Is it possible to climb as pure Tracer OTP?

General Discussion
1

Hi,

I’m a 3800 DPS player and often I play in Diamond or low masters, and recently I tried to 1 trick Tracer. I have done this before in like s22-25 and got to 3800, but now I seem to be unable to repeat this climb. In general, these days I MUST flex if I want to win in Diamond and low Masters. While I am aware that people are bad there, I would like to know if it’s possible to carry bad players as Tracer. My main limitations on the hero are 2:

  1. difficulty in dishing out enough damage to finish tanks whenever my 2nd DPS is bad, or when my supports play “healbotty” supports (Ana + Mercy, Moira + Ana, Ana + Lucio etc.). Noteworthy mention, I get often Genji 1 tricks in Diamond who dash into some target, do 100 damage and then escape with deflect (low value and LOW DAMAGE play).
  2. me setting up on a flank pre-fight to engage after sees me get peeled nearly instantly (typically by hitscans or even a support pushing me with the help of someone else).

When I manage to overcome these 2 obstacles (which is not often), they just swap to some comp like Moira + Ana or Bapt + Brig and look out ONLY for me and basically do nothing else. The problem is that while in high SR, a Brig that is chasing a Tracer around the map leads nearly always to a teamfight win, in low SR ANYTHING can happen. Hell, even a Bapt getting distracted for 5-7 seconds from healing frontline by a Tracer sees his tanks die nearly every time if the Tracer goes in at the right time.

I generally think that Tracer has 2-3 “nuances” to her, aim, pulse bomb landing, coming from the right angle (ideally from high grounds), and notably, timing. Coming in at the right time as a flanker is very important.

The problem with timing is that I often struggle to find a balance of me not taking the full attention and doing damage, or me taking the full attention of the team and the team doing damage. Very often, I go in when I see my tanks engage, but the problem is that in Diamond/low Masters, often tanks misplay, engage, and disengage, at which point 4 people from the enemy team turn on me and force my recall and my retreat instantly. My 2nd DPS also very often is incapable of creating frontline pressure to keep enemy supports busy healing tanks and, as a result, distracted from watching flanks.

I would like to know if there is any other masters/GM Tracer players, what are your thoughts on this. I generally end up swapping if I want to win, but I am curious if someone managed to actually climb in s30 as Tracer 1 trick. I think if I played 100+ games, I would end somewhere around 3700 after highs and lows, but if I 1 trick, these days in diamond I can legit lose 3 in a row, nobody in my team swaps to “good heroes” like Zen Brig and meanwhile the enemy is running 3-5 counters to me.

Am I not good enough or is Tracer not 1-trickable? Keep in mind that in GM, often you have consistent DPS, who know how to play, for example if they see me on Tracer, they know they must pick Hanzo Ashe Soldier to create frontline pressure, meanwhile in Diamond I do get a Soldier sometimes, but instead of breaking shield and shooting the flank Hog to force his retreat, this type of Soldier tries to kill supports but doesn’t have good enough aim to do so, and as a result just wastes time.

tl;dr: in Diamond/low Masters, people don’t swap to synergistic comps and play heroes wrong very often, this makes the game random and sometimes it makes weird things happen. There are also a lot of inconsistent people and a lot of players with plat gamesense who are as high as 3400 on DPS/Support/Tank. I am curious if through this it’s possible to climb as Tracer 1 trick or not.

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2

I can climb as a Moira OTP healbot.

OTP is the best way to climb anyways in 2/2/2. You’re never going to win every game anyways, just focus on a high winrate and performance.

3

support is different, also, what SR did you peak at? In my experience, Moira falls off HARD starting from low Masters and is basically a throw pick from there on. It’s nearly impossible to win with a Moira on the team if the enemy knows how to abuse her. There are only like 2 Moira mains in GM on EU iirc and, tbh, I don’t know how they climbed there, my guess is that they climbed there time ago when it was easier to climb because people didn’t understand 2-2-2, and now they stay there because in GM people flex more.

Anyway, supports has its own nuances, I am curious about DPS. Generally on DPS, in my experience if you want to climb, you need to flex more, AT LEAST having a small hero pool of 2-3 heroes, but the more, the better.

4

I have to agree with… SockSniffer. Time and time again it is proven that the single most effective way to climb on ladder is to pick any one character and one-trick the heck out of them. You might hit a wall around GM level though, so it depends on what your goal is.

5

I am not asking whether 1 tricking is good or bad, I am inherently neutral on the topic, whereby keep in mind that 1 tricking is selfish because someone MUST flex at some point, for example if you have Ana, Mercy, Rein, Zarya, Tracer, Genji, all 1 tricks, you just get demolished by dive, no matter how good you are. It’s stupid to become toxic when someone asks for a swap (for example, the Mercy player to go Brig), but this is the norm on EU Diamond/Masters these days.

What I’m asking is if anyone playing DPS in masters/GM hit the same problems as me on Tracer (2nd DPS not hitting his shots, supports not going "enabling supports that fit DPS picks like it’s common in high elo), and, if so, how they solved them.

Typical comp I could have is:

my team: Rein, Hog, Tracer (me), Soldier/McCree (not playing frontline), Ana, Mercy/Lucio

enemy team: Rein, Hog, Widow, McCree, Lucio, Ana

In such a game, my success (imo) heavily relies on my Soldier pushing back the Hog and Rein (about 60-70% of his time should be devoted to shooting tanks and in high elo this is pretty common knowledge but in Diamond for some reason they have this mindset that they must flank). The Soldier should also be able to deny the Widow and at least force her off high grounds, better if kill her which requires a long range direct helix hit (not hard to do as Widow is a bad hero these days). It also relies on my tanks peeling the flanking Hog. If neither of those things happen, playing Tracer becomes much harder, but I am open to suggestions.

For example, in a recent game, there was a Hog flanking 1v6, and getting many successful hooks. Neither of my diamond tanks paid particular attention to that and my Ana never thought about anti-nading him or sleeping him. I know I can go Sombra or Soldier and win the game because I know how to counter Hog with those heroes, but as Tracer it’s harder because if he sees me chase him, he just waits in a narrow room where it’s impossible to blink without getting 2-3 shot.

6

I’m still climbing on my journey to become a legendary solo queue GM Moira healbot.

I get gold healing every game, nobody is exploiting my hero pick, my dps just need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Either that, or my tanks have to play at least one tank that’s not Winston, Ball or very aggressive DVA. I just stick near my tanks and healbot them.

Ana doesn’t counter me, she counters DVA who don’t eat grenades or Zaryas who don’t cleanse anti off the main tank for me to healbot.

Let me explain, there’s a healing pecking order: Me, tanks, support, droppings, dps and supports who don’t heal me when I heal them all the time :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

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7

this is the problem I also found as Tracer. You have to deal with:

  • people counterpicking you (doable and this is the challenge of 1 tricking)
  • people in your team not being able to play their hero at a basic level (such as not eating Moira orbs as Dva or not pressuring tanks as Soldier or not getting Sound Barrier in time for the Nanoblade as Lucio).

Point a) would be fine to deal with, but when you also must deal with point b), it becomes much harder because many things that you assume should happen (tanks noticing the Hog flanking and at least taking the Hog 1v1, it’s fine if you lose it, at least he is low HP and with no CDs), don’t happen.

this is flawed approach to the game, imo. Support as a role, by nature, fills for tanks/DPS for whatever is best. Your DPS are not “holding you back”. You just need to enable them. Moira enables nothing and as such it’s not surprising your DPS underperform whenever the enemy DPS are in contrast enabled.

this legit seems like gold talk. What’s your rank?

Healing order matters minimally and is very game-dependent, there is a certain priority in healing people, but you also need to assess how risky it is to heal someone who is in danger, and whether or not that person is a carry player or not. As such, there is no definitive answer to “to whom should the healing resources go”. What’s far more important is playing a hero you can have an impact on. I don’t see how it’s possible to have an impact on Moira like ever, her kit is useless (short of flanking with Coalescence which basically, much like Hog 1 tricks, works only vs bad teams).

8

It definitely is possible, but it’s much easier if you have even 1 or 2 other heroes in your hero pool. No need to have 15 DPS heroes you’re ready to swap onto, focus on 2 or 3. Keep in mind tracer is strongest DPS right now, so you should be fine with tracer majority of the time. But if they’re running like brig bap double shield then you’d definitely need to swap off.

9

You can one trick on any hero and climb high. It boils down to you.

10

if you have a bunch of 1 tricks and trolls, I am starting to think it’s not true.

Example of a game that I lost:

14CE27

Enemy Bastion is a smurf, my supports are Ana + Mercy 1 tricks (but they nano’d me so I think that SHOULD be enough for me to carry IF we had average tanks). My tanks never go in, check out my Winston’s usage of Barrier and my Ball’s usage of Grapple hook, SR is 3400, while I could have played better here (died to high noon, for example), I don’t know how to carry tanks that are basically AFK and deranking, in 3800+ such behavior gets you 11 reports.

The problem is, you could say “go agane” and ignore this game. But the next game is literally the same. This time, not bad tanks, but I get a Mercy 1 trick on DPS getting boosted by her boyfriend Dva, and an AFK troller Lucio who just stands next to tanks with healing aura and that’s it. My Ball (a high Masters player) complains about lack of damage followup after Piledrives so it can’t be my imagination, we don’t even beat the Nanoblade (somehow we don’t get the Beat in time), in the end on round 2 I go Soldier and literally kill 6 (with the help of Orisa/Ball player), but again in my opinion this game is not winnable on Tracer because supports have legit 0 clue how to pick supports (they go Ana + Bapt in attack, LOL!), and 2nd DPS is inconsistent as hell and can’t kill/is unwilling to kill tanks (you see me pressure their tanks on our attack round and I legit create infinite space as Soldier).

Replay: RCSS5Q

Game that I lost due to (imo) tanks lacking monitors: BRJASH

Check out how our Roadhog plays on defense round for example, feeds Soldier ult, misses every hook and lets the enemy Hog sneak by and kill everyone).

This game I didn’t swap but I am curious to know what I could have done more, everyone of their annoying heroes (Junkrat, Hog) go camp a small room the moment I try to jump them and in a small room you can’t beat Junkrat or Hog as Tracer.

These are all ~3400/3500 games, again I play Tracer comfortably in 3800 (although I flex more there), people are more flexible, people play Zen/Brig more (which are Tracer enablers), Hog 1 tricks actually hit hooks and don’t grief like my Hog player “Benbestfan” at 11:28 in the replay.

11

Everyone gets 1 tricks and trolls. Best you can do is report the trolls (maybe avoid the one tricks) and move on, but that isn’t stopping you from climbing. That’s why any true GM will easily climb to GM.

12

I ask you to read what they OP asks again, I can climb if I flex, generally with a mix of Soldier/Widow/Tracer/Sombra/Hanzo I can win most games until 3800. I am asking how to carry bad DPS players or supports playing garbage heroes (like Lucio) at a garbage level, because in the end, Tracer does 111 DPS and that’s not a lot, notably it’s not enough to kill both tanks fast which is sort of what you need to do in Diamond to climb with people who are AFK in the brain and SYSTEMATICALLY picking the worst heroes in the game.

13

They should build around you.

Unwinnable game or tell them to play the hero they the best at. One tricks support one tricks.

They can find a health pack or my sidekick can heal them. Not my job.

My job is to make my tanks immortal and peel my sidekick so she can do her thing also.

It’s not my job to be copium for the dps diff, sorry dps, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Check for yourself, I kept it private because of forum stalkers.

Not my job as healbot Moira. I stick near tanks and make them immortal. Rapidly tap right click to exploit a ‘bug’ that allows me to get my full resource bar in 3 seconds. So healing resources are not a problem.

If my sidekick is not an idiot/heals me too and sticks near me, I will heal them also. If DPS are near me then I will heal them.

If they are in danger and so are my tanks, then oh well, it’s not my job to save them, that’s my assistant’s job or they can play near healthpacks and not get dps diffed.

Keeping your tanks alive with healbot Coal is plenty impactful, trust me. Tesla also says to use dmg orb to combo coal, using heal orb only for certain Zarya grav follow up combos.

In Rome, a tournament is held where the strongest warriors are assembled from across the world with a strong track record verifying their valor.

There’s a muscle god with a titanium hammer and lustrous armor as strong as it is beautiful.

There’s a woman with reinforced chainmail, a sacred sword, and her greatest weapon is her powerful intuition that many mistaken as precognition.

There’s someone from very far away with armor made out of unknown alloys, and a weapon that’s an enigma to the spectators.

Then there’s someone with rusty armor, they’re lanky, and their only weapon is a feather duster for tickling.

every warrior is verified to be on a similar power level, the organizers made sure of it.

Who should the contestants be most afraid of?

The person with the feather duster.

I’m Moira, I have the feather duster. I’m just that much more skilled than my peers to make up for the feather duster.

You focus too much on the hero, and not enough on the player behind it.

1 Like
14

Sorry my bad, I was referring to trolls only, not one tricks. I’ll edit my post now.

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15

Just to be clear, I think you have the right to play Moira (which we can both agree is an awful hero and probably the worst support in the game), I think good DPS can still win games with Moira, for example today I played tank and went 1-1 with a Moira 1 trick (who, though I know plays a bad hero, I didn’t avoid because I thought that they did good even though we lost), just it’s harder because DPS is a role that by how the game is designed, shines ONLY when enabled by tanks and supports. You not wanting to enable DPS is your right, nobody forces you to play Brig Zen Mercy, but I don’t think it’s “copium”, it’s how the game works (again, coming from someone who feels confident playing without pocket, so I respect your desire to play the game in your own unique way, just I am obliged to point out that you are wrong).

ok interesting. I don’t play Moira and I think highest I’ve played Moira is like 3300, in 3700 where I play support, I generally play Ana/Brig/Mercy/Zen.

the game is ultimately a mathematical game. Smurfs abound, players are leaving. Diamond has become a lot harder to climb than in s22 or so. You can’t “just be good” when you are driving a Corvette and the enemy a Lamborghini. You can definitely win as Moira, sometimes the enemy team is outright awful, but the problem is maintaining a 50% winrate, when you are Diamond you get Genji 1 tricks who don’t swap and Rein players and it’s semi-freelo, but after, when you go vs Brig Zen comps, or well-executed Dive where it’s a Ball piledrive + a Tracer follow up always… it’s hard to win those games as Moira (also because the combo might not be on you).

I’m lowkey becoming convinced that past 3400-3700 it’s impossible to 1 trick in nearly every role also because a lot of top500 players deranked to masters/high Diamond recently so you might go both vs people wanting to climb back again (so they counterpick your Rein with Pharmercy and good luck winning as Rein 1 trick vs Pharmercy) and people with good mechanics compared to Diamond.

16

You can hit 4.4k one tricking doom (its not easy tho at all)

You can definitely clim one tricking tracer

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17

Perfect play is highly theoretical and the gap between Top 500 and perfect play is extremely vast.

Stevoo hit top 500 with Sym 1.0 who was hard bottlenecked by a very short autolock beam that took very long to charge to level 3. Every hero outplayed her on paper and even in practice.

How did Stevoo become a top 500 Sym 1.0 one trick (and still is for Sym 2.0 and Sym 3.X)?

He plays the game so well that he’s peerless. On Sym 3.0, he took down an OWL stack with beautiful play, see for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT8MN1rd7Zg

The math to perfectly describe the power of perfect positioning, movement, opportunity identification, tactics, strategy and timing is impossible for humans and modern machines.

You have no sweet clue of how much power there is that the core fundamentals of the game which every hero has.

There is no bottleneck for one-tricking. You probably fail to see the many opportunities that you don’t seize in your matches. Self-improve through self-criticism or stagnant/become hardstuck as they say colloquially.

18

Symmetra is a cheese hero and I’d rather not go into how people who main cheese heroes climb as it’s not a pleasant talk. Basically it’s a mix of the enemy not knowing how to play vs heroes almost nobody plays, and them being coinflippers.

Ok. How do I solve the damage problem you can have in Diamond games? 2nd DPS being inconsistent is the issue most of the times, and without a frontline DPS, no matter how good you are, you can’t do enough damage to secure kills, imo (and you do need to get kills to climb as DPS).

Keep in mind that Doomfist has 2 important advantages over Tracer:

  1. can ignore shields with his combos (so you can pressure tanks and ALWAYS solo kill bad tanks)
  2. has more burst than Tracer (also more HP so you don’t die to random Junkrat mines etc.)
19

As i recall, with her time travel/temporal imbalance…if u do climb with her u will be thrown back in time randomly back to the begining of OW or even before her existence or after OW3 or more comes out (u know that would be a looooonnnngggg time in the future), in which case u would win and lose at the same time. So im sorry u should not attempt it. For rhe sake of the time and existence.

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20

I mean…you’re a diamond player playing in diamond that thinks you’ll end up just 100 sr lower than where you are without one tricking. I’m not really sure where the problem is.

A GM Tracer is going to be able to play to GM. Though I do recall in GOATS era that became untrue. I doubt it is now.

I will say I love that the description of play by every rank sounds like every other.

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