There are No Tracer Counters!

General Discussion
246

Well I remember beta 76 and once he got up on that high ground it was pretty much McCree’s ULT was the only thing you could count on to go get him, but even then it was scary to chase a 76.

Now you bait his helix, which sucks because he knows he has to get a hit with it to remain competitive, and then after he uses his helix unless he has the tracking of a god and RNG on his side, he literally cannot kill you. Doesn’t have enough DPS out.

It’s kinda like arguing that Winston is a counter to Tracer, he isn’t and it’s because his beam doesn’t do enough DPS, tracer can ignore it and out kill him, especially if she has recall available. Not saying Winston should compete with her DPS at all, just it’s he’s often cited as a counter when mathematically, he is not.

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247

yea if winstons dont hit me with the jump i will just sit there in the laser standing still and shoot them in the face until they realize they’re dying and they’re not going to kill me.

it’s always funny because you can see the exact moment they realized they messed up every single time. it’s the best when they full on play a game of chicken and don’t move at all lmao.

I hadn’t really played Soldier much since Season 3 ended enough to encounter a Reaper or really understand just how much lower his damage had become (i was also a much lower rank back then) but in today’s game you can literally hit him with the rocket and he won’t die before he kills you.

i mean i know im rusty because i picked up a new job and was too busy to play a lot this year but i didn’t miss that many shots. I just don’t remember when that was ever a thing, but now I do I guess.

248

brig still can counter
mccree still is counter
sombra still can counter
junkrat still can counter
widow still can outplay her (or just use hg and cover supports from tracer)
hanzo is just imba
mei still is counter her

249

tracer is problematic in that her damage and mobility are high and she has a get out of trouble card.

you basically have to either kill her in an instant or kill her twice before she kills u once.

this is not easiest to do for most of playerbase (as they dont all have higher aiming skills)

sure she is a glass cannon, but shes also a glass cannon who has insurance.

she never has to really “commit” since she gets same value out of dash in, dmg some ppl, recall to safety while healing, keeping ult gain, and getting out of trouble.

whereas someone like Genji has to be more careful about when to engage into enemyor they end up stranded behind enemy lines and likely die.

Even sombra has to “prepare” before goign into a fight (and she has legit invis).

tracer just has part of her weakness covered by her kit.

apart from a sniper with aim or hard CC…your gonna have to be lucky to land a headhsot/enoguh dmg before she can gtfo

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250

“Not everyone has the capability to aim.”

Then they need to realise they will have to accept defeat alot in some situations. It’s a FPS not being able to aim is quite the disadvantage.

251

Telling lies.

A decent Tracer easily dominates any good character and this is not a high elo issue.

252

Not at shooting, but a well placed mine can do a decent chunk of the damage or at least alert them to the rest of your team while you zipline away.

253

Oh I did. It’s on you for not informing your team when you’re going to stun. It’s on you if you continue to try to solo combo her.

254

Tracer takes good skill to play effectively, it should take good skill to kill her, right?

255

And that’s where the issue is. You need to be incredibly more skilled that the Tracer you are fighting in order to have a chance aginst her.

256

then why is it, that she has a winrate lower than 50% unless you are the literal 1-2% of the playerbase in master-GM, when she has such a big advantage?

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257

I meant McCree is good at stopping backline harassers, not that he was one. :thinking:

258

Oh lol. The wording was a bit unclear. My mistake.

261

Yeah, if Tracer just uses only her first blink on rollout so a regular pattern of blinking forward 7.5m then running forward at 6m/s for 3 seconds (18m) until the first blink recharges so she can blink again, that’s a regular pattern of 25.5m every 3 seconds… or an average of 8.5m/s.

Tracer will get to the fight from spawn about as fast as Soldier 76, and like the masked avenger without putting loads of abilities on long cooldowns.

That’s faster rollout than Dva or Winston maxing out their movement abilities, though those may be able to save time by crossing gaps or taking shortcuts to high ground. It’s faster even than Rein’s maximum rollout speed assuming he can charge in a straight lime almost immediately after leaving spawn. Also faster than Lucio using amp it up as soon as spawning and speed boost for the rest of the rollout, wall ride speed boost doesn’t stack.

The only hero who can really beat Soldier 76 and Tracer for rollout speed is Hammond.

With Biotic field (BF) Soldier 76 can absorb 405 damage over 5 seconds while still able to evade within an area and attack.

But the damage has to be coming in slow and steady or else he’s going to get fragged before BF even has a chance to heal 204 damage. It’s really good for damage that hits at a steady rate of 80dps or lower, so evading about 40% of the shots from an Orisa would be it.

But if damage is coming in bursts then healing is wasted, if he is dodging grenades/rockets/arrows for the first 1-2 seconds then the 40hp/sec healing might as well not be on, then he takes 120 damage, if he takes another equal hit within the next second the damage will overcome the healing. Whereas tracer can know she got hit by a phara/junk/Hanzo attack and can very quickly realise that’s 120 damage, only 30hp would be left so “it’s rewind time”.

The limitation on BF is the timings of the ability mean it’s not very effective to use on reaction or to escape. It only really adds up if Soldier can begin using it from cover when he expects to take steady chip damage, the cooldown is too long to use on a whim.

And if he does use it this way, he’s probably going to come out of fights with sub-50hp, he’s going to need a healer to stay in the fight as if he takes any chip damage from any enemy they’ll see how weak he is and try hard to finish him off. You can’t repeat this on a 15 second cycle like Tracer can repeat her “blink in and try to damage, whoops take 130-149 damage, recall-escape” on her 12 second cooldown unless Soldier 76 has really convenient medipacks nearby.

Tracer is nowhere near as dependant on medipacks, she can exploit them if she’s being chased down after a recall, running from medikit to medikit on a loop until her recall is done for another safe attempt at an assassination.

262

I’d say they both have pretty good means of escaping from a fight not going their way.

Not that Genji is much of a cannon, his base DPS is just not all that great, he’s just so evasive and you can never be too bold in trying to burst him down without being screwed over by reflect.

I think glass cannons need to have a decent “disengage” option otherwise they end up feeling way too fluky. I think this is what’s holding down the ultimate glass cannon in the game, Bastion. He’s got huge damage potential but his immobility in sentry maximises DPS potential against him, he really needs a middle ground between:

“Likely winning fights by stating in position attacking eliminating opposition before they eliminate you”

vs

“Likely losing fights by being eliminated whether you try to stay and fight or flee”

There should be a middle option of:

“Take a smaller loss by being forced to stop attacking and retreat but likely avoid the greater loss of being eliminated”

That’s something that Tracer has. You can get a smaller short term victory against Tracer by doing enough damage to scare her off. For now. This reward needs to be made greater, so increase the cooldown on her recall to much more than 12 seconds so she can’t repeat her gameplay loop quite so soon. The quality of the loop is fine, it’s the frequency that’s annoying.

But not too long, it takes her 10 seconds to respawn, and with her quick rollout (average of 8.5m/s) she may be able to get back to a flanking position in the time a recall cooldown of 20 seconds would be as long. Something like extending the cooldown to 15 seconds could make all the difference.

Example of a gameplay loop

Roadhog has a fiendish gameplay loop depending on if he gets heals or not, it’s all on a 10 second cycle with him outputting about 750 damage through 8-12m while advancing, making a hook attempt at some point before the 5th shot (it doesn’t matter if it misses, it limits their options trying to avoid it), then breather to retreat back to cover, reload and get heals, repeat.

Rant about unappreciative Roadhog mains

I don’t get how this is underplayed by Roadhog players, that’s a devastating gameplay loop for any map with a choke point, it’s a short loop, it puts out a lot of damage and it feeds your healers’ ult far better than it feeds the enemy’s ults, you can quite consistently get a nano-hog in about 30 seconds this way. Nano-hog may not get kills… but it consistently breaks through chokepoints. So what if the soldier gets a nano-visor at about the same time, that’s only 170dps, nano-boost cuts that down to 85dps and Ana can outheal that.

263

If tracer really was this machine with no counters then I would never die.