Why Overwatch’s latest range nerfs shouldn’t affect Widowmaker players

The latest Overwatch Experimental path included a number of updates for Widowmaker, but the good news is that the nerfs to her range don’t really seem like they’ll affect regular players too much.

On August 24 we got a brand new Experimental patch in Overwatch that contained a number of updates for several heroes, including Widowmaker. Notably, it increased her max ammo from 30 to 35, but increased the cost of fully-charged scoped shots from 3 to 5 ammunition cost.

The biggest nerf (or what seemed to be at the time) though, was adding a 50% damage falloff from 60-85 meters for all of her scoped shots as well.

It definitely sounds like a massive nerf to the long-range Widowmaker, but she still does 200 damage (enough to kill most heroes with one shot) up to 76.66 meters, which is quite a bit of distance when you can actually see it.

To demonstrate just how far Widow is able to reach and click heads, Overwatch player PMAJellies whipped up a quick rangefinding tool in the workshop. The sniper will deal 200 damage and up to any player within that range, and less than 200 to anyone outside the red wall.

From these images, it’s pretty safe to say that unless you possess the same OWL-calibre skill as Minho “Architect” Park or any other legendary top-level Widowmaker, you probably won’t notice too much of a difference to her maximum range.

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Take Ilios Ruins for example, even back on the roof of the temple containing a large health pack, the entire point, and then some, is still within her kill zone.

Let’s be honest here, even though we’d all like to think our Widowmaker play is good enough to tag an enemy from miles away using a clutch grapple boost, the vast majority of players aren’t capable of this, and stick to targets already inside of the ranges PMAJellies displayed on various maps.

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Widow is certainly in an interesting place as far as Overwatch heroes go at the moment. The “death” of the double shield meta in the August 13 patch could very well herald a new golden age for fans of the purple-haired sniper, even with her recent nerfs. Just be sure to try and keep your shots within a realistic distance to get the maximum damage.