DISCLAIMER!!!
All of these opinions are based on a purely QM perspective. Many of you have made points saying that other talents in given tiers are more viable in HL. This is absolutely correct and in an HL environment much of what I’m saying doesn’t apply. All that said, QM is the most widely played game type and the vast majority of the remaining community doesn’t bother with HL which is why I’m making these arguments.
Now on to the original post…
Aloha!
Tracer lover/main/one-trick checking in!
I’m certainly not the best Tracer out there and a lot of this will be me just vomiting ideas, but I’m hoping this will start an honest discussion on the state of our beloved, time-traveling little nuisance. Some of you may disagree with how I approach playing Tracer or the changes I’m suggesting. If so, then great! Please let me know so we can hash it all out!
(Side note: I’m halfway through and this is already an extremely long post so if you aren’t interested in reading about Tracer for half an hour feel free to click away)
Tracer is a very tough hero to balance. Her kit gives her incredible mobility and surprising burst damage - not to mention she’s the only hero in the game with an ult at level 1. Because of all this, Tracer has received nothing but nerfs since her release (with the exception of one or two patches at the most) and it seems as though Blizzard’s philosophy on balancing her has been “She can pull off some crazy moves but 90% of the roster can 100-0 her”. 90% may be hyperbolic, but you get the picture.
Nobody can deny that when Tracer was released she was extremely oppressive and could get away with just about anything without much recourse, but today she’s hardly seen and is most certainly not meta because of an incredibly high skill floor and an exorbitant amount of counters (again, because everyone can kill her almost instantly). A lot of this is due to an extremely cookie-cutter talent build and having HALF of Qhira’s health pool without any good CC or sustained damage…but this is not a QQ Qhira post.
Bear in mind, I’m not asking for Tracer to receive an across the board buff. I do, however, believe most all of her talent tiers have one “must pick” with the other two either absolute trash or simply not as competitive.
I’m going to go through Tracer’s talent choices one-by-one to explain why I do or do not like them. I don’t have fixes to every one of these but I’m hoping the community can come up with some good ideas as well.
Level 1
Pulse Strike: The only talent at level one. I like how it works and in it’s current state I think it’s just fine.
Slipstream: This used to be the best choice back when it reduced Recall’s CD in addition to the extended rewind time and Spacial Echo gave 2 Blinks on every Recall. In it’s current state, the 1 second can be lifesaving at times, but it can also put you in a place you REALLY don’t want to be so without the CDR it’s not nearly as competitive as Pulse Strike.
An interesting idea I had was to add a functionality to Slipstream: It would be neat if instead this talent gave Tracer a real-time visual track of where she would recall to at any given moment (think Ekko from LoL) so no matter what, you know where you’ll be taken before you Recall. I’m not sure if this alone would make it competitive with Pulse Strike so maybe keep the increased rewind time of 1 second as well.
Tracer Rounds: This was always a bad talent but there was a time when it was halfway-decent against stealth heroes. Today the ONLY two uses for this talent are chasing heroes into the fog of war by yourself (which is almost always a bad idea) or those rare moments when an enemy is at extremely low health, running back through their Fort Gate to safety, and you want an extra half second to be able to dive under towers and shoot them past the wall to secure a kill. However, with Tracer’s HP pool you CANNOT EVER take tower shots so the use for this talent is quite literally 0 especially when compared to the other two available talents.
When it comes to Tracer Rounds all I can say is get rid of it. I don’t really know what it could be replaced with aside from swapping an existing talent to this teir (maybe Ricochet).
Level 4
Parting Gift: Has always been the best talent in the tier. With a surprising amount of base damage, this talents ability to secure kills even without an Ult available is incredible. Only drawback is knowing how to use it. Most Tracers miss and therefore don’t pick it, but I’m telling you this talent is golden.
Is That a Health Pack?!: Rarely a good pick. Doesn’t help you in fights, and only gets benefit when you’re sitting around waiting for your HP to tick back up once you find a globe or your fountain has come off cool-down. You lose a lot of damage and kill-securing by taking this talent so unless the enemy has infinite poke and you desperately need some extra healing, you can almost always ignore this talent.
Change Is That a Health Pack?! to a separate new ability that gives Tracer a small heal, like Gul’Dan’s Healthstone. It doesn’t have to be much, just enough to run in, get a kill and not die because Kael’Thas used one W on you.
Untouchable: The ultimate bait talent. You might think this will net you more damage than Parting Gift but let me throw you some knowledge: Tracer’s basic attacks are not supposed to be your primary source of damage. They help whittle the enemy down but the more time you spend shooting, the longer you are in the middle of the enemy team, therefore giving them more chances to CC and kill you. Tracer’s whole philosophy is get in, do some damage, and get the hell outta dodge before anybody knows what happened. Basic attack modifiers on Tracer are relatively useless and because she has so little HP you simply cannot go into any match expecting 0 deaths; and when you die, this is a dead talent. Parting Gift on the other hand, has constant value.
At first, I wasn’t sure what to do about this talent but after thinking about it I have an idea. Make Untouchable work like Murky’s Livin’ the Dream where instead of requiring kills to gain stacks, you just have to survive for X amount of time and then you lose the stacks on death. I know it doesn’t sound to creative to copy-paste a talent from one hero to another, but Untouchable has to be changed.
Level 7
Jumper: I don’t really like this talent. I’m not saying it’s terrible but here’s my thinking: 4 blinks gives you the ability to dive farther to the back line of the enemy to secure a kill, but this is extremely risky because once you use those 4 blinks you’re on a hard cool down and all you can pray for is Recall taking you away from the enemy and not right in front of Butcher. I’ve found that the 3 to 4 blinks is about equal to the distance between the enemies front line to back line and if you blink past the front line and get a kill, Recall takes you right to the front of the enemy team. Now there are plenty times when you are coming in from the side or even behind the enemy but I still feel this talent is inferior.
I don’t wanna say get rid of this talent, but I honestly don’t know what could be done to make it better. Even if you manage your blinks and only use 2 or 3 to dive in, Spatial Echo still provides more value.
Bullet Time: Honestly not that bad but Spacial Echo is usually the better pick. The only time you can justify picking this talent is in HL or when the enemy has a beefy team and your team has 0 kills. In a match where you just can’t kill anyone this will provide you more value than Spacial Echo…sometimes
In QM it’s extremely rare to not get at least one kill in every team fight and because of that, this talent falls behind. I like the idea behind it but I think the CDR needs to be raised to perhaps 0.18 or even 0.22 seconds per shot instead of 0.15
Spacial Echo: This talent used to be BUSTED. For those of you who don’t know, Spacial Echo gave you 2 blinks every single time you used Recall. So you didn’t even have to get a kill if you dove straight behind the enemy and did some damage. Just Recall then blink away twice and you could cover an absurd amount of ground. In its current state, it’s still the best talent in the tier. Especially in those moments where everyone on the enemy team is low and running for their life. Tracer can 1v5 just by killing one, get two blinks, kill the next, get two blinks, etc., etc.
I really like the changes this talent saw. It took away pretty much all of Tracer’s extremely forgivable game play and required you to only dive if you knew you could get the kill instead of every time Recall was off cool down. I have a theory that this change was planned before Tracer came out and only existed in its original state to get people to buy her.
Level 10
Sticky Bomb: The only use for Pulse Bomb is to secure kills and with its long window between sticking a target and the bomb exploding, Sticky Bomb has very little use because it doesn’t add to the abilities core function and it’s very rare that the slow will hit anyone but the primary target; and if Pulse Bomb is what’s supposed to get the kill, then why slow a dead person.
Remove the the slow and have this talent also decrease the time Pulse Bomb takes to explode. This would actually make Tracer’s level 20 talents more competitive with each other as well.
Quantum Spike: Even after the nerf from 10% to 7% bonus HP damage, this is still the top pick of the tier…please don’t nerf it again.
Pulse Rounds: This talent is usually ignored just because the damage from Quantum Spike plays to Tracer’s strengths so incredibly well. Additionally, Pulse Strike being the only viable talent at level 1 makes this less of a necessary pick because you shouldn’t really be starved for Pulse Bombs. One mistake I see Tracers constantly make is not clearing creep waves or damaging structures to gain ultimate charge in between fights. I never take this talent because I’m always damaging SOMETHING be it a hero, creep, or structure and I never find myself needing more Pulse Bombs. I had a professional player (can’t remember his name) tell me that taking this talent along with Pulse Strike enables him to get off 2 Pulse Bombs per team fight. At first that seemed pretty great but then I realized that with this talent you NEED 2 Pulse Bombs to secure 1 kill because it really doesn’t do that much damage without Quantum Spike. Yes, it will do more OVERALL damage but Tracer is a kill secure hero who’s focus is on bursting the enemy down from 50% HP, not extended fights where you have the time to get off 2 Pulse Bombs.
The range from this talent certainly is nice at times but not it’s enough to justify taking it. I may be wrong but expanding the charge rate increase to include creeps and structures could make this talent much more viable.
Level 13
Bullet Spray: If you’ve played enough Tracer, you may have noticed that without this talent Tracer must complete the animation of bringing her arm up, and then slamming it down for the damage from Melee to go through. This means after pressing W, you must remain very close to your target about one whole second longer before you can leave them a Parting Gift and secure a kill, leaving you vulnerable. A secret bonus to this talent is that Melee’s damage becomes instant. This talent synergizes incredibly well with one of Tracer’s level 20 talents while also giving her wave clear that is actually passable.
I hate to say it but this talent could actually be nerfed and it would still perform well. The bonus range on Melee isn’t really why people take it, it’s the instant damage and the elimination of getting body blocked from the target you actually want to Melee.
Ricochet: Unpredictable RNG damage and kind of forces you into a play style where you are spending more time spamming bullets at a safe distance than disrupting the enemy back line. Plus it no longer can hit stealth heroes while they are stealthed. Not a very good talent in its current state because of it’s unreliability and the loss of what you get out of Bullet Spray.
I’ve revised some of my opinions on this talent where I believe just a few tweaks could make it viable. You can keep the 50% RNG on bounces but slightly increase the range that bullets can bounce while also allowing them to bounce to a 3rd target. I still think Bullet Spray would be the better pick in most matches but at least with these changes Ricochet has more opportunities to be useful.
Leeching Rounds: Awful talent in my opinion. Very low healing without a Tassadar and you have to shoot heroes for an extended period of time to get any real benefit and in that time Kael’Thas has already clicked on you with one W and now you have less HP than you started with. This does have synergy with Untouchable (but we know why you shouldn’t take that) and her 16 talents but the ONLY time you take this talent is if you are partied up with a Tassadar in voice chat and every time you go in he throws a shield on you. But even then a good enemy team will know to focus you when you go in with that shield, making this a very risky tactic. On top of that, if you are going for the 100-0 burst at level 20 (which you should) then you HAVE to take Bullet Spray.
This talent has almost no use in team fights so let Tracer heal from creeps and this would be an excellent talent for those QM games with no healer. Doing this and replacing Tracer Rounds with Ricochet at level one would also make nice synergy if the bounced AAs stack the healing…but maybe only do that for creeps so Tracer can’t bounce AAs on multiple heroes and get her full HP back on every clip lol.
Level 16
Sleight of Hand: This talent goes very well with Bullet Time and if you’re in one of those low kill-count matches you can certainly justify taking it.
I don’t necessarily think this talent needs to be changed but there is one reason in particular that I always take Locked and Loaded instead so if you REALLY want to change this talent, give it an added bonus of 25% increased shooting speed while reducing reload speed increase to 25% as well. This would make it work even better with Bullet Time.
Focus Fire: This is the pleb talent. People who want extra damage but suck at Locked and Loaded take this. Just don’t do it.
Change this talent so your bullets do either gradually increasing or gradually decreasing damage instead of requiring you to unload a whole clip on one hero to get any benefit at all.
Locked and Loaded: This. Talent. Is. Fire. Ok, so I use a Logitech G600 mouse which is an MMO mouse with 12 buttons under my thumb. When I play Tracer I bind D to 1 because my thumb never has to move to do an active reload, meaning 99% of the time I get value from this talent with half of that last 1% being a miss due to lag or weird moments where it doesn’t work in the middle of a Recall (usually it does) and the other half me just derping out. If you don’t use a mouse with a button under your thumb then this talent might not be right for you. You NEVER want to take your finger off of any of your QWER abilities simply because Tracer is the fastest-paced hero in the game and fractions of a second matter. If you have to move your finger from E to D and back to E, that short amount of time could kill you. No changes needed to this talent, it’s got great value when you have the skill.
Level 20
Get Stuffed!: The 100-0 talent. If you have Parting Gift, Bullet Spray, Quantum Spike, Locked and Loaded, and this talent, you can run up to any Assassin (aside from Qhira), Healer, Support, and even some Bruisers, unload a full 40% increased damage clip, blink in front of them, instantly R-W-E and they are dead. Every single time. I love diving a cocky Lucio who’s been saving Sound Barrier for my bombs all match and just blowing him away in under 1 second. You gotta be fast to use this right, but if you practice enough you can dominate the late game.
A question for anyone who knows: I could be wrong but taking this talent feels like it makes a Pulse Bomb into Melee do increased damage. Even after almost 700 games as Tracer I honestly haven’t paid enough attention early in the game but at level 16-19 I don’t feel like I could 100-0 a target with the same combo until I take Get Stuffed!
Total Recall: Used to be great, now it sucks. If you take this your Recall will be on a 38 second cool down and that is just absurd. If you’re new to Tracer and find yourself ending with more than 3 or 4 deaths per match this might help you out but Tracer’s HP is so low you gotta Recall fast or you will be dead before you get the chance to use this talent.
If I remember correctly, there was a time when Slipstream still gave a CDR on your E and this talent also increased the cool down of E giving your Recall about a 32 to 34 second cool down (correct me if I’m wrong there). This was…okay. Originally, this had no cool down increase so it was busted because Tracer had plenty of hp, and could reset her health bar every 24 or so seconds. With Recall now on a 30 second cool down and no talent to reduce that, this 8 second increase is unforgivable and should be reduced to at least a 3 or 4 second increased cool down.
Composition B: Another dead talent. Compared to even Total Recall in it’s current state this is useless. Tracer is not an AoE damage hero. All of her focus should be on singling out one target so even if the whole enemy team is caught in a Mosh Pit, you’re better off getting Get Stuffed! because it will guarantee at least one kill.
I think adding some of the changes I suggested by giving Tracer a bit more AoE damage and the ability to reduce the explosion time on Pulse Bomb at level 10, this could be a great talent.
So that’s it! What I want everyone to take away from my post is this: With the one minor exception mentioned earlier, there is only one talent build that makes Tracer remotely viable. This obviously a problem and all I’m trying to do is come up with ways to widen her talent options without bringing Tracer back to the days of 30-0 K/D with 100k hero damage matches.
I had a few other ideas but this post is already long enough and right now I just want to see if any blue posters decide to respond.
Thank you to everyone who got this far in reading my incredibly long-winded rant on Tracer and her current state. Hopefully this can start up enough conversation to get a developer interested in making some much-needed changes to Tracer…just…please…don’t nerf her again.
Much love,
Phailbot
