Hmmm... The Sniper Issue

General Discussion
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I’ve heard and read a lot of posts from people regarding Hanzo and Widowmaker, mostly it’s all the same, whining about heroes needing to be removed because god forbid anyone take the time to learn to counter or maybe just don’t walk in the open unprotected, it isn’t that hard.

I don’t play either sniper because I make star wars storm troopers look like the greatest marksmen in all of time and space so I say this not because I want to defend favourite heroes, I’ll admit of the entire cast they’re the ones I think of the least. I don’t hate them, they’re just not my thing really. I am defiantly not against a sniper or two in a match, a masterful sniper is a good obstacle to overcome and if overcoming obstacles isn’t for you then maybe online or even regular gaming isn’t either.

I just don’t see who they’re over-powered. Yeah, granted a head-shot is pretty much an instant kill but their tricky to pull off and if you get head-shot easily then you probably need to take a look at how you are playing. Personally, I like Sombra, so sneaking up on a horrid Hanzo or wicked Widowmaker is easy and I only tend to get head-shot when I fail to pay attention to where I am. I agree, spawn camping snipers are just evil when they’re too accentuate but that’s true of any hero really and if you do keep getting killed at your spawn by a head-shot from 20 miles away then it’s more to do with a cowardly player who doesn’t want to fight fair, than the hero themselves.

I appreciate a skilled sniper, it isn’t easy for me to blow people heads off from half a planet away and when it’s done with skill, not just as a “don’t let them out of the spawn because I’m 6 and a poor sportsman” then I have no issues with it. Yeah, it’s annoying to be killed by one but death as a whole is kind of an inconvenience. I can’t believe I am about to type this, but there was more mileage in the Briggite outrage and I didn’t even agree with that because the super secret move to defeating her was “don’t run towards the twitchy woman with a flail, you’ve only yourself to blame”

If Hanzo or Widowmaker healed themselves with each shot, carried high explosive rounds, auto-aimed and only could be killed on a Tuesday then I would agree they ruin the game, as it stands they both require skill to play and for you to just take a few seconds to plan around them. Get headshot? Ok, get behind a barrier, if no barrier, be barrier! If the team composition sucks then that’s a communication problem. I guess that’s the answer isn’t it? As powerful as a hero is a good team composition is always better, if even that failed then better just to accept the enemy where the better players.

I am just so tired of reading so many posts complaining about certain heroes and while some are well crafted arguments that I respect, many seem to be “wah wah, I got killed by someone and therefor they’re character is immortal.”

I apologise for the length of this, and I feel like I went off topic a bit, I had nothing better to do this morning.

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Nope you hit the nail on the head here, these post are 100% without proper logical or factual reasoning and purely “I don´t like it, wahhh”. That is the whole issue right now, there are many characters showing far worse problems than these two, yet the lesser ones for snipers is getting attacked.

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the dev team admitted in a recent interview that snipers in OW are overpowered but they are not gonna change that. so no logical. if people are complaining about snipers beeing OP since the beginning as a devteam you are doing something very wrong. sure it is very easy to counter them. i can kill every hanzo and widowmaker with a junkrat. but do i always wanne play a hero like junkrat no sometimes i don’t. but the fact that hanzo and widowmaker has a onehit killshot even when they don’t hit you at all is ridiculous and their hitbox is huge. so more then enough logical reasons for players too hate these OP heroes

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So from the beginning Hanzo en Widowmaker are overpowered.
blizzard already admitted that, but are not going to change it.
why are they OP?
their hitbox is huge they keep killing people without even hitting them.
and one thing truly is OP the onehit killshot. it doesn’t require skill. because of the huge hitbox.

so Hanzo and Widowmaker have onehit killshot. why doesn’t ashe have that. if you stand right behind a hanzo or widowmaker with ashe and shoot them in the head they are not dead. but if you see what kind of gun Ashe has. they should not only be dead, their heads should have been blown off. i know that is not going too happen and it doesn’t have too. but the onehit killshots has to be removed. i tried Widowmaker myself too see how they play if it requires skill or not. but i actually got many killshots.

on reddit i saw that some one was going too report both widow and hanzo as cheating for beeing OP and ingame i have noticed it too.
truly that wouldn’t be fair too the players who play these heroes. but they do play them because they are OP, so is it fair too report them?

i honestly believe those players should not get in trouble for playing OP heroes because the Blizzard are the once too blame. but if this is what it takes to nerf them it is oke i think.

what are your thought?

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Snipers, zero-reprisal burst and other instant death player mechanics are always going to be unfair. The imbalance of power between user and target can be monumental. The whole “thing” about these problematic mechanics is the power fantasy behind them. The one-sided domination. It’s not healthy.

No one likes having their fun instantly stopped because of one shot, or one ability or one round of burst that they couldn’t react to. Knife-edge reaction fights are not what normal gamers want.

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Now let me clarify some things for you here.

  1. The hitboxes in Overwatch were once huge, (aka bigger than the player models, but the heads have always been rather decently sized in terms, only the body are “bigger”, than other games). Right now the player model hitboxes fit quite decently to the player model. There are multiple things showcasing this.

  2. For Hanzo this is different, his arrows have a travel time and drop, so to compensate for this, his arrows have a slight hitbox themselves, as soon as the hitbox of the arrow interacts with a players hitbox, then the arrow “Teleports” to the center of that hitbox to do damage, it looks far more stupid than it actually is.

  3. If both were OP, they would be dominating everything and both are barely dominating anything, except for the DPS pick in GM, only. (Widow)

  4. They are some of the only viable solutions to massive amounts of cc/defensives and healing, as seen by the most popular support and tank picks.

  5. Both heroes requires a lot of skill, some have aspects that can be more forgiving than others, like Hanzo can spam areas, where enemies run into his fire, yet so can you with Junk, around corners, without even seeing the enemy, mind you they can stay on the ground for a long ass time as well, with aoe damage, when they explode after a set time, guarantee a lot of “free” kills and damage.

  6. Widow on the other hand only gets kills if she hits and has no real follow up or back up, if missing. She is the definition of an all or nothing hero. The problem isn´t that the higher you go, the more OP the heroes get. It is simply, that the higher you rank up, the more rewarded you get for your increased prowess with aiming for headshots. When most things do not change through some ranks, many do, aiming being one. If you weren´t rewarded for getting increasingly better, what is the point in having a Hero like Widow, that is useless with no aim. If she didn´t have her one shot, she would either become a Mccree/Ashe with a scope, depending on the ROF she then has.

  7. You simply has to realize, that it is a form of balance, that incredible skill is rewarded incredibly well, if someone is chain flick headshot something the size of a sandcorn, from across the map, as soon as someone drops their shield, its not something easy to do, so it should be rewarded heavily.

In the end if you touch her one shot, she is dead, guarantee, if you change her ROF, she needs other buffs to compensate, many that would prob have an effect on low ranked games, making her more viable here. So what is your suggestion, there is a reason, that pros are not saying she needs a nerf.

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their are no pro’s just people with too much free time. the biggest group of players are just casual players, most of them probably do not care about the overwatch finals or whatever it is called so yes they need too be nerfed since the biggest group of players are casual players and not people with too much free time. if some one asked me would you recommand overwatch i would say no. i like the game for a while then i quit for a long time then i play again for a while. the main reason i quit is because pro players do QM too so the dominate the new or casual players and that is why they need too get nerfed.

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They’re not always OP, but Widow especially is a horribly designed hero for Overwatch.

I get it, they wanted a sniper, in the same way they ‘decided they wanted a rocket launcher hero in the game’. But Widow’s design is horribly imbalanced and not at all coherent with the 40m battles that almost EVERY OTHER HERO is subjected to.

There’s a reason that OW is more than just a deathmatch shooter. It was designed that way and its heroes were created (at least hypothetically!) to complement and counter one another. Only VERY FEW heroes counter a Widowmaker because of her ridiculous range and wanton disregard to the limitations of the sniper archetype. I know that sounds daft or pretentious, but hear me out.

Typical snipers fire slow, powerful shots at targets. If the sniper moves, their aim is compromised; if they miss, they are forced to reload or reset for another high-risk (high-difficulty) high-reward shot. High stakes gameplay, in that if you do ‘nothing’ then your team (or score) suffers. Only Widowmaker isn’t reduced to the typical sniper archetype. She has a power gauge that allows her to quickly fire off follow up shots (which can STILL HEADSHOT) meaning the price she pays for being able to one-shot from half a map away is greatly reduced.

Snipers are also not mobile heroes. But Widow is, and she is mobile across the normally immobile Z Axis, meaning she is harder to reach than other heroes (in their natural habitat!)

Widow is OP because she is her own counter, and other ‘semi-counters’ (Mei, perhaps, Soldier, McCree) do not have the same one-shot power. They also don’t ‘de-scope’ Widow, where many sniper archetypes are ‘flustered’ or ‘distracted’ by incoming fire.

I understand that, for the most part, hitting shots as Widow is an honest endeavour, in the sense that if the pixels line up and you fire, you get the shot off. But morally, she doesn’t belong in the game with the power she has. SO MANY HEROES can at least fight back despite being in unfavourable positions (outside of their ideal playing position) and where they are very limited (i.e. Winston at mid-long range they have extra health or mobility to compensate.

But TOO MANY heroes cannot reasonably pressure a widow in the middle of a battle. Projectiles have no drop-off, but their speed and spread makes hitting a 200hp sniper standing 70m away particularly hard and unreliable. This sniper can also strafe, crouch, air-grapple, not to mention auto-fire and mine for additional defence.

I don’t think snipers belong in the game full-stop. But if Blizzard are going to keep her in the game, then they need to balance Widow mechanically. She should be subject to the expected restrictions on a sniper. Slow, powerful shots that are fired at 100% power only. No cheap follow-up shots because she missed her headshot. She should also be de-scoped if she takes damage. I understand the need for great range on a sniper, but infinite hitscan OHKO range is ludicrous in a RPG shooter.

Same goes for Hanzo. The expected drawbacks for a bowman are that they shoot bigger projectiles but they’re slower and they dip considerably. And if they are dived upon, they should be at a clear disadvantage, NOT BE ABLE TO FIRE OFF 420HP of damage in under two seconds and obliterate someone even more easily that at range!

The design of both do a disservice to the other heroes (and players) who are much more limited in their roles. Hanzo’s arrows should have an acceleration distance between 0~30m where the damage ramps up to 100%.

Snipers don’t belong on OW, but if they’re going to stay (ofc they are) then they should come with the expected drawbacks of their archetype.

Also, Widow’s scoped shots should take 5 ammo, giving her six sniper shots, not 10! before reloading.

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You bring up a good point. Widow and Hanzo are overpowered, but they might not be fixable without being sledgehammered into uselessness

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The amount of stupidity in this answer is crazy. “people with too much free time”, “pro players do QM”, holy hell, why do you think that making up things is actually a good argument ?

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Well not only that they would have a hard time nerfing them without making them useless, right now both are not heroes that can be used by “Anyone”, both increase in usefullness exceptionally well with your ability to hit headshots, just because Widow is the one shot is irrelevant, back in the day it was Mccree, that was ridiculous and scaled this way. As i have stated before i see no issues with also factoring into a game, “Ease of use” and more. Not that i think Widow needs to dominate high tier play, but with the current metas, that could change. Bringing just some of her longer range rivals a bit up, like they did Soldier and Mccree already helped quite a bit i would say.

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wrong Widow can be played by everyone because it is freaking easy too get headshots. oke it is hard when you fly in the air but if you stand aim and shot boom dead. so your point is useless as are your comments. i bet you are a hanzo or widowmaker player. becarefull not too get reported tho

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You can barely make a coherent sentence. Please do be careful with, how you smash your keyboard with those hands.

If anyone could get headshots, then go ahead and do it, fact of the matter is, that heads are still multitudes of smaller objects to hit than bodies. So no you are kinda saying a lot of stupid things again.

Also her pickrate and winrate in anything below GM, clearly shows this fact. Now please go learn some facts about the subjects you wanna engage in.

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so you are a hanzo main? or Widowmaker main.
oh wait you do not play Overwatch at all because in this topic are only facts, and you.
so go back too your pokemon go game.

just read what jez said only facts and truth so before you make yourself look even more stupid learn to read

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I am a hitscan specialist i actually started this game as Mccree and Soldier but thanks for a well written, diss ?

Again with the coherent sentences, you are such a joke, buddy. Start writing actually, non mentally challenged sentences, where your blood isn´t boiling.

Jez wrote "

Now he completely disregards and does not include, that any character in the game basically, is Widows counter, when they are in close range combat, which most of all points are and many characters have better mobility to reach her if needed.

This argument, that he makes, is like saying, that everyone counters doomfist, cause he can´t do anything at long range, yeah but if he is close range, that is no longer the case.

The only counter to a Widow at range, is another sniper or diving, both viable strats, at many other ranges, many characters can win against her in a battle.

So feel free to explain how at all times, Widow only has 1 counter lol.

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It is not particularly easy to land precise headshots repeatedly, but it isn’t hard to either. Widowmaker only really need to hit one and she does her part but she also has access to her scope and is usually able to find these shots without being hassled by the enemy (who are usually far far away).

Pick rate doesn’t exactly show balance.

“Just deal damage” is a piss-poor excuse for a counter-argument, mate. Widowmaker can easily escape from targets with her grapple and deter close quarter ganks with venom mine and her auto-fire.

The problem is that the mobile, high damage, rapid fire, long range sniper damage is still there. There is a problem if the only way to break her is to engineer an undesirable situation for her. Of course she’ll be weak if she is reloading while stunned on 1% health while in a corner stuck between a wall and a Lucio-ulted Reinhardt - she isn’t impossible to kill!

But she is still a problem as a sniper with almost all of the drawbacks taken away. Her shoulder should be shattered from recoil of repeated close sequence shots and she should not be able to stand and aim with such precision with that same recoil. Talon-augmented Agent, sure, but she has little to no scoped sway, no weapon fatigue from firing repeated high powered rounds and no physical exhaustion at all from lugging a proper sniper around the map.

The problem with Snipers is that developers seem them as a cool power fantasy weapon. They put them in their games and then forget that there are reasons that AWPs or M82s are not standard-issue among regular infantry.

I know Widowmaker was meant to be a butt-expanding deadly femme fatale but honestly if she was a sinister, crouching patient shot Hero then that’d be cooler!

Heck, my idea for her would have her baseline weaponry be a machine-gun, some venom mines and the grapple. Even an option for her venom mines to “detect” enemies and grant her old team-wide wall hack ability. Maybe even hunt them down. Her ultimate would allow her to use her sniper rifle for a number of shots. Her scope would mark enemies through walls and detect them if they begin to move within her zoom. Her shots would have a degree of penetration through solid objects.

At least that would give her reasonable threat with reasonable drawbacks. Her machine gun and venom/spider mines allow her to help her team mark targets and hamper the enemy. Her ultimate would put a lot of fear into the enemy. Reasonable fear. She’d be powerful during open fights but also prepared for if the enemy goes and hides. If Widowmaker had prepared properly, she’d be able to combo her scuttling venom mines with her ultimate to give her enemies a tough choice - run and be detected, marked and potentially shot through a wall, or stand still, found by a venom mine, DoT’d, detected, marked and potentially shot through a wall.

At least it would mean that the anti-fun of instant death is restricted.

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So in short it isn´t at all, it is the hardest thing to hit in game and you only have 1 shot, that needs recharging so no spraying and dragging (praying to hit it), you have to be dead accurate, most of the time on very fast moving objects, which btw has no deaccel.

Not always, but in general you can always get something from it. Her winrates and pickrates clearly showcase, that anyone below GM, is not able to carry with her, meaning that she is easily countered/is not OP at all at these ranks. Even in GM she only has a slightly higher pickrate than Hanzo and not even the best winrate in the game as a DPS. That in no way is a “Holy sh*t she is crazy OP”.

If she has to use grapple to escape close combat, most of not all characters have a shorter CD ability to catch her, making it an almost won fight all the time in that case.

First off there are many things outside close combat that completely negates her, shields and cover. There are a plethora of this on any map.

Also, it is exactly the same way to counter many other heroes. For example doomfist is the exact opposite, generally just harass and poke him so much from range, he cannot get in easily, you effectively stop him from doing his job a lot of the time.

Neither do any other f*cking character, but because it is Widow, she has to have these ? Soldier doesn´t tire, heals wounds with a small light and have no weapon sway either.

Neither is requiring more than one bullet to the brain, there is a reason CS is a completely one shot centered game, it is way more realistic, yet the AWP is still an insanely powerfull weapon for that reason and it functions near identical to Widows except it needs no charging.

You miss all points about this game, it is filled with gap closing mobility, insanely fast heroes, no real long sight lines or long range friendly sniping opportunities and generally a decent TTK and few one shots, outside of HS sniping. Yet you want to have snipers be slower, bulkier have disadvantages that no other character/hero archetypes have, while all this is also present. That is insane.

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High skill, high reward

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Nerf Widowmaker and Hanzo please Blizzard people are begging you from the start, they ruin the game

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widow and hanzo has nothing to do with skill, they are overpowered so it’s easy to get kills