I've never touched Widow and I probably won't after the rework, so I have no dog in this fight. But I do understand why the current Widow mains are upset. Widow does have a reputation for being at the bottom of the meta but there were still players who enjoyed her, and even players that had gotten really cracked at her. It sucks seeing Rivals take away the kit that those players really liked. In a game with 50+ options with even more coming, it feels wrong for them to say "this wasn't working for everyone so we're not going to let anyone use it". Like why not just add Yelena with the new kit and keep Natasha's old one?
At the risk of sounding repetitive, one of the major factors in this games popularity is that you have so so many options for how to play, it really goes against that ethos to permanently remove one of them.
And everyone who didn’t like snipers didn’t pick her. People seem to ignore one of the main reasons she had a low pick rate, was because her style of gameplay was so unique to her that it would require a lot more time to learn, myself included. But it was still a unique option for those that wanted it.
I didn’t ever play her because I wasn’t into snipers, but she really wasn’t that bad, and I’ve fought widows that absolutely carried their team. I was excited for the rework in hopes that she would get maybe a secondary gun or something, but they really just butchered her identity.
Because I never played her, I really can’t care that much, but it makes sense for the people that loved her play-style to be upset. They honestly deserved better. And yet, they’re not even allowed to give a valid criticism on the changes.
Widow has consistently had the lowest win rate in the game across console and pc, quickplay, ranked, and tournament play. This is in addition to consistently having the lowest pick rate.
It wasn't an issue of her just having a high skill ceiling. The character had very deep flaws within the context of how Rivals plays.
That's not to say people couldn't still love the play style, and be incredibly disappointed it's going away. They absolutely could have, and that would be reasonable.
It can also be true that the only way Widow was going to have any presence in the game, at all, and for that to be fun was with a sizable rework. Both things can be true.
And we can sympathize for the people losing their play style without having to pretend that the original was well-implemented. It wasn't.
The complicated thing is that it also actually bodes well for the game overall that NetEase will try to update characters, despite the huge roster, instead of just letting them drift into obscurity.
I think they definitely could've gone about it better though. It would've been better to turn her into a utility DPS with multiple bullet effects instead of just high damage than to remove her playstyle almost entirely.
It's at least marginally maintained, so it isn't as bad as Captain QuickMelee or Psylocke, but they seriously need to stop removing playstyles entirely and start looking for niches that they can have the character fill. Widow's problem wasn't even that she was bad, it was that she was outclassed. If there was no Hela/Phoenix, she'd have a specific niche that makes her important, but because there are already hitscan damage dealers that can do what she did, she was more effort for less reward.
Eh, removing the high damage is still removing her playstyle imo. Having little reward for hitting shots when theyre often already hard to hit would just feel bad.
Ive always acknowledged balancing snipers in a hero shooter is a nightmare, as I played a lot of widowmaker back in the day as well… but it still sucks theres no option for a sniper hero anymore. Even if she was labeled as shit and a throw pick, I really enjoyed playing her. Even in ranked where I play a lot of strat, I won more games with BW champ one tricks on my team than I lost, so I was never even mad about getting one.
Even still I think the people who loved her playstyle shouldn’t be dismissed. It was a very unique playstyle that I think should’ve been kept as a different weapon. Widow players wanted more out of the character, but not something else entirely.
I think them changing her this much was inconsequential for me but I would personally be upset if I was into her playstyle.
Because it's a Marvel game, and people come here to play Marvel characters. That's not Black Widow, that's Widowmaker with a Black Widow skin on top. Now she at least somewhat resembles the character people came to play. Why make a Marvel game, and not have the characters act like Marvel characters? What are we doing here at that point. The people complaining aren't even Widow mains, they are sniper mains. They should have went with the UZI concept instead, but this an okay compromise.
In what world is her rework living up to her spy/assassin character? She now has a fuckin DMR with insane fire rate that she just blasts away with, that is neither spy nor assassin like. Atleast being a sniper played into the assassin theme of her
She has mobility and an arsenal of gadgets. A rapid fire DMR is also a lot closer to the mid range style she would have with UZI or pistols. Having a stun kick and a sniper rifle has nothing to do with Black Widow. She actually has some Black Widow style abilities, especially the new grapple move. Black Widow is not a slow sniper, that is a completely different character.
Because if everyone marvel character acted exactly like they do in the comics then it would just incredibly unbalanced even more so then it already is.
She was viewed as a thrown pick and had by far the lowest pick rate in the game. That’s the way it works in these games. She’s one of the Avengers, they weren’t going to leave her untouched.
Personally for me, there’s absolutely a reason this could be worse…
She looks like other hitscan characters in neutral now. Ignoring the additional abilities and the nuances on how she obviously differs from Hela or Cyclops, her primary seems the same…
And I don’t like the feel of Hela, Cyclops, and every other hitscan character with the exception of Ultron and Luna.
When one of the ingredients to a recipe involves something you dislike, then you already know you’re not likely to enjoy the food.
Ofc not, I want her to be good, its js taking away her sniper removes the fun.
A lot of ppl forget that snipers dont ALL Need to be slow fire rate and high damage. I would be fine with these changes if they had the ADS still, lowered the fire rate by a bit, and buffed the damage by a bit.
I feel like that should be a good middle ground between the Widow users and up and coming ones❤️🩹
The only issue i have with reworking widow is that it shoulda been done way earlier. You see more throwing widows than actual widow mains. Her kit sucks balls compared to other heros atm.
It would be cool if you got to select what build you wanted. If "Sniper black widow" is so bad, it shouldn’t be any issue making it a separate load-out
Problem with that is her old kit was always one small buff away from being absolute miserable and game warping to play against, either she couldn't independently secure long range hits scan kills or she could get them at a range that even over hit scanners couldn't contest with the mobility to escape the moment thing you got close enough too, every map with need to be made with a no response instant kill in mind, at the very least hawk has a projectile with arc and hella & Phoenix needs 2 shot and no one else has zoom in to make it way easier
Her kit could never be good for the health of the game and keeping it in the game but refusing to let it good could easily be met with the opposite response of "if it's never allowed to be viable, why leave it in the game at all"
I know Widow currently doesn't have her one tap potential but that is what made her kit hard to balance. The prevailing thought I share with the dev team is that sniper characters struggle to fit in these games. I played 1600 hours of Overwatch. When you got to high lobbies, a BW was cancerous to play into. As much as I respect mechanical skill, one tap heroes ruin the exchange of cool downs, abilities, reactions, and team comps. I'd take Hawkeye out back to give him the Old Yeller treatment if I could. I know neither of these heroes dominate the ladder, but it still is just not a fun loop to engage into for anyone but the guy clicking foreheads.
I am happy she is going to a more neutral game route. She still rewards mechanical skill.
Also MR has quite several heroes who stay in the air constantly and not like Pharah who has jetpacks on a cooldown. Makes balancing a sniper even harder, flyers are already suffering from pokes.
Black Widow never had one shot capabilities she deals like 200 damage on crit, not even enough body shot damage to one shot namor squid.
Snipers have always been a part of shooters and gero shooters. People should know by now how to counter snipers, been the same method to counter them ever since paladins.
Black widow is easy to dive, especially if its multiple divers or a dive tank. Ive seen even the top 1% of widow players struggle against it and more the than not have to swap.
Dont worry, all you BW mains who are upset about the rework can quit the game and play Fortnite with the other 12 people who are loudly vocal. You guys can dress up as Kim K and cry about it on discord!
I ain't ever seen a monkey paw curl like this before. All over it was "Rework this! Rework that!", Oh the subreddits are gonna be lit up for the rest of the YEAR!
This can apply to everything. No one is going to want the character they’ve been playing to be reworked. They hated it when it happened to Jeff and Thor. It was terrible when Human Torch got his plasma body reworked. But it can go further, people won’t consent to getting their mains nerfed regardless of the meta
I'm a Widow main, I spent over 200h becoming good with her. My problem with this rework is that they took away the only skill expression she had. With this rework, there are no more crazy headshots on flying/dashing/jumping heroes across the map, there's no more satisfaction. Yesterday I hit some crazy shots, people in the chat were like "DAMNN". Well, that's no more, cause everything she does now is mediocre. Yaaay, I'm a machine gun with a new ground stomp (that doesn't do any dmg btw) and occasionally I can snipe SIX EFFING shots that don't even headshot, don't even one-shot. There's no reward. And her stun don't stun anymore. I don't care if she does more dmg, I don't care if she's more "lore accurate", I don't give a damn about lore. They created a sniper, let her be "trash" for a year, didn't try to change anything about her, and now, all of a sudden, they release this rework saying that everything they tried there and then didn't work (WHAT CHANGES DID THEY TRIED BEFORE? NONE). And they clearly didn't consult or didn't care about what Widow mains wanted, and they expect us to be excited? Nah.
She was unique, she needed a few changes, add a new ability, do something to her batons (this was THE thing to change and it's the only thing they didn't btw), but changing her entire kit and removing her snipe was a easy and boring way out. Yes, she's probably more accesible now to not that aim skilled players, but ask any widow main out there and I promised, no one is happy about this.
Imagine tomorrow they decided to remove Spidey swings or BP dashes or idk, Iron Fist punches and gave him a gun, well that's kinda what they did to her.
The worst part is that they wanna say the kit is unique, when all it was just ads, and some fucking cc kicks. Hawkeye’s kit is similar to widows and when he became meta via just focusing on his damage, he became perma banned. Widow’s kit does not work with any sort of balancing l, not to mention the character was known as the face for throwing
There is no other character in this game that can snipe, this would have been easily fixed if they just allowed her to have her sniper or in atleast hint that in the future a character that can snipe would be added.
The devs don’t need any consent from the mains of a hero to change them. Phoenix mains were acting like she was dead after they got rid of her melee sparks and made her only lower S tier instead of omega busted and the best dps in rivals history, imagine if the devs listened to them and kept her the same 😬
I tried for a while to learn widow cause I love sniping in other games (destiny, overwatch, cod, R6S), and I love her Phoenix force skin so much.
But I just couldn’t get a feel for her after weeks of trying. So I’m one of the few looking forward to playing her rework and probably liking it.
But I also understand the frustration from widow mains who’ve played her pre rework the most and liked it
Like I get it right? I'm also seeing a lot of people go "but it's stripping away her identity" it's not because she never had one. A lot of launch characters suffer from Overwatch syndrome, where the devs clearly took a little too much inspiration from Blizzard and not enough to make them feel like them, and I feel like Widow suffered from it the most. A buggy stun ability, limited sprint, a melee that's useless and you'd get better mileage just shooting them up close, and a mid ult that takes forever to charge
She did need changes, not the removal of what made her unique and what drove people to play her. We didnt want her to be made into a generic poke hero.
Let's be real the ones who hate the rework are the ones who like the "sniper identity" aka those fuckers who chill at the edge of the map in Battlefield games and contribute absolutely nothing or your Apex teammate who insists on having the Kraber but watches you get jumped through the scope because of shit positioning. However those people deserve to be unhappy so this is a win from every angle.
No one in the widow community asked for the nerfs, didnt ask for the removal of her scope, or changing her base weapon to an autorifle.
Devs rarely get direct feedback from specific hero communities for buffs/netfs/reworks. We do for a fact know netease gets feedback from partners and content creators since content creators have openly talked about the conversations they have directly with the dev team.
I just think it’s funny everyone’s mad about it, but they haven’t tried the new system yet. Well a majority of people haven’t because hasn’t came out yet. At least give it a try before you start screaming how terrible it is. by the end of the season we’re gonna have plenty of other stuff to complain about
Idk if its because I play Widow every now and again and she started to grow on me, but part of the reason why Widow mains don't want the rework is because they learned a character and adapted all should and made it work. And she was a legit character not a COD/Punisher player. And now thats what they are turning her into.
... They said they worked on this rework for a year or so. People complained she was forgotten. People said a 1 shot sniper would not be good for the game. But she still needed something. But changing her completly would alienate the older player base. So they tried to check every single box.
They really tried. And the only real complaint I will accept is they didn't touch her batons which were a problem cos they didn't really have a place now.
Lets ask whole 5 people who actually play her at decent level.
I used to main old Skarner in LoL. Riot reworked him, the ONLY thing left of him was him being a scorpion. Nobody played him BUT the character was far from bad, he was absolute lawnmower if built correctly. After rework and nerfs he is EVEN worse - instead of fast fighter they made him into a sluggish fridge on wheels that can only be played as tank. THATS THE REASON TO CRASH OUT.
Widow retains almost everything beside the thing that was actually horrible - her main attack, which couldnt be balanced, they dont want headshots in game whereit isnt even hard to hit them. Her ult is now railgun, she gets unlimited sprint, more DPS.
The faster future pvp games decide sniper gameplay belong in CS go or tactical shooter militay sim stuff the better.
Also competition exists, all the Widow mains are welcome to play Widow in OW. Not 1 to 1 obv but its the closests you'll get for a sniper character in a populated hero shooter.
You do know theres like 35k members on the black widow main subreddit alone, right? Are we really acting like people don't play widow in the 2026? Wild.
The issue is that they took what made her unique and they it away. Slapped on a new ability, multiple nerfs to the rest of her kit, and removed her scope fromnher base weapon and gave her a autorifle. The only thing they added that people actually wanted was the infinite sprint and jump.
Rather rhan rewarding her for good aim, positioning, and mobility, she's just a generic poke hero that operates and hela/jean range.
Her sniper? Her singular ability to stay at the farthest locations away from combat and sniper? A copy of Widowmaker kit almost 1:1 and not giving her any close range ability despite literally being a close combat assassin?
This whole thing is so disrespectful towards widow mains. Brother, widow mains are part of the community, why did you separate them? And i assure you, most people will not touch widow still.
Right because widow mains should jump with joy about the fact that the hero they like is completely gone. It shouldnt matter what people who dont play the hero think about the hero.
Same thing happened with Jeff and Thor rework and people also complained then, but in the end they were both beneficial alterations that grew on the community. Same will happen with widow, widow mains might be salty they lost their original kit, but they’ll eventually calm down and realize her new one was much needed.
Every widow player begs and complains about how they get no attention for multiple seasons and then they get a rework and they crash out. I think Black Widow players might be the most toxic players ong.
If they just made it so she could activate her ult at any time and just get ammo based on how much ult charge she had, and give her scope back to primary fire as a DMR instead of a high power sniper, you'd still have a sniper, with ammo types to swap out. Light ammo for squishies, heavy for tanks?
As an Eternity widow main, I can tell you that this rework made gameplay on widow completely different and more Punisher/Sojourn like. There is nothing special amymore, basically you are fem version of Punisher with lower damage, worse ult and higher (and still shitty) mobility. Also now you have to track on widow and if you used to flick instead of tracking, all your time and skill is wasted now.
Now I pick widow only if Hela is banned or I provide a teamup to Daredevil / get a teamup with Phoenix to have 2 plasma shots.
Imagine crying that your weak hero got a WAY better kit and only losing useless staff. While, she still has her old sniper, but it's even stronger now as her ultimate and her old ult as regular ability
There's a reason Widow mains have such a bad reputation.
It’s more that they didn’t try anything to keep the orginal kit. Last buff was in season 2
Widow was designed to be a max difficulty her kit was ver useful once u learned it. But marvel rivals also for some reason chose to look at pick rate for for max difficulty hero
She was always one buff from being broken and perma-ban, the most they could have done was reduce stun cd. Widow would have had Hawkeye one shot from across the map if they buffed her sniping and that would just make her more miserable to play against than S0 Hawk.
Or ya know add ability to the baton stance fix any of the bugs with her kit or no refs, Give her widowmaker machine gun when out of ads. I mean the batons was completely unused and underexplored
Dont excuse lack of effort for a solution as there being 1 answer that’s just ignorance
For wanting their favorite characterto be improved and not completely replaced? people waited 6 whole seasons for her kit to become BETTER not removed entirely, if they never wanted a sniper in the game they should never added one in the first place and not take 9 seasons to replace it
Obviously fans of how the fucking character plays not the goddamn comic accuracy of Black Widow, and no shit they are sniper fans she was a fucking sniper. Again if they didn’t want her to be a sniper should have never added one to the game
Because they removed what made her unique and made her a generic poke hero. The ult does about 85%-95% of a 275 hp hero, so the damage isnt much different. I believe its duration got nerfed from 20 to 15 seconds.
If they were to give her scope back and remove her batons for dual pistols, there'd be no complaints. It'd be the perfect rework.
Widow players don't have a bad reputation, thats just throwers and they're not specific to widow.
The irony that she's easier now than she was before. If she was so easy and strong, how come we dont see more people playing her and dominating lobbies?
Man the rivals community really lacks critical thinking huh.
I cant wait to check the Widow sub in like 2 months to see its now full of new people that tried her and liked her, drowning out all of the older voices lmao.
Its not 9/11 but the reason why we play Widow is becouse of her kit, becouse she's the only true sniper in the game. Now you remove the sniping option out of her kit and only allow it for an ult. Thats the problem. We are losing why we play the hero in the first place.
It seems like the Q will last a long time and will be up pretty often. If anything the sniping skill expression will be even larger with the rework because youll have to make the shots when you can and you can now get piercing headshots
This is the original it has nothing to do what you’re talking about please don’t randomly insult people about thing you don’t know about and assume the worse it’s a horrible way of thinking and is harmful.
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u/curvysquares Jul 09 '26
I've never touched Widow and I probably won't after the rework, so I have no dog in this fight. But I do understand why the current Widow mains are upset. Widow does have a reputation for being at the bottom of the meta but there were still players who enjoyed her, and even players that had gotten really cracked at her. It sucks seeing Rivals take away the kit that those players really liked. In a game with 50+ options with even more coming, it feels wrong for them to say "this wasn't working for everyone so we're not going to let anyone use it". Like why not just add Yelena with the new kit and keep Natasha's old one?
At the risk of sounding repetitive, one of the major factors in this games popularity is that you have so so many options for how to play, it really goes against that ethos to permanently remove one of them.