How to be good at Tracer?

General Discussion
1

I play in comp and there’s usually a Tracer harassing my team, getting a few kills every push, so I figured, hey, she must be a good DPS right now since some hitscans got banned…
Yet I try and play her in Quick Play and I struggle to get even one kill with pulse bomb.
How are people so good at Tracer?
(P.S. I’m on PS4.)

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2

Have you tried playing her on Uprising?

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3

You can only practice to improve mechanics with Tracer, but the thing you can do right away is her positioning and timings.

Early stage of learning her, play safe, unless you know you easily storm. Try to play as cowardice as possible, strike when they have not noticed you, strike when they are distracted, strike from different angles that they are not comfortable (from behind, blink in from high ground, ect,) strike when you have enough cooldowns, spam ADAD crouch, don’t jump (get rid of bad habit of jumping.) Expect that some games you won’t be able to kill anything, settle for being a good distraction and priotize staying alive, (every seconds you distract them is a second they do not shoot your team), and only commit when it’s mope up phase (your team got picks and press for advantage.) Learn Tracer flanking route, you need to move unseen, or be able to break Los immediately when they start shooting you, and pick your engagement, pick the easy targets until you learn to outplay your counters.

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4

I tried but barely anyone queues for uprising :frowning:

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5

basic tips i think everyone benefits from:

  1. work on your mechanics. you won’t get anything done by just being a distraction, contrary to what people will tell you. you need to be able to take duels and win otherwise you’re a huge liability and will be more impactful on a different character.
  2. learn your limits. spend some time playing as aggressive as possible, and then spend some time playing as safe as possible. go on insane flanks even if you think it might not be a good idea, and then spend way too much time by your team even if you feel useless. do it so you understand what you can and can’t get away with, and then find a happy middleground.
  3. ask someone on your team for support or you won’t get it. support players are human and make mistakes or oversights too - it’s not uncommon for zen to afk his orb on reinhardt while completely ignoring his tracer. even better, ask your brig for armor packs before you go in. it’s one of the most powerful trends as of late and it will keep you from dying.
  4. recognize why tracer gets all of those early picks. if someone’s doing something that you can’t, seriously, watch them and figure out why. it’s probably something stupid like someone standing out in the open with no cover, or way too far back so their team can’t support them etc. or maybe their aim is just way better - assuming they aren’t a smurf, that could be an indication that you need to improve.
  5. don’t try to do it all yourself. contrary to what the forums will tell you, tracer’s damage output is pretty mediocre especially once you consider how you’ll lose most of it to rng spread. time your attacks with guarenteed damage like firestrikes, hammond piledrivers, pharah or junkrat spam, etc.
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6

Practice, a lot.
Watch the timing guys like Kabaji and Dafran engage with and notice who they target.
There are tons of how to Tracer vids that explain things in depth.

Remember you don’t necessarily need to kill somebody immediatly, taking their attention from their team can be enough to win the fight. Then you can clean up.
Stay alive, stay an irritating pest they know is behind them and will come at the worst time.

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7

just don’t play tracer, everything outheals you, if you try and play within your own effective range youre gonna get hard CCd until you switch to mccree

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8

Good tracking. Good movement. Good blinks and recalls. Good blink movement. Learning 180 blinks. Become good at stickies.

There’s a lot of skill required.

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9

Practice Tracer in AI and PvE mode, you get to learn a bit about timing your blinks and how to fight with enemy that does 180 and shoot you easily. Once you get decent enough, start using her in PvP. In PvP, you need to learn to track enemy abilities.

A lot of players often tell me Tracer is a lot easier in PvP than it is in PvE/AI. It’s quite fun playing chicken with the Enforcer in close range, blinking just as he is about to shoot resulting in receiving 0 damage.

10

Haha this is so true, but sometime you gotta take the L to have some fun and variety.

11

That’s too bad. It’s an excellent way to learn her mechanics.

12

Just dodge everything 4head?

13

Tracer is the 3rd best dps on PS4 and in GM Tracer has the highest winrate in the game.

14

Try to kill enemies in a way that wastes as little resources as possible. The best Tracer kill is one where you never had to use recall. Work on your aim…aim trainers are great for it. Try to get used to her ideal range. When you get in a fight make your movement and blinks unpredictable to the enemy. Don’t simply blink side to side. Blinking behind enemies makes it much harder for them to hit you which is why most Tracer players use a really high sensitivity.

Try to only play on her ideal maps. Ones which are fairly flat with flank routes. Most koth maps are great because there usually very flat and have more of a deathmatch feel which Tracer can excel. Numbani is great because it’s fairly flat but more importantly has a ton of flank routes. Bad tracer maps are Gibraltar, anubis (first point), and hanamura because there is a bunch of verticality which she struggles at.

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