As it stands, Widowmaker is a dominant force in the meta to the point where she and Hanzo are arguably the best DPS heroes in the game. I feel like part of this is that Widowmaker doesn’t really have to commit to a position to be effective; her grapple basically lets her vacate a position with few drawbacks if she gets jumped on; something which logically should be a sniper’s weakness. As such, if she ever does get nerfed, I feel like her losing the ability to cancel grapple would be a good change, or at least something along those lines.
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Mmmmm I don’t know about that one, don’t get me wrong I don’t like playing against good Widows in this meta either but I don’t feel that’s the right change. It’s hard to balance her because she does already feel balanced on paper anyways, high risk being your aiming skill and high reward with instant picks. If anything I would change her charge up time to 100% power that way she could still do what she needs to do but not be deleting an entire team with god tier aim in the same time that an ult can do.
The grappling slingshot is one of her most interesting elements. I’d hate to see that removed.
There are plenty of easy tweaks that don’t require mechanical changes if she turns out to need nerfs: Scope in delay, scoped charge speed, grapple cooldown, grapple travel speed, body/headshot damage distribution, etc.
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You cant nerf skill. Get over it mate ^^ Improvise, Adapt, overcome!
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I bet OP is the same type of person to rush to Brigittes defense anytime someone complains about her.
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If you lost the ability to cancel grappling hook, you can’t airshot. That’s not going away, on sole showboating purposes for Overwatch League alone.
But aside from that, the hook actually pulls you to wrong locations all the time. The slingshot is an essential part to course-correct mid-air because otherwise you’ll get pulled to the wrong location.
And if you have the sensitivity slider on minimum, the slingshot is literally the only chance you have of actually landing on ledges. All walls will drop you to the ground otherwise.
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ouch, forum meta burn
But you should be able to completely invalidate a huge part of the hero roster and thus many other skillsets? Aiming is not the end-all, be-all of skill.
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Yall wanted Tracer/Genji nerfed. You got it. Someone was bound to take their place. You nerf Widow/Hanzo, someone’s gonna take their place, and then you’ll complain about them. And the cycle continues.
What is it that you want? To have no DPS in the game? To have only goat comps?
Widow doesn’t invalidate anyone in Bronze-Platinum. Hell, a Pharah worth her salt that doesn’t fly out in the open can give her a run for her money, regularly.
Also, it’s an FPS game. Aiming is the end-all-be-all skill that you need in an FPS game. You can have the best movement, jump tech, and coordination in any FPS game, but if you don’t aim, you can’t win.
For widowmaker, it actually is. She is literally a “hit the head to be viable” character since her Ult isnt a game winning one. she is literally one of the few if not the only aim=skill character.
If you cannot hit the head, youre not a good widow. And you should probably switch off and train said aim to be better.
I stand to my point. You cant nerf skill. you cannot nerf widows damage output which is directly linked to a players ability to aim good.
Except Overwatch is not a traditional FPS game. The majority of the roster and even the majority of DPS heroes don’t depend on twitch aim to succeed. To let one skillset to overshadow the rest because of an arbitrarily chosen ideal is stupid.
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Balancing around execution barrier can be problematic. If you try to cast aside the sniper problem by saying they’re not oppressive in lower ranks like one other posted mentioned, you’d be wise to keep in mind that meta shifts trickle down. If pros sanction dual snipers, lower ranks will become better at it. This is already apparent in matchmaking.
Just because it’s not a traditional FPS game doesn’t mean that it’s not an FPS game.
Twitch aim is only one of three major skills in aiming – there’s also tracking, and leading (prediction).
It’s not arbitrarily chosen. Aim is a requirement. It is the only skillset that is a requirement, a prerequisite.
You can have the most healing, the most damage blocked, the best movement in the game, but if you cannot aim you cannot secure kills and cannot take or retake the objective.
That’s why it’s a shooter and not a MOBA or RPG. Aim is an integral part of the genre.
The inclusion of characters that aim for you, and characters that have generous aim requirements, does not override the aim prerequisite. You still need aim.
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So your point is?
Lower ranks learning that if they are good at hitting the head with a character that is supposed to hit the head to be viable is a good thing imho.
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I have honestly not read anything that is so true. Especially the last sentences, youre just spitting truth there. Aim is a requirement for this game and to try and change that wont work. Bringin in no aim heroes isnt going to benefit the game in anyway (if theyre DDs, if theyre supps, good for you, spray and pray that healing juice.)
Widowmaker is balanced. Yes, she’s meta right now, but I think that’s about to change.
I find her no more oppressive than any other well played DPS (except Hanzo, he’s OP). You learn how to adapt. kthx
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Twitch aim proficiency is what makes Widow effective and puts her over the top. In comparison, Pharah aim depends more on leading and Zarya more on tracking.
But that misses the main point of my argument, which is Widow can succeed without playing so much of Overwatch, herself. She doesn’t have to navigate CQ teamfights, she only has to commit to few courses of action. This would be fine if there was reasonable counterplay, but as more Widow players become proficient with her at all levels of play, it seems like there isn’t. Like I said, Widow’s dominance actually negates other, independently interesting play styles. Granted, knowledge of other heroes is important when playing Widow, but if she’s squeezing other heroes out, this is not such a mitigating factor in her defence.
Rewarding aim is fine, but letting one hero instakill so many others based on headshot proficiency defeats the point of Overwatch.
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The execution barrier is the most reliable balancing point.
Consider Street Fighter’s Shoryuken.
Dragon Punch has a high execution barrier of 
+ 
specifically because it is a counter to air moves. It’s balanced around this execution barrier because if it were only one button then all air moves would be obsolete. No one would use an air move.
That barrier for entry is a requirement because of its strength. Strong moves are almost always, invariably gated by a high barrier for entry – this is why Pulse Bombs are hard to stick without planning, why Deadeye often ends up being a dud, and why Meteor Strike almost always requires a Grav to setup.
Widow’s barrier for entry on her headshot is very high – some characters are unidirectional in their critbox location, other characters have protective abilities that outright nullify a headshot, and an entire composition of characters can be used to specifically counter her headshot. She’s forced to reposition, all the time just to get value out of her headshot.
And she only has a headshot. Venom Mine doesn’t even stack with a bodyshot to deal lethal, Infrasight only works on enemies who don’t pay attention to the voice line, and grappling hook is an abomination of a movement ability.
Completely untrue and telling that you don’t play Widow.
Just because she’s not in close proximity to the main team fight, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her fair share of CQC. She’s constantly fighting flankers and dive tanks.
There are currently 4 states of counterplay in the game;
- Widow counters herself (you do not need to be a better Widow to win a Widow duel, you simply need team coordination)
- Hanzo counters her (keeps pressure on Widow with raw vision uptime allowing for other heroes to put in chip damage, plus by pure suppression of his Storm Arrow, regular arrows, and projectile hitboxes).
- 2+ barrier team comps counter her
- Dive counters her (and will resume countering her on Wrecking Ball’s inclusion)
Counter does not mean kill. Harass and forced relocation, as well as mitigating all damage by pure protection, is also countering.
The amount of counterplay will continue to increase with the inclusion of a stronger Sound Barrier, stronger Nanoboost, and Wrecking Ball.
You do realize it’s specifically because Widow has no other options that she has a OSK headshot right?
If you strip that from her, she has nothing. She is, for all intents and purposes a worse version of Ana, without her headshot. Ana brings sustain, anti-heal, CC, and Nanoboost. Widow without headshot gives… wallhacks, which Hanzo (and by extension Sombra and Zenyatta) already provides.
The barrier for execution is the balancing point because without it, Widow’s kit has nothing to bring to bring any value to her team.
Edit - Two additional points;
- You aren’t a sniper character without a OSK on headshot on normal health pools.
- Widow is a designated hardcounter to Pharah. Changing Widow to lose her OSK means she gets power somewhere else in her kit that has to be equivalent to the power provided from OSK headshots, and equally as effective on Pharah (or alternatively, someone else becomes a Pharah hardcounter and thus gets grossly overpowered against other matchups).
Edit 2 - One more point;
- People are going to get better at aiming as time goes on. The shots that people made at launch (right after Widow was nerfed to 120 damage) were child’s play compared to the plays that people get now. You can see that if you go snooping through all of the Reddit highlight clips where people got excited for getting a Widow 3k.
- If average play continues to trend upwards, you can’t do anything about that except get better yourself.
Oh yes please remove skill abilities and nerf these heroes that actually need skill, while you all complain about the dive heroes that countered them