Tracer is unhealthy for the game

General Discussion
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That’s right. A whole hero is unhealthy for the game. And not like Doomfist or Widow, who can delete you in under a second but are manageable via balance changes. No, Tracer is fundamentally unhealthy for the game.

For one, she is “balance by extremes” concept. Smallest hitbox, smallest health pool, one of the best mobility tools in the game with a pathetically low 3-seconds cooldown, and good burst damage on top of that. These characteristics are already a sign of a problematic hero, but the worst part is…

…she’s the baseline for game balance. And this has done the game more harm than good. If you have the slightest idea of how to play Tracer, she’s uncontested; if you master her, she’s unstoppable. She was dominating high ranks to such degree people had to either go Tracer themselves (and hope they’ve got a better one) or pick a beefy full-cheese composition like Quad tanks and ignore her altogether.

The addition of Brigitte further shows how problematic Tracer is for the whole game. Release Brig was extremely strong because of Tracer, every single tool she had was meant to deal with all problems Tracer brought. Even now, when Brigitte was severely toned down, she’s still targeted for nerfs. Why? Because apparently her Armor packs work extremely well on Tracer. Any other game developer would’ve said “okay, Tracer is the problem here, we’re nerfing her next”. Not the case here, it’s Brigitte who’s getting nerfed soon.

And this has been happening for every other hero who could counter Tracer or keep her in check. Sombra and her Hack, Torbjorn with his Turret and right-click, Symmetra with auto-aim on her M1, Moira, even McCree to some extent.

Pick any other hero as a balancing baseline and the game is healthier already. Tracer isn’t, and the game would’ve been better with her nerfed or reworked a bit, like Blink being a “dodge the next damage instance” but a single ability on a 4-6 seconds cooldown. In her current state the game breaks when Tracer becomes meta.

TL; DR is in the title.

71 Likes
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I mean, Hyper-Mobility was always a problem with the game, the first year and a half of the game’s competitive scene was built off of everyone pressing L-Shift and E and jumping on someone at the same time while someone playing a Korean girl held R-Click over them so no one could do anything about it

During this period as well; if you had a worse Tracer you just lost because her mobility is so insanely powerful because it’s easy to pull off, there’s no movement acceleration making AD-AD Spam way more powerful than it should be, and she’s one of the few characters who has actual Carry Potential and Depth to their kit despite the game being designed in a way that most characters depend on their team doing their jobs to begin with and have absolutely zero depth to their kit and would be considered “Specialists” in any other game in order to force Blizzard’s idea of “”"""“Balance”""""" which is Rock, Paper, Scissors but the scissors broke in half and it’ll take Jeff and Pals a year and a half to fix them because of God knows what even though they could probably just buy a new pair tomorrow, so the most logical thing to do is to just toss rock at each other over and over again and determining who wins by who’s hand can best emulate a piece of Limestone.

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You’re…let me see here…four years late…

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Uhh…? They aren’t managed. At all. They’re still just as garbage to play against as they were 6 months ago.

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Abseloutly ture. I hope there will be an attempt to rework Tracer at some point. To me, she has always been the biggest problem when it comes to balancing. Alternativly, give her a hard counter, like how Reaper and Bastion can delete Winston.

Doesnt matter. It has always been like this.

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I do remember Geoff said having regret giving double jump to Genji as well. Think makes balance challenging

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Umm what? Even though doomfist is objectively bad right now? And has gotten nothing but nerfs in the past year or more? Is this a case of “I don’t learn how to counter so he’s bad to play against” orrrr what?

I can’t take people who call ridiculously easy to counter heroes, “garbage to play against”.

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I consider Tracer one of the best overall characters in the game. Next to McCree.
Why?

Because their kits are simple. The only way you get better with them is pure mechanical skill. They are simple characters to understand with a lot of depth to them and as you get better, they get better. That’s why both are great picks in GM.

Tracer is a fine character. The players are just really good, hence why she rises as the ranks go up. And, if you need to, the counters are there for you.

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And? Those 14 nerfs, in my own and a lot of the forums opinions, have not changed the fact that hes total garbage to play against. Hence my point, his fun factor(healthyness) can NOT be properly handled with balance changes.

And he is garbage to play against. Just because hes “easy to counter” doesn’t change that. The hero feels awful to go against regardless.

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Yeah, but there becomes a problem where other characters simply don’t have the same skill ceiling or potential that another character has, so when they’re optimized to the highest degree which always happens in high tiers of Competitive Play; they utterly dominate everything else in the game, and it already happened during the first year and a half of the game’s lifespan; if you had a worse Tracer you just lost outright.

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I havent even read the post yet but im calling a few things

To much mobility

unbalanced

To much dmg

Tracer is easy

She deletes supports

Why cant supports 1v1 tracer and win every single time

Zen/ana main

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Maybe the devs should try giving her one less blink on experimental and see how that goes.

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Well that wasn’t the OP’s point. His point was sure the fun meter is low but even though someone can master them, it’s still ridiculously easy to stop him.

With tracer, if someone masters tracer, it’s unstoppable. He’s not talking about tracer’s fun meter or if it’s garbage to play against her.

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Well, on that point I hard disagree. Tracer is definitely extremely powerful when mastered, but she does have checks and balances.

I think the real problem people have with tracer is that she is countered by skill, whereas doom and widow are countered by a hero. Like, sombra or mccree pretty much hard shut doom down, just pick the hero and hes already useless. But with tracer, you actually have to know how to play her counters to stop her.

So contrary to the post, I think she actually one of the few healthy heroes as far as counters go.

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100% agreed. I’d prefer they just remove restrictions on other heroes.

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Lets be honest. There wouldnt be as much CC today if they have just nerfed Tracer and Genji back in the Dive meta.

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overwatch is different from other FPS games because of its mobility and the fast pacing that comes from that

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I don’t think tracer is problematic but I do agree that some balances are made around tracer and not to tracer itself which is… Bad?
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I think tracer is pretty balanced, however, it is clear most nerfs go to her counters, and never get buffed, which is sad and “powercreeps” tracer in some way

I don’t think tracer deserves any nerfs, but neither does brig, and hey low picked counters such as sombra (you mentioned sym let’s add her too) do deserve a little buff IMO

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Tracer has a near infinite skill ceiling with the ability to outplay her counters, the only counter to her is hypersustain (GOATS, DB, Bunker)

That is the very core of the problem.
You either throw sustain over sustain at her or she has the ability run rampant.

Only reason why she isn’t such a big problem: Pulsebomb nerf
If she could blow up tanks again she would become meta again

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I can agree with that statement for tracer, but not mccree. He’s always had the flash fan combo, and ever since he got that fire rate buff, he’s pretty much become the handicap hitscan of the game.
Even the pros said similar things about him.
When you vs a widow, there’s usually a very clear line on being able to tell how good they are, due to them either landing or missing shots.
With mccree after that fire rate buff, it feels like 9/10 mccrees are REALLY good.
I’m glad he got that flash nerf (even if it wasn’t necessarily needed), I was getting extremely sick of being forced to vs him in literally every single game I played, no matter the game mode.

1 Like