What's up with Tracer?

General Discussion
1

Back in the good ol’ days, when Tracer was something of a glass cannon, she had 27 basic attack damage, and yet people were mostly relying on her Pulse Bomb for damage.
Then her pulse bomb got nerfed, but they buffed her basic attack damage to 29 to compensate. People started to realize that basic attacking is good, so they started to build her around it, so they nerfed the basic attack damage to 28. But for some reason she kept being good, so they decided to revert the damage back to 27, since she has also gotten some HP to compensate for the damage nerf (although part of it also got reverted).
And then the nerf spiral began:
damage from 27 to 26
damage from 26 to 24 (along with getting other changes)
and now damage from 24 to 23.

She used to have:
27 b.a.d.
1206 HP
6 sec blink cooldown
420 + 5,5% dmg Pulse Bomb with 10% Quantum Spike damage
254 + 4% Melee damage
She was in this state for 2 years, and she was fairly balanced.

Then she got:
26 b.a.d (-3,7%)
1280 HP (+6,1%)
9 sec blink cooldown (50% longer)
360 + 6% dmg Pulse Bomb with 7% Quantum Spike damage (up to 14% lower damage on low levels, but nearly the same later on. Less % damage tho)
220 + 4% Melee damage (-13,3%)
She was in this state for a year and a half and she was still fairly balanced.

And now she has:
23 b.a.d (-14,8%)
1330 HP (+10,3%)
9 sec blink cooldown (50% longer)
288 + 6% Pulse Bomb with 6% Quantum Spike damage (up to 31,4% lower, with 40% lower % damage)
220 + 4% Melee damage (-13,3%)
ALSO:
Her recall was nerfed - she goes only 2 seconds back, and it takes 0,5 sec longer, which gives enemies plenty of time to set up.
And her basic attacks heal her for 10% of their damage.

I fail to see how 10% extra HP and 10% life steal compensate for 15% b.a.d. loss, 30% Pulse Bomb damage loss and 13% Melee damage loss. Considering all the utility nerfs on top of that.

With 27 b.a.d, she has 135 dps (considering her reload time), which is lower than average, compared to her peers, but still relevant.
However, with 23 b.a.d, she has 115 dps, which is the 2-nd lowest sustained damage for a ranged assassin, who’s not a spell caster. Nova being the worst at sustain damage, with just 105 dps.
Her damage only becomes noticeable with Untouchable, which makes it a must pick.

It’s really sad seeing Tracer fail to kill heroes, she easily could’ve taken out before. Using Pulse Bomb on a 25% HP Hanzo (before level 10) doesn’t kill him! And he’s on the low end of the HP pool.

So what do I think should happen?
I think that Tracer should get her damage reduced to 20, but she should also deal 0,25% of max HP as damage.
This way the squishiest heroes will indeed be taking 23-24 damage, but the tankier ones will be taking 25-27.
While I don’t think that this will fix Tracer’s problem, it certainly will mend it, as she simply doesn’t damage higher HP heroes right now.
Also, I think that Pulse Bomb should have its damage increased to 320 :stuck_out_tongue: It’s simply at a laughable state right now.
And Quantum Pulse can be changed to: Reduces Pulse Bomb’s damage by 25%, but causes it to deal 10% of enemy’s max HP as additional damage.
This way, the squishiest of enemies will be taking less damage from it than they are taking now. And by the off-chance the game reaches a state, where both teams are level 26-28, then squishies will actually take LESS damage than they would without this talent. While medium HP enemies will take relatively the same amount as they are taking now (with QP), and tanks will be receiving more damage.

At least I think that a step in this direction will be healthy for Tracer, as she will become generally more useful, while not clinging between overpowered and utter trash.

4 Likes
2

Tracer already was low pick hero even in masters. You could pick her in some specific games mostly, but overall other heroes could work better I guess.

Last nerfs were unnessesary.

2 Likes
3

They shifted her from an ability user to more of an AA hero, and the only way that could work was giving her more HP and less ability burst. In her first iteration, she was proclaimed to be overpowered as sin, but it only took one ability or a couple autos from a Raynor or Valla to send you out of a fight–I never struggled against her in teamfights like I did against the busted Illidan/Abathur combo. Her only anti-tank tool has always been required, even in situations without tanks, just to have more burst. Her coolest talents are locked at 20, and her only team utility outside of Get Stuffed! is in a single option: Heavy Handed.

The talent overhaul she got came with a plethora of nerfs where she wasn’t regarded as a high tier pick and fell out of popularity, and it removed Jumper and forced her to give up wave clear (which they moved a talent up) just to try and bridge the gap in the nerfs.

But everybody was crying because she got back, like, 3 HP/hit with her autos. Like, damn, she does a fraction of the damage and mobility as before…

5 Likes
4

Well whenever a hero is transitioned to be more aa focused there comes a huge problem - aba. Abathur enables heroes like Tracer, Illidan, Samuro very well and so they then have to be balanced around there being Abathur in the game.

1 Like
5

Mobility and damage = sad face
If she becomes a tank buster, she is going to shoot up to pick or ban tier

6

Tracer should get 0 sustain in her kit. Like nothing.
Buff her damage AA, ulti and melee, nerf her HP.

Make her the glass cannon she was supposed to be.
High risk, high reward.

4 Likes
7

Then everyone will cry again

4 Likes
8

People will always cry.

I don’t understand the incentive of the devs to give every hero in the game shields, sustain and healing.

4 Likes
9

Devs shouldn’t listen crybabies what can’t learn how to play vs Tracer.

1 Like
10

Funny thing about Tracer is that she isn’t as good of an Aba pair as other heroes. Her damage has a cap, that is determined by her reload time.
Even if you give her 9999999999999% attack speed, she still wouldn’t deal more than 306,67 dps. Or 613,33 with the faster reloading time talent, while other heroes can theoretically scale to infinity and beyond.
A normal hero gets x% more dps from x% more attack speed, Tracer gets x*(shots + reload time*aps)/(shots + reload time*aps*x), or x*16/(10 + 6*x), which leans towards 2,667 times more damage, at infinitely high attack speed bonus.
But the actual problem isn’t the cap, but the way her dps is scaling based on her aps. Not to mention Illidan also gets cooldown reductions from higher aps, while Tracer doesn’t.

EDIT: With the 25% bonus attack speed from Aba, Tracer gets 14,3% more dps, or 18,18% with the reload time talent.

5 Likes
11

There are some missed steps in the op.

Like how Tracer was bad in QM, how her playstyle was going in for the kills with her Heroic and do jothing else, how she was babysitted by Malf, WM and Tassadar, and how her talents changed.

And hp is really important if you were super squishy and buffed out from a certain treshhold. By that I mean that “your hp is equals with a 1 sec burst” (not direct example), and if you’re hp is buffed by a small number that it pushes you under the “needs 2 sec to burst down” that’s a huge buff.

1 Like
12

Tracer is even worse for QM now than she was before. Before she could at least kill the enemies, although she felt like Greymane back then - needing to retreat after every kill.
Now she indeed doesn’t need to retreat as often, but she can no longer kill…

While indeed damage, that would’ve killed her before can now leave her at 10 HP. But she is also leaving enemies at 10 HP a lot more often than before.
She’s much much weaker duelist now.

13

I beg to disagree.

14

This, with LnL she got 7 HP per attack and people still cried broken because “BrRrRr sHe HaS LiFeStEaL NoW”

2 Likes
15

I think they do it to compensate for damage nerfs. There’s always going to be complaints on heroes who can go in, kill you, and be able to leave just like that.

16

I agree, but making such heroes have shields, heal and sustain makes them even more annoying, resulting in further damage nerfs.

You cant have high damage hero with sustain. So you either nerf his damage or his sustain.
Devs introduced the sustain to her, so they had to nerf the damage. Over and over again.

Like, D.Va has the talent on 4th level that deals 4% (now nerfed to 3%) enemy max HP when she hits them with Q. Every 10 seconds.

Tracer has 6% max HP damage as a lvl 10 talent to her ultimate. :smiley:
Like come on, that’s just so bad… And yet it is the most taken talent out of that tier. That says a lot…

17

Tracer’s bullets were already tickling.

Thanks WereElf for making a Tracer thread, I really appreciate that :heart:.

Well, on that I agree; I also think it was unnecessary to give her life. In exchange for that, she could receive buffs to her damage.

2 Likes
18

Aye… it is bad. Yet it’s the most taken talent, because she lack damage otherwise and NEEDS this in order to be viable :stuck_out_tongue:

19

True.
But it is funny that it is her ulti upgrade, yet it is worse than Imperius’ lvl 1 talent that deals 2.5% per mark. :smiley:

4 Likes
20

I mean, okay? Like abathur still enables her to be tankier and do more damage and maybe doesn’t synergize as well with her as say illidan but numbers are not everything. Different heroes perform better in different situations regardless of numbers so in a comp where aba illidan might get shut down aba tracer might perform. Just looking at the math in an isolated scenario doesn’t really prove anything.

2 Likes