I don't think it can be realistically understated how abjectly worthless Widowmaker is now on consoles. She's literally one of the most useless characters right now. Torbjorn is more useful than her.
I am not a great player by any means, but I have my moments. When I play Widowmaker well, I still feel laughably limited in my contribution. The most I can say is that when I hit someone, I do a fair amount of damage, instant kill if it's a headhshot. But hitting enemies is REALLY REALLY hard as Widowwmaker. At a distance, at an elevated angle, they're all tiny dots. And they have SO many recovery options. They can get out of my line of sight, pick up a health pack, self heal, have a healer heal them, use an ability to block my shots. The worst is that so many characters can outgun her though. Like, Widowmaker should theoretically be a counter to Pharah, but because she's so difficult to hit, AND that pharah's missiles can fuck with your positioning, a pharah will win out most times. A soldier can just lightly shoot in my general direction while strafing a bit while I have to line up my sight. A genji or McCree can headshot her from a distance if they are outside her narrow field of vision. The number of counters she has are beyond count.
Now, you might be thinking that all snipers suck in this game. But this isn't the case. Hanzo is an objectively worse sniper, but he still is super useful as a mid-long range fighter, either by spamming arrows so his allies who are closer might get an easier kill, or just being a really high damaging midrange fighter. His scattershot can take out many characters instantly. His sonar Arrows are what Widow's Ult is, which is just insulting. Then there's Ana. Her rifle can shoot faster. She has the sleeping dart and the grenade trick. She can be a great asset if the player in question knows how to play her right. Again, maybe not even as a sniper, but a back line fighter that is healing and hurting and putting to sleep and nanoboosting.
Compare that to Widow's tool kit. Her sniper rifle is the best in the game, but it's hampered by the fact that sniping is really difficult to do. Characters taht are speedy are nigh impossible to hit and characters who are large and slow can tank your shots. She can use her grapple once every 12 seconds, so she doesn't have much in the way of mobility. She has a poisonous mine she can set, that definitely helps but can't kill anyone by itself, and she can only plant one in a 15 second span. This mine is impractical to use in the heat of combat itself, since after fired, it takes a bit to set itself up, before proximity can affect it. Her main firing mode, an assault rifle, isn't worthless, but it's on the weaker side of DPS. And her ult is completely passive. Wall Hacks help, but not to the extent that they should. I would argue they primarily benefit her teammates rather than herself, because even with wallhacks, aiming is goddamn hard.
She needs a boost, and I don't think just getting her 150 body shot damage is enough. She needs to be more mobile by shortening her CD on her grapple or more HP, because anyone who merely knows her position has an extreme advantage over her. She needs her mine to be more usable. Either do more damage or let her set up two of them. And her ult needs to have some kind of damage benefit. Hanzo can unlease the dragons, Ana can supercharge an ally....Let Widow make her headshots easier.
At this point, it's not a matter of 'git gud'. If the only way to be a good Widowmaker is to get headshots with nonstop frequency, then that's just not going to work.
