Widowmaker's counters are?

I find it increasing difficult to counter enemy widowmakers in competitive matches. Espescially if they have mercy or zen pockets. If you dive her, she just runs away, or gets rescued by a pocket.

She also just decimates soldier, mcree, and ashe (excluding when ashe has a pocket, that’s a different story).

The only success I have found in countering her at all is either getting lucky deflects as genji, steamrolling her with GOATs (which won’t even work anymore soon), alternating tanks to poke her, or attempting to play widowmaker myself. I don’t have much time on widow, so that’s usually pretty hopeless.

The solution is obvious, right? Learn widowmaker.

But I don’t feel like I should have to specifically learn widowmaker just to counter widowmaker. That kinda feels counter-intuitive to the whole rock-paper-scissors thing

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She’s taking the headshots so the way i see it is that you peek her and ur not behind a shield.Judge your own gameplay man,idenify your bad habbits which are mistakes u do against widowmaker.One and first is you don’t know her position,which means you can’t possibly know from which place she will camp and take her shots.Just think,on this map which is the best way for her to flank you? Find her,contest her,A-D spam her,make her nervous as much as possible. That’s my tip.Most of the people just sit and wait to get headshoted.Even now with orisa meta which makes her alot less value,people are having trouble against her.Learn widowmaker solution is indeed obvious but not the way you meant it.Get better at widowmaker won’t save you when the enemy widowmaker is even better.But if you learn her you might be able to learn more about how to predict her before she predicts you. I hope i helped

Perhaps your present strategy of (presumably) running in a straight line towards her with no protection is bad? One good barrier is enough to shut down a sniper for a whole match.

Dives require timing and skill, you can’t just run at someone and expect them to fall over. Ideally you target isolated enemies. Widowmaker will use the grapple to escape, but if you’re playing a mobile hero you can easily catch up and kill her. Better yet you can play with your team behind a barrier: Widowmakers can’t really contest.

That’s exactly the next thing i was about to say man! Everyone is complaining about widows but when u see how they play you realise that they get it wrong.They walk always on straight lines or in a way too predictable pattern,they even jump for real! They’re making it even easier for her

Counters that i use: widow, sombra, Winston, dva, sym (portal behind her with centries in it)
Edit:if the widow isnt so good at aiming at a pharah, i go pharah

Result: 9 out of 10 games i need to kill the enemy widow twice to make her switch :slight_smile:

Hide behind the shield or game or you lose.
6v1 her or you lose.
This is what I hate. She dictates the entire match just by existing! It’s why I hated old rez too

I should also mention sitting behind shield doesn’t always work, because on some maps like horizon, she can literally grapple to the skybox and instakill you in a heartbeat.

Did you hear of dva, genji, or Winston also tracer

Dva : Low damage since widow doesn’t get hit by 50% of the pellets
Genji : Good counter, but if they have brig (which they often do with widow), it’s almost impossible to get her
Winston : Same thing as genji.
Tracer : Good counter as long as they dont have a zen or mercy. discord or damage boost allows her to one-body you.

orisa/hog counters widowmaker stand behind shield and pull hook her if she is out of range for pull hook get a mei also and snipe her from behind the shield or a hanzo.

Also hiding behind the shield is meta right now so ofc you should be doing it and dive comp is very good vs widow also but you need to go full dive and be on the right maps.

I have a soul, thanks.

Just kidding. Thanks for the advice.

I mean, yes, there is no 100% surefire way to obliterate her no matter what the enemy team plays, no kidding. Saying that because you have to hide behind shield she’s oppressive is just funny, everyone needs to get behind shield and cover at all times, or they risk death anyway, it’s more like the basics of the game.

That being said, Dva does have enough damage ever since receiving micro missiles, Genji should be able to get to her anyway (how many Widows do you konw that stand next to their Brig? Just flank her and kill her in one combo), similar for Winston. The thing is, you don’t even need to kill a Widow to render her useless, just keep her busy by poking her, she can’t get shots that way, and her ultimate is pretty much useless anyway.

As for Tracer, it’s really not that good of a counter most of the time due to not being able to reach high-ground easily. You’re almost better off with a Sombra in that case. But yeah, you need to adjust your playstyle, just like when they have Mei, Reaper, Hog, Torb, Brig (old) etc. etc.

Doomfist counters widow if it is not Chipsa.