Is tracer an op hero?

season 32 had over 200 tracer players in the top 500 on NA and over 160 on eu which means for every other dps in the game there was an average of 20 people playing them of course heroes like bastion sombra mei and junk had maybe 3-5 people playing and thats at a stretch, so whats so fun about tracer, that she has over 1/3 of the dps ladder maining her as opposed to 16 other dps heroes? or is it because a good tracer is actually very hard to counter and extremley versatile in pretty much any matchup, if your gonna respond please start with why there are 200+ tracer t500 players first and then why shes op or balanced

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Not really op but there’s definitely a question as to whether or not she’s balanced. She has one of the highest potentials of the games. So many people play ger up there because of this high ceiling of hers. While I wouldn’t say op, I would say she’s not exactly balanced.

A high skill floor and an extremely high skill ceiling. Similar to Widow but the ceiling on Widow is drastically lower.

Being able to 1-clip people is a lot of fun actually. And her kit of advancing forward, backward, left, right by several paces allows you to close the distance on people who otherwise aren’t prepared for that quick of an engagement.

  • Also recall gives you a get out of jail free card, kinda like moira fade or adaptive shields (being the closest thing on the tank side I can think of).

Been a while since I was in scrims so I don’t really know what the META is right now. But when I stopped it was Ball/Sig, Ball/Zar, Ball/Dva, Monkey/Zar and sometimes Rien depending on the map.

Having Tracer means you have a high speed DPS that can keep up with Balls mobility and can conduct Micro dives (two man engagements onto the back-line). More traditional DPS like Cree, Reaper Junkrat and similar just don’t have the mobility to keep up.

  • Pile Driver does a MINIMUM of 20 damage and a MAX of 100.

If you have an Ana/Zen/Moira/Baptity that just received 50-100 damage from getting slammed, running in as Tracer and 1-clipping the target went from Difficult to Easy Clap. And if you get 2 targets in that time, your team is pretty much guaranteed a won team fight at that level.

I’d say it depends on how patient the player being accosted is.

An Ana player in Silver/Gold is gonna have a hard time dealing with tracer. In Masters and GM, an Ana player is pretty lethal all on her own.

On ladder, so is McCree.

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T500 and legue only play heros that let them win the easest way possible (wins=higher rank) so yes in a lot of ways tracer is op. Looking at her kit vs other heros like cassidy, s76, ash and so on.
1 she gets a natural speed boost to movement. Even a small boost is enough to throw off the aim timing slightly vs other heros that dont move that fast.
2 her teleport is and can be predictable but hard to move to the exact spot for each shot to hit.
3 her teleports recharge while shes using them so if timed right she has unlimited of them
4 her recal gives her some were around 300+ hp due to it can restore her health fully if used at the right time, so no healer is needed.
5 her pulse bomb and be delivered quick and easy and most heros cant stop/counter it.

Her downsides are a little less then the upsides
1 less hp then most heros at start so if damaged and not healed or recall is down is vulnerable to fie fast
2 dosnt have high damage unless u can land headshots a lot
3 can be hard to master at higher ranks

Even her “counter” cassidy is rendered useless vs her as she can stay just out of range of his stun and just like genji she takes high skill to stop/shut down but lower skill to play. A couple heros are like this and it can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on rank/whos playing x hero.

Low skill to play isn’t the same as low skill to get actual value out of.

A bad tracer is similar to a bad Sombra.

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Yep that is true also good point

Tracer is kind of a golden standard for hero balance and has been since the launch of the game. If she’s played a lot, it’s usually just a side effect of which other heroes are being played. If she is too powerful, then I guess reverting the effective range buff she got a while ago should be a good start. Getting in close should be a requirement for dealing her damage anyways. The spread reduction in dive heroes like Tracer and Genji isn’t good for the game, and only feels necessary because of other oppressive heroes that have been added with CC abilities that completely shut them down.

i’d say s76 beats tracer in that depart (for hitscan).
junkrat for your projectiles.
everything else gets more complex and overwatch specific.

s76 is your “transferable skill” from other games/genres.
best to calibrate power budget around that.
tracer takes more arena shooter xp (way less tactical shooter muscle mem) and requires a lot more gamesense to min/max.

I’ll counter that by saying that Tracer is in almost the same state right now as she ever was. Tracer and Winston both. Meanwhile, both junkrat and 76 have gotten many changes and are arguably much more powerful now than they ever were. If they were golden standards, they wouldn’t have been changed so much.

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That is predicated on them knowing what they’re doing or making the right changes. The provenance of how heroes changed over the years just shows a lot of oopsie, pandering, and knee-jerk compensation.

Whatever the take and current position on tracer, I’d argue S76 is a “more correct” gold standard from which to reference and calibrate power budgets. All else being equal. Ditto for junkrat on projectile. Both have the “quintessential kit” you can dial in and tune around. Tracer is faster and squishier and makes these “deviations” from the ground state you might expect for FPS.

I’d agree that giving 76 the more predictable spread was the right direction to take him, and that I’d rather balance other heroes around him than to change him around other heroes, I can’t say the same for junkrat. His kit has a high skill ceiling, however, his skill floor is way too low. His massive bouncing projectiles allow for too many random kills, his ultimate guarantees kills in any rank below diamond, and his mines, while good for mobility, are annoying to deal with because of the knockback and the ability to finish people off without actually hitting any shots. Saying that he is the golden standard for projectile heroes is outrageous.

Tracer doesn’t work like most FPS playstyles, but Overwatch is more unique, and Tracer isn’t the poster hero of the game for no reason.

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