welcome-banner
All News
article-headline
Overwatch9 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Will Widowmaker be an Overwatch eSports staple?


Her ultimate ability, Infra-Sight, is something gets orders of magnitude more powerful as player skill increases. Will one team with "wall hacks" have a huge advantage over the other?

If you aren't familiar with Widowmaker's abilities, check them out below. Pay special attention to that Ultimate ability at 59 seconds:

Crazy right? What isn't specified in that trailer is that all allies also benefit from the Infra-sight buff. Meaning that once Widowmaker sees your every move, so do 5 of her allies:

Infra-sight:
Widowmaker’s recon visor allows her to see the heat signatures of her targets through walls and objects for a moderate amount of time. This enhanced vision is shared with her allies.

Having played Overwatch my self for a sizeable amount of time over the course of multiple days (Thanks to press allocations at last years BlizzCon, I remember what it's like playing against a skilled Widowmaker. True to her defensive nature, some hallways or corridors become death pits once Widowmaker finds decent high ground, and once her Infra-sight becomes active, it becomes very difficult to stay alive. You die and it feels like you are facing a god; how on earth did I die so quickly after turning the corner for only half a second?

Than you see the death re-cap and you have an "oh" moment. "Oh", you think to yourself. "She saw my every move and tracked my head as I walked in a straight line for 4 seconds, that makes sense"

But when I played, it wasn't in a cohesive eSports environment. There wasn't 6 on 6 people who had organized, trained, and developed strategies for winning. It was a bunch of reporters and media types with limited FPS background, with 2-3 developers each on our respective teams to show us the game and lead us newbies. The skilled Widowmaker developer didn't have a team of 5 people to capitalize on his Infra-sight, but sometime in the future, eSports hopefuls will.

And when that happens, I predict Widowmaker will be a huge part of competitive play. When the game is still young and it's limits haven't truly been pushed, perfect vision will be the most fundamental, easy to capitalize on ultimate ability in the game. Counter play is possible, but I don't think it will be perfected early in the games scene. The threat of Infra-sight and the ease in which a team can obtain it will always trump the team who plans on playing around it.

Threats are always more important than answers in eSports-a threat without an answer wins the game, and an answer without threat does nothing. 

It's not like counterplay is impossible, just improbable. If it's possible to notice when Widowmaker activates the ability, a team can just fall back and stay behind walls until it's over. You may give up some ground but it's better than getting team wiped. However, this assumes the Widowmaker uses it during a neutral moment in the game, and not in the middle of combat (or right before it is about to happen).

The latter is the ideal time to Infra-sight as once the fight already started, it becomes much harder to retreat when the enemy sees your every move.

Check out the 1:35 mark of the following video:


Very cool. A sniper's dream. Wasn't isn't shown though, is the 5 other heroes that made similar plays after benefiting from perfect vision them selves. Yikes.

Ultimately, I think this ability is awesome and I am glad it is in the game, but, with what I know about the current build (and it's only slightly more than everyone else who is in the same boat of incredible anticipation) I don't see a team that is playing for money ever doing so without Widowmaker.

Follow us @GosuOverwatch for more eSports news.



More on GosuGamers Overwatch:

All Esports

Entertainment

GosuBattles

Account