"Widow needs a nerf, she's too oppressive"

General Discussion
61

In 7.06e and sort of in 7.12

62

Wish I could get myself a 144Hz monitor since I play Mccree ,though for now 60 will have to do.

(I still can and am running the game on 144 FPS though ,heard it helps with input lag)

63

“nothing you can do”

  • pick Rein, Winston, Zarya, Orisa + 1 healer and Brigitte for maximum protection
  • pick dive comp, the predominant meta for over 6 seasons now, which still successfully eliminates spidergirl provided you can actually coordinate with each other and time your movement ability cooldowns
  • strafe spam+crouch spam, which turns the average Widow 1/20 crit hit rate, easily into 1/40 crit hit
  • pocket any projectile character with Mercy, have them pepper Widow’s last known position so she’s forced to relocate

Let’s make this clear. Using any of the above strategies, you can counter Widow without even really “countering” her (by killing her).

These arguments are tired. I’ve literally been saying this counter-argument for over a year.

All of the heroes she counters were subject to power creep and soft counter her. The only character she still obviously counters is Ana, and even Ana is getting a buff soon. For literally everyone else, the matchup has become more and more favorable against Widow with each passing balance update.

Displacing her, forcing her to constantly overextend because of barrier protection, and nullifying her damage with barriers, can completely counter her without outright killing her.

Everyone can nullify every single impact Widow has in the game by this alone. If you can’t, then you’re willingly choosing not to counter her and that’s your own fault.

1 Like
65

The buff wasn’t even significant.

Eight second cooldown is just a bandaid over the leaky hole that is Grappling Hook…

Wallhacks from Venom Mine do absolutely nothing in practice.

The only reason she’s been seeing an increase in usage is because of Mercy’s rework, and now that the rework has been nerfed into the ground, people are just feeling the aftermath of the resurgence.

In a short while, her usage is going to go back down as Hanzo’s usage increases from his much improved kit.

1 Like
66

This is usually the safest option since it requires no sneaking behind enemy lines or getting caught in “no-mans-land.” Widow’s new hook makes her difficult to chase, and the good Widows will land 2+ headshots into Winston or Diva as they swoop in. If the rest of Widow’s team is providing CQC fire-support, then the divers are usually killed off trying to trade themselves for Widow.

The shield option denies Widow easy head shots if the rest of your team is aware of her current location. Simply keep the barrier between yourself and the Widow, and you will be safe while the barrier lasts. This is where keeping Rein or Orisa properly healed becomes critical – they won’t be resetting barriers if your team has 5 other DPS’s >_<

68

7.06e was a minuscule change and it didn’t really nerf the hero for lower levels

7.12 was a buff

69

I don’t think Mademoiselle Lacroix (sorry I’m learning French lol) would be forgotten. She is shining in OWL. She requires most skill, probably she’s the most skill heroe. I like the buffs she had, what I don’t really like is her ult.

70

The only buff in 7.12 is so io doesnt need boots so early. The rest of the changes made early game harder for it

71

noooo it was a buff for low level io players the nerfs weren’t really that bad, there was another buff besides the removal of getting boots, which is huge.

they nerfed io slightly for higher level coordinated play but they made some great changes for low level and pub play. The other change was the removal of duration on tether

If possible id like the same thing to happen to widow, i can think of a few qol changes or simply changes to give widow more options that wouldn’t buff her at high level play but would make the learning curve easier

72

Im all for a nerf and a buff which makes her less needed in high level play but better in low.

73

oh you are? Ok, cause, thats what i was asking for but it sounded like you weren’t? But if you are, thats great, yay.

Id be completely fine with nerfs for widow at high level play if you only reduce the skill floor slightly, somehow.

74

OWL play is a terrible litmus test to base an opinion on balance.

Overwatch League players train somewhere in the ballpark between 12-17+ hours a day at their most rigorous, (17+ hours a day is the typical Olympian athlete schedule for mainland China, and likely would be employed for Shanghai Dragons).

Most people are lucky to play more than 4 hours straight with real-world commitments.

Furthermore;

  • Stage 1 was more representative of Widow’s balance status.

  • Stage 2 was with Rez Token Mercy. Pros were aggressive and stupid while playing with Rez Token Mercy, giving Widow more opportunities (and also countering her hard by removing a third of her impact every ult cast/20 seconds).

  • Stage 3 had some good Widow maps in rotation, and weird balance with Sombra’s increased usage.

  • Stage 4 will have Widow’s 3 best maps in rotation, won’t have new Hanzo, and will have Brigitte of which an instant elimination is going to be prioritized and valuable.

OWL does not translate to ladder play.

And while we’re on the same topic, OWL pros aren’t even achieving godly stats on a stat-for-stat comparison to the average Diamond player. Above average in all stats, but not that far of a difference between their hit/crit hit/damage/elimination values.

2 Likes
75

Are you asking for huge Widowmaker nerf? Or a rework?

76

Neither. Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn anymore. I’m done with it all.

Widowmaker, as she is right now, is a buggy unplayable mess that isn’t worth the time and effort to deal with her frustrations.

Blizzard has demonstrated for 20 months straight that they will never engage Widow’s core audience in an agreeable, transparent, and quick fashion.

The extended timeline;

  • 1-day’s notice for a nerf that literally slowed Widowmaker’s gameplay down an order of magnitude

    • nonsense “animation cancel” rationale on a mechanic that isn’t an animation cancel and exists in literally every single FPS game in history
      • accidentally proliferated the false belief that Widow could “stockpile” damage between scopings, which spread like wildfire across early YouTube and Twitch content creators (which was later disproven by Widow mains, but the damage was already done)
    • disagreeable “power gain” rationale, where it’s considered too powerful for Widow to get a movespeed bump despite the fact that the other two sniper characters get movement bumps right out of their firing modes + Orisa, Lucio, and DVa who also have variable movement speeds, also get movement bumps right out of their firing modes

  • 3 months of radio silence

    • during those 3 months, enforced quarantine of all Widow posts
      • mods outright deleted… not locked or redirected… deleted all non-megathread Widow posts

  • spent S1 in its entirety in the trash with 0% pickrates in Overwatch pro weekly tournaments

    • buffed too little too late, just in time for S3 where triple-tank meta rendered her useless
      • patch notes were incorrect, leading players to believe that the buff was stronger than it actually was

  • 9 months of radio silence, again

    • rather than addressing the loud and growing concerns of grappling hook being buggy, they roll out a sensitivity slider option as if to say, “here, you deal with it” that does nothing to fix her bugs and only exacerbates her issues
    • Jeff sent private emails to the “rude forum poster” that weren’t supposed to be shared to the public as per the nature of the contents of said email
      • after the email was leaked, no comment was officially made to follow up what was said on the email
    • buff didn’t adjust how the grappling hook functions, it just made the cooldown shorter by 4 seconds as if to say, “sorry you have to deal with this”

  • continued refusal to listen to Widow players about issues, forcing me to create an all-encompassing buglist megathread on Reddit in November 2017 which was then reposted here when the forums migrated

  • community manager denies a status update by saying it would take too long to go over each of these bugs and issues individually, and that we should just take their word for it that QA is working on a fix

    • 3 weeks later, Doomfist’s buglist megathread gets a status update on each individual bug/issue from Kaplan himself

  • it is currently May 2018, and the only bugfix that had remotely any impact was fixing Infrasight in FFA

    • all other bugfixes were for;
      • fixing an animation bug that was purely cosmetic and had no effect on gameplay
      • fixing a jump input bug during mid-air slingshots, which most people didn’t even know exist (which only I knew because of my weird keybinds with jump on scroll wheel)
      • fixing the accidental breaking of HUD elements between November and May (this was literally discovered by me and added late to the buglist)
        • 2 of the above 3 bugfixes weren’t even listed in the patch notes, I had manually test every point on my buglist in order to stay current/up-to-date

Twenty-three straight months of repeated requests for more transparency and communication, have self-evidently been ignored.

Twenty-three straight months of alternative ideas, QOL improvements, buffs, and rework ideas have been ignored.

Twenty-three months of Blizzard saying “we hear you, we’re listening”, whilst simultaneously discarding everything in Widowmaker’s quarantine thread, and the fallout/followup of any Widow related discussion, except when coming from a loud forum outburst, of which the player in question was basically just bribed by Kaplan himself to stop talking about Widow under the guise of Jeff saying he’s sorry for making an example of him.

I’m so far turned off and tuned out of Widowmaker discussion. I’m so done trying to be an arbiter for change, because Blizzard clearly isn’t listening.

Jump ship, because Widowmaker’s crusier is set sail for a wide open sea of nothingness

  • If you don’t jump soon, you’ll be left stranded in the middle of the ocean with nothing but a salty taste in your mouth
  • And if you do stay, you’re literally just going to be harassed by every other boat on the water who won’t give you so much as a life-jacket when you start having engine troubles again
  • Also, you stayed to be a king/queen of a broken boat.

For the longest time I’ve taken the stance that Widow’s balance discussions should be put on halt, until after they’ve bugfixed her kit entirely.

I literally only pop into Widow threads nowadays to stop misinformation and misconceptions from being thrown around because I have over 20 months of experience with correct information.

I’m removed from Widowmaker discussions and will continue to be removed from her discussions until, if or when Blizzard decides to finally address her buglist in full. Which isn’t going to happen for months, if at all.

4 Likes
77

What would a Widow rework even look like is what I wonder.

78

What a insightful thread. You have earned my respect. Widowmaker used to be my main, i played beta with her.

79

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

Probably something like this.

1 Like
80

That’s an interesting take. I think Infra-sight would be a little overclocked, but the marksman rifle idea is cool and would help her to be more accessible to less skilled players. It would also make her more capable in short-range fights.

I’d definitely try it. I’ve always wanted to see how Widow would perform if she was less sniper and more designated marksman. But like you said I don’t think Widow is on Blizzard’s shortlist of heroes to be looked at, especially for a rework. I don’t see that changing any time in the near future either.

81

I think one of the major details that wasn’t exactly made clear on the reworked ultimate, was that if you reload at any point during/after the ultimate, the ultimate/sniper rifle is immediately cut short.

No more habitual reloads or you’re screwed. But you can cancel out of it and create a situation similar to Deadeye where you zone players because they don’t exactly know if you’re still sniping or not.

You get 10 shots to work with and you don’t get any more without having to build up more ultimate charge. You have to prioritize your shots. Sniping feels like a reward for good play, as opposed to just something you have.

1 Like
82

Tracer, Genji, Hanzo, Sombra … Dive comp, shields …
If you can’t counter Widow with these then maybe Widow isn’t op and she desearves the kills ?