We will see when the next set of PTR changes gets released. Pulse bomb was stated to not be intended as a tank killer, in fact none of Tracers kit was intended to be anti-tank. This was stated by the devs during her nerf patch. And even if they are going back on that now Doomfist can do all that without needing his ult, or nearly as good aim and isn’t restricted by low hp. That’s the whole point with this change, its doesn’t really do anything to help her compete for his spot. They will end up trying to do more instead of toning DF down. They will end up taking it too far and that’s what has me worried because its happened several times before.
they are so crazy… buffing tracer…
those changes just will create a new broken hero like hanzo , widow, mcree and doomfist… where you needs like a full comp to stop them or is just really unfun to play against.
the new tracer will destroy heros like zenyatta… what is next blizzard? buff all others heros to the level of hanzo and widow?
STOP WITH THE POWER CREP…
just nerf hanzo,widow, mcree, sigma and orisa dmg. and revert mcree, mei and reaper (goats buffs)
It’s too late.
Lena is coming, and her disciples will follow closely behind…
Play Nice, Play Neutral
|DoritoDiet|
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I agree its a very undeserved buff simply due to the numbers on overbuff for her pick rate and win % … even if you were to buff her that should not be how you buff her if she doesnt have to get in close your basically making one of the hardest to hit characters … honestly I feel like zarya is a pretty hard counter to her tracking heros that can continuously put damage out on her work well… but she does a lot of damage even right now and a good tracer is really rough to play against
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what pulse bomb nerf? she literally just got it buffed last patch
Nani?!
I didn’t say that lol
How did you quote that from me?
That was @Ph4yt who said that 
Play Nice, Play Neutral
|DoritoDiet|
I hope tracer can make a comeback…especially since i’ve gotten a lot better at killing her since she was last meta.
Sorry, I should have been more explicit with my usage of the word “should” when I said “you should have an advantage”
I wasn’t trying to say that picking dive right now gives you a clear advantage. That would be silly, and you know it. My point is that running two shield tanks should present you with a clear and exploitable disadvantage, that being you have no utility being provided by an offtank. For example, picking reinhardt orisa has been an option for ages, yet even before orisa’s nerfs it was a terrible idea and you would most likely lose.
Yet picking orisa sigma (or even orisa reinhardt!) does not offer that disadvantage because he can both play as a shield tank while at the same time filling most of the checkboxes that an offtank is expected to. There’s simply no reason to pick an offtank outside of just wanting to.
I think Blizzard are onto it too and I feel like that’s the real reason they’re buffing dva and roadhog. To me the patchnotes read more of “pick roadhog and dva more” and less of “pick dive”.
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that was really confusing … i like the road buff tho-- still think winston is kinda weak but hes not a char i play a lot, sigma nerf is def significant, the 1sec cooldown before redeploy will make his play style change, gonna have to be more conservative on use, course hes opaf right now
13m fall off is still one of the worst in the game and the worst one that isnt a shotgun. Cool your jets.
its not about its relation to other heros … its about how tracer is now vs later… 30% longer rang before fall of is very notable, tracer entire kit is annoying she needs to have weaknesses
She can see the fear in your eyes.
There is still time to repent.
Play Nice, Play Neutral
|DoritoDiet|
Honestly the tweak where hog can hook through kinetic grasp is what I was liking more than his ammo buff. Before they put out the PTR patch, the changes I wanted the most was for hog to be able to hook sigma out of grasp, for grasp to have some weakness that encourages people to pick defence matrix more, and for potentially a cooldown or cast time on his barrier.
Between the hog buffs, the defence matrix buff (which is tiny, but still they’re on the right track) and the cooldown to sigma’s shield… idk, it seems like too much of a coincidence for me to think they’re not looking at it in the same way. Rather than trying to force a playstyle that the community has defined back into relevancy (dive), they’re trying to give characters like roadhog and dva more usefulness so they get picked more.
Umm tracers spread at 13 meters doesnt really allow the falloff changes to effect zen. Tanks sure but no one else imo
Ah, I see. Thank you for the response.
Yes, I’m certainly sure that Blizzard is trying to create more META diversity.
They wanted it with old-dive, they wanted it with double-sniper, they wanted it with GOATs.
The issue is, at least the way I see it, is that they buffed the whole of Dive.
Genji has always been obsolete in high play because Widow and Doom exist as alternatives.
But let’s see what they did all at the same time.
Reverted Lucio to Pre-GOATs, similar to how he was in Dive. Buffed Tracer. Buffed Mercy. Dive at one point was Lucio Mercy. Buffed Winston. Buffed D.Va.
They are trying to FORCE Dive to be viable again.
Except bullheaded changes like this cause problems at higher elos.
You were ~3300 the last time you played Comp with an open profile. Overbuff says that was 3 months ago, but I’ll give or take 200sr because I don’t trust Overbuff for jack.
In 3100 and lower, the META isn’t really necessary. Nobody knows what they’re doing or they climb insanely quickly.
In 3500, people understand the META better than 95% of the playerbase- typically. But they don’t have the mechanics down, or the strategies down, or they don’t play enough to climb on their own.
It’s in High Masters and GM+ (My peak was 3.8k back when I played, and I had a 60%+ winrate across the Tanks I played, so I could’ve kept climbing but I took a break from the game); where the META becomes solidified.
Most Effective Tactic Available.
We won’t have a “diverse” META because for that to happen, we’d need what was basically GOATs patch- and even then it wouldn’t be common.
GOATs countered Double Sniper in the Overwatch League. Other teams, such as the Chengdu Hunters- refused to run GOATs, and instead went into Multiple-DPS compositions based around Hammond and a Pharah. They made GOATs teams struggle, but didn’t really get too high on the board with it. Shanghai Dragons come in and master it, and during the playoffs- their opponent (who ultimately lose) realize they must adapt.
They mirror at some points, but also use O.G. Triple Tank and Quad Tank (Slambulance) to resist all the incoming spam damage and to out-survive the Hammond and Supports, thus making Pharah and the other DPS easy to kill.
GOATs, at the highest level of play, was the MOST EFFECTIVE. Meaning it required the least amount of work compared to other compositions. META does not mean uncounterable.
But Dive reigned for two YEARS. I worry that with hamfisted balance changes like these, Dive will retake its throne. Not only as a viable composition, but as the composition we are STUCK with until the next few balance patches.
Over time, this leads to intense power-creep.
That is what I fear.
That is the point of my posts.
Does that make sense?
Well you talked about “buffing the solution, rather than nerfing the problem”. That made me think you believed Tracer has been the solution to countering Doomfist this whole time.
The main problem with balance is that we like to skew things depending on the meta. Heroes that we never see are either “just fine” or “too weak” to play (in the current meta). So we inadvertently buff these heroes for that reason.
Not only that, countering a hero is something that’s still mythical concept for a lot of people. I’d go so far as to say majority of the people simply do not want to play counters; they just want to play. Others will even go so far as to mirror the opposing player, rather than simply pick a good counter.
So there are a lot of problems with the state of heroes in the game. They tend to rear themselves as people like the above show up and demand changes.
This is true with every hero. Any time you buff/nerf a hero, you are also changing their counters or the heroes they counter. That doesn’t mean we leave them in a garbage state. Tracer has been bad for a long time. This change is just bringing her in line with all the other dps power creep so she has a chance to compete. Because as she is now, the only people who can have a real impact with her are streamers with god-like aim. Anyone lower than that can pretty much only use her as a disrupter which is a failed playstyle at this point.
Thing is the tank changes on the PTR already help with that. But the issue is a problem for the entire DPS class, Doomfist. He is not balanced for 222 as long as he is hyper mobile with very short CDs, bursty AND can have a tank’s amount of hp at 400 max. Doesn’t matter if the tank meta picks change Doomfist is going to boss the DPS picks, just look at top 500 right now. And blizzard, judging by this Tracer buff, would rather buff out some DPS weaknesses to compete with him than tone him down.
Like I’ve said since 222 launched, Doomfist needs to be able to only get a max of 350hp no other change is needed. He is honestly fine on live as long as you can actually confirm a kill on him if you are able to fight back. It is way too easy for him to snowball.
Yeah, but are the dva/winston buffs really that impactful? They don’t really address the issues that they have - laughably low damage and they die as soon as they land. 100hp worth of extra shield dancing is nice but I’m guessing it definitely won’t be enough, especially considering roadhog’s getting more ammo in the same patch. And the dva change? Sure, it’s nice for matrix to recharge faster, but it doesn’t keep anyone alive longer on the way in and it depletes way too quickly to sustain monkey long enough to get a kill. To me it sounds more like a buff for more situations outside of monkey/dva than it is inside of a monkey/dva comp.
And the tracer change? It’s already proven to be extremely polarizing in whether or not it’s effective - generally to the tone of tracer players saying no it’s not it’s garbage, and people who dislike tracer saying yes it is she’s a sniper now.
From my view it looks more to me like they’re just nudging people in those characters directions individually, not towards what the community considers to be “the best way to piece them together”. I don’t expect this patch, tracer buff included, to do much of anything at higher elos except encourage people to just go back to playing hog/orisa now that sigma is marginally worse and hog is a bit better.
You’re right not to trust it - a single name change completely kicks it out of sync. My account has been out of sync with the forums as well for months, not sure how that happened, at some point I changed my name like 3 times and it lost track. Though if you really care I’ve been playing at ~3900 for a few seasons.
So I don’t really need or want a lesson on past metas, what meta means, or the fact that it means uncounterable. I know. I’m that guy who climbs by forcing “bad” picks because it’s fun. Like lately forcing rein/zarya because… double shield is boring dog 
to play. 
I ALWAYS KNEW OVERBUFF WAS BROKEN.
Yeah my forum account isn’t entirely in sync either. 
I would definitely say yes for both.
^Jayne briefly discussed them with his stream and uploaded it to youtube later on.
*I am not saying to take Jayne’s opinions and views as though they are gospel. However, I do believe being an Assistant Coach in the Overwatch League means you have a decent amount of knowledge about the game. Especially as that is his job.
Having it recharge faster and sooner is the key. Because it was buffed in both regards. It can be used much more proactively now instead of reactively.
It recharging faster means that you can use up more of it within the same time, and have it come back sooner or at the same time as before. That’s a net gain.
It recharging sooner means that you have less downtime between “bursts” of DM, because your overall uptime is buffed flatly.
Melee (if enemy is in range), Leap, Melee (before landing), Land, Melee/Beam.
35 + 1 + 50 + 35 = 121 damage.
Remove the first melee as it is VERY niche and you’re left with: 86 damage burst.
Pile 60dps on top of that, constantly. Now add the damage from D.Va’s missiles onto that target. That person is now dead, or forces the enemy team to use a crap-ton of resources.
Winston/D.Va will have their resources back sooner rather than later, and can do another engagement or continue their previous engagement while the enemy is recovering.
Add on a Tracer, maybe a Genji/Doom/Widow, add on Discord or Mercy’s Damage boost.
That dive target is dead.
The Winston change will allow him to focus more on utility rather than straight tanking damage (which is typically what it’s meant for tbh, the former- not the latter).
An example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1ZRzyhXa1Q
Knowing the ins-and-outs of Winston’s leap and bubble is far more useful, imo.
Skirmishing Winston’s, such as my own play there (from 4 months ago, so excuse the mistakes please)- are now much better off.
Not a Sniper. Although the Tracer Pharah matchup is now much worse for Pharah being as Tracer already had the advantage in pokes due to Pharah’s inability to 1shot Tracer.
My concern with the Tracer buff is that it is polarizingly good for her, against Tanks. Hence my fear that Dive will become THE META just like how it was when it first reigned for 2 years. It didn’t have a lot of variation or totally swapped team compositions in high elo (iirc). It was just Dive.
Orisa’s shield was nerfed from 7 seconds to 10. You realize this, correct? The last 3 patches. (Maybe it was 8 initially, I can’t remember- one of those two). That’s a massive decrease in shield uptime, Sigma can now be punished for poor shield management, making diving him or his teammates, much easier.
I am not saying Dive is the only META available or that it will be.
It’s just that it seems plausible that might happen, and I really hate stagnating METAs. I hate them, and I think they’re horribly unhealthy.
My beef with the Tracer buff is that it just makes her stronger where she was already strong, instead of focusing on something that could be tweaked to make her more situation-ally viable.