I mean, if the Red Widowmaker isn’t showing up on the kill feed, especially at the level where she should be strong, then you have a good idea of how good the Widow is.
There is plenty that you can do to keep yourself from being deleted. There is cover in Overwatch, both in the from of the environment and in Shield tanks. There are now 3 different forms of straight up negating damage in Sigma, D.Va, and Genji…
We’ve got high mobility heroes like Genji and Tracer who are notoriously hard to hit; Sombra, who’s hard to see; Hanzo, who can reveal you every 12 seconds and might turn a kill into a trade, or even a straight up death because his aim doesn’t have to be as precise with how projectiles work.
Then we’ve got 3 different tanks that have ways of clearing large distances without showing their critbox who all have twice the mobility as Widowmaker.
We have one healer who can negate death on a cooldown, and another healer who can reverse death on a cooldown, and a third who can increase health on a cooldown, as well as with an ult.
Well no one likes feeling like they have no control over whether they live or die. THe issue is that people do have control over the outcome of a match, and they choose not to do anything about it.
The tools are in the game to Deal with Widowmaker. She’s been the same hero she’s been for the entire lifespan of the game; weaker now, actually. She’s been dealt with consistently for that same amount of time.
Numbers don’t relate that much to game itself. If you are in a fight and widow is only setting up, then countering her is ok. But if you lost the fight and now your team is coming from spawn you have huge disadvantage. A Winston (which is the default go to counter) will need to sneak or pass enemy team in order to even have a chance to get to the widow if she is not pocketed in which case - just hide, isn’t that a fun way to play the game. On some maps picking Winston to counter widow is almost throwing giving how hard is to even get to her.
Your team need to have an equally good widow to make the game fair (because in these cases they focus on each other), of course with 222 you can just use shields (as they can’t have more than one additional dps), but even then tanks like Orisa, Roadhog and Zarya are pretty good at shield spamming, so shields aren’t a very reliable counter and some support will always get in widow LOS for a moment and get instantly killed.
A good reason to why D.Va can get high elims but low damage done. She just tickles them with her cannons and the rest of her team finishes them off
Also.
People shouldn’t underestimate this part of her kit.
Her ultimate is great in this sense because it removes a chance for a sneak attack against her and forces both teams to adjust to the conditions she sets.
Well, that post brings up a couple of fair points; other heroes have to actually interact with the enemy team, a lot more than Widowmaker does. During a match, there will be a lot of times when you can’t even touch a Widowmaker, but she has plenty of opportunity to kill you.
Well, we’re not talking about the past, are we? This is a non sequitur.
Cover works both ways. If your only option is to hide behind cover, then you are now unable to advance, and unable to attack the enemy team.
Barriers break. They have to break, or no one would ever die. And a Widowmaker will be more than happy to pick off a key member of your team when the barrier inevitably breaks.
First of all, not every hero can gap-close. If you don’t have a barrier and you can’t gap-close, you have to switch off to beat a good Widowmaker. RIP Reaper.
Second, Widowmaker can simply outskill most of her counters with a well-placed headshot or two, and there’s very little that her “counters” can do about it. If the Widowmaker has good enough aim to kill a moving target like Tracer, then Tracer has zero options to beat Widowmaker. Winston dies in two charged headshots, which Widowmaker is more than capable of giving him.
Third, Widowmaker’s teammates aren’t AFK. It’s really quite easy to peel for a Widowmaker when she’s all the way in the back, behind the rest of your team. The chances of a successful dive on Widowmaker are minimal unless your whole team commits to it. And if your whole team has to commit to killing one hero, there’s a problem.
Meanwhile, we have a character who can instantly kill most of the roster at any range, with no cooldown at all.
Try telling that to GM players.
Actually, she’s stronger now than she used to be. Her Grappling Hook was buffed to make it latch onto almost everything, not just ledges. And her charge time was buffed.
I feel like the problem with the rising widow hate lately is that people realized (even in lower elos) that getting a pick early in the fight already gives the team a big big advantage.
Any hero without a cap on their range can shoot at and hit a Widowmaker. Fall off is a thing, but at Worst it’s 50% damage. From 2 sources, that’s still plenty, and it doesn’t make up for the fact that if Widowmaker is so far away from the match that no one is trying to hit her, she still has to hit headshots to have value.
We were talking about high skill heroes being strong at GM and weak in the average ranks, and it is relevant to mention all the other heroes who have been in this position.
You can advance under cover. Every map is riddled with Flanking routes not within a Widowmaker’s sightline. And if we’re playing at the level where Widowmaker is destroying teams just by looking at them, then we’re also playing at the level where cover and barriers are properly utilized to prevent that from happening. There’s a very good reason why Widowmaker only has a GM average winrate, and why she’s being picked less than once a game, despite being as potentially strong as she’s made out to be.
Barriers will break, eventually, but until they do Widowmaker is useless. Actually, with Sigma’s introduction you can put up a Barrier that only blocks Widowmaker on a sniper perch, one she can’t break but is in a position that she can’t walk through it either.
I don’t see anyone complaining when it’s Pharah, instead of Widowmaker, that Reaper has to fight. Switching heroes is a core aspect of Overwatch, and not one that should go away.
Tracer has 4 options to avoid a headshot, with instant mobility in a 360 degree area around her. She is designed to be hard to hit, and that is the reason why aim doesn’t counter flankers. If 2 equally skilled players were to fight, one on Widow one on Tracer, Widowmaker would be very hard pressed to hit Tracer consistently, especially since Tracer can blink to cover easily.
Winston does not have to show his critbox when he dives Widow. He can turn his back mid flight. If we’re assuming Widowmaker is skilled enough to headshot Winston Twice midflight, then we can assume the Winston is skilled enough to Leap backwards.
Widowmaker can’t aim if she’s being knocked around through CC, peel or no. And if Widowmaker is being supported by her team when she’s “all the way in the back,” that’s far less at the front lines.
Focus fire is literally the strongest thing in this game. Stronger than any one hero is. If your whole team is committed to killing a hero, even Widow in the backlines, that hero is dead. No amount of support, barriers, or peel is going to stop the focus fire of 2 DPS and 2 Supports while 2 tanks keep any incoming damage at bay, without even needing to Dive.
We have a character who can potentially kill most of the roster. A lot of heroes can do that, and many of those heroes aren’t stopped by little things like barriers or walls, and don’t have to require pixel perfect precision and accuracy or a charge time between shots, while offering point presence and consistent utility.
She has an average winrate and a slightly above average pickrate. GM players are doing just fine, you’re only hearing the ones who choose not to do anything about it. Junkrat doesn’t counter Widowmaker.
She’s weaker. 120 for bodyshot, charge time was introduced, her ult is cancelable. WIdowmaker used to be able to quickscope. Grappling Hook latching onto more than just ledges can be just as much of a detriment, as she has nowhere to go if not to a ledge with Grapple Hook
To be frank, even if Widowmaker had a 40% winrate in every rank, she’d probably still get a lot of hate. Just look at Sombra.
Widowmaker’s just not fun to play against. She’s a great example of what happens when you create a character that has a single ability with super-high damage, rather than multiple abilities with moderate damage. The whole game ends up revolving around that one ability, and she becomes a feast-or-famine character based on how often her user can land that one ability.
Compared to other heroes like Ashe, Widowmaker’s counterplay is much more limited, and much less effective. She makes the game a lot less fun and a lot less interesting for her opponents. Her kit is in dire need of a rework.
Anyway, I’m tired of repeating myself, so I’m just going to link my own comprehensive thread on this topic, and leave it at that: Why Widowmaker is hated, but Ashe is loved
Widow is a weird hero in that she’s not only effective at getting kills, but she basically creates a giant field of risk in her LoS since the danger of being one-shot is always there, forcing the enemy to peek less, holding a lot of space hostage. This even applies to mediocre Widowmakers; the risk may be less, but in a lot of cases just a lucky headshot is enough to win a fight.
The use of barriers may help as well, but Widow has the tools to go for different angles, and overall, plying too tightly together creates another complete set of risks.
You should check one thing actually
Mirror matches
Widow pickrate was highest dps last 3 months and is second next to hanzo now.
So basically her stats are from fighting Another GM widow
The problem with looking at stats, is that this only shows how people deal with the game currently. There’s a very small chance that someone has explored the game on their own freedom. It’s more likely that people are just following eachother, limiting the potential of each hero.
As such, if we looked at Widowmaker’s potential we can see that it would take less than 11 seconds to kill an entire team from any distance. It doesn’t matter if there is a low chance of this happening; when it does happen, it isn’t fun. That is where the problem lies.
As time goes on, people will slowly be inching toward this potential nonetheless. In most cases, very slowly.
No she can’t do that… Unless the whole enemy team are tracers.
Im guessing you think that she can kill 200hp targets in 0.5s but she can’t, She has recovery her charge doesn’t start instandly after killing someone.
Eliminations are just assists. Is Moira a better killing machine than widow?
Damage stat is similar. Lots of heroes can shoot pockethealed tanks in the back and rack up damage. The stat has limited use, especially for widow, who is probably looking for squishies to oneshot. While Tracer was busy doing 1000 damage to reinhardt, widow only did 200 damage, but very possibly won the fight with it.
And that brings me to solo kills, and would you look at that, she leads in solo kills and final blows.
That being said I don’t want widowmaker nerfed. Maybe changed around so the rifle is weaker but other stuff is better.
PS: a few of my own stats from overbuff: sombra accuracy is top 3%. Am I a beast on Sombra, oneclipping everything in my way? My damage is bottom 39% and elims are bottom 30%
My Zenyatta accuracy is top 1%. Is Jjonak out of a job now? Hardly, my damage is bottom 3%, elims are bottom 5.
Think about these things: about stats, how they relate, how they don’t relate, the stats we don’t have, and the whole picture.
No sensible person says she’s op and unkillable- the reasonable widow h8rs like me, are pointing out how;
Yes; she does make other dps irrelevant. Genji and doom are picked more in gm? Two individual keep yourself alive characters? Not surprising, I presume hanzo is the top pick after these 3? Oh look it’s all the best dps. Widow is probably only picked less than genji and doom because she has no point prescence.
Widow shouldn’t have high damage and she shouldn’t have high elims because she only needs to delete squishies or body them to put them essentially “one shot” an easy pick for her teammates.
Reason widow is busted is because just like pharah; she requires you to counter with a very narrow pool of characters, she can play so far outside the majorities of the casts range that average widows win games by bodying enemy players who have to headshot the widow multiple times to get her to critical health.
Alll i see is how forums were heavily and still are, mad about Pharmercy being a nightmare, when actually now you just need one hanzo or widow to ruin your entire game, being at spawn and dont know which pick to switch because you cant counter them with consistency unless you go mirror and outplay them
Pharah alone, and pharmercy might be the most countered pick atm, its not even close how many ways you have to annoy this “strat” just with a zen discord and some soldier poke, or then go for the ana, or Ashe, or Hanzo, or Widow or Mccree, etc etc
Hanzo should not be able to OS from so far, and if he’s considered as a sniper then raise his skill cap which is absolutely low af since they reworked and buffed him
Widow should be 150hp just like hanzo if they keep him like he is right now
But if they dont, they have to rework storm arrow, less arrows, no HS, or increase cd.
Back then only Wraxxu, only people who would literally main Hanzo were good on him. They just made him easier to “master” for casual people, now its just a press storm arrow button and land 3 shots out of 6 to get rid of your dualist
