How to Improve Black Widow?

[Prof_Nekko]

Simple thought experiment. Black Widow on the rankings is as we've seen... well kinda sucky to put it nicely. So I wanted to brainstorm a couple ways to improve her kit that would put her in a solid niche. A couple Ideas I had were in terms of giving her a passive effect. and came up with two decent ideas on how to work it.

1. Healing reduction: Simple enough effect, when she damages a target they get reduced healing. Kinda fits in with the "Widow's bite" kind themes and all, while not needing to improve her damage. Also gives her a good counter against Mantis and Luna players as she can tag an ulting Mantis or Luna and it would reduce the healing enough to make it so moderate focus can punch through the heals. This also improves her ult as the plasma puddles become genuine threats instead of tickle spots.

2. piercing shot: again simple concept. Make her basic plasma rounds pass through targets a few meters (ie 2-4) behind their target. Letting her bypass barriers like Groot Walls and Dr Strange shields (but not Magneto or Cap's shield as they are absorb/reflect effects and not block) as well as letting her counter punisher turrets since she can just shoot right through it and plug Frank from where he thought he was safe.

What about you guys? Have any ways you could improve her outside of just flat boosting her damage numbers? Love to hear them

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

I haven't used her much yet, as I like Hawkeye for sniping better... It's a bit difficult to justify using her over him.

I generally don't like having two snipers in a match either. You need to be sure the people pushing the fronts are high so that you can actually push onto the objective. Snipers generally don't do that.

So I would like to know how well she fairs as well as a character. What makes her unique against Hawkeye?

[TwoFaceTony]

I agree that just increasing her damage wouldn't be good, but I don't think the piercing shot is a very good idea, cause then she would just fire randomly into groups. Completely ignoring shields and barriers is also just not a very fun mechanic to have to play around.

The antiheal is a pretty fun idea though. Since she can't one-shot kill anyone she is often considered more of a "support" sniper or a suppressive sniper, rather than a kill sniper. Giving her some utility to her shots would certainly help her feel more distinct from the other sniper (Hawkeye), and make it feel more justified to use both of them for the team-up bonus.
If you introduce antiheal to her sniper, I think you should also reduce her damage output a bit to compensate. Still let her hit hard, but either reduce the damage itself or reduce the fire rate. Obviously the amount of reduction would have to be balanced with the amount of antiheal. Alternatively, give her an ability that makes her next shot, or her next X shots, apply antiheal to her targets.
That being said, shooting an ulting Mantis or Luna wouldn't make their ults heal the team less. The anitheal would only be applied to the person you shoot. So you could fire at the person your team is attacking to make killing them more feasible, but you couldn't just shoot Mantis and completely negate her ult for her whole team.

Another Idea would be to separate her scoped vs unscoped gunshots. Right now, they feel pretty similar to each other. They could give her a pistol for mid range combat, then make her only use the rifle when she scopes in. She could rest the rifle over her shoulder while she shoots her pistol with the other hand so she doesn't have to switch between 3 weapons. Her melee feels pretty underwhelming, but it's a fun and thematic part of her kit so I think it should stay.

[Cursememe]

I would prefer her to either get 1 new ability or reduced ult cooldown, it should not take that long to charge a ult that cannot even one shot unless you headshot

I think her damage is'nt that high because she has the literal best team up in the game being hawkeye's ult every 30 seconds so her damage is justifiyably not that high
It kinda knee caps her since she is piss weak without the team-up to deal consistent dmg

[KaZudra]

No Anti-heal.
Leave that trash in Overwatch along with all the other Anti-play BS.

[Prof_Nekko]

Counterplay exists in all games friendo. So long as it mitigates a tactic instead of flat out stopping it it's healthy to have. The concept I was pushing was a 20-30% reduction for 2 seconds or so. Just enough to coordinate a kill on a target with heal focus on them or more reliably score 2 taps on a target

[Aetemes]

Her problem is Bow Guy/Hela shoot at a much faster rate and have ultimates/abilties that are just overall a lot more useful/easier/interesting/flavourful to play around. They didn't even nerf Hela's damage to perhaps force considering her.

I think they seem to have tried to "keep the sniper character in check" to avoid player rage aka widowmaker, but somehow made two characters better at "sniping" than she is anyways.

But why did they even make her a "sniper" all together???

Her abilities are just very boring and not interesting, kick someone away, and a high jump, for real?

The gauntlets to me should've been her "main" theme, maybe her being adept at both melee/mid range or something I dunno, with some cool acrobatic/dancing bs, why create a cheap copy version of something that is already bland, and was a "thorn" to many players. "Widowmaker = Black Widow" is already pretty tacky.

Is it just to fill the "sniper" slot to appeal to the type of player-base that would be interested, make it easy for over-watch players to transition maybe?, or maybe it was an easy copy pasta model situation /shrug.

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

Originally posted by Aetemes:

Her problem is Bow Guy/Hela shoot at a much faster rate and have ultimates/abilties that are just overall a lot more

I honestly feel like you don't even need Hawkeyes Ultimate... I almost never use it myself and I still get crap tons of kills without it if your actually good at landing his headshots...

[Cursememe]

Originally posted by Aetemes:

Her problem is Bow Guy/Hela shoot at a much faster rate and have ultimates/abilties that are just overall a lot more useful/easier/interesting/flavourful to play around. They didn't even nerf Hela's damage to perhaps force considering her.

I think they seem to have tried to "keep the sniper character in check" to avoid player rage aka widowmaker, but somehow made two characters better at "sniping" than she is anyways.

But why did they even make her a "sniper" all together???

Her abilities are just very boring and not interesting, kick someone away, and a high jump, for real?

The gauntlets to me should've been her "main" theme, maybe her being adept at both melee/mid range or something I dunno, with some cool acrobatic/dancing bs, why create a cheap copy version of something that is already bland, and was a "thorn" to many players. "Widowmaker = Black Widow" is already pretty tacky.

Is it just to fill the "sniper" slot to appeal to the type of player-base that would be interested, make it easy for over-watch players to transition maybe?, or maybe it was an easy copy pasta model situation /shrug.

Black widow is indeed very disappointing, like a futuristic super soldier gasses out after running for 5 seconds and uses a chambering sniper rifle that does less dmg THEN THE GUY WITH THE BOW like what was the point, The sniper also has damage falloff that makes headshots deal not enough damage to kill bruce banner(falloff headshot dmg is 180)

[Longathan Johnathan]

just remove that weird pump mechanic on her gun and she will be fine

[Gatita Tiernita]

Widow is indeed in serious need of some buffs, especially at close range. She doesn't need to one-shot like Widowmaker, but she definitely needs a fire rate buff, at least 35% - 40% and some way to defend herself against divers and flankers. She gets absolutely destroyed at close range and being that she's a sniper she can't rely on supports to heal her because the best sniping spots are always far away from healers. Her batons are literally 100% useless and a waste of time trying to switch to them in the middle of combat. Get rid of the batons and give her a shotgun like Punisher or a stun gun, something actually useful for close range. Her ult needs to be buffed too, make it faster and so that when you press Q it auto charges without you having to do anything but aim and click.

[HeckDiver Vulkan]

Like I said in another thread.

Give her the Widows Bite ability.

In the comics she has Wrist Bands that fire stun darts (The Widows Bite)

Make it a 5 second Stun, plenty of time to either escape or secure a kill, and give it like a 30 second CD.

[Cursememe]

Originally posted by Gatita Tiernita:

Widow is indeed in serious need of some buffs, especially at close range. She doesn't need to one-shot like Widowmaker, but she definitely needs a fire rate buff, at least 35% - 40% and some way to defend herself against divers and flankers. She gets absolutely destroyed at close range and being that she's a sniper she can't rely on supports to heal her because the best sniping spots are always far away from healers. Her batons are literally 100% useless and a waste of time trying to switch to them in the middle of combat. Get rid of the batons and give her a shotgun like Punisher or a stun gun, something actually useful for close range. Her ult needs to be buffed too, make it faster and so that when you press Q it auto charges without you having to do anything but aim and click.

They buffed her anti dive options range and in case you did not know if you land it, it gurantees one shots squishy enemies with the grapple follow up into headshot combo

This hard counters psylocke, spiderman and magik if any of them get caught by it and due to the range buffs its more likely now to occur

[Metal Izanagi]

Widow honestly needs to just not be a sniper. Leave that to Hawkeye and have her be mid-range instead.

[dghostter]

shooting through heros and objects and maybe walls would help a lot. Tanks just stand in front of healer and you cant even shoot them

[Electi]

I think regular woman in spandex should not be any close to omegalulz level mutants and etc overpowered stuff, sniper rifle is her best bet, and They should give her some special shots \ traps to defend healers nearby her. I think we need to understand that most efficient role for her would be destroying tanks or healers, so if she land a shot in healer, it either heal itself and stop heal tank, or die from second shoot.