Anyone else just sucks at widowmaker?

General Discussion
1

I just can’t for the life of me play her well.
I made a new account specifically for her but I just can’t land those shots.
Most heroes I’ve been able to pick up and get decent at in a number of games.
But it’s different with this one. I opened up tons of custom games with bots to practice as well. the ONLY thing that I got better at playing her is my positioning, I die way less now than I used to before. But the aim is another story, which is weird 'cause I’m used to playing hitscan heroes. Does it happen that a hero just doesn’t click with you even though you enjoy playing it? I’m starting to consider just dropping her altogether.

2 Likes
2

I guess I haven’t really given her the proper time she deserves to figure her out- but I started off trying to learn her and when I get her in say mystery heroes it really depends on the map and/or the tanks if Widow will even be able to stay alive long enough to attempt getting kills. She’s one of those characters that’s difficult to learn (in my opinion) but lethal if you can learn her, she isn’t an easy character to pick up right off the bat (in my opinion). She’s one of the few character’s I’d say is fine the way she is.

3

You need to put a lot of time into widow as you basically have only one job. Hit headshots

4

Play Quake III with rail gun, you will get better

5

Widow is useful only with headshots (mostly on 100% power) which require good flick aiming (which is based on muscle memory) because of the fast paced nature of the game and the small head hitboxes. If you don’t have good flick aim then your widow isn’t feared by the enemy, it just annoys them and they can run into hide after the first hit. The good news is that this ability is relatively easy to gain if you are actively working on developing it. On “actively working” I mean trying to flick the crosshair to a head with one quick movement a moment before pulling the trigger instead of lazily/slowly pulling the crosshair here and there. I totally sucked initially but this skills starts to get better very quickly within a few hours of practising. You can start out with this exercise in the practice range with moving robots then later you can set up a headshot-only ana custom game for this practice.

Flick aiming is important with mccree too but with him headshosts are less important (you should have at least 45-50% weapon accuracy with a close to 10% critical hit rate). 200 HP enemies die from 3 regular mccree shots or 2 shots if one of them is a headshot. The rate of fire is different from that of widow and you meet enemies under different circumstances where they usually have less chance to escape a second or third shot (compared to widow).

You also need a larger mouse pad (30-50cm) and a relatively low mouse sensitivity for hitscan, something below 5000 eDPI.

6

Try different settings until you hit your sweet spot.
Thou you will need a lot more than 2h if you want to be any consistent with widow.

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7

Aim is king but remember that positioning, map and enemy composition means a great deal when it comes to your possible output with widowmaker.

If they have an orissa, a reinhardt and a brigg, chances are you can do better on another hero.
If you’re playing widow on kings row attack, chances are you’re gonna have a pretty significant advantage.
If you play widow but the enemy team has a competent genii, Winston and hanzo fx chances are you’re gonna get wrecked and not hit anything.
If you can stand behind a barrier where you can aim and take your time it’s a different story.

My point is that playing an ideal widowmaker can be quite circumstantial and unless your aim is God like, you will have a hard time compensating for the bad set ups.

However if you pick her when conditions are optimal you can have an extraordinary output. Because you play hitscan in generel widowmaker is a very powerful sub pick for those times where it makes sense, and that’s how I’d reccomend using her.

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8

Even though she is a hitscan, she plays absolutely and brutally different compared to the other hitscans.
You cant rely on visuals and constant “head movements” to check your position and your team mates and you “tunnel vision” most of the time to hit the shots.

Your mechanics and muscle memory also have to change a lot. Many people is able to change the mindset and “educate” themselves to be able to switch from widow to tracer, genji then mcree and then widow again but its HARD.

I cant play snipers, none of them but with Ana i can heal while unzoomed so im decent. Some people can, some people can’t, dont bash yourself too much.

PS: You can probably overcome this by playing 3months only widow EVER as an OTP but you will lose part of your skills in other heroes.

9

Widow and McCree are basically in their own mechanical category.

Surefour made a video recently discussing aim. I really liked how he broke aiming down to a spectrum, being:

Flicking — Tracking — Projectile

Left side of the spectrum is essentially reactionary, whereas right side is predictive. Hanzo or Zen aiming is mostly predicting enemy movement patterns where McCree or Widow are entirely clicking the moment the target is in crosshair. Most heroes are probably more tracking, kind of a blend of the two styles.

I very much agree that to excel at Widow you need to basically 1-trick her and maybe McCree for a while.

And probably lower your sens, going through the awkward phase of being at uncomfortably low sens until you get used to it and end up better than ever. It seems between 40 and 50 cm/360 is ideal. Getting more travel out of your arm and less in the wrist is going to help a lot with the precision needed (though there are exceptions… Architect is a freakishly good Widow for a Genji main and he uses ~28cm/360.

10

There are some players who are pretty good with hitscan at high sense but they are rather the exception. With mccree/soldier (and other unzoomed hitscan) your recommendation is indeed ideal for those who aim with arm movements only. Unfortunately it requires a relatively large area+pad for the mouse.

I’m using a hybrid arm+fingertip aiming so I can perform a bit of precision adjustment with fingers. This way I can achieve similar accuracy with a bit higher sens compared to using only arm movements.

Since I wanted the same sensitivity for all heros I settled with 4000 eDPI (34cm/360) which gives me quite good mccree accuracy but I can still do quick enough 180 turns with genji/tracer. With genji I could use a bit higher sens while with mccree I could benefit from a bit lower sens. Before playing genji I was on 3200 eDPI (43cm/360) with mccree.

Widow has a “relative aim sensitivity while zoomed” setting which defines what percentage of the normal sensitivity should be used when zoomed. The default setting is 30% and Architect uses 38%. This means that instead of 4800 eDPI he uses 1824 eDPI (~76cm/360) when zoomed. He could’ve set a lower value but probably this is what he is most comfortable with.

I’ve heard that some players coming from other shooters (e.g.: CS) try to set up their video resolution, fov and zoom sensitivity to make it as similar as possible to sniping in the previous game so they can transfer some of their aiming abilities.

11

This might have been said I only read your post. Try messing with the sensitivity, some hero’s are best played using wrist flick style, while others are better with arm aim (lower sens). Having played hits can means nothing as tracer needs to be played with a higher sensitivity than say soilder.
Generally lower sens will yield better shots. But 180 grappling no scopes will be harder.

What I do with Anna might also apply to widow. is to play using two different set of sensitivity one when I’m just barrling long shots which is lower I think it’s 800dpi and 3/4 in game.

And one for when the enemy is on top of me and requires me to be able to 180 wrist flick genii ect. Which is 1100 dpi and 3/4 in game sens.

Just mess around between that range and maybe a bit lower and higher. Play the whole match using low and high sens and get a feel for which you prefer it’s limitations ways to switch between the two.

12

I guess.
There are days where I hit everything, but most of the time, I don’t hit anything, except Roadhog :neutral_face: aaand… That guy is pretty easy to hit…

13

I have huge issues with adjusting her scope-in DPI to my flicks so it’s a complete 50/50 whether I hit a shot or not. Surely just being overall more accurate helps but the scope is not really something other heroes have so it’s not like you get better at it without practising precisely Widowmaker. Ana has it but bodyshotting teammates isn’t really good practise…

14

Maybe widowmaker isn’t your playing style. And you have to train extra hard.

15

Just click on heads dude 4Head

1 Like
16

just go to arcade an make a game with only headshots with window, or find a game like it in the arcade and spend around 50 hours training. at that point you will be ready to face snails :wink: