I have the most hours on Tracer in OW1 (around 120hrs), and Unpopular opinion, but I think Tracer is one of the worst DPS in the beta as of right now.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not a pro Tracer player, my tracking is generally okay-ish. So forgive me if I’m completely in the wrong here, But playing her in the beta feels so much different compared to playing her in OW1. All the other DPS outclass her in Damage output, she gets one shot by 50% of all heroes abilities if not more, her damage was LOWERED by 1 damage per bullet which was completely unnecessary…
I just feel like she should get her 6 DMG per bullet back plus some small buffs here and there… she’s the only hero that hasn’t changed AT ALL since the launch of OW (only some tweaks to her damage outputs and cooldowns). I just think she deserves some more love that’s all.
this forum is overwhelmingly anti-tracer so dont expect much support here lol
i agree with the notion that she feels weak compared to most other dps (minus a handful who are, bluntly, dubious by design). the damage nerf makes her feel particularly weak when dueling against a couple who you’d expect her to be good against. and characters with tiny hitboxes and good strafes? forget about it lol.
i cant get a good read on how good she is because … not many high level ppl i follow are playing her. they’re all playing sojourn, or genji. they play her in owl, but i have my own suspicions about why and i dont think its for her dueling or kill potential
in the mean time, ive been finding some success with her on the beta, tips:
she isnt a duelist anymore, so don’t take duels unless you have a huge advantage. she can duel other tracers, but its a total stalemate if they have orb/armor pack.
she almost certainly isn’t going to bully out a tank like some other dps easily would, so don’t bother
you do not have the damage to kill supports chain-healing eachother, unlike some other dps, so don’t bother
pulsebomb is still incredible, and theres a lot less to punish you. just don’t stick a tank unless they’re low, and go for really easy sticks, like brigitte or zen or ana. instead of grinding mechanics to get 1 clips, go for consistent pulsebombs, it will pay off a lot more
do not underestimate how powerful it is to ping somebody, and then wait and see if someone shoots them. its incredibly strong if you do it with hammond, genji, sombra, zen, or anyone else who can follow up
literally always ping who you’re shooting at when you change targets. they will melt. tracer needs the help.
forcing point/objective is SUPER strong in ow2. be as annoying as possible. just keep in mind her blink cd got raised by 1, so avoid taking chip damage, its gonna hurt your uptime a lot more
I find I have to play her play her way safer in the beta. She kinda has a boring cleanup playstyle now. You can still duel but you need near perfect tracking and hope your target isn’t getting peeled. Also, Zen is ridiculous to try to kill atm since he has more health and you have less damage, it’s like a double-wammy of nerfs.
Right now, ranged poke is king. You are better off playing Sojourn or Widow than Tracer if you want picks. Tracer is played in OWL right now to a degree, however it’s mostly as a distraction and cleanup role rather than main damage source.
im pretty sure it’s for objective pressure, either by forcing point or by guarding it to deny that while the rest of the team (namely the tanks) fight for map control. maybe i’m just crazy but it seems like she’s spending a lot more time pushing or contesting payload while tanks either stage for dives or spearhead the pushes for positioning, rather than staging for those dives herself or taking duels during those pushes
even after the adjustments she’s still really good for threatening pressure onto something without having to commit, there’s no singular ability being burned that can result in her being out of position & punished
if the patch notes that didnt make it come back zen is getting a 25 hp nerf so that will buff tracer a bit. i think she is fine really, i mean she wont be king like in overwatch 1 but hey shes not that bad
the only thing that does suck was she had a higher skill curve so its harder for average players to get value out of her, just gotta play it safe
matchmaker is out of whack too so cant really judge any hero maybe in the beta, have to wait for comp
At least buff her dmg halfway back to 5.5/pellet. It feels like you just tickle people with your pulse pistols now. Really frustrating that one of the most engaging heroes in the game that takes loads of skill to use properly gets completely outclassed by braindead heroes like Junkrat and Torb who they decided needed to be buffed for some ungodly reason.
I would like to see her Ult go back to doing 400 damage. It was originally nerfed to help tanks survive her farming and then sticking them. Now that the tanks got gigabuffed and she got giganerfed, I don’t see the harm in her old Ult nerf getting fully reverted.
Tracer’s nerf goes well beyond the ~17% damage reduction. Not only can she now generate her ults ~17% slower due to her reduced damage, but almost all of her former targets (i.e. Widow, Ana, Zenyatta, Baptiste, Mercy, etc.) have now received significant improvements. With 5v5 and the ping system, the focus in the backline is now much faster on tracer than in OW1. Unfortunately, Tracer’s relevance has dropped so much that anyone who doesn’t have perfect aim and movement will be a burden for the team with her. There are simply better heroes to play than Tracer now.
There are also many changes that make Tracer’s ult all the more difficult and take away a lot of leeway. Eg. Zarya has two bubbles, Cassady can no longer be consistently killed by Tracer’s Pulse Bomb, Zenyatta’s and Brigitte’s increased knockback, etc.
I don’t think Tracer can stay the way she is now because her already low playrate would drop all the lower. Tracer requires a lot more skill than many other heroes and currently her influence on the gameplay is disproportionate: A character that demands a lot from the player should also have a corresponding number of opportunities to win the game. Unfortunately, this no longer applies to both Tracer’s ult and her damage after what is probably the biggest nerf in history.
This is a common logical fallacy that players fall into that makes sense to them but not to game developers.
An individual heroes impact will never come before the overall health of a game.
Additionally all play styles and play style difficulties should be catered to but just because someone prefers to challenge themselves doesn’t mean they should always have the upper hand, from a game design perspective. That last one really ruffles feathers.
In FFXIV for example, not equating just an example, they have easy jobs and difficult jobs and the margins between them are slight for the most part. Balance has little to do with complexity. As complexity is seen as a play style.
Tracer requiring a lot of skill to play does not necessarily mean she should win every engagement, or have the upper hand. Tracer is meant to be an annoyance not an assassin. She’s a velociraptor. Herding the weak and picking them off from the sides.
Her effective health can be up to 299, she’s disorienting. She has some of the best mobility and escape/chase tools in the game. She was massively buffed by the removal of most hard CC. She can recall out of most debuffs, sticky bombs etc. she’s a deeply nuanced and interesting dps but that doesn’t mean she deserves to one clip a squishy consistently.
Tracer was never about having perfect aim, but more about having the right kind of movement. You needed to know where to blink and when to blink. Aim won’t get you very far on tracer unlike other hitscans. We could buff tracer, but I’d like to see sojourn toned down first and see where that takes her.
I could be wrong on this but I’m pretty sure what’s keeping tracer from not being as viable are other DPS heroes, more-so than tanks or supports. Maybe we could look into balancing the DPS roster instead of nerfing tanks or supports.
Also, regardless of baptiste being strong or not, he is rarely being played at the moment in quickplay matches from what I’ve seen. It’s mostly just ana, zenyatta, mercy (because she’s popular), and lucio. So I’m not sure why you even had to bring up baptiste into this. How can a hero that’s rarely being picked make tracer unviable? I don’t understand.
Even if you give all supports 1HP, tracer’s pick rate will still not go any higher. Because it’s the other DPS heroes that’s keeping tracer down, not supports.
