Ok, I’ve got about 40 games in with the new widow, about 15 today with the hotfix. Here are my thoughts. Is she better? Yes, with the hotfix she’s much better. The real question tho… is she more fun? I’d say she’s a tweak or two away from that for me. 

She is now a sustained damage character. Along the lines of Moon Knight and Punisher. She’s going to force teams to heal check. If they can’t, they fold. She’s a mid to long range skirmisher, who has some mobility to keep moving and keep laying on the damage. No longer is she an anti-diver, dualist. Most of the match will be you running away shooting, or punishing squishies that are out of position. Most of the games I’ve played has been me hammering the tanks with rapid fire headshots until healer cooldowns are cooked and then I move to pressuring the healers / DPS. 

I suspect this is why they removed her kick stun. Given she is now a very heavy poke with high sustained damage, they wanted her weak to the classic counter to that architype: Dive. 

With the recent release of cyclops and his amazing get out of jail free card of being able to push, slow and damage with his anti dive tech, I would love to see them restore the kick to its previous version. I think it would make her a solid A duelist. It would also unlock her slam into kick into kill for dive assassinations and play making. 

Here’s a few tips I’ve learned so far:

Use Phoenix team up. It’s just better. The right click being instant lets you do flick shots for kills or finishers similar to cyclops.

Jump in the air when you reload. You will keep your speed and momentum. You can take this time to displace and fall back.

Try and skirmish around health packs. You can use your widow slam similar to a spidy grapple to find health packs and stay in the fight. 

When not shooting tanks and larger targets, switch from full auto to click firing. Think DMR in other games. Constant pressure to a back line and send support scrambling with just one or two hits to them. 

Her ult is.. meh. It’s good when people line up and push through choke. Can lay some heavy damage down. You can get a little cheeky with it and try and take out healers from an off angle… but if found it much more effective to send down main and just cause massive collateral damage as they rip through massed targets. 

This one hurts but… you are no longer anti dive. Your anti dive is pure hitscan and landing shots on diving targets, your kick is good for interrupting things like ultimates or abilities, but it will just get you killed. I honestly have not found a great use for it other than trying to finish people that are low when you need to reload. Hopefully they’ll address this in future patches. 

In summary I think I see what they were going for, but definitely removed her identity. I know in the dev talk they said they didn’t want to alienate old widow players, but they definitely did. She is a radically different hero. People that enjoyed old widow likely will dislike the new widow. 

My thoughts after 40 matches.