Of all the heroes in the game, Widowmaker is by far the most horrible, anti-fun hero to go up against in Overwatch.
Unlike any other hero, widow only needs line of sight in order to be a massive threat to your team. While in LOS of her, you risk getting one shotted from across the map. Yes, one shots exist on some characters (Hog for instance and Sojourn kinda) but they are limited by factors such as CD’s, time between shots etc.
Not only that, but there is a point where you reach a certain rank (usually about masters) where widows just have amazing aim and you have no choice but to create a team comp around countering her AND co-ordinate said comp in order to shut her down (because if you don’t, the enemy team WILL protect her with all their rescources and give her space to one shot your whole team)
This is not gameplay that is meant for Overwatch. It’s supposed to be a team-based strategic game involving the intelligent use of cooldowns, positioning, map awareness and aim, but the only thing widows need to be good at is aim and positioning, which she is VERY heavily rewarded for. The only real way to counter a good widow if your team isn’t actively working together to counter this ONE hero is to hide around corners, which is just terrible gameplay design and isn’t realistic to do most of the time in this game, as its a fast paced game where staying in one place is extremely counter productive.
They need to take her one shot away and add more to her kit instead or remove her. The only other soloution I can think of to make her balanced is to buff/rebalance the many other heroes who can’t contest her high burst damage from long range (and having to do that in itself just shows how busted and anti-fun she is to deal with)
Most ranks don’t have the co-ordination and skill to counter a good widow and even if they do, it is NOT fun at all being forced to play a very specfic team comp just so the game becomes playable.
Played against 2 widows yesterday and was able to counter them. Once with kiriko and once with Hammond. I know a lot of people can’t or don’t play Hammond. But a character that can’t be headshot does very well against the hero the needs to hit headshots.
I never see balls in my game; probably because he isn’t good right now, considering most tanks can easily deal with him (Especially Hog) and he has good DPS counters as well (Mei for instances). Kirkio can be good, but widow still has a big advnatage over her, given she is hitscan and doesn’t have to worry about healing her team.
For referernce, I play in Masters/GM games. I just want to be able to play any DPS player I like without having to swap to widow myself or tracer and play a danagerous game of hide and seek. It’s really truly not fun playing against a widow.
I’ve had a match in one of the push maps (the snow one) where a Widow was picking us off the minute we came out of spawn, it was not fun, but we manage to win somehow? Pinging somehow works to get her away, but it’s also a bit risky without getting your head shaved cleaned right off.
Haha this widow witch hunt that has suddenly come up on the forums, probably from a very small group of people with multiple accounts. 2 post account checks out.
Noo many people have had issues with her for a while. I’ve seen streamers like Jay3 and KarQ be critical of her extremely oppressive kit (By Kit I mean just sniper). She was even an issue in OW1, which is why they nerfed her HP back then too (then buffed it again)
Why heal the team when widow is just gonna one shot through it anyways? Seems like a wasteful way to play. May as well go for the pic then go back to heal. And just because Hammond and mei exist doesn’t mean I can’t go after the widow. Funny enough the widow went mei after I killed her a few times. Counter successful.
Those seem like some good suggestions! I’ve also seen suggestions where instead of straight up one-shotting, they instead take some of the power out of her one shot and instead replace it with a DOT.
Before I say anything on the subject, I’ll state that widow is one of my least played and I generally dislike hitscan.
However:
This argument can be made for a lot of heroes. I main sombra and pharah and I’ve heard this argument for both of them a million times.
And tremendous amount of practice, some in game, others out of game, to develop muscle memory in order to be consistent. There’s a huge difference between widows that hit shots and ones that don’t.
Widow has to charge up her shots, it’s there for that reason.
So what you’re saying, both teams have to work around widow.
It’s similar to pharah, you need mercy, therefore a specific composition to make her
viable in higher elos.
But you just said that widows team works with their widow in order to keep her safe. Otherwise widow is exposed to flanks and most likely would die alone, no?
I personally find widows design boring, I’ve played that hero back in cs1.0 and plethora of other games. But that’s me, I’m pretty sure a lot of players find my mains boring as well.
I don’t think widow herself is the issue, I think it’s more the map designs as well as current matchmaker as well as balance and an attempt to appeal to generic fps audience.
Using your team picks to protect and enable a Widowmaker is a team effort and they are using their abilities and positioning in ways to make it happen. Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it not true.
If Widow wasn’t fit for the game, they’ve had 6 years to figure that out. Seems like she fits fine.
Widow also does have to manage her positioning and cooldowns as well if the enemy team is actually making an effort to force her to use things besides her gun. It sounds like you just don’t know how to fight Widow.
Widow in OW and Widow in OW2 are two different things. So many of new maps benefit her, with high spots and good positions for her. She can constantly have one Support pocketing her, because there is one less Tank to heal. She has a DPS reload passive that she also benefits from. And the most important one, it’s 5v5, one less Tank and most of the barriers are weaker or removed.
