While waiting for the grappling hook to be looked at by QA (an actual update on this would be lovely), I’ve noticed a few recent developer comments have been made about Ana being a victim of dive meta, and that a few potential ideas are being privately around to bring her back up to speed.
Which is true, and cool…
But I’m just throwing this out there, Widow has been a victim of dive meta since the first patch ever.
And it’s kind of unfair that Widow won’t ever get any substantial buff to fix her issues.
Disclaimer
This is not a thread asking for Widowmaker to be invincible/uncounterable/overpowered.
This is a thread asking for the skill requirement to play Widowmaker to be more forgiving… even though it’s practically guaranteed to never happen.
Secondary Disclaimer
Just because a hero has a high skill cap, doesn’t mean they can’t have some safety. Genji has a bunch of safeties in his kit, arguably one of the safest kits in the game, and he is a high skill cap hero just like Widowmaker.
“Skill cap” does not mean hard to play. Skill cap means, scales really well with well-practiced players.
Third Disclaimer
If you comment without reading, you’re not welcome here. So many lies have been spread about Widowmaker’s kit/tech because people don’t read.
Widowmaker has three major issues.
All of which puts her squarely in a position where she will always invariably get dived, and it takes her entire team to peel for her against the diving Winston/D.Va/Tracer/Genji, just for her to survive.
Issue #1 - Widow suffers a DPS/fire-rate penalty every single time she looks through the scope.
Every time she zooms in/out, she’s unable to fire or deal any form of damage for 0.33 seconds. She also has a fixed 0.5s timer after each shot, where she cannot fire again.
She was nerfed in this regard, and the reasoning for it doesn’t hold water.
The reasoning that was given by a developer in June 2016;
- Widowmaker players were using an animation canceling trick.
- A trick that gives an unfair advantage to players that know how to do it by giving them rapid changes in movespeed.
- That an inexperienced Widowmaker would always lose a fight because they didn’t do that trick.
This is wrong on all three accounts.
note - I’m using the current Widowmaker scope-in timers for all examples, but the original scope-in timer was half a second long.
- It wasn’t an animation cancel. There’s nothing here that’s giving Widowmaker players an inherent timing advantage here. While we’re on the topic, the “trick” was so easy that literally everyone was able to do this and did it without even thinking – I’m not joking;
- Click RMB.
- Unclick RMB, use WASD for a third of a second.
- Reclick RMB, before the above third of a second ends.
- If you reclick RMB before the above third of a second ends, the amount of time you spent out of scope, would be the next scope-in time
- If you fire a shot, descope for 0.25s, and then rescope, the time it takes to rescope would be 0.25s. Not the usual 0.33s.
- But you fired a shot, and your maximum firerate that you cannot exceed is 1 shot every 0.5 seconds. She was always limited by that 0.5 seconds, regardless of if she used the descope/rescope.
Staying in scope with a slower movespeed is the dumb thing to do, because you’re a sitting duck. A smart player SHOULD reposition slightly after firing a shot, because you literally can’t do anything except strafe, in that 0.33s.
Doing this meant that Widow could maintain her DPS/firerate while still having some form of duck-and-weave. Something that literally ALL characters in this game can do, and most people do mindlessly.
This exact trick was demonstrated in Widowmaker’s closed-beta gameplay preview videos.
Strafing is literally the only thing that she can do between shots.
-
You only gained a movespeed “bump”. Something that isn’t Widowmaker exclusive, you can do this with other heroes.
- That movespeed “bump” exists in other heroes. The movespeed bump is literally the exact same thing as Orisa/D.Va firing for one/two shots, stop firing to reposition for a third of a second, and the resume firing.
- The other “sniper” heroes in the game STILL have this exact movespeed bump. Hanzo and Ana have similar slow movespeeds with scope-in/bow drawn, which they can immediately cancel out of a shot to get that movespeed bump.
-
Inexperienced Widowmakers didn’t always lose Widow duels because they didn’t do this trick.
They lost duels because they gave up their position that an enemy Widowmaker knew where they were, that they could pepper it with shots (often with Infra-Sight active) with peeker’s advantage. Exactly how Hanzo operates now.
In fact, this is how everyone operates. Every single hero can duck and weave while they’re shooting at the enemy, except Widowmaker. Even Ana herself can duck and weave because of her super fast scope-out timer (0.16s, with her next fired shot taking more time to fire), but Widow on the other hand cannot.
All of this was before the 60 tick update, and the reduction of hitbox sizes universally, that even hitscan could hit around corners like a projectile can, today.
Because of the above oversized hitboxes, we don’t even know if inexperienced Widow players could avoid being shot by adding crouch… without ever using the trick. Chest/bodyshots were turned into headshots because of the larger hitboxes.
4. Somewhere down the line, a lie was spread around by streamers and YouTubers saying that Widowmaker’s animation cancel allowed her to keep scope charge.
- This was a flat out fabrication that was thoroughly debunked. I have the video evidence to prove it.
https://gfycat.com/FreshLawfulBlueandgoldmackaw
Descoping ALWAYS reset the scope charge to 0%.
Issue #2 - Because Widow is immobile while scoped when she gets dived upon, she’s constantly forced to choose between dying while running away (because grappling hook is awful, and no healer has time to pocket Widow), or dying while standing her ground trying to snipe someone.
To give context, in the time it takes for Widowmaker to descope out of her sniper rifle (0.33 seconds), Winston, Genji, D.Va, and Tracer could have already all coordinated to dive her, and already landed on top of her.
She has no protection, she almost never has a pocket healer, and aim punch makes it considerably harder to stand your ground to get successful snipe, that the default choice is running away.
She doesn’t have the tools to run away. She’s impossibly bad at running away, except on the few maps that have a vertical platform that can’t be reached except by Pharah/Genji.
Issue 3 - Community Attitude
“wtf OP, why would you want to buff Widow”
Because she still currently suffers from a plethora of issues. Some of them being netcode, some of them being her own movement ability, and a lot of it being that she has no safeties in her kit.
There’s a really strong community belief that Widow is strong “in the hands of a good player” and that she’s in a good spot because good players can do well with her.
All heroes, in the hands of a good player, will do well.
Just because an OWL player can do well with Symmetra, doesn’t mean that Symmetra is in a good spot.
The same goes for Widow.
Being in a good spot is not contingent on the higher level players being able to get a good shot in.
Just because a player in GM has the aim to be a main DPS with top damage and eliminations, doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have issues that plague her, or that she’s not allowed to receive changes to improve her kit.
“she’s not bad, you just need to git gud”
This argument is entirely based on the idea of a limiting skill floor. That there’s a barrier that prevents everyone from being a good Widow that you need to overcome by being good.
But the same isn’t said for other heroes. Other high skill cap heroes have safeties… “crutches” if you will, that still enable them to be good at the lower levels.
- McCree can flashbang + right click
- Genji has the highest mobility with his double jump
- Tracer gets omni-directional blinks and a recall that allow her time to readjust her aim and put damage where it hurts
- Widow has… a mine that gives her wallhacks?
There’s nothing here that benefits limiting her behind a gate. Many Widow players have continually said that she’s suffering from power creep and continue to be smothered and silenced, despite the fact that virtually of the heroes she used to counter have received buffs, and she hasn’t scaled appropriately to continue being their counter.
- Mercy now has Valkyrie, faster self healing, faster healing her teammates
- Pharah has received more substantial flight control, and adjusted knockback/damage for her rockets to make follow up shots easier, that a Pharah worth her salt will keep playing around corners and behind cover and severely peel Widow’s fire away from her teammates
- Bastion has Ironclad
- Torb’s hammer speed got increased, allowing his turret to outsustain Widow’s maximum damage output
- New barrier characters were introduced
- Symmetra turns all 250 HP heroes into 300+ HP heroes that they no longer can be one-shot headshot
- Zenyatta has long since gotten a health buff, and his recoil for his primary/secondary fire have all be removed so he’s pinpoint accurate
She barely counters these characters any more. Things that used to be cut and dry rock-paper-scissors, aren’t.
“If you buff her, the only counter to a good Widow will be a better Widow”
The game literally told you this exact thing in death tips;
“Look out for enemy snipers. They are your greatest threat.”
https://imgur.com/AgNXPl7
I don’t know what made this so taboo in this game, but Widow vs. Widow is a perfectly viable strategy to counter Widow.
“but if you buff her, she’ll be OP in the hands of a good Widow”
With regards to Widow, Blizzard has a track record of just throwing a compensatory buff over it instead of fixing those issues.
Grappling Hook
- 12 second cooldown grappling hook with a mind of its own
- cooldown reduced to 8 seconds, so even if it still has a mind of its own it’s a little bit more bearable
Sniper Scope
- 0.5s scope-in timer
- reduced to 0.33s timer because reasons
Sniper Charge Rate
- 1.0s charge to reach 100%
- reduced to 0.8s charge to reach 100%
But straight number buffs are not the only method of buffing her and helping her out. There are plenty of ideas out there that can be used to help her out, without having incredibly overt power increases.
What if we actually addressed those issues, without just blanketly buffing her?
-
The idea of a wallhang/wallcling has been requested for a year and a half. This gives her a reliable escape route from dive specifically (gravity stops Winston and D.Va) whilst opening up counterplay in the form of explosions characters (she’d be attached to a wall, splash damage characters love walls).
- Letting her simply stand on a few more ledges that are completely out in the open would help her so much, yet she’s not allowed to have even that.
-
The idea of giving her wallhacks a longer duration, or the ability to see enemy turrets/enemy deployables (like Shield Generator, or Sombra’s Translocator), would give it more utility without outright increasing her ability to snipe.
-
Giving her a slow-firing 3-round burst fire weapon instead of an automatic assault rifle, where she’s rewarded for decent aim without necessarily penalizing her for sniping, and can actively challenge McCree/Soldier in her given role as DPS at the farthest ranges (but by nature of 3-round burst, leave her very vulnerable in close range).
-
Giving her shields, so she has a recharging health pool and reduces some of the pressure that comes with no pocket healer, making chasing her a bit more difficult so she can actually outplay a chasing Tracer or Genji instead of almost always losing.
-
These are all tiny nudges that help Widow without necessarily making her overpowered, and yet every time you try to suggest this, it gets shut down.
-
Nevermind the fact that we have literally have 6 barriers in the game now; Brigitte, Symmetra, Rein, Orisa, Winston, Zarya. 7, if you include Defense Matrix, 8, if you include Roadhog being a meatshield.
- You can literally make a team comp that leverages 3 or more of these barriers to effectively nullify all damage she can do. She doesn’t need to have an explicit counter in the form of being dove upon and killed. If she can’t get a hit in, that’s effectively as good as killing her.
But no. No one ever wants to experiment with those other comps because they don’t want her to be good enough to force hero switches to counter her. She’s not allowed to have safety where other high-skill cap heroes do, and dive is permanently her counter.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty of scorn surrounding Widow players, especially if she’s on your team. You hate her for being dead weight on her team, but you don’t want to acknowledge the problems she has and give her some real fixes to her problems to make her enjoyable to play?
Her niche is heavily dependent on sightlines, map design, and area denial. Yet she’s not able to keep her footing in that niche because once the enemy team goes dive comp, they’ve moved to a drastically different sightline and area of the map where she’s no longer able to perform in her niche.
If she can’t perform in her niche because the maps won’t change, the meta won’t change, and she’s constantly gated to only be effective in GM/Top 500/OWL, then shouldn’t that prompt a full rework?
On another note, with how long it’s taking Doomfist to get bugfixes, Widow is probably going to take several more months to get her bugs fixed, and she might not get fixed until Summer Games 2018.
So there’s always that to look forward to. But that silver lining is losing it’s luster pretty fast.