Overwatch 2 team reveal big nerfs to Widowmaker & Hanzo in Season 5 patch

The Overwatch 2 developers have confirmed big changes coming to notorious one-shot heroes Hanzo and Widowmaker in the upcoming Season 5 update.

Widowmaker and Hanzo have been the bane of many Overwatch 2 players’ existence for some time, thanks to their ability to one-shot characters – but things are finally going to change.

While the two snipers aren’t losing their one-shot potential completely, their impact on the game is going to be significantly reduced in an attempt to limit their lethality.

In a blog post, Game Director Aaron Keller revealed several changes coming to begin Season 5 and how they will deal with the dominance of the snipers.

Overwatch 2 devs take aim at Widowmaker and Hanzo

According to Keller, the team wants to reduce the amount of one-shot kills in the game with nerfs to some heroes while also adjusting “extreme sightlines” on some maps.

“Widow’s damage falloff will change from 70-100 meters to 40-60 meters. The damage falloff scalar will also increase from 30%-50%,” he revealed. “She will still have the ability to one-shot 200 health heroes at 50 meters or less, but further than that, it will no longer be a killing blow.”

Meanwhile, Hanzo will no longer be able to one-shot heroes with a 250 HP pool, meaning that Reaper and Mei are getting slightly buffed in the match-up. That’s not all; additionally, Sonic Arrow will now be more recognizable by the enemy team.

Keller concluded the discussion on snipers by saying that the team will continue to discuss them and whether they are healthy for OW2 going forward, so it’s possible that more nerfs and changes are in the cards.

We’ll have to wait and see how these changes affect the game, but hopefully they do enough to hinder snipers and their dominance in the new Season 5 meta.