Willow

Willow is one of the few throwers that don’t primarily play passively. There is no lingering map effect to her projectiles - similar to Dynamike - but the shots land faster the closer you aim. This allows her to capitalize on her good matchups especially well at the start of the match, where you can easily rush into positions that other throwers have to slowly creep up into. The trade-off is that her main attack and super are notoriously difficult to consistently hit. The super gives her a tool that can simply be held to prevent assassins and tanks from approaching directly, as she could then quickly turn fights into a 3v2.

Since you want to avoid longer range matchups (without properly walled areas), she primarily excels in close-midrange control, evident in the gamemodes below. She is not a substitute for the extra long range throwers that dominate Bounty and Knockout!

Brawl Ball - Willow is an aggro thrower, meaning she excels at putting pressure at the enemy while going up the map. This is especially useful in Brawl Ball, where the core objective is to get to the enemy’s side of the map and score. Simply having her super gives a lot of map pressure against tanks, assassins and choke points.

Hot Zone - In condensed maps, throwers excel at keeping control of the zone. While Willow doesn’t have as much area denial as the others, her super and gadgets give enough flexibility to deal with threats that the other throwers generally cannot fight.

Paint Brawl - With the mode being a mix of Hot Zone and Brawl Ball, it’s no surprise Willow is a really strong choice in Paintbrawl, being able to both chase after enemies, defend the ball and - most importantly - stay alive. Her super is extraordinarily useful there as well, being able to pass the ball back into safety in the case of a slip up.

Gem Grab - Willow’s aggressive playstyle excels at controlling chokepoints and with Gem Grab having a static objective, it’s no wonder that she absolutely locks down lanes on closed maps.

Speed (Effective): Necessary to capitalize on her early aggressive playstyle and sneak in supers later into the game.

Health (Ineffective): Willow’s counters primarily burst her down, so Health gear doesn’t help unless fighting other throwers.

Damage (Effective): Helps force 2/3 shot interactions alongside Spellbound.

Vision (Ineffective): Not necessary, as your shots already have poison to reveal opponents.

Shield (Situational): Helps prevent a few kill interactions, but isn’t as powerful as the other gears.

Gadget Charge (Situational): Helps when you expect longer matches.

Enemies under the effect of Willow’s mindcontrol cannot score a goal in Brawl Ball, as they are - temporarily - members of your team. You can utilize this to save an otherwise undefendable goal. This also works the other way around - you can score a goal with a hexed enemy (Core reason for Obsession being a must-use in Brawl Ball!). This works in Paintbrawl as well, though not in Hot Zone. Weird.

At ~1.67 tiles max, spamming autoaim on Willow’s super allows you to use the hexed enemy’s super as well. According to The Testing Team, the direction it goes is in based on True Blue and True Red, but it might not be fully consistent in that (or in it’s possibility to be executed). This is useful, but also VERY glitchy on some brawlers - beware!

Your super counts as a Special, the same way Cordelius’s and Charlie’s does. This means it effectively bypasses anti-stuns, such as the Sick Beats modifier or Frank’s Active Noise Cancelling Gadget. This also means that you can interrupt long-execution attacks with it, such as any windup (Bibi, Shade, Frank etc.), any dash-like attack (Carl’s Hook Gadget, Buzz’s super) or simply any long-lasting one (Clancy’s super etc.)

HUGE shoutout to The Testing Team, which helped us try out every interaction we thought of: Axorouns, Alfateh, potass1um_07 & Fio - wouldn’t be possible otherwise <3

For clarity - A “Steal” refers to a super forced by Willow, one of the advanced mechanics.

Brawlers on Willow’s team that have a slash / windup attack can damage enemies hexed - consider running up to your team’s Bibi or Kenji in order for a guaranteed kill!

Hexed Berry cannot deal damage to himself. Nor can he heal himself. Funny.

Penny’s barrel still takes 100 damage per shot from a hexed Penny.

Hexing Ash while his rats are out destroys all of them almost instantly. Doesn’t apply to stolen supers!

Leon is still visible to his teammates while hexed, even from a steal.

Melodie gets an extra note for every hit while hexed - 1 for the enemy team, 1 for your team. Notes from a stolen super during her hypercharge count as notes for Willow’s team, somehow.

Stolen pets (Jessie / Pam / Penny’s turrets, Mr. P’s porters, Lawrie) work for Willow’s team - Yes, Larry can use Order: Fall Back to swap positions with that Lawrie. It’s just as funny as you think.

It’s possible to self-kill by stealing a super from a brawler with big projectiles (Griff, Hank etc.), although this isn’t consistent and might not even work at all.

Bo’s tripwire Gadget doesn’t deal damage from hexed mines - both teams get stunned though. Quirky.

Belle’s and Otis’s traps cannot be activated by a hexed enemy.

R-T can self-kill (in 3 shots!) when hexed in the split form, only the head takes damage from your attacks though.

Stealing Kit’s super makes him attach to Willow’s teammate, effectively functioning as off-super attack wise, but moving like attached to a teammate. Instantly recharges his super as well - Not recommended!

Frankly, listing every single Willow interaction is impossible, as the frequency at which they change, as well as the amount of them, makes it a maintenance nightmare. Perhaps consider looking up what changed online whenever an update drops?

Willow, being an aggro thrower, doesn’t exactly play into clear cut synergies. She does, however, benefit a ton from her teammates covering up for the lack of close-range self defence; Tank counters and long ranges such as Bea are ideal.