Orisa is quite probably the most broken in that regard. She just spams shields, and you need to get your entire team to focus that somehow, or you just lose…
Doomfist is also a hero that 6 people need to focus down, and to dodge his abilities you kinda need to use movement abilities.
Against Widow you just need to know how to position. You can play around her with the movement keys alone.
It makes part of the community to hate a different here every week.
It’s scheduled next week is gonna be Ana. Mark in your calendars.
Brig started to get hard counter Dive back then, and that is why Widow started to be the main dps.
If you look at seasons 3, when Mercy was stronger than of today, and Widow with 8 second GH, she still competed with Genji and Junkrat to be on the second dps slot.
Dive was “OP” > Tracer got huge indirect nerf(Brig), we got widow Dive, when Hanzo got Buffed, we got double sniper, when Hanzo got nerf, Goats got discovered and that is the meta now at the top pros.
It’s only showed that she was powerful dps at the hand of the best player in the world, shocking.
But is she was too op? Uncountable? Is every team composition was around her up to Goats? The answer is no.