It wasn’t just tracer it was genji, D.va, Winston and dive comp as a whole. Mobility didn’t have a hard counter and blizzard I guess thought it was easier to make a hero designed to stop it rather than nerf heroes who’s whole kit revolves around being extremely mobile.
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Yeah… remember the “good old days” with the Winston led Dive comp. Those were the days!
…Unless a Bastion was hiding and got PoTG by killing everyone trying to dive, of course.
Balance was far worse back then, but people forget quickly.
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Oh well. I’m glad somebody likes her personality.
Actually, as much as I argue against her, I do rather like her playstyle and play her fairly often. I just don’t think she’s good for the game as she is now. She needs some sort of changes.
No character is strong developed in this game really. However it would be, even for me as a hobby writer, not hard to write a good story about someone who wants to step up and help the aging, more and more injured knight, who happens to be her teacher as well, actively instead of repairing his armor and tend those injuries only.
Well then…be objective.
Objectively speaking, Tracer didn’t dominate every single game even at OWL S1. She was very important, but like 5th important in a team comp, and she had moments of brilliance and carry every now and then (like Widow).
I’ll not deny Brigitte’s value and what she has done to OWL stage 4 and finals though, which was mostly positive.
However I do feel her design is rushed. Before her release my prediction was that she would not be able to singlehandledly counter dive because a single hero that can counter a well-coordinated composition of at least 4 heroes, has to be broken in some way, and I thought Blizzard would not introduce such a hero. Turns out they did. I think Blizzard felt the urgency in keeping OWL fresh after stage 1-3 of dive dominance and wanted to quickly kill it…what better way to do it than a busted hero?
Necessary evil or not, another major flaw in her design is just how easy she is to use, probably the result of rushed design. Silver/Gold players being able to one-trick her to Master/GM. This is pure absurdity.
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Counters to Tracer’s pulse bomb or significantly reduce it’s effectiveness.
Zarya Bubble (Anyone), D.VA Defense Matrix (Anyone), Wraith Form, Fade, Transcendence (Zen only), Sound Barrier if timed extremely well (anyone in range), Primal Rage, Bastion’s Tank Configuration, Roadhog’s self heal, Orisa fortify, Sombra’s translocate, Tracer’s recall, Mei’s ice block, Torb’s ult, Doomfist’s ult. Am I missing any? Thanks to the pulse bomb nerf she gets a whopping 2.7 kills per game in comp with it.
Pretty sure Zarya can do her thing even after Tracer’s stuck a target. No preemptive actions needed.
Things that can one shot Tracer.
Everything that can one shot 200 hp heroes.
Everything that can one shot only Tracer (Or… Pilot D.va… I guess). Mei’s head shot (which has gotten buffed thanks to more ammo and no fall off), damage boosted Widowmaker/Hanzo body shots, damage boosted McCree headshots (no flashbang required!), damage boosted direct Junkrat grenades or mines, damage boosted direct Pharah rockets (make sure to dive down on her from above for maximum effectiveness and reduce projectile travel time!), Damage boosted Soldier: 76’s direct helix rockets. Torb’s alt fire (must land all pellets so get in close), Damage Boosted Torb primary headshots. Half charged Doomfist Rocket punch (Must have wall impact as well). Reaper landing 11 (one more than half the total amount) pellets as headshots or 16 pellets as body damage and 3 as headshots (that’s right he still doesn’t need to land all his pellets!), Roadhog landing all his pellets as body damage, or half as headshots (No pesky hook required). Damage boosted dragon blade. Remember no amount or mobility or Recalls will save you from getting one-shotted!
I’m sure there’s tons more via combining damage boosting, discord and nano boost in various ways. Such as Reinhardt’s melee (needs all three), or Fire Strike (just damage boost and discord.)
Nail in the coffin is a successful Sombra hack can take away her defenses to avoid all of this. Which if you can’t get off a .65 second ability on an unaware target (You get to control when and where you engage with Sombra thanks to stealth) If the buffs go through for Sombra it’s GG Tracer. Also we now have Brigette who has her 155 damage combo. You can say, oh just stay out of range. Sure, thing is Tracer needs to get within her range to do any kind of meaningful burst damage. Also flashbang does work. McCree’s should not be rewarded with a dead Tracer for missing their flashbang end of story.
Biggest thing I can say is Overwatch is a team game. Not 1v1 death match in a vacuum Fox only, no items, final destination. Tracer’s mobility DOES NOT make her immune to damage at all or even abilities as I have been hooked and flash banged mid blink countless times. People like to argue that she can just blink and avoid damage acting like it somehow makes her immune to everything and that’s all they need to argue. That’s way too simplistic. That’s not how it works in real game play, trust me.
Incidentally both Zarya and D.VA can stop Tracer from one clipping anyone.
She can’t recall or blink out of flash bang/hook as an escape, she can only avoid it.
Neither her average 2.72 competitive kdr, 2.23% pick rate or 49.18% win rate suggests that she needs either counters or nerfs. I’d also like to point out that Reaper does more damage per game, and heals more per game then Tracer does with recall. He also has effectively the same KDA. His ult gets more kills per game. Also there are tanks that do more damage per game then Tracer does (Dva who also gets more eliminations, Zarya, Reinhardt is comparable to Tracer, and Hammond. Roadhog as well with 10% less accuracy.)
The average is 36% competitive accuracy on Tracer. She doesn’t one clip people nearly as often as people thinks she does. Cut that 240 down to around 81.6 and you have a more accurate number. This is why people think Tracer is op is they assume 100% accuracy all the time. That’s just not the case.
Hope this helps.
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We already talked about this in this thread, please read up what UnderDog wrote on this topic.
What is really absurd is the misinformation created by showing one video with highly favored circumstances as “proof”, disregarding all other experiences players have with her. And no, it was never silver/gold there.
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But then you have to look at Overwatch hero history.
Genji - was GOD OP at release
McCree - killed all other heroes with fth
Roadhog - killed all but a few heroes with hook + RMB
It isn’t just Brigitte that was released as Uber powerful.
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Not saying every low rank can jump to high rank by one tricking her, but there is more than just one video. I’ve seen it multiple times from casually watching streams. Less now because they are protected by private profiles.
None of those heroes could make a master/gm out of a low rank player, though ranked wasn’t available then.
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That’s your opinion.
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It is, a very informed one from having played all of them for a good amount of time…except Brigitte. I played her far less hours than the other 3 and had my best season where I played her the most.
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Is this a thread discussing balance of the top 1% and/or the pro scene?
I find this emphasis really weird, I never saw anyone suggest pharah counters Tracer. Maybe I just didn’t see it but I’m pretty sure that’s quite an unpopular opinion.
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So you say…
as you post from an alt account with no play time.
At least, even with my private account, you can easily go look at my old Overbuff info.
Honestly, I think if they hard reset everyone’s past data and made everyone start from scratch, I think people wouldn’t get as high as they are now using the same heroes they used before (IE genji in his prime vs genji now)
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Lol, thanks for having an “idea” right after Stylosa and Oneamoungstmany put out a video on thos exact subject.
#originalidea
#iwokeuplikethis
#nofilter
Baguette was the last gulp in a full glass of wtf have the devs done to this game?
Could you give me the names of those “low ranks” who managed to climb with her from bronze to GM, because they seem to be better than me, which would, you know, implicate skill involved? Also, people climbing with a chosen hero is not a uncommon thing at all, just go in the Competitive forum section and you will see people telling you very often that you can climb faster if you focus on learning one hero well with the occasional switching, do not know why that should be proof for anything.
Also, I managed to climb almost exclusively with Rein from bronze to gold and holding myself with him in Plat so that must mean his character is broken and I do not really deserve my rank I got through learning the game? Is this not the same kind of logic.
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Ehh, I have no reason to lie about how much I’ve played a hero or how I’ve performed with them. Feel free to talk about those heroes with me, my answers will sound like someone who at least understands the basics of the hero if not at an intermediate level.
One one hand, people might not get as high as their rank because of the meta changes, rather than their heroes being weaker than when the game was just launched.
On the other, people are now better with their heroes and would still be able to maintain their ranks. Especially for heroes with high skill ceiling like Genji and McCree.
The proper thing would’ve been to nerf Tracer, Bridgette is exactly the same stop gap as pre nerf McCree.
Brigitte is not a necessary evil, and has done significantly more harm to the game than good. Dive and Tracer’s dominance has long been vastly overstated, and her release has brought about a chain of incredibly restrictive metas and a very sharp decline in tank variety. Even before Brig’s release Tracer had a negative winrate below Diamond, and Reinhardt was the most picked main tank until Master. Even though tracer over-performed at the professional level, it is not worth the decline the game has had for regular players.
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