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Overwatch 2 fans agree Widowmaker needs nerfs—but what they should be isn’t so simple

There's a counter for every suggestion.

Widowmaker has been the topic of many complaints in recent months, and Overwatch 2 fans have been begging Blizzard developers to take her one-shot potential down a peg—but it’s apparently harder than you may think.

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Fed up with the sniper’s cross-map power, the Overwatch community banded together earlier this week to tackle some of Widow’s core issues in a Reddit thread, all with the goal of keeping her a viable option in the meta. As it turns out, this endeavor put nerfing and buffing heroes into perspective.

The player base bickered over several tiny changes to her arsenal, with some even suggesting they need to keep her “one-shot” potential.

Take note—May 22 is the date players finally realized how hard balance is.

Players overwhelmingly agreed the sniper needs changes, but pinpointing the exact change was increasingly difficult as more people weighed in.

Widowmaker mains even joined the chat, trying to halt the career-ending nerfs in their tracks. Some changes were welcomed, but the majority seemed too harsh for Widow fans, who pushed back against lots of the ideas.

Other Overwatch players (note, not Widow mains) suggested reducing her max damage from 200 to 170 and dropping her health from 175 down to 150. While the damage tweak could work, some gamers mused, the health adjustment might be too severe. In the discussions, players dubbed her “frail” and suggested any changes to her health would be too dramatic and leave her struggling to stay relevant.

One change players seemed to agree on was a tweak to her grapple. Making it so she can grapple-hold onto almost any wall and still shoot would be interesting. However, this paired with no nerfs would likely only add to Widow complaints.

Some gung-ho gamers even suggested removing her entirely, which might fix how overpowered she’s believed to be, but disappoint a lot of wannabe-snipers in Overwatch.

Whatever changes the devs eventually make to Widowmaker, it seems Overwatch fans finally have some insight into the tumultuous task of nerfing heroes.


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Author
Harrison Thomas
CS:GO, Overwatch, and Valorant Staff Writer - Played CS:GO since 2012 and keep a close eye on other titles. Give me a game and I'll write about it. Ranks are private information. Contact harry@dotesports.com