What oneshot potential? The potential where most Widows in every game that you encounter are missing headshots 19/20 times?
The oneshot potential that’s limited by damage falloff?
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She does seem to be surprisingly ineffective on average at the moment though for a character that people say is OP, like she’s not in the top half of winrate at any rank.
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I don’t agree, and I don’t like the forums obsession with winrates and pickrates, they mean nothing because statistics are not 100%.
I watch Top 500 streams all the time, and I constantly see teams struggle to counter a Widow. Her mere presence denies entire areas unlike any other character.
This HP nerf means that she actually has drawbacks. Shields are meant to be her drawback but she was still meta during double shield. She was a character with no weakness, now this change means she can hopefully be reliably dived.
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she can one shot, for one, without the need of mercy
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Better than anecdotes.
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What games are you using as a metric for being “like a sniper”?
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Better than stating a statistic that literally means nothing without context or rank.
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Literally one shots. If you’re getting out dueled by an Ashe on Widow, Ashe is just the better sniper.
Not in general, just you as a player.
All Widow’s skill is put into one aspect. Aim. She’s not that intensive or multitasking of a hero.
Aim well, and you succeed. She’s basic and not at all deep but extremely valuable.
Widow has given you a big Ego.
Again if Ashe is out sniping you on widowmaker, they are playing better than YOU.
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Here’s something for you. She’s 8th from the bottom in winrate in GM, where she should be the most effective. Soldier and Ashe are a little below her in pickrate, and both are still above her winrate, Soldier especially. Since his gun rework, he’s pretty much taken number 1 hitscan in GM.
But then again, a lot of the DPS are fairly close in pickrate as it stands, so winrate actually becomes more important with a more equal distribution of playtime than before. Right now, no DPS is really a clear meta winner, and that’s a good thing.
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Genji high skill and Tracer easier? LOL
this gave me a good laugh
delusional genji mains at its best again.
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My point was about her the skill required to play her effectively.
Lol, widow high skill. Get a load of this guy.
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People often use other games as examples of how the developers should balance snipers, i.e. less health like in TF2. But you can’t extrapolate balance changes. They have to be specific for each game.
Take TF2 for example, the snipers there have just 125 HP, which is quite low. However, they still have a fighting chance when it comes to dealing with their counters. In other words, they don’t have hard counters.
In Overwatch, though, this isn’t the case. At 200 HP a Widowmaker stands a chance to get away from a hypermobile WInston or Ball, which have 500 HP and 600+ HP, respectively. Also, Overwatch has a ton of shields, something not usually found in other FPS games.
At 175 HP, Widowmaker is likely to be instantly killed by a flanking tank.
IMO, a better change would be to just give her a bright laser that shines wherever she is aiming at, giving the enemies a warning and time to react.
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Ok well Overwatch sniping is by far fundamentally different to CS:GO sniping or CoD sniping
When I say other snipers I mean characters who are snipers, like in other hero shooters where their kit is based around being a sniper not. You can just use a sniper like any old FPS
Lets take Sniper TF2 for example, to balance out his potential to kill any class in the game in one shot, even when overhealed by a medic, he’s tied for having the least health in the game and his options for an up close fight are abysmal, having to rely on his SMG which is considered the worst weapon in the game for close range defence or a having to swap out to a melee weapon
It balances out his incredibly high damage over long range by making him weak at close range, because excelling at both just wouldn’t be fair
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Genji keeps getting nerfed?
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The problem is skill is entirely subjective
As a Junk main I think Widow, Tracer, Genji and a few others as some of the lower skilled heros while I think Sym, Doom, Pharah, Bastion, and a few others are some of the highest skilled heros.
Junkrat I’d say is somewhere in the middle…unless he’s against a team of nothing but his counters but that kind of goes for everyone… that has 6 counters that is.
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TF2 Sniper is the worst possible example you could have come up with.
Not only does TF2 Sniper have fewer penalties than Widow just with the stock sniper (which is only gated by firerate, and made up for with 75 base damage), TF2 Sniper loadouts enable a variety of safeties, including protection from backstabs, fire-reduction, scaling melee options (in situations where melee duels are not uncommon). His tournament-legal secondary Cleaner’s Carbine can give him mini crits against heroes whose average healthpool is significantly lower and have zero barrier protection options.
I repeat myself, where are you getting this “sniper archetype” when literally none of the eSports, or even casual games, feature what you’re saying? Literally the only games that have this are mil-sims.
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Woah, a Genji main found it easy to learn the two heros most like Genji!? Who would have thought! It’s not like they all fill the same role as flankers or anything!?
We’ll see how this change affects Widows gameplay in due time. Although, I can see how this might head. It’ll either have little effect of Widow, other than having to be more careful. Or, It could result it Widow entering a world of pain. It might make flankers too much of a problem to be effective with her. Considering how fast characters like Tracer, Doomfist, and Genji could kill her (The nerf would allow Genji to one-shot her), It would make her fragile character much more vulnerable. It would also make poke damage a bit more dangerous for Widow, with her lower health pool. Mix that with her Grappling Hook’s long cooldown with her terrible close range combat, and you could potentially have a problem with her. Personally, if this nerf were to go through, I’d balance it with a shorter Hook cooldown (Maybe 2 seconds less or 12 > 10. Although I can see how people wouldn’t like that.) To compensate for her being more fragile. If you were to ask me, the only buff I’ve really wanted for Widow is a close-range combat buff so she doesn’t have to hard-scope all the time. This could be a slight damage buff to her SMG, and a large spread reduction so that it could actually hit something. (It could look like this: Damage per bullet: 13 > 15 Max Spread: 3.0 Degrees to something between 2.0 and 2.5 maybe?) But that’s just my opinion. We’ll see how it goes it a few days.
P.S: As a slight edit, I’ll definitely can see why Widow needs a nerf. She can escape being dove if she’s smart with her grappling hook, and overall her ability to one-shot can be extremely powerful in the right hands. So, if it does go through, I’ll be fine with it. My only worry is the abuse Mercy players will go through being verbally assaulted by a Widow DEMANDING that they pocket them. ＞︿＜
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Whether or not I think Widow needed nerfs, the biggest thing people agreed on was that she could survive being Dove too easily, and that for her hitbox and range no one could deal meaningful damage to her.
These changes address those problems, without taking away Widow’s underlying ability to kill quickly at long range.