No one saw this thread coming. Anyways incoming knowledge dump with a lot of videos, so if it doesn’t load (especially for mobile users), sorry.
Introduction
Tracer is a range assassin who excels at kiting, diving and harassing backlines by taking many different approaches while making herself hard to kill due to her timed mobility.
What makes Tracer special at least when she was released, is that she can attack while moving which allows you to transform you into a hard counter against Melee heroes who lack abilities to reach you, the cost? She has 0.5 less range than ranged assassins, meaning if you are a ranged assassin, and she is spewing her pistol at you, then you can do the same and quite a lot more if you are a basic attack ranged assassin.
However because of her special abilities to do a lot of things at once, she has suboptimal DPS in the early game and will struggle A LOT until she starts hitting her power spikes, she can still kill duh, but most of her damage is very low, Pulse Bomb scales completely differently since by level 1 it deals less damage than some basic abilities and only starts contesting a huge amount of them by level 9-10.
Nonetheless, because of this gimmick of attack while moving exist, Tracer can literally body block the enemy to a point they will struggle in reaching where they are running away to which secures more kills. And Blinks turn abilities from dangerous threats to wasting mana and the ability itself. Especially if the said enemy used it directly on Tracer and ONLY her, no one else.
Allies and Enemies
Don’t pick her early in the draft, ever, easily hard countered by generalist picks that have point and click CC or Auto Attackers, normally the comp should be built before she is chosen to harass a certain hero on the other team.
She values healing that is drop and leave, so heroes like Malfurion, Whitemane, Anduin and even Morales to some extent or excellent choices in the comp as they provide good amount of health without putting a lot of effort, just click on her, she will be ok.
Like her being a diver and backline harasser, she’s good with heroes who can do the same and those who can create the initiative for her to follow the opposite is also true in this regard, overall Divers are like her best buddies who can go for a walk to harass the poor healer who was left alone to die, or the mage who literally cannot do a lot against her.
Counters
Alternative title: how 2 tank ur win rate in your guide /s
Sgt. Hammer
Outtrades and out ranges Tracer, very hard to dive due to her knockback and Pulse Bomb is useless against 50 armor, this is very Hammer favored without a team that at least can do something against her.
Jaina
Frost Armor Level 4 makes her very hard to deal with because everytime Tracer attacks all damage she takes from Jaina is buffed while also Tracer is 25% slower, this is also true with Water Elemental. It’s mostly the Frost Armor that counters Tracer more so if Jaina doesn’t get this talent she’s easy to harass.
Because of this talents like Deep Chill level 20 makes it even MORE difficult because you immediately get slowed down by 40%!
And of course her Ice Block a 40 seconds cooldown denies Pulse Bomb making it go to waste if Tracer attempts to dive her specifically into the backline.
Zuljin
Better range and can out trades Tracer with his AA that keeps scaling, Tazdingo makes him difficult to dive upon so make sure its not there to save him, try buying yourself enough time until it runs out to finish him off.
Varian, Valeera, Uther, Brightwing and Diablo
All counters you if you are very impatient with diving relentlessly but they are doable and can played around by playing the main build of AA. They certainly make Melee build difficult to execute though. You have to be more conservative with your positioning and just wait for that signal that allows you to engage such as cooldowns are going out.
Maps
Tracer can be picked on any map, but some she is generally weaker and others quite strong.
Maps like Towers of Doom are her best as she can rotate and flank people in areas that are away from building, and because of its time taking longer than some other maps, you will certainly reach late game to justify the pick because by this point she becomes extremely lethal.
Garden of Terror is also a similar case, the only exception your team need to be good at macro so if your team doesn’t utilize camp timing or even don’t do camps at all correctly she will struggle.
Braxis Holdout lanes are harder to flank as they tend to be shorter than some other maps, but also she literally sucks against the zerg wave, this is where waveclear is very important.
Abilities
Reload
Cooldown: 1 seconds
Tracer can Basic Attack while moving, and after attacking 10 times she needs to reload over 0.75 seconds. Tracer can manually reload early by activating Reload.
Basic Attacks heal Tracer for 10% of the damage dealt.
- Reload is uninterruptable with exception of “Locked and Loaded” which can be denied with a silence/stun.
- Automatically reload when mounting.
- Reload is not reduced by attack speed modifiers.
Effectively you have 5 attacks pre second thanks to the 0.75 seconds, and because of the reload time Tracer is number #1 worst contester to attack speed, heck even Nano Boost is really good at her (melee go brrrr).
Common examples:
- Abathur’s Adrenal Overload (+25% attack speed) doesn’t increase damage dealt by 25% but 14%. Pick Needlespine instead if you are going to hat her a lot as it will result in more damage.
- Morales Stim Drone (+75% attack speed) effectively is a 41% damage increase, not 75%.
Blink
Cooldown: 9 seconds per charge
Dash toward an area. Stores up to 3 charges.
- 0.125 cooldown per cast
The mosquito’s mobility, can be utilized in a lot of ways, from trying to get the finishing hit on a target then recall, to kite abilities and reposition to better spots.
This… is literally no brainer its just a Blink. lmao
Also put this on Quick Cast, I don’t care about the rest in her abilities this one in particular 100% quick cast, no quick cast = no fun
Melee
Cooldown: 8 seconds
Deal 220 damage to a nearby enemy, prioritizing Heroes. Gain 5% Pulse Bomb charge when using Melee against an enemy, and 10% against Heroes.
- Always hits. Cannot target untargetable heroes.
- Stops Tracer from attacking with her AA for a moment of 0.375.
- Breaks the space and time continuum and all laws of physics, this is not a joke this ability is like “bugged” but also not “bugged” I STILL DON’T KNOW OK.
Melee is melee, you slap someone deals damage.
See this example:
See completely NORMAL ability, Melee breaks all laws of the game despite being a straightforward ability itself, so you can technically without even thinkin about it, hit someone from Brazil despite them teleporting across the map, that case is also true if you melee then recall instantly to safety.
Each time you hit someone you get 5%, 10% if a hero was hit.
Recall
Cooldown: 20 seconds
After 1.25 seconds, Tracer returns to the position she was at 2 seconds prior to casting, refilling her ammo and removing all negative status effects from herself.
- Can be casted while rooted.
- Can be buffered. (See below)
A cleanse, and going back to safety? What else can you ask for? For a diver about going in and out to safety, it’s what really completes her to do her job.
One thing I should mention is that Recall can be buffered, meaning if you are about to get CC chained for that sweet sweet kill on you, holding E will allow you to squeeze out of it the moment you are no longer silenced/stunned. So hold that button and pray the enemy is going to cause a leak in the CC chain.
Pulse Bomb
Scale: +6% per level
Fire a short range bomb that can attach to an enemy if it hits them. The bomb explodes after 2 seconds, dealing 298 damage to them and 149 damage to other nearby enemies.
This Ability is slowly charged over time by dealing damage to enemies with Basic Attacks and Melee.
- If it was thrown on the ground and someone was standing on top of it, they take the full damage.
Pulse Bomb deals so little damage that is quite similar to other mages basic ability but unlike others, this has the highest scale in the game, a 6% per level!
Assuming the latter is 4% scale (the default for pretty much the whole game)
By level 10 it deals 534 instead of 441.
By level 20 it deals 957 instead of 652.To put this in a different words, Pulse Bomb doesn’t do a lot in the early game, but becomes a power house in the late game that would change the tide in dealing exceptional damage.
It’s extremely easy to charge this ability, all you had to do is farm minions, do camps and even just fighting in general would prepare this quickly but outside of this, it has no literal cooldown, so if Tracer is doing nothing, that charge meter is frozen which is very bad.
In early game you can focus the siege giant camp to throw your Pulse Bomb and if you did this camp alone, you will have another one ready to be used once the camp is taken.
Builds
= Main Pick
= Optional
= Ver Situational
Main Build
→ Tracer Rounds
→ Pulse Generator
→ Locked and Loaded | Sleight of Hand
→ Pulse Rounds | Any
→ Jumper
→ Ricochet
→ Get Stuffed| Total Recall
AA Build allows Tracer to keep attacking constantly from equal range of any ranged assassin while still keeping her distance in check, this build excels in many different cases, passively deploying damage that hurts not only the front, but the backline thanks to Ricochet. Overall the main Storm League build you should be going for most of the time.
Early Burst and Anti-Armor Build
→ One-Two Punch
→ Pulse Generator
→ Locked and Loaded | Sleight of Hand
→ Pulse Rounds | Any
→ Jumper
→ Heavy Handed
→ Get Stuffed| Total Recall
Allows to give you some early damage and PB charge through Melee. But also allows you to commit to some high burst in the late game thanks to the Armor Reduction that can be applied for a worth of 12 seconds for all damage received on that target!!
Dueling Build
→ One-Two Punch
→ Pulse Generator
→ Locked and Loaded | Sleight of Hand
→ Sticky Bomb| Any
→ Jumper
→ Heavy Handed | Ricochet | Bullet Spray
→ Total Recall | Get Stuffed! | Composition B
QM Match Build.
Similar to the above but this enables for possible and potential different paths depending on who you are dueling, pick your arsenal right!
Extremely threatening if Tracer is playing as a roamer thanks to Sticky Bomb, you win very hard if you apply extreme pressure by going in.
Talents Breakdown
= Highly recommended
= Situational
= Very Situational
= Not recommended
Level 1
- Cooldown per cast: 3 seconds
Gives you a lot of Melee damage and extra layer of DPS by enabling aggressive playstyle, go in, Melee, AA → 3 seconds later, melee again, a lot of damage applied in a short duration. Strong synergy with Heavy Handed. Allows you to charge Pulse Bomb faster!
- First Bomb appears based on where Tracer is look, then a bomb with 60 degree offset around that first bomb.
- Bombs don’t hit an enemy that was already hit by another Bomb (so no Bombs stacking damage x2/x3 and so on).
Helps with short damage fights, I think this talent isn’t really good to justify its picking when Melee does it more directly without risking E missing or as a matter of fact wasting a 20 seconds cooldown for such DPS, really not worth.
My Suggestion? Preserve Recall for important situations! It’s a life saver when used in a defensive matter more than as a damage source.
This talent is really good for a lot of reasons, first of all the reveal quirk looked upon as a counter to stealth, this is VERY false.
From all heroes the only thing does countering is against Samuro and Nova in breaking their illusion or Decoy respectively, but to reveal them out of stealth? Impossible, all passive out of combat Stealth features require a 3 seconds duration which equals Tracer Rounds duration, Nova, Samuro and Valeera have can cleanse revealing effects nullifying this feature through Nova’s Ghost Protocol, Samuro’s Mirror Image & Wind Walk and Valeera’s Vanish.
So why is this recommended? Because its a very strong for the range increase, bush dueling and able to finish squishes who passes the gate, the reveal effect also makes it so that you can see nearby heroes of that revealed target making it a very beneficial intel for your own team.
This talent also makes match ups like Varian the other way around, Varian counters your aggressive burst (which is what Melee does), not your passive sustain DPS.
Extreme synergy with Ricochet as the bounce also reveals targets.
Level 4
Please pretend this tier doesn’t exist, I’m sorry but really this is sad.
Small health pool with an ability based on your current health will not save you from imminent danger, its extremely outshined by anything in this tier, heck Health Pack does more.
Powerful choice every time because it gives a lot of play making potential for many different styles of play, you can get REALLY creative with this ability and use for mobility, burst as a finisher or sustained damage.
Overall, the extra blink makes it you can avoid or not risk using Recall since you can just blink back, if you have Pulse Rounds level 10 you can use the extra range to apply the bomb and then blink to melee to guarantee kills that would otherwise be impossible to get.
) Is That a Health Pack? - Collecting a Regeneration Globe instantly heals Tracer for 10% of her maximum Health and reduces the cooldown of Healing Fountain by 15 seconds.
Drinking from a Healing Fountain instantly heals for 20% of Tracer’s maximum Health.
Out of combat healing, but the main reason to pick this was to abuse a bug that was uh bug fixed, I personally never liked the bug but that’s literally its viability in this tier for its own worth. I would argue the older version in which it increased 100% all healing sources from Regen Globe and Fountains is far better than the current functionality. But alas, this talent just doesn’t do anything impressive that is worth picking for in combat reasons.
I would say though, this could be a really good ARAM talent or in a no healer comp (though this one can still be doable with Pulse Generator).
Level 7
- Damage increase is ~24% not 20%.
- Effective attack speed goes from 5 → 6.4 per second
Recommended for beginners to try this one out, the cost is less damage, but more Pulse Bomb which translates to more synergy with her level 4 Pulse Generator.
- Multiplicative damage
- Triggers when the 10 bullets are hit in the row on the same enemy, not when the last bullet is depleted, allowing Chrono Trigger to effect this talent to trigger multiple times.
The only case scenario this talent out competes Locked and Loaded is when you consider Untouchable 13 when its fully stacked, will deal a little bit more damage than when combined with Locked and Loaded.
Overall, extremely conditional to make it valuable resulting in less usage with anti synergy with Ricochet and while deals more DPS as was said in the other paragraph, its not really practical. This talent hasn’t been viable since 2016. Avoid at all cost.
- Additive damage
- Can be activated while mounted without dismounting.
Passive damage increase, the intimidating part is that you need to press a button every few seconds to keep the effect, I would highly recommend to open her in Custom Game (not Try Mode, Try Mode has no lag), simply learn the timing and this will be the most consistent damage increase on this tier.
Sleight of Hand damage increase only starts after the first reload, Locked and Loaded begins from the moment you fire (assuming you reloaded prior combat successfully).
The best talent in this tier.
But also this tier just kinda sucks, I wish we had more flexible choices instead of upgrade level 1 / 2 / 3 which is very disappointing.
Level 10
Hard to peel off 3 seconds of 70% slow in a large area of effect can deny deathball comps from diving and saving your backline to be more safer. This heroic also helps with combos and securing kills as the person who’s being stuck by it will find it extremely difficult to escape others or do anything for 3 seconds.
This is still dangerous even if you miss it, as it is a large AoE.
Useful when you need to burst down high health pool targets or need to squeeze through a lot of armor, rather uncommon choice but its worth noting that it still does a lot against heroes such as Garrosh, Deathwing and Cassia.
Recommend pick to many situations, it makes Tracer easier to play but also helps in closing gaps against heroes they are a little far away by applying Pulse Bomb, use the Blink from Pulse Generator you recieved.
Overall, more Pulse Bomb = More Damage = More Healing = More Blinks. Just don’t miss it.
Level 13
More kills = more damage, the risk is less sustain by compensating a 20% movement speed increase for a moment, but has less playmaking in comparison to more Blinks and Shield value that would allow you to win more duels.
This is a win-more talent, not worth as a choice over Jumper.
First power spike for Tracer in level 13 which is usually considered a weak talent tier for a lot of heroes she gets a very strong talent choice.
You will likely to stay on low Blinks a lot of times, especially if you capitalize on them correctly, Blinking now gives shield which helps with sustain damage such as basic attacks and even helps with more kiting.
Blinks would recharge around 4 seconds instead of 9 resulting in winning damage trades better.
I think this talent was made to work in a full recall build, but being useless until level 20 is just… not really worth it honestly, this talent is just absolutely sucks in every way, especially the unkillable status effect which won’t do anything worth considering. Knockback and damage is very small to be worth it.
Worst talent in the entire game?
Level 16
- Won’t generate multiple charges for each hit.
- Charge amount from hitting target prioritizes heroes. (so +10%)
For split pushing with Tracer, ironically not a real build tbh, but you can basically become good at pushing lanes with Melee and if someone goes after you just use your stuff to run away.
Extremely niche, pick this unironically if you lack wave clear by level 16.
Only pick this if you are going for full aggressive W build or you need the armor reduction. -15 armor over 4 seconds is a lot of time and damage increase from all sources, don’t underestimate it especially with One-Two Punch this can last 12 seconds worth of armor on a single target.
When combined with Get Stuffed, it will apply the armor reduction after the bomb is detonated, thus you won’t get benefits from it.
Strong self-sustain and damage spread around multiple enemies, you can consider this as a range increase by attacking as an example the frontline which can then randomly jumps to the backline, resulting in weakening them and spreading the damage.
The only issue with this talent is that you will aggravate forts/keeps if it bounces to a hero while attacking those structures, so your pushing is very much not great if enemies are nearby.
The extra bounce doesn’t benefit for extra Pulse Bomb charges but it can target enemies in bushes, fog of war and things you aren’t looking.
Level 20
Gets really out classed by the other choices in the same tier for its own value to be useful, your effective attack speed assuming you only blinked once/twice/thrice per reload goes from 5 to 6/6.5/6.8, reload hinders the DPS to justify this as a choice.
Overall an increase in sustain damage assuming your capitalize on the blink immediately to justify its usage, personally go Totall Recall. I never pick this IMO it doesn’t really do a lot.
- The knockback can still activate for a short duration even if Pulse Bomb blew up before applying your Melee attack.
The play making talent that nullifies your biggest weakness of Pulse Bomb, being a telegraphed attack, now your enemy has to predict when you are close that you are going to throw a bomb and make it explode immediately.
But the biggest gimmick in it is the play potential, you can defensively save people by pushing someone off of them to isolate enemies for easy kills to interrupting crucial heroics due to knockback.
Very strong and can even surprise people when they least expect it, if you take a lot of damage and not be able to have some room to breath, this talent will help a lot, your mistakes are automatically deleted especially in duels if you take a lot of damage.
Personally a never go wrong to pick, but IMO Get Stuffed does way more especially if you have the right comp to compensate for Total Recall healing.
- Inherits your level 10 choices.
- Quantum Spike % damage is halved for the second bomb.
Very niche talent that only worth picking with Sticky Bomb because of the range increase and the lowered delay of 2nd Pulse Bomb blowing up earlier results in making it hard for none-mobile squishes to avoid the 2nd bomb. You can basically force fights with this one.
General Strategies
You Can Dive, But Not a Must
Tracer is a diver from the game she comes from, but the reality is if you execute this strategy in HotS relentlessly without a thought of your current situation you will end up being destroyed. Take a deep breath, analyze the situation squeeze your damage when the time is right, for example: Cooldowns are used on someone else, the backline is vulnerable as the frontline dives away.
Crossfire
slightly inspired by the same overwatch strategy
Also known as… flanking, you play away from your team from the sideway, this results in many different situations, but the reason this is done because if you stay behind your tank, you are more likely to get hit by poke, projectiles and other attacks unlike when you playing from the flank.
When you are flanking as Tracer and harassing their team from side, two choices occur:
- Enemy team tries to attack you, if so you can blink and dodge those attacks, causing them to get wasted.
- Enemy team attacks your team, if so you can capitalize on attack their backline if possible which then results in potential kills or further distractions.
Side Ganging
Is a strategy where you rotate to other lanes to gang potential heroes, mostly off laners who are vulnerable to dive which results in kills and more soak potential. This is also true for heroes who are weak to dive, she can help them by denying potential engages just from dismounting or providing vision in the early game as warning flags of incoming gangs.
Pulse Bomb Charge Management™
Because Tracer relies heavily on Pulse Bomb to do a lot of things, having it prepared every fight is crucial, so rotating for small fights and soaking can help with preparing the next bomb for the big fight which also results in you soaking for the team even if slightly, especially if you want to farm regen globes.
Part of the early game you can do is get siege giant camps or Hellions as they are easy to do and give you enough charge for two pulse bombs (so you can technically use one on them to make it quicker).
How 2 Stop Attacking (Hold Fire)
Alternative title: Press H on your keyboard.
Imagine this situation, you are facing a Genji self proclaimed hard counter (who popularized this?) because deflect can be used against your fast attack speed to kill yourself or your team by 20!
But… that’s not really case at all with this one simple trick! HOLD FIRE! By pressing H on your keyboard when you see deflect it will do absolutely NOTHING!
On a serious note, Hold Fire is extremely powerful because a lot of players struggle when it comes to how to stop attacking in such situation, by learning this button press, you can expect a massive difference against such match up turning from “hard counter” to skill match up of who’s really the better player! (IMO a very fun one too, just me things).
But do keep in mind that Hold Fire is effective on other heroes like Medivh, Zarya and Kharazim which feed from auto attacks.
(yes i died, you win some, you lose some and you win more)
The problem is H is really far away to be pressed and I would recommend to swap it to S which what a lot of people do, for me I use Spacebar (which followed by rebinding camera center to Capslock).
Closure
Tracer can allow you to express your own skill in a different way entirely, on paper a very simple hero with very basic abilities but in reality a very hard to master hero that rewards you with that satisfaction for your effort in putting those hours into her. I’ve been playing her since I started playing HotS and I still find her satisfying despite all the changes and nerfs she has gotten into!
Truly de facto queen of “no more Overwatch heroes”.
Thank you for reading. Pew pew. 
