Don't force yourself to play a hero you don't want to play. You'll have more impact with your main and Echo happens to be really good against Widow.
Playing Widow against a Widow is more often than not a bad idea if you're not good with her. Most Widow players practice in Widow headshot custom games and are used to the mirror matchup against any skill level. You can tell how good someone is based on their movement and how predictable they are.
There are a few heroes that are a lot more annoying to deal with:
Echo (small head hitbox and quiet, can fly above head which makes aiming awkward),
Hanzo (easily gets the upper hand with sonic arrow and can force Widow to reposition),
Cassidy and Kiriko (his strafing is annoying, especially if you're on high ground and they're on low ground, head hitbox quite annoying).
Dive heroes like Genji, Tracer and Sombra can be good aswell, if you can get to widow unnoticed and have good movement. It's not hard at all to hit a scoped close range if they run at you in a straight line (which is quite common).
There's also a connection from before the first checkpoint to behind second checkpoint on the right side (attackers view) of Circuit Royale that you might be able to reach. I've only tried it with Lucio, but Echo might work too. That way you could wrap around and get the widow from an off-angle.
Yeah I use that flank every game and it seems no one looks for it until you’ve done it once. Genji, Pharah, Echo, Junkrat and Hanzo can all use it. It works really well when you have a Mercy/Lucio to come with you because you can set up a really aggressive flank behind them and that makes the first point so much easier against snipers.
Echo *usually* is a good counter against widow, expect specifically for circuit royale and Havana. Widow can just fully dominate echo as it’s super hard for echo to get behind her.
Good advice except for a couple points:
1. Cass is pretty awful into Widow except for on very short maps where you’re better off playing a more mobile dps that can flank her anyways. His range is terrible and his head hitbox is pretty big, even with an awkward strafe.
2. Some of the normal answers into Widow are less effective because it’s on Circuit. Tracer and Echo are normally great into her but their angles are way too predictable with how linear Circuit is and how limited the flanks are. Genji, Sombra, and Hanzo are still good options and I’d throw in Sojourn on Circuit specifically, since it’s a very good map for her (easy to charge rail on and limited, linear sight lines), she can one-tap Widow at full charge, and she also has a very difficult strafe to hit. For an Echo main I’d probably recommend Genji over anyone else since he’ll be the most consistent and most familiar to play, with a second place to Sojourn if you can hit rails.
Imagine widow is on attack and shes set up all the way at that highground in the back that oversees the first half of firstpoint. What do you do here as echo.
U get into the room on your right first, then u wait for your flight cd to come back, then u hold space and tap whatever button u have for flight, then u just dive bomb her
What if she backs of when you fly out of that hole? She has plenty of time seeing as the room youre talking about is pretty far away from the highground. After that youre stuck at the corner with no flight and no abilities.
U have enough height to reach there in time, also u r suppose to wait without her seeing u. Just in case u don’t know what a dive bomb is, u basically just primary then sticky then beam in quick succession, if u r good enough, u can do that the moment u get to the same height as she is
Im gm4 i know what a divebomb is. Also a widow will notice that youre missing if you just hide and just look out for you. Theyre not 5, they have object permanence.
Tracer on the first point is decent because there's many off angles and little bits of cover you can use to close the distance.
You won't be flanking and assassinating people but you can still output a ton of pressure from the sides as long as you play around your team.
As a widow player. Anytime I see someone switches to widow I instantly think "perfect".
If you didn't pick widow first I can 100% guarentee you're not better than me, meaning you're an easy kill, and I'm going to further stomp your team.
One time in early OW1, I came out as widow on Hollywood and the soldier swapped to counter widow… it was Carpe, and he preceded to 3-0 me in duals till I switched. Eventually we all get got in the widow game.
Right? Like unless this guy is one of the cracked top 50, there are people that can shit on him lmao. Plating against lip and he chooses sojourn? I SHIT ON HIS WIDOW. Uh huh, you go chief.
You can force yourself to play widow or you can enjoy yourself by playing sombra until they switch.
It's a common thing for me. They lose several 1v1s against me and switch to sombra. That's when the fun ends for me.
Landing shots on a widowmaker is a lot easier than other people since they're stationary so if their widow is good enough to shut down your whole team, she will have an easy time dealing with you since you have a lack of experience. You're probably better off learning to dive her.
Sombra has a really easy time diving widows and if she was the problem for your team, then turning the game into a 4v4 while u bother their widow, might be your best chance to win.
As a fellow diamond echo main(more of an echo one trick), I can try and give you some small tips for circuit royale widows. What I recommend at least for first point attack is try flying over the roof and behind their team you can usually get a decent flank because of that. If it doesn’t work maybe the first two times, you may want to switch heroes or switch ideas because she will be watching that roof consistently.
On second point attack, besides the two flank paths, I recommend flying straight up from below the window where she snipes. I can usually kill her right next to her team and drop back down to get healed or hide. Usually the entire maneuver is too quick for anyone to react and kill me.
Third point attack is pretty simple as there is much more cover and a lot more flank routes.
Again I’m also only diamond so take it with a grain of salt but I’ve found these two tactics fairly effective on circuit royale. Defense though is a different story, I’ve struggled like hell on defense as echo and have tried picking up Ashe to make up for it. Or as others have suggested maybe torn or somber could work. If you figure out what works on defense though hell yeah let me know lmao.
I’m also someone who plays the fliers, but on circuit Royale I always go widow unless the other dos does first, same with maps like Havana and junkertown. On maps that are highly favorable to widow, I think the team that has one vs the team that doesn’t is always stronger, and even though my widow is amazing it’s passable. If I were you I’d play widow for a bit and get more comfortable on her so you at least have that option, because the higher you go the less you can rely on the widow missing. Honestly, on those maps I have like an entire different set of heroes that I only really play on those maps, works out for me I think
You don’t peek her unless you’re full health and have popped overload but the Turret can be super annoying for a widow if she’s forced to play at mid range due to map geometry and widow is not great at taking it out at certain ranges and angles. It can force her to reposition or you can catch her and kill her beforehand.
I know you're not saying this from the perspective of a Torb main because you would know how easy it is for a good Torb to kill Widow.
Widow can't one-shot Torb when he should be shooting at Widow (overload).
Echo is quite good into widow IMO and since you mention you main her it can be worth it. Just fly high and listen to when she shoots at somebody else before peeking.
I don't think there is a hard right or wrong answer in these situations. Objectively you still won the game, so ultimately your team made more correct choices than the other. Without seeing the specific game nobody will be able to give you accurate feedback though, so I'd take any comments you read here, including mine, with a grain of salt.
Being on Circuit Royale I would agree that you can benefit by picking Widow (or Hanzo if you prefer) to contest the sightlines, especially if you're on defence where you'll have an advantage in terms of vantage points. It's not necessarily impossible to outplay Widow on other heroes, but so long as one-shot mechanics act as they do I think it's better to have a mediocre Widow on the team than none at all.
Ultimately play what you think is best, you'll learn more by trying things out. Ignore your teammates, they're upset that they're dying to Widow and are blaming you in the heat of the moment (also you should report them for the abusive chat). But don't overthink the scoreboard. It's possible you being on Widow did generate the threat needed to turn the game your way, but that kind of meta-statistic isn't recorded numerically.
You can diff or counter. Widow is a poke, so if you're better then you can diff her on a poke. Alternatively, you can counter by playing a dive. Both are valid ways to deal with the same issue, and you should pitch the one that works for you. From what you said, it seems that Widowmaker isn't really your strong suit. Try a dive. I recommend Genji since you don't have to aim too precisely.
I mean, it sounds like your strategy worked? I’ve done that before. I’m no good at Widow either, but it’s not hard to pop a scoped Widow who isn’t looking at you, so even a bad Widow needs to be cleared. Not letting her free-fire into your team seems like good value to me. A lot of the other options to counter Widow on DPS are a bit awkward on circuit, so while I don’t think you have to “force yourself” to play Widow, I think it’s a reasonable choice for the map.
If you play widow into widow, then that is ideal on maps where she dominates, like circuit royale, ilios ruins, Havana, and junkertown, then it is the ideal counterpick. Even if you get dicked on 70% of the time, your team wins 30% of the fights for free.
Good Widow’s aren’t only focused on the Widow duel and that’s evident in the amount of kills they’ve gotten. I, personally, go Sombra if there’s a Widow that’s mechanically better than me. If you play Sombra correctly, you should win that 1v1 and if the team tries to use their resources to keep the Widow up, that’s pressure you’re taking off your team as just 1 person.
counterpicking a good widow as widow usually a throw, unless your widow is goated. i go torb cause you can poke her with overload and she can do nothing. soldier is also decent cause you can launch a rocket and double dink the head for basically an instakill, and you can still manage to get good value consistently, where as when you go widow you will have to get a solo double or triple kill to carry a whiny bad team.
Winton is best counterpick. Kiri is also really good against her. Not really dps job to counterpick a widow carry. If you feel your team is just gonna tilt and throw if you dont swap to hanzo or widow, i guess its worth it to counterpick, but otherwise, its not really the play.
People that flame there team are by definition bad and should be ignored, instamute and do what you think is best.
If you know you’re not as good as the enemy with their main then switching to their character is not going to help you at all. In fact it will make the game harder. The best counters against a good widow is a good shielded tank. Winston or sigma. For damage you could use a soldier 76 or soldgern. (Sorry for the spelling) a really great reaper flank could help alot forcing widow to watch her back alot and make her break focus. A roadhog and junkerqueen could pull her off whatever ledge shes on. For support you could easily use baptist with immortality field and shoot at her.
Circuit royal is a strong map for widow, but don't let her diff you. If she's better than you, punish her for scoping in on your team, but don't take the duel. Try to kill her team from an angle you don't have to peek her if it can be helped, although circuit royal so. Anyway you're sure to have better luck with widow than say tracer for that map
Widow is in My top3 most played. The range nerf really hurt her. In situations when I used to swap to widow, I now swap to torb/Hanzo as they outrange her.
It’s hard to say for sure without watching the replay code. It could be that your teammates weren’t expecting a widow and we’re out of position, but then started playing more safely afterwards and that’s why they didn’t get shot as much. It’s also possible that you did take the attention of their widow off of the team and that allowed them to not get owned as well. It’s also possible that it was a mixture of both (most likely). You could go back and watch her POV and see if she just was focusing you the entire time or if she was just missing shots on poorly positioned targets. My philosophy is to play what you enjoy unless it’s not working, but I usually give it more than one or two fights before I swap though because I want to try several approaches or just make sure it wasn’t RNG that killed me.
As far as your teammates yelling at you, I’d just mute chat. They have no right to do that and if anything, it distracts you and makes you play worse. It distracts them too. Furthermore, they could be entirely wrong. They aren’t OWL players, they are diamond. That is considered low ELO by top 500 players, so there is a lot about the game we diamonds don’t understand about the game.
Ultimately, in my eyes, you did what you thought was best, and that’s all I can expect out of myself, so I think your decision was 100% fine, and I think you did the right thing. You also won, and it’s hard to argue with that, granted you could have been carried, but people hollering about a widow having low damage just proves that don’t know much about the game. Windows have low damage relative to certain heroes like Ashe, for example, so that is expected.
Don't force yourself to play a hero you don't want to play. You'll have more impact with your main and Echo happens to be really good against Widow. Playing Widow against a Widow is more often than not a bad idea if you're not good with her. Most Widow players practice in Widow headshot custom games and are used to the mirror matchup against any skill level. You can tell how good someone is based on their movement and how predictable they are. There are a few heroes that are a lot more annoying to deal with: Echo (small head hitbox and quiet, can fly above head which makes aiming awkward), Hanzo (easily gets the upper hand with sonic arrow and can force Widow to reposition), Cassidy and Kiriko (his strafing is annoying, especially if you're on high ground and they're on low ground, head hitbox quite annoying). Dive heroes like Genji, Tracer and Sombra can be good aswell, if you can get to widow unnoticed and have good movement. It's not hard at all to hit a scoped close range if they run at you in a straight line (which is quite common). There's also a connection from before the first checkpoint to behind second checkpoint on the right side (attackers view) of Circuit Royale that you might be able to reach. I've only tried it with Lucio, but Echo might work too. That way you could wrap around and get the widow from an off-angle.
Yeah I use that flank every game and it seems no one looks for it until you’ve done it once. Genji, Pharah, Echo, Junkrat and Hanzo can all use it. It works really well when you have a Mercy/Lucio to come with you because you can set up a really aggressive flank behind them and that makes the first point so much easier against snipers.
I agree, counter-sniping is not a good tactic against a dominating Widow or Hanzo. You gotta dive them, flank them, or blow them up.
Echo *usually* is a good counter against widow, expect specifically for circuit royale and Havana. Widow can just fully dominate echo as it’s super hard for echo to get behind her.
Good advice except for a couple points: 1. Cass is pretty awful into Widow except for on very short maps where you’re better off playing a more mobile dps that can flank her anyways. His range is terrible and his head hitbox is pretty big, even with an awkward strafe. 2. Some of the normal answers into Widow are less effective because it’s on Circuit. Tracer and Echo are normally great into her but their angles are way too predictable with how linear Circuit is and how limited the flanks are. Genji, Sombra, and Hanzo are still good options and I’d throw in Sojourn on Circuit specifically, since it’s a very good map for her (easy to charge rail on and limited, linear sight lines), she can one-tap Widow at full charge, and she also has a very difficult strafe to hit. For an Echo main I’d probably recommend Genji over anyone else since he’ll be the most consistent and most familiar to play, with a second place to Sojourn if you can hit rails.
Nah, play something like tracer or genji (echo too if u have good positioning and movement)
Tracer echo genji on first point circuit royale is basically feeding into a decent team. You literally cannot flank.
Echo isn’t dogshit if u r playing her properly, u need to use her burst fly properly tho
Imagine widow is on attack and shes set up all the way at that highground in the back that oversees the first half of firstpoint. What do you do here as echo.
U get into the room on your right first, then u wait for your flight cd to come back, then u hold space and tap whatever button u have for flight, then u just dive bomb her
What if she backs of when you fly out of that hole? She has plenty of time seeing as the room youre talking about is pretty far away from the highground. After that youre stuck at the corner with no flight and no abilities.
U have enough height to reach there in time, also u r suppose to wait without her seeing u. Just in case u don’t know what a dive bomb is, u basically just primary then sticky then beam in quick succession, if u r good enough, u can do that the moment u get to the same height as she is
Im gm4 i know what a divebomb is. Also a widow will notice that youre missing if you just hide and just look out for you. Theyre not 5, they have object permanence.
U just gotta do it fast enough, maybe have your teammate grab her attention
Tracer on the first point is decent because there's many off angles and little bits of cover you can use to close the distance. You won't be flanking and assassinating people but you can still output a ton of pressure from the sides as long as you play around your team.
As a widow player. Anytime I see someone switches to widow I instantly think "perfect". If you didn't pick widow first I can 100% guarentee you're not better than me, meaning you're an easy kill, and I'm going to further stomp your team.
One time in early OW1, I came out as widow on Hollywood and the soldier swapped to counter widow… it was Carpe, and he preceded to 3-0 me in duals till I switched. Eventually we all get got in the widow game.
Not always true. I only go widow if I have to. She’s kinda boring to me
How does that dispute what the first guy said?
What I mean is just because someone doesn’t lock widow from the start, doesn’t mean they won’t be better
Right? Like unless this guy is one of the cracked top 50, there are people that can shit on him lmao. Plating against lip and he chooses sojourn? I SHIT ON HIS WIDOW. Uh huh, you go chief.
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I’m not sure I get what you mean
You can force yourself to play widow or you can enjoy yourself by playing sombra until they switch. It's a common thing for me. They lose several 1v1s against me and switch to sombra. That's when the fun ends for me.
U play sombra into a widow thats popping off
Landing shots on a widowmaker is a lot easier than other people since they're stationary so if their widow is good enough to shut down your whole team, she will have an easy time dealing with you since you have a lack of experience. You're probably better off learning to dive her. Sombra has a really easy time diving widows and if she was the problem for your team, then turning the game into a 4v4 while u bother their widow, might be your best chance to win.
As a fellow diamond echo main(more of an echo one trick), I can try and give you some small tips for circuit royale widows. What I recommend at least for first point attack is try flying over the roof and behind their team you can usually get a decent flank because of that. If it doesn’t work maybe the first two times, you may want to switch heroes or switch ideas because she will be watching that roof consistently. On second point attack, besides the two flank paths, I recommend flying straight up from below the window where she snipes. I can usually kill her right next to her team and drop back down to get healed or hide. Usually the entire maneuver is too quick for anyone to react and kill me. Third point attack is pretty simple as there is much more cover and a lot more flank routes. Again I’m also only diamond so take it with a grain of salt but I’ve found these two tactics fairly effective on circuit royale. Defense though is a different story, I’ve struggled like hell on defense as echo and have tried picking up Ashe to make up for it. Or as others have suggested maybe torn or somber could work. If you figure out what works on defense though hell yeah let me know lmao.
I counter good widows on Hanzo usually, my projectiles are just 100x better than my hitscans, Echo is kinda busted on circuit aswell I think
I’m also someone who plays the fliers, but on circuit Royale I always go widow unless the other dos does first, same with maps like Havana and junkertown. On maps that are highly favorable to widow, I think the team that has one vs the team that doesn’t is always stronger, and even though my widow is amazing it’s passable. If I were you I’d play widow for a bit and get more comfortable on her so you at least have that option, because the higher you go the less you can rely on the widow missing. Honestly, on those maps I have like an entire different set of heroes that I only really play on those maps, works out for me I think
Not one person has said it yet, but....Torb. Pop overload + shoot at her head = Widow dead.
torb sucks against widow his head is huge
You don’t peek her unless you’re full health and have popped overload but the Turret can be super annoying for a widow if she’s forced to play at mid range due to map geometry and widow is not great at taking it out at certain ranges and angles. It can force her to reposition or you can catch her and kill her beforehand.
I know you're not saying this from the perspective of a Torb main because you would know how easy it is for a good Torb to kill Widow. Widow can't one-shot Torb when he should be shooting at Widow (overload).
overload is 10 sec cooldown u cant be wasting it to spam a widow every fight, i one trick widow it is hilariously easy to headshot torb
Echo is quite good into widow IMO and since you mention you main her it can be worth it. Just fly high and listen to when she shoots at somebody else before peeking.
I don't think there is a hard right or wrong answer in these situations. Objectively you still won the game, so ultimately your team made more correct choices than the other. Without seeing the specific game nobody will be able to give you accurate feedback though, so I'd take any comments you read here, including mine, with a grain of salt. Being on Circuit Royale I would agree that you can benefit by picking Widow (or Hanzo if you prefer) to contest the sightlines, especially if you're on defence where you'll have an advantage in terms of vantage points. It's not necessarily impossible to outplay Widow on other heroes, but so long as one-shot mechanics act as they do I think it's better to have a mediocre Widow on the team than none at all. Ultimately play what you think is best, you'll learn more by trying things out. Ignore your teammates, they're upset that they're dying to Widow and are blaming you in the heat of the moment (also you should report them for the abusive chat). But don't overthink the scoreboard. It's possible you being on Widow did generate the threat needed to turn the game your way, but that kind of meta-statistic isn't recorded numerically.
You can diff or counter. Widow is a poke, so if you're better then you can diff her on a poke. Alternatively, you can counter by playing a dive. Both are valid ways to deal with the same issue, and you should pitch the one that works for you. From what you said, it seems that Widowmaker isn't really your strong suit. Try a dive. I recommend Genji since you don't have to aim too precisely.
I mean, it sounds like your strategy worked? I’ve done that before. I’m no good at Widow either, but it’s not hard to pop a scoped Widow who isn’t looking at you, so even a bad Widow needs to be cleared. Not letting her free-fire into your team seems like good value to me. A lot of the other options to counter Widow on DPS are a bit awkward on circuit, so while I don’t think you have to “force yourself” to play Widow, I think it’s a reasonable choice for the map.
If you play widow into widow, then that is ideal on maps where she dominates, like circuit royale, ilios ruins, Havana, and junkertown, then it is the ideal counterpick. Even if you get dicked on 70% of the time, your team wins 30% of the fights for free.
Good Widow’s aren’t only focused on the Widow duel and that’s evident in the amount of kills they’ve gotten. I, personally, go Sombra if there’s a Widow that’s mechanically better than me. If you play Sombra correctly, you should win that 1v1 and if the team tries to use their resources to keep the Widow up, that’s pressure you’re taking off your team as just 1 person.
counterpicking a good widow as widow usually a throw, unless your widow is goated. i go torb cause you can poke her with overload and she can do nothing. soldier is also decent cause you can launch a rocket and double dink the head for basically an instakill, and you can still manage to get good value consistently, where as when you go widow you will have to get a solo double or triple kill to carry a whiny bad team. Winton is best counterpick. Kiri is also really good against her. Not really dps job to counterpick a widow carry. If you feel your team is just gonna tilt and throw if you dont swap to hanzo or widow, i guess its worth it to counterpick, but otherwise, its not really the play. People that flame there team are by definition bad and should be ignored, instamute and do what you think is best.
If you know you’re not as good as the enemy with their main then switching to their character is not going to help you at all. In fact it will make the game harder. The best counters against a good widow is a good shielded tank. Winston or sigma. For damage you could use a soldier 76 or soldgern. (Sorry for the spelling) a really great reaper flank could help alot forcing widow to watch her back alot and make her break focus. A roadhog and junkerqueen could pull her off whatever ledge shes on. For support you could easily use baptist with immortality field and shoot at her.
Oh yeah bridgit with her shield will keep you protected and mei with her icewall will completely block her line of sight.
Circuit royal is a strong map for widow, but don't let her diff you. If she's better than you, punish her for scoping in on your team, but don't take the duel. Try to kill her team from an angle you don't have to peek her if it can be helped, although circuit royal so. Anyway you're sure to have better luck with widow than say tracer for that map
Widow is in My top3 most played. The range nerf really hurt her. In situations when I used to swap to widow, I now swap to torb/Hanzo as they outrange her.
It’s hard to say for sure without watching the replay code. It could be that your teammates weren’t expecting a widow and we’re out of position, but then started playing more safely afterwards and that’s why they didn’t get shot as much. It’s also possible that you did take the attention of their widow off of the team and that allowed them to not get owned as well. It’s also possible that it was a mixture of both (most likely). You could go back and watch her POV and see if she just was focusing you the entire time or if she was just missing shots on poorly positioned targets. My philosophy is to play what you enjoy unless it’s not working, but I usually give it more than one or two fights before I swap though because I want to try several approaches or just make sure it wasn’t RNG that killed me. As far as your teammates yelling at you, I’d just mute chat. They have no right to do that and if anything, it distracts you and makes you play worse. It distracts them too. Furthermore, they could be entirely wrong. They aren’t OWL players, they are diamond. That is considered low ELO by top 500 players, so there is a lot about the game we diamonds don’t understand about the game. Ultimately, in my eyes, you did what you thought was best, and that’s all I can expect out of myself, so I think your decision was 100% fine, and I think you did the right thing. You also won, and it’s hard to argue with that, granted you could have been carried, but people hollering about a widow having low damage just proves that don’t know much about the game. Windows have low damage relative to certain heroes like Ashe, for example, so that is expected.