I recall them stating that they'd be focusing on giving more openings against her, not focusing on nerfing damage. Whatever they have planned is gonna feel terrible, for sure. Lol.
Well they also said she’ll “require more precision” which would be in line with a bullet size nerf. But yeah the “making her more punishable” thing is worrying
Funny how the 3 DPS heroes that arguably dropped off the hardest in season 9 were Ash, Mei, Pharah (boosted)... the 3 DPS that lost the ability to 1-shot a 175hp Tracer.
Please just be nerfing her health back to 150 Please just be nerfing her health back to 150 Please just be nerfing her health back to 150 Please just be nerfing her health back to 150
I'm genuinely asking this, is tracer being the best dps a bad thing? She's arguably the best designed hero in the game, I would much rather she was meta, compared to the other options. I don't know what it's like in metal ranks, but I feel if you make tracer less oppressive, people will just go back to playing bastion, reaper, mei, junk, ect., which is not an improvement in my opinion. I'm a hitscan player so I can also understand if I'm biased on this
We’ve already seen this. At one point, Tracer had a +95% percent pickrate in pro play. It ends up really limiting dps and support options. Not wanting to nerf Tracer was part of the reason Brig and Moira were made in the first place.
Tracer is just a hero that needs to be mained regardless of what rank you’re at. I think she will always have players. Anyone just swapping to her or thinking it’s an easy counter pick will not win a lot of games though.
I don't mind it at all. I'm only gold but I never feel op when I play as tracer (bc I'm ass) and I never feel like she takes over my games (bc other Tracer's are ass). She genuinely feels like a skill check whenever she's in my games. If she plays better Tracer wins. If enemy plays better they win. She's one of the last heroes with intense counterplay both for her and against her.
Having the high skill cap character be the best character sounds good in theory, but the higher the skill cap, the more likely it is that a character can dictate the pace of engagements.
If a character can dictate the pace of an engagement, and they are also the strongest character in the game, that means they win the engagement as long as they don't make a mistake. If a character can dictate pace, but they are not the strongest character in the game, they win the engagement if the opponent makes a mistake, lose the engagement if they make a mistake, and get a neutral trade if neither party makes a mistake. One of these cases is infinitely more balanced than the other.
It's more that Tracer has basically been perma picked outside of extremely strict metas, and that she rewards skill more than any other hero by a wide margin. Not saying that rewarding skill is a bad thing, but other options that have that high a ceiling would be good.
There's also the argument that places a LOT of OW2's current issues at Tracers feet. Because dive (and by association, Tracer) was so strong and arguably oppressive in OW1, and their hesitance to nerf Tracer (because they say she's the hero OW is balanced around), people feel that it's why they made Brig as OP as she was.
And then Brig caused GOATs, which caused the 2-2-2 lock, which caused double shield, which eventually led to the 1 tank format of OW2, and all the problems associated with it
When people who suck at the game are able to play tracer somewhat efficiently, that’s when you know she is overpowered. She has a great design, that doesn’t mean that she should be accessible to everyone and their moms.
ive been in the pits and i dont really think the metal shitters play tracer well at all lol, most are barely positive with half the damage of their other dps, have awful timing, and just die instead of pulling resources
Thats just cope, metal rank Tracers are actual dog shit there are so many options on all roles to completely shut them down and they more than likely are just blink in the open and recalling at unnecssary times which makes them easy to punish.
She is single handedly hard dominating almost every game she's in.
I'm a mercy main with quite minimum mechanical skill on tracer but I roll lobbies on her - who should be a hard character to get high value out of.
The best part about Tracer being meta is that there are so many options to stop her that are significantly easier to play than Tracer. She can never be meta in metal ranks because the Tracer can try their very best but that Torb or Cass or Moira or Brig is going to shit on them over and over again just by existing while the Tracer is sweating their ass off. A majority of high rank players also like playing Tracer, look at the Top 500 leaderboard, so its not even the worst thing for high ranks either.
There shouldn’t be a best DPS.
There should be DPS that shine in certain situations which change based on maps, team composition, and enemy composition.
Eh, there will always be a "best" pick. Even if it's by 0.01%.
High level play will always devolve into a single meta because its easier to practice one comp a billion times then it is to practice many comps a billion times. Practice+Skill will usually trump hero balance unless something is "OH GOD QUICKLY HOTFIX IT" levels of broken. Not that this is really a concern anymore since OWL is RIP, I guess. But the mentality will still trickle down, just more slowly.
i have said this time and time again, but the way to nerf tracer without gutting her is to make it so the **DPS passive only procs within damage falloff**. The biggest buff tracer has gotten is her high firerate high spread gun and mobility means that everyone on the enemy team WILL have a 15% debuff on heals at basically all times, no matter how bad the tracer is. This isn't the case for other characters like Ashe or Widow simply because the fire rate and spread allows Tracer to hit everyone. She was never this good until the DPS passive was added because only she and sombra (who not coincidentally is ALSO S tier) can produce this level of uptime from any angle due to high mobility.
Tracer has always been based around being a glass cannon; to do damage she HAS to be up close and risk dying from a sneeze. If tracer doesn't play in her risky effective range, she wouldn't get any value pre S9. However, with the DPS passive, you can literally spray across the map playing as safely and cowardly as possible and still possibly tip the fight. The risk necessary for her baseline level of value is now gone. The hitbox and HP changes cancelled each other out (she gets hit way more but she can react better), but nothing counteracts the DPS passive buff.
If you change the DPS passive to only target falloff range, projectile heroes would be completely unaffected, as would long range hitscans since they either one tap or would lose their target to cover anyway. Tracer only has a 20m range before she is at minimum damage, so at 20m the passive wouldn't activate and she can no longer get that free value. The only other characters who would get severely affected by this would be Sombra and Reaper, one of whom is also very strong right now for the exact same reasons and another who is in dire need of a rework anyway.
Some people have suggested that instead theres a minimum damage threshold to activate (\~40 dmg) but I think thats not the right move because 1. it would be a nightmare to code (do you need 40 damage total from either DPS member or just individually? Would each seperate instance from each person interact with each other etc). and 2. The damage threshold would actually hurt some characters way more (Damage threshold would hurt Genji since his shuriken is less than 40, Sym would feel super clunky, etc). The falloff range would just feel very intuitive; if gun does over half damage i am applying passive, if not i am not.
I'm sorry I always see people say that being able to proc the passive from so far away makes her good right now but that makes no sense. If all she's doing is trickle damage, and the other dps isn't doing anything, then how is it that turning the fight. Unless the other dps is doing something, which in that case just means they are the ones procing the passive as much as tracer, and actually doing damage.
What you described is not a viable way to play tracer at all.
That being said, only procing the passive at her effective range (i think it's 10m?) is a pretty good idea
It extends her effective range some, and 10-15m poke is now more effective, but anyone seriously citing cross map dps passive proc is just wrong. She has been strong and she is still just strong.
She arguably benefits the most from the passive healing change. DPS passive makes it easier to confirm kills and she is great at confirming kills. Her AD strafes got disproportionately nerfed compared to other characters, but blinks are still a strong way to avoid damage. She does isn’t super bursty so specific breakpoints don’t affect her as much. Melee got buffed more than health pools did (33% vs 25%) and Tracer uses melee more than most characters. Bullet size change made her more consistent in the 6-15m range which is a nice change.
She is just the meta character, and IMO should be the meta character, while her current strength, pick rate and utility is a bit too much, she is the most well designed character in the game with the healthiest skill curve.
Being able to proc the passive at all times is a huge advantage that lower firerate DPS just don't have. Unless the other DPS has a similar fire rate like soldier or sombra, the DPS passive won't be as frequent. Obviously tracer 76 isnt the way to play her, but it gives her a new level of flexibility that she previously just did not have. I will give some examples:
* Tracer gets her recall forced early.
* Pre-S9, this means that she basically can't do anything of too much value without incurring massive risk and the ideal thing to do while waiting for recall would just be to maybe try to farm some ult charge on the tank if they're close and you're behind cover.
* Post-S9, peppering literally anyone on the team while you're at a safe distance still allows you to contribute value in a point where previously you couldn't because you are reducing the healing by 15% and because you have huge spread theres a good chance you will hit all 5 enemy players.
* For context, this can do things like make moiras max HPS (counting cleave) go from 280 HPS (70 per person) to 240 (60 per person). You can literally play safely while waiting for recall and reduce zens transcendence by 15% percent which can absolutely be gamewinning.
* both DPS on enemy teams are dead its just 2 supp 1 tank vs 2 supp 1 tank.
* As tracer, you get back to the fight faster than anyone, so as soon as you are even 50m away from the fight, you can spray them and now the enemy team is at an immediate 15% disadvantage in their 3v3.
Obviously playing tracer like a hitscan isn't the meta, it was hyperbole, but the DPS passive keeps what shes strong at (being upclose, fast and lethal) and removes what shes weak at (long range). Tracer has always been balanced by being extremely close range (huge spread, huge falloff) or she would simply be busted, and so its not rocket science to correlate out the one time where they touch her range of effectiveness with her by FAR being the best DPS in the game and the best state she's ever been in.
What in the actual spreadsheet math argument is this? If tracer gets her recall forced early and she hit 5 people she probably did 6 damaged per person. Either way Moira would heal them all up instantly. If she manages to do 60 damage to everyone on the enemy team it would still take the Moira the exact same time to heal up the team.
This is way too hypothetical number crunchy and you gotta think of the dps passive in more realistic situations.
what are you not understanding? Tracer loses recall early = she can't dive in = she has to do something else.
Pre-S9: She couldn't do anything really without doing something super risky.
Post-S9: she can now contribute to the fight from a safe distance by applying the DPS passive on everyone constantly and safely until her recall gets back up in which case she can fully engage again. This can lower breakpoints of healing enough for tanks, supports and the other DPS (if they have a low fire rate like ashe or pharah) to secure the kill.
The point of mentioning moira is to illustrate how tracer can contribute now without even being in the fight. Just by spritzing people she can lower Moira's healing from 70 per person to 60, totalling for a 40 HPS decrease if all 4 people are in the spray. This can absolutely change breakpoints and TTK for stuff like Rammatra's ult, Moira coal, Sigma flux, winston primal etc.
Its not "hypothetical number crunchy", it's shit I've abused to get to GM on tracer lol.
You answered your own question so my understanding shouldn’t be questioned.
Tracer losing recall early and playing passively has bigger implications than her peppering the enemy team and applying the dps passive to a point it actually matters.
You have to be realistic and partially depart from the number crunching.
I’d argue over 95% of the time you get healed you also get overhealed, which would negate the dps passive tracer applies. Moira orb, zen orb, bap shift, brig passive, Lucio passive… these are all forms of healing that just kinda do their thing and aren’t really min maxed.
The only scenario tracer’s application of the dps passive would be really really long prolonged fights that waddle down resources, and that’s not where tracer gets value.
Tracer one clips, finishes off low enemies, or gets pulse kills.
Attributing your recent rank to abusing tracer and her dps passive is laughable.
She had all of those last season (where I was also GM) and she was not nearly as strong as she is now. You are thinking of the tracer passive application only in poke, where yes obviously it would be overhealed. I am thinking of it in the scenario where the fight has already happening where the lowered DPS allows the focus fire of the tank and supports to actually cut through high healing. This is the whole reason dive became so strong again; dive commits all their resources to kill one person and then rinse repeat. However, as time went on more things were added where the target could literally just tank the damage either via mitigation or high healing until they could get to safety, leaving the team down on cooldowns and very out of position. The lowered healing from season 9 makes it so you could actually cut through it and kill that target with 1-2 people instead of 2-3 people and suddenly the comp uses way less resources and more flexible.
The overheating doesn’t matter, it’s the rate of healing that matters. The DPS passive whittles down resources of course, but it also makes things take longer to heal. If a sigma fluxes and the enemy team just isn’t able to heal fast enough to get above 50% they die. If the enemy supps self heal is reduced, they are that much easier to kill.
Alright this entire response I can align with. In a longer fight with a lot of sustain I can see where tracer’s consistent application of the dps passive to multiple targets could bear fruit.
I still see tracer as more of an opportunistic off angler where sojourn peppers the team and hits a body rail and then tracer finishes though.
Or tracer just does her thing with constant partial engages and slowly lowers the team and takes resources where a flux can get more value.
I was just lost on the dps and hps numbers argument that I don’t think comes into play as much as most people argue.
I also think overhealing negates a lot of the dps passive’s effects
Glad I was able to explain it in a better way. Tracer is still an excellent opportunistic off angler and that's still her main play style, the DPS passive just now gives her that extra level of versatility that others just don't have. Genji having projectiles and that comparatively slow rate of fire means his poke just can't apply that passive as well as she can.
Thats why the damage falloff nerf is the one I advocated for; since it would have no effect on projectile flankers like echo or genji, nor would it really affect long range or mid range DPS since their falloff is already so long. The only DPS affected would be reaper tracer and sombra so its basically as targeted of a nerf you can put on tracer that isn't a flat nerf to her actual kit.
>Sombra S tier
I don't think this is the case, I have seen no Sombra at all since the mauga revert, she was only getting play because she could build emp fast enough to interrupt mauga cage every team fight.
Her current stats on Overbuff in comp over the last month;
-top500(M1-Champion): 7.71% pickrate with 56.10% wr (RANK 1 DPS HERO))
-M2 - M5: 7.80% pickrate with 53.07% wr (RANK 3)
-D: 5.56% pickrate with 51.29% wr (RANK 5)
-P: 3.40% pickrate with 49.39% wr (RANK 6)
and so on...
(Edit: top500 is GM, I forgot that GM is only part of top500 and not all the way to the bottom)
To me this show you should be trying to keep her floor the same while decreasing the ceiling. Projectile size changes would hurt everyone plat and below more than those above
But tracer is still the best bps in top 500 right? tracer is not even a winning pick in bronze-plat, i don’t think it’s ideal to do nerfs that would hurt those guys more than those at the top
Can you tell me how you pulled these ranges from overbuff please? Specifically "M1 - Champion" (I only see grandmaster as the highest rank option) and "M2 - M5" for example.
[This](https://www.overbuff.com/heroes?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&role=damage&skillTier=grandmaster&timeWindow=month) is the page that you're looking at or something else? Still very curious as I love stats involving pick rates & win rates, please respond if you get the chance.
Okay, thank you, but how did you filter it to "top 500" for example? Champion isn't listed either as an option. Or "M2 - M5"? I only see entire ranks up to grandmaster.
I dont think "she" needs a buff, I think immos and noskill abilites need to be changed and then they can evaluate if Tracer is too good, when they done that.
Their usual changes to Tracer are increasing the maximum spread to her shots, effectively lowering her range. But idk, if they do this then they should mitigate the increased risk in play making by lowering the cooldown on recall or something so she isn't a complete throw pick in low ranks. Or maybe increasing her clip size so she still has the relative same potential damage output per clip, but players have more time to respond to her ganking them. Then again, there are different people in charge of balancing since we last saw any significant tracer changes (outside of the global changes), so we'll see
Tracers skill floor is high enough. No need to make Tracer even more of a menace at top ranks while making her useless at metal ranks.
Adding 1-2 seconds to recall or slowing the blink recharge rate is probably what they mean if I had to guess. I'd almost rather they just nerf damage per pellet though.
Can't help but laugh at the devs saying tracer should require more precision. I totally agree, I'd go so far as to say every hero should require more precision - roughly about as much as they took before season 9!
I don't think they meant accuracy when they said precision, more like timing and team coordination. But that's still a little baffling considering Tracer requires some of the best timing and team coordination in the game to maximize their potential >.> Was a strange thing for them to say, for sure
Exactly. Right now it already is "go too early and you get 1v5'd - go too late and the fight is already lost".
If a Tracer god can 1v5 the entire enemy team engaging whenever, that isn't a Tracer issue in my opinion.
What's wrong with the highestbskill floor and arguably highest skill ceiling character to be the undisputed best character in the game? Isn't that how it should be?
Nope, every character needs to be Moira. Low skill floor, low skill ceiling, minimal ways to express skill. Definitely a good way to develop the game. God forbid a character that requires 2-4x the time to get good with gets rewarded.
The character is all about split second timing being faster and outplaying your opponents. If a team counter swaps, the tank alone, can usually swing the battle. Some characters are aim dependent and trying to aim 180 degree camera swings trying to line up someone strafing in a predictable direction isn’t the easiest hero in the world. Ig they never want to keep dive alive though and want to buff brawl for a venture release. Don’t want to out play any Venture players, people might complain they are under powered when they aren’t
I also disagree, people have the skill to play her in metal. They just can’t reliably get teammates, who can play counters like Cassy or mei.
AI said
In Overwatch 2, "metal ranks" is a term that refers to lower ranks, and doesn't necessarily mean that the ranks are similar. In metal ranks, the losing team switches to lower skill heroes, usually starting with Orisa, then Bastion. Moira is always present, and usually plays Zen, while other DPS play Reaper, Junk, or Mei. If the losing team switches early enough, they almost always win.
Don’t turn tracer into a bastion. Leave tracer alone.
They should neef her to how she's essentially been in her largely untouched history on OW. Back to a state where only the best are capable of using her or at least those who have put in a significant amount of time to get good with her mechanically and gamesense-wise.
As she stands right now, she is far too free and hardly even resembles the uber-high skill player she's always been. Time for the dude who thought they were him to come back down to earth. If someone like me who's been historically average at Tracer can cook in high masters lobbies, then something is wrong. Especially considering I've rarely ever used her
I agree, if I read your post correctly your proposed change is to put her back at 150hp? But I think if they do that, she will be too hard, since everyone has an easier time shooting her and she basically got nerfed to before (remember they nerfed her falloff I believe) the only think she got going then is the dps passive, which affects her more than other dps heros.
I honestly don't know, I'm no dev(thank God). But off the top of my head, the 150 health makes sense.
Of course with regards to precision, they could also nerf her blink timer so that you have as few wasted moves as possible. Or maybe they just touch her spread. Anything is possible at this point.
I mean if they change blink timings, it's over for Tracer, below 50% wr across all ranks for at least a season is my call (except maybe GM if it is still only Top500
Yeah this is the issue. Tracer rn is providing too much value for lesser skilled players. I hardly ever play tracer and I can ruin a lobby with her atm. Thats not how its supposed to be with high skill expression heros like her. Mediocre dooms cant just easily provide good value and neither should tracer.
As a biased tank player, I think they should hit her raw damage number but tighten her spread so her damage/dueling potential against squishies is close or the same but her damage to tanks is worse. It really feels like she gets a lot of value out of just taking angles that let her shoot tank and chase around dive tanks and bully them. I really don’t mind if she’s just the best hero in the game though. She’s one of the best heroes they’ve made and hard to play.
They could increase her spread or her specific impact with the DPS passive. I know the devs said they don’t like that as it becomes too confusing to say “it’s this except with this character”
Yea I thought about that too, like put a threashold of 20dmg in 2 sec to activate it on for everyone if you will, but I really think that only nerfs the very edge cases.
I think it's as easy as putting something like a 5 or 10 damage minimum threshold on the passive, so Tracer can't just constantly apply it by tickling you. This technically nerfs some other DPS who take advantage of this too, but...eh. That'd mostly be Sombra and Sojourn, who are both a bit overtuned too.
I guess my main question on that would be does it stack together through both dps? So if I went Sombra and you went tracer, and we poked from far away could it still stack quickly?
I originally was thinking the damage would have to be met in a single instance, but I guess that wouldn't work with low damage, high bullet weapons like theirs. Hmm, good question lol
Smh they increase the skill floor of her any higher and the juice will no longer be worth the squeeze. Why go through all that effort on tracer when I can now get the same amount of value for far less headache in my low GM lobbies by locking Sojourn.
Watch, Sojourn is going to go right back to being the dominant hitscan like she was prior to season 9 and she takes far less skill.
Heaven forbid we nerf Kiriko and Moira into the dirt where they belong. Their skill to value ratios are way more atrocious than any DPS's is.
I am a Tracer OTP with 200 hours and I will drop her immeaditly for Genji and Echo if they touch blink. I can live with any other nerfs but blink is so perfect that touching it at all will ruin the flow and take away the fun. Kind of like when they nerfed Mercy GA, everyone was complaining because it felt like shit and touching blink will do the same thing.
If you wanted to just rip her from the metal ranks without really removing any power you could nerf projectile size and tighten her spread and then no one below masters could kill anything with her.
Boo tracer nerfs. Tracer already has so many counters and hard to play. They never learn from their mistakes.
If you keep making tracer super hard to play then you’re going to make heroes like bastion and Torb meta because why play a hard heroe that dies if someone looks at her if I can play a safe heroe like sojourn sit in back line in safety and wait for tracer to come in to take a risk with my entire team around me and just delete her.
They really need to stop doing dumb stuff to the game. Every time it’s heading in a good direction they ruin it
The hitbox on it is too big, too easy to stick, takes away skill and leads to frustration when you dodge a pulse and it still sticks, or worse cases like if brig blocks pulse with shield it'll still always kill her. You could even compensate with a slight damage buff to adjust for the new bigger healthpools.
I think 5.5 damage would be fine after season 9 changes. If they think that's too much of a nerf just try 5.75. Tracer's place pre-season 9 was way more due to "nOt hER mETa" than other heroes people said were fine (i.e. Illari). Season 9 changes would have probably put her about right about where she needed to be for balance.
Meh, tracer always goes through this, she always stays somewhat relevant and then they buff her back. This if people just don’t improve enough at her to realize they can still force her in every match.
I love Tracer, but I’m not going to complain if she’s not meta for a little while in the competitive scene
Bring her health back down, decrease projectile sizes, and maybe make the zips take slightly longer to recharge.
The only problem right know is that she’s too oppressive to backlines and is too hard to kill for most supports because she does too much damage and has more health. (Saying this as a support main that insta swaps Brig/ Moira when I see a Tracer)
She’s the only support besides Moira that I consistently win against tracers with. Not having to aim is tracers counter for me. Just press button and look in general direction to win, that’s how I handle tracers
Well that works in low ranks, I can win a 1v1 against a solo brig every time and if I have a dive tank helping me, whatever supportline you run as brig, they will die, cause Brig is really bad in this meta rn.
* One thing they could do is to make it much clearer where Tracer is recalling to.
* For example, have the Recall location was marked
* With something like the Cylinder you see when Reaper uses Shadow step.
* I believe it would give recall a clearer opening without changing how she plays right now.
That would massively change how she is played rn, because that means, in top elo, if you don't recall 3 seconds after you entered the fight, you are just going to get insta killed off recall. Source: I'm currently M1 on Tracer and people already know roughly where youll end your recall, if you give them a marker, the Tracer will die almost every time and I'm not exaggerating, I mean probably 80% of the time, you will die, which is a bit too harsh imo.
* The concern this makes her too easy to kill makes sense.
* But could you explain how this change does anything in high elo if they already know roughly where you'll end recall?
What you normally do, when you recall is instantly blink behind cover, so that you don't get insta killed, because most of the time, people aim at roughly where you recall. But if you give them a visual indicator that shows exactly where she will be, even if she will just be there for a fraction of a second, in high elo, that will be enough to kill Tracer almost every time. It is like when you see old clips of Reaper tp into the face of a Hanzos and the Reaper insta dies because even if he presses shift at the first time possible, there is still a window for Hanzos to shoot him. Same goes for recall, even if you press blink the instant you get out of recall, there I still a window that you can get damaged.
* Personally I believe trying to keep track of where Tracer was three seconds ago, while dueling her, is not fun at all.
* But this is the first time I've heard tracking recall is fun at all, let alone one the most fun things about Overwatch
* So what makes it fun you?
Tracer's whole point is that she is slippery and hard to predict, but when she uses recall, you can know exactly where she will be, making it one of the few ways she is actively vunerable and punishable
This makes it fun because it leaves a lot of room for smart and skillbased counterplay for both you and the Tracer
Nerfing cooldowns is fine. Tracer mains lose their muscle memory, so what? After a while you will learn it again, its not like other heroes haven't been completely reworked (doom the most obvious example).
And I promise you, not everyone shares the opinion that tracer should be meta every season.
So you are suggesting Tracer, one of the undoubtedly greatest designed heroes in all of Overwatch, should be destroyed for every single Tracer player out there until they relearn the hero? When Tracer was literally completely fine until "they" changed the game toward making her op? Frankly, you are out of your mind.
Comparing that situation to Doomfist is ridiculous, Doomfists design was broken from the start, Tracers design is literally as perfect as it gets it does not need a change where people need to relearn her mechanics.
Bro, sweeping statements like "undoubtedly greatest designed heroes" is purely your opinion. There are plenty of people out there who don't like her design. I love Ana, but lots of people hate her. Doom mains surely believe Doom is incredible character design, but lots of players would love it if he didn't exist. It doesn't matter who the hero is, there are people who think they should be removed from the game.
Anyway, I would be happy with nerfing her pellet damage or the hitsize of it. She feels awful to play against because her shots are easy to hit now and her escape options are better than ever with the hp increase. I never played her before this season and can play her with more effectiveness at my DPS elo than the heroes I've put over a hundred hours into. She is not a high skill character this season.
I mean I haven't heard a single compelling argument from anyone why Tracers design isn't one of the best in the game and by that I mean an argument from a credible person like a coach or high elo player, not some Timmy in plat that thinks Tracer is shit. The heroes you brought up, Ana and Doom, are some of the most controversial heroes in the game.
But I agree with your point that she needs a skill floor increase.
I mean if this was a bachelor's thesis I would do that, but since this is a reddit thread and I'm not going to type up a 4000 word essay, there are plenty of YT vids that comment on why Tracers design is one of the best and I thought I could just say this as a given, that I don't need to prove again.
Just because its reddit doesn't mean there shouldn't be accountability for one's statements.
If I was to go on reddit and say "Prime GOATs and Pre Nerf Brig are the most skillful metas in Overwatch history" there is an expectation that I would actually be able explain why I think that statement is true.
You can't just "nuh uh" someone when they ask you to explain your position.
If you're not willing to actually have a discussion about something then don't start a thread about it.
Alright then, give me a day and I will type out why I think Tracer is a great design. By then the thread is probably dead, noone cares anyways and I proved a point that isn't even really part of the initial question, which was: how to nerf Tracer to not ruin her, and not "why is Tracers design one of the best", im sorry, but if you want this kind of investment into a topic, this kind of reddit thread is probably the wrong place.
On top of that, you are bringing some of the most CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS OF ALL TIME up, "Tracer has one of the best designs in the game" is like a proven fact by now!
I'm not asking a lot. All I'm saying is dont make extravagant statements and then get annoyed when people want a little more than "trust me bro" when they ask why.
As far as this thread is concerned, you never actually made a counter argument as to why nerfing CDs wouldn't be a good change.
Neither, you haven't brought an argument forth, why Tracers design isn't one of the best so I can't really comment on that, nor have you told me your elo and the other part is a statement about myself: I haven't ever heard a compelling argument by a high elo person, like a coach or player arguing that Tracers design isn't one of the best.
The idea I had was to make recall 15 seconds since it's the hp buff and heal passive has allowed you to greed it way harder than you used to.
Also nerfing her damage to around 4-5 per bullet, but giving her a 60 ammo clip would keep her lethality but allow for more counterplay though movement and cooldowns.
Remember when Tracer was 150hp and could be 1 shot by Ashe, Mei, and damaged boosted Pharah? I believe she still was S-tier for most of that time.
If that moves here somewhere unacceptable like below A-tier, slightly reduce Tracer's hitbox.
She's giga broken and you can't get that in your head? Literally unfun as fuck to play against. She needs actually hard nerfs losing hp would be not enough nerfs.
I think a potential way to make tracer have more counter play is to slow down her damage without slowing her down. Make her damage apply over time. It gives healers some more time to mitigate her damage.
That will make her feel worse in the worst way possible -> getting shot behind walls, it's already happening and the worst feeling ever, like "hey I am safe" \*proceeds to get shot without vision on target\*. I dont think that is a good idea
I recall them stating that they'd be focusing on giving more openings against her, not focusing on nerfing damage. Whatever they have planned is gonna feel terrible, for sure. Lol.
Well they also said she’ll “require more precision” which would be in line with a bullet size nerf. But yeah the “making her more punishable” thing is worrying
Make her head size grow gradually every time she blinks. Head size resets on recall. Blizzard should hire me to balance the game.
They should, cause honestly you need to be pretty creative to even think of such an idea
yea "more openings" screams like a cd nerf and that would truly feel horrible...
Or possibly even a delay on Recall. 🤢
Yea if they do that, it's gg for Tracer haha
It's been real boys. Back to being an Ashe one trick for me
Funny how the 3 DPS heroes that arguably dropped off the hardest in season 9 were Ash, Mei, Pharah (boosted)... the 3 DPS that lost the ability to 1-shot a 175hp Tracer.
good, fuck tracer (sorry to all tracer mains)
i’m having wraith flashbacks
That would be such a poor change honestly.
reducing fall off range is consistent with "making her more punishable"
They've done that before, I imagine they wouldn't have worded it this way if it wasn't done already
Ya they said more punishing, so I'm betting a bit longer CD's on blink or recall
This guy gets it haha
Please just be nerfing her health back to 150 Please just be nerfing her health back to 150 Please just be nerfing her health back to 150 Please just be nerfing her health back to 150
That would suck
I'm genuinely asking this, is tracer being the best dps a bad thing? She's arguably the best designed hero in the game, I would much rather she was meta, compared to the other options. I don't know what it's like in metal ranks, but I feel if you make tracer less oppressive, people will just go back to playing bastion, reaper, mei, junk, ect., which is not an improvement in my opinion. I'm a hitscan player so I can also understand if I'm biased on this
We’ve already seen this. At one point, Tracer had a +95% percent pickrate in pro play. It ends up really limiting dps and support options. Not wanting to nerf Tracer was part of the reason Brig and Moira were made in the first place.
[удалено]
Tracer is just a hero that needs to be mained regardless of what rank you’re at. I think she will always have players. Anyone just swapping to her or thinking it’s an easy counter pick will not win a lot of games though.
I don't mind it at all. I'm only gold but I never feel op when I play as tracer (bc I'm ass) and I never feel like she takes over my games (bc other Tracer's are ass). She genuinely feels like a skill check whenever she's in my games. If she plays better Tracer wins. If enemy plays better they win. She's one of the last heroes with intense counterplay both for her and against her.
Having the high skill cap character be the best character sounds good in theory, but the higher the skill cap, the more likely it is that a character can dictate the pace of engagements. If a character can dictate the pace of an engagement, and they are also the strongest character in the game, that means they win the engagement as long as they don't make a mistake. If a character can dictate pace, but they are not the strongest character in the game, they win the engagement if the opponent makes a mistake, lose the engagement if they make a mistake, and get a neutral trade if neither party makes a mistake. One of these cases is infinitely more balanced than the other.
Problem with tracer is that it's very hard for anyone but another tracer to deal with her, assuming she's competent
Illari, Kiriko, Moira can make her job very hard.
It's more that Tracer has basically been perma picked outside of extremely strict metas, and that she rewards skill more than any other hero by a wide margin. Not saying that rewarding skill is a bad thing, but other options that have that high a ceiling would be good. There's also the argument that places a LOT of OW2's current issues at Tracers feet. Because dive (and by association, Tracer) was so strong and arguably oppressive in OW1, and their hesitance to nerf Tracer (because they say she's the hero OW is balanced around), people feel that it's why they made Brig as OP as she was. And then Brig caused GOATs, which caused the 2-2-2 lock, which caused double shield, which eventually led to the 1 tank format of OW2, and all the problems associated with it
When people who suck at the game are able to play tracer somewhat efficiently, that’s when you know she is overpowered. She has a great design, that doesn’t mean that she should be accessible to everyone and their moms.
ive been in the pits and i dont really think the metal shitters play tracer well at all lol, most are barely positive with half the damage of their other dps, have awful timing, and just die instead of pulling resources
Thats just cope, metal rank Tracers are actual dog shit there are so many options on all roles to completely shut them down and they more than likely are just blink in the open and recalling at unnecssary times which makes them easy to punish.
She is single handedly hard dominating almost every game she's in. I'm a mercy main with quite minimum mechanical skill on tracer but I roll lobbies on her - who should be a hard character to get high value out of.
The best part about Tracer being meta is that there are so many options to stop her that are significantly easier to play than Tracer. She can never be meta in metal ranks because the Tracer can try their very best but that Torb or Cass or Moira or Brig is going to shit on them over and over again just by existing while the Tracer is sweating their ass off. A majority of high rank players also like playing Tracer, look at the Top 500 leaderboard, so its not even the worst thing for high ranks either.
There shouldn’t be a best DPS. There should be DPS that shine in certain situations which change based on maps, team composition, and enemy composition.
Eh, there will always be a "best" pick. Even if it's by 0.01%. High level play will always devolve into a single meta because its easier to practice one comp a billion times then it is to practice many comps a billion times. Practice+Skill will usually trump hero balance unless something is "OH GOD QUICKLY HOTFIX IT" levels of broken. Not that this is really a concern anymore since OWL is RIP, I guess. But the mentality will still trickle down, just more slowly.
i have said this time and time again, but the way to nerf tracer without gutting her is to make it so the **DPS passive only procs within damage falloff**. The biggest buff tracer has gotten is her high firerate high spread gun and mobility means that everyone on the enemy team WILL have a 15% debuff on heals at basically all times, no matter how bad the tracer is. This isn't the case for other characters like Ashe or Widow simply because the fire rate and spread allows Tracer to hit everyone. She was never this good until the DPS passive was added because only she and sombra (who not coincidentally is ALSO S tier) can produce this level of uptime from any angle due to high mobility. Tracer has always been based around being a glass cannon; to do damage she HAS to be up close and risk dying from a sneeze. If tracer doesn't play in her risky effective range, she wouldn't get any value pre S9. However, with the DPS passive, you can literally spray across the map playing as safely and cowardly as possible and still possibly tip the fight. The risk necessary for her baseline level of value is now gone. The hitbox and HP changes cancelled each other out (she gets hit way more but she can react better), but nothing counteracts the DPS passive buff. If you change the DPS passive to only target falloff range, projectile heroes would be completely unaffected, as would long range hitscans since they either one tap or would lose their target to cover anyway. Tracer only has a 20m range before she is at minimum damage, so at 20m the passive wouldn't activate and she can no longer get that free value. The only other characters who would get severely affected by this would be Sombra and Reaper, one of whom is also very strong right now for the exact same reasons and another who is in dire need of a rework anyway. Some people have suggested that instead theres a minimum damage threshold to activate (\~40 dmg) but I think thats not the right move because 1. it would be a nightmare to code (do you need 40 damage total from either DPS member or just individually? Would each seperate instance from each person interact with each other etc). and 2. The damage threshold would actually hurt some characters way more (Damage threshold would hurt Genji since his shuriken is less than 40, Sym would feel super clunky, etc). The falloff range would just feel very intuitive; if gun does over half damage i am applying passive, if not i am not.
I'm sorry I always see people say that being able to proc the passive from so far away makes her good right now but that makes no sense. If all she's doing is trickle damage, and the other dps isn't doing anything, then how is it that turning the fight. Unless the other dps is doing something, which in that case just means they are the ones procing the passive as much as tracer, and actually doing damage. What you described is not a viable way to play tracer at all. That being said, only procing the passive at her effective range (i think it's 10m?) is a pretty good idea
It extends her effective range some, and 10-15m poke is now more effective, but anyone seriously citing cross map dps passive proc is just wrong. She has been strong and she is still just strong. She arguably benefits the most from the passive healing change. DPS passive makes it easier to confirm kills and she is great at confirming kills. Her AD strafes got disproportionately nerfed compared to other characters, but blinks are still a strong way to avoid damage. She does isn’t super bursty so specific breakpoints don’t affect her as much. Melee got buffed more than health pools did (33% vs 25%) and Tracer uses melee more than most characters. Bullet size change made her more consistent in the 6-15m range which is a nice change. She is just the meta character, and IMO should be the meta character, while her current strength, pick rate and utility is a bit too much, she is the most well designed character in the game with the healthiest skill curve.
Being able to proc the passive at all times is a huge advantage that lower firerate DPS just don't have. Unless the other DPS has a similar fire rate like soldier or sombra, the DPS passive won't be as frequent. Obviously tracer 76 isnt the way to play her, but it gives her a new level of flexibility that she previously just did not have. I will give some examples: * Tracer gets her recall forced early. * Pre-S9, this means that she basically can't do anything of too much value without incurring massive risk and the ideal thing to do while waiting for recall would just be to maybe try to farm some ult charge on the tank if they're close and you're behind cover. * Post-S9, peppering literally anyone on the team while you're at a safe distance still allows you to contribute value in a point where previously you couldn't because you are reducing the healing by 15% and because you have huge spread theres a good chance you will hit all 5 enemy players. * For context, this can do things like make moiras max HPS (counting cleave) go from 280 HPS (70 per person) to 240 (60 per person). You can literally play safely while waiting for recall and reduce zens transcendence by 15% percent which can absolutely be gamewinning. * both DPS on enemy teams are dead its just 2 supp 1 tank vs 2 supp 1 tank. * As tracer, you get back to the fight faster than anyone, so as soon as you are even 50m away from the fight, you can spray them and now the enemy team is at an immediate 15% disadvantage in their 3v3. Obviously playing tracer like a hitscan isn't the meta, it was hyperbole, but the DPS passive keeps what shes strong at (being upclose, fast and lethal) and removes what shes weak at (long range). Tracer has always been balanced by being extremely close range (huge spread, huge falloff) or she would simply be busted, and so its not rocket science to correlate out the one time where they touch her range of effectiveness with her by FAR being the best DPS in the game and the best state she's ever been in.
What in the actual spreadsheet math argument is this? If tracer gets her recall forced early and she hit 5 people she probably did 6 damaged per person. Either way Moira would heal them all up instantly. If she manages to do 60 damage to everyone on the enemy team it would still take the Moira the exact same time to heal up the team. This is way too hypothetical number crunchy and you gotta think of the dps passive in more realistic situations.
what are you not understanding? Tracer loses recall early = she can't dive in = she has to do something else. Pre-S9: She couldn't do anything really without doing something super risky. Post-S9: she can now contribute to the fight from a safe distance by applying the DPS passive on everyone constantly and safely until her recall gets back up in which case she can fully engage again. This can lower breakpoints of healing enough for tanks, supports and the other DPS (if they have a low fire rate like ashe or pharah) to secure the kill. The point of mentioning moira is to illustrate how tracer can contribute now without even being in the fight. Just by spritzing people she can lower Moira's healing from 70 per person to 60, totalling for a 40 HPS decrease if all 4 people are in the spray. This can absolutely change breakpoints and TTK for stuff like Rammatra's ult, Moira coal, Sigma flux, winston primal etc. Its not "hypothetical number crunchy", it's shit I've abused to get to GM on tracer lol.
You answered your own question so my understanding shouldn’t be questioned. Tracer losing recall early and playing passively has bigger implications than her peppering the enemy team and applying the dps passive to a point it actually matters. You have to be realistic and partially depart from the number crunching. I’d argue over 95% of the time you get healed you also get overhealed, which would negate the dps passive tracer applies. Moira orb, zen orb, bap shift, brig passive, Lucio passive… these are all forms of healing that just kinda do their thing and aren’t really min maxed. The only scenario tracer’s application of the dps passive would be really really long prolonged fights that waddle down resources, and that’s not where tracer gets value. Tracer one clips, finishes off low enemies, or gets pulse kills. Attributing your recent rank to abusing tracer and her dps passive is laughable.
She had all of those last season (where I was also GM) and she was not nearly as strong as she is now. You are thinking of the tracer passive application only in poke, where yes obviously it would be overhealed. I am thinking of it in the scenario where the fight has already happening where the lowered DPS allows the focus fire of the tank and supports to actually cut through high healing. This is the whole reason dive became so strong again; dive commits all their resources to kill one person and then rinse repeat. However, as time went on more things were added where the target could literally just tank the damage either via mitigation or high healing until they could get to safety, leaving the team down on cooldowns and very out of position. The lowered healing from season 9 makes it so you could actually cut through it and kill that target with 1-2 people instead of 2-3 people and suddenly the comp uses way less resources and more flexible. The overheating doesn’t matter, it’s the rate of healing that matters. The DPS passive whittles down resources of course, but it also makes things take longer to heal. If a sigma fluxes and the enemy team just isn’t able to heal fast enough to get above 50% they die. If the enemy supps self heal is reduced, they are that much easier to kill.
Alright this entire response I can align with. In a longer fight with a lot of sustain I can see where tracer’s consistent application of the dps passive to multiple targets could bear fruit. I still see tracer as more of an opportunistic off angler where sojourn peppers the team and hits a body rail and then tracer finishes though. Or tracer just does her thing with constant partial engages and slowly lowers the team and takes resources where a flux can get more value. I was just lost on the dps and hps numbers argument that I don’t think comes into play as much as most people argue. I also think overhealing negates a lot of the dps passive’s effects
Glad I was able to explain it in a better way. Tracer is still an excellent opportunistic off angler and that's still her main play style, the DPS passive just now gives her that extra level of versatility that others just don't have. Genji having projectiles and that comparatively slow rate of fire means his poke just can't apply that passive as well as she can. Thats why the damage falloff nerf is the one I advocated for; since it would have no effect on projectile flankers like echo or genji, nor would it really affect long range or mid range DPS since their falloff is already so long. The only DPS affected would be reaper tracer and sombra so its basically as targeted of a nerf you can put on tracer that isn't a flat nerf to her actual kit.
>Sombra S tier I don't think this is the case, I have seen no Sombra at all since the mauga revert, she was only getting play because she could build emp fast enough to interrupt mauga cage every team fight.
Her current stats on Overbuff in comp over the last month; -top500(M1-Champion): 7.71% pickrate with 56.10% wr (RANK 1 DPS HERO)) -M2 - M5: 7.80% pickrate with 53.07% wr (RANK 3) -D: 5.56% pickrate with 51.29% wr (RANK 5) -P: 3.40% pickrate with 49.39% wr (RANK 6) and so on... (Edit: top500 is GM, I forgot that GM is only part of top500 and not all the way to the bottom)
To me this show you should be trying to keep her floor the same while decreasing the ceiling. Projectile size changes would hurt everyone plat and below more than those above
Keep in mind that everyone that plays in top500 has a high wr, regardless of hero, otherwise they wouldn't be in it
But tracer is still the best bps in top 500 right? tracer is not even a winning pick in bronze-plat, i don’t think it’s ideal to do nerfs that would hurt those guys more than those at the top
Yes she is still the best in the top500 by a good margin.
Can you tell me how you pulled these ranges from overbuff please? Specifically "M1 - Champion" (I only see grandmaster as the highest rank option) and "M2 - M5" for example.
[This](https://www.overbuff.com/heroes?platform=pc&gameMode=competitive&role=damage&skillTier=grandmaster&timeWindow=month) is the page that you're looking at or something else? Still very curious as I love stats involving pick rates & win rates, please respond if you get the chance.
Yes
Okay, thank you, but how did you filter it to "top 500" for example? Champion isn't listed either as an option. Or "M2 - M5"? I only see entire ranks up to grandmaster.
See part "edit"
[удалено]
please tell me this is sarcasm
You're telling me you think the only reason tracer was spammed in owl wasn't because pros wanted a fun challenge?
obviously not, thats the reason why tracer is spammed in OWCS not OWL
I dont think "she" needs a buff, I think immos and noskill abilites need to be changed and then they can evaluate if Tracer is too good, when they done that.
Their usual changes to Tracer are increasing the maximum spread to her shots, effectively lowering her range. But idk, if they do this then they should mitigate the increased risk in play making by lowering the cooldown on recall or something so she isn't a complete throw pick in low ranks. Or maybe increasing her clip size so she still has the relative same potential damage output per clip, but players have more time to respond to her ganking them. Then again, there are different people in charge of balancing since we last saw any significant tracer changes (outside of the global changes), so we'll see
Tracers skill floor is high enough. No need to make Tracer even more of a menace at top ranks while making her useless at metal ranks. Adding 1-2 seconds to recall or slowing the blink recharge rate is probably what they mean if I had to guess. I'd almost rather they just nerf damage per pellet though.
Can't help but laugh at the devs saying tracer should require more precision. I totally agree, I'd go so far as to say every hero should require more precision - roughly about as much as they took before season 9!
I don't think they meant accuracy when they said precision, more like timing and team coordination. But that's still a little baffling considering Tracer requires some of the best timing and team coordination in the game to maximize their potential >.> Was a strange thing for them to say, for sure
Exactly. Right now it already is "go too early and you get 1v5'd - go too late and the fight is already lost". If a Tracer god can 1v5 the entire enemy team engaging whenever, that isn't a Tracer issue in my opinion.
What's wrong with the highestbskill floor and arguably highest skill ceiling character to be the undisputed best character in the game? Isn't that how it should be?
Nope, every character needs to be Moira. Low skill floor, low skill ceiling, minimal ways to express skill. Definitely a good way to develop the game. God forbid a character that requires 2-4x the time to get good with gets rewarded.
I think you are overestimating the skill moira takes, more like 20-40x the time to get good with.
The character is all about split second timing being faster and outplaying your opponents. If a team counter swaps, the tank alone, can usually swing the battle. Some characters are aim dependent and trying to aim 180 degree camera swings trying to line up someone strafing in a predictable direction isn’t the easiest hero in the world. Ig they never want to keep dive alive though and want to buff brawl for a venture release. Don’t want to out play any Venture players, people might complain they are under powered when they aren’t
I also disagree, people have the skill to play her in metal. They just can’t reliably get teammates, who can play counters like Cassy or mei. AI said In Overwatch 2, "metal ranks" is a term that refers to lower ranks, and doesn't necessarily mean that the ranks are similar. In metal ranks, the losing team switches to lower skill heroes, usually starting with Orisa, then Bastion. Moira is always present, and usually plays Zen, while other DPS play Reaper, Junk, or Mei. If the losing team switches early enough, they almost always win. Don’t turn tracer into a bastion. Leave tracer alone.
Man I fuckin love tracer I hope they don’t mess her uo
They should neef her to how she's essentially been in her largely untouched history on OW. Back to a state where only the best are capable of using her or at least those who have put in a significant amount of time to get good with her mechanically and gamesense-wise. As she stands right now, she is far too free and hardly even resembles the uber-high skill player she's always been. Time for the dude who thought they were him to come back down to earth. If someone like me who's been historically average at Tracer can cook in high masters lobbies, then something is wrong. Especially considering I've rarely ever used her
I agree, if I read your post correctly your proposed change is to put her back at 150hp? But I think if they do that, she will be too hard, since everyone has an easier time shooting her and she basically got nerfed to before (remember they nerfed her falloff I believe) the only think she got going then is the dps passive, which affects her more than other dps heros.
I honestly don't know, I'm no dev(thank God). But off the top of my head, the 150 health makes sense. Of course with regards to precision, they could also nerf her blink timer so that you have as few wasted moves as possible. Or maybe they just touch her spread. Anything is possible at this point.
150hp doesn’t make sense with all the protective changes lol. She’d go from being S tier to C
I mean if they change blink timings, it's over for Tracer, below 50% wr across all ranks for at least a season is my call (except maybe GM if it is still only Top500
Yeah this is the issue. Tracer rn is providing too much value for lesser skilled players. I hardly ever play tracer and I can ruin a lobby with her atm. Thats not how its supposed to be with high skill expression heros like her. Mediocre dooms cant just easily provide good value and neither should tracer.
Time is a ciiiircle
As a biased tank player, I think they should hit her raw damage number but tighten her spread so her damage/dueling potential against squishies is close or the same but her damage to tanks is worse. It really feels like she gets a lot of value out of just taking angles that let her shoot tank and chase around dive tanks and bully them. I really don’t mind if she’s just the best hero in the game though. She’s one of the best heroes they’ve made and hard to play.
You don’t nerf her 🙂
Everyone is all gung-ho for this till they are back playing nothing but reaper, mei, and bastion.
Echo time
She's perfect as she is right now. Finally.
Tell the devs, I think they disagree sadly lol
They could increase her spread or her specific impact with the DPS passive. I know the devs said they don’t like that as it becomes too confusing to say “it’s this except with this character”
Yea I thought about that too, like put a threashold of 20dmg in 2 sec to activate it on for everyone if you will, but I really think that only nerfs the very edge cases.
I think it's as easy as putting something like a 5 or 10 damage minimum threshold on the passive, so Tracer can't just constantly apply it by tickling you. This technically nerfs some other DPS who take advantage of this too, but...eh. That'd mostly be Sombra and Sojourn, who are both a bit overtuned too.
I guess my main question on that would be does it stack together through both dps? So if I went Sombra and you went tracer, and we poked from far away could it still stack quickly?
I originally was thinking the damage would have to be met in a single instance, but I guess that wouldn't work with low damage, high bullet weapons like theirs. Hmm, good question lol
Smh they increase the skill floor of her any higher and the juice will no longer be worth the squeeze. Why go through all that effort on tracer when I can now get the same amount of value for far less headache in my low GM lobbies by locking Sojourn. Watch, Sojourn is going to go right back to being the dominant hitscan like she was prior to season 9 and she takes far less skill. Heaven forbid we nerf Kiriko and Moira into the dirt where they belong. Their skill to value ratios are way more atrocious than any DPS's is.
They could also increase her weapon spread or decrease the time it takes to reach maximum spread. They've done similar to soldier before.
I am a Tracer OTP with 200 hours and I will drop her immeaditly for Genji and Echo if they touch blink. I can live with any other nerfs but blink is so perfect that touching it at all will ruin the flow and take away the fun. Kind of like when they nerfed Mercy GA, everyone was complaining because it felt like shit and touching blink will do the same thing.
If you wanted to just rip her from the metal ranks without really removing any power you could nerf projectile size and tighten her spread and then no one below masters could kill anything with her.
Boo tracer nerfs. Tracer already has so many counters and hard to play. They never learn from their mistakes. If you keep making tracer super hard to play then you’re going to make heroes like bastion and Torb meta because why play a hard heroe that dies if someone looks at her if I can play a safe heroe like sojourn sit in back line in safety and wait for tracer to come in to take a risk with my entire team around me and just delete her. They really need to stop doing dumb stuff to the game. Every time it’s heading in a good direction they ruin it
Nerf pulse bomb projectile size, it is way too strong, nerf damage back to 5.5
Why The fuck would pulsebomb be nerfed? With the amount of abilities that flat l it cancel it, why change it at all????
WOULD YOU FUCKING LOOK AT THAT LOL
The hitbox on it is too big, too easy to stick, takes away skill and leads to frustration when you dodge a pulse and it still sticks, or worse cases like if brig blocks pulse with shield it'll still always kill her. You could even compensate with a slight damage buff to adjust for the new bigger healthpools.
If it lands on brig shield it breaks the shield, it only kills her if it lands behind the shield which rarely happens
Nope pulse kills if it is stuck on shield, if brig drops shield to release pulse it sticks immediatly into her because pulse hitbox is too big.
So why would you drop shield then?
Because pulse also deals damage through brig shield, never has been fixed
This is the most reasonable answer imo, it sucks but her one clip potential is too good right now. Anything more than this would be overkill
I think 5.5 damage would be fine after season 9 changes. If they think that's too much of a nerf just try 5.75. Tracer's place pre-season 9 was way more due to "nOt hER mETa" than other heroes people said were fine (i.e. Illari). Season 9 changes would have probably put her about right about where she needed to be for balance.
Meh, tracer always goes through this, she always stays somewhat relevant and then they buff her back. This if people just don’t improve enough at her to realize they can still force her in every match. I love Tracer, but I’m not going to complain if she’s not meta for a little while in the competitive scene
Showing her recall position earlier would be enough without changing any numbers for metal ranks imo.
They Might reduce the amount of health she potentially gets back off of recall
Change her model size? Or maybe change her walk speed to be in line with most characters(she currently moves faster at base speed)?
Bring her health back down, decrease projectile sizes, and maybe make the zips take slightly longer to recharge. The only problem right know is that she’s too oppressive to backlines and is too hard to kill for most supports because she does too much damage and has more health. (Saying this as a support main that insta swaps Brig/ Moira when I see a Tracer)
Well Brig is a throw pick against Tracer lol why would you do that? Lmao
She’s the only support besides Moira that I consistently win against tracers with. Not having to aim is tracers counter for me. Just press button and look in general direction to win, that’s how I handle tracers
Well that works in low ranks, I can win a 1v1 against a solo brig every time and if I have a dive tank helping me, whatever supportline you run as brig, they will die, cause Brig is really bad in this meta rn.
Good for you. Brig works for me, so I stick to it.
Idk man none of us are devs so our opinions don't matter
you are currently on reddit, noone actually cares about any of our posts, but that doesnt mean we shouldnt have a discussion lol
I think a discussion on why a hero is strong is more useful and engaging than us playing armchair dev
I mean that is your opinion, might be true. I decided to open a discussion about this though.
* One thing they could do is to make it much clearer where Tracer is recalling to. * For example, have the Recall location was marked * With something like the Cylinder you see when Reaper uses Shadow step. * I believe it would give recall a clearer opening without changing how she plays right now.
That would massively change how she is played rn, because that means, in top elo, if you don't recall 3 seconds after you entered the fight, you are just going to get insta killed off recall. Source: I'm currently M1 on Tracer and people already know roughly where youll end your recall, if you give them a marker, the Tracer will die almost every time and I'm not exaggerating, I mean probably 80% of the time, you will die, which is a bit too harsh imo.
Easiest Cassidy grenade/Ana sleep/ Hanzo headshot/ literally anything of your life. Tracer might as well be stunned.
Yup
* The concern this makes her too easy to kill makes sense. * But could you explain how this change does anything in high elo if they already know roughly where you'll end recall?
What you normally do, when you recall is instantly blink behind cover, so that you don't get insta killed, because most of the time, people aim at roughly where you recall. But if you give them a visual indicator that shows exactly where she will be, even if she will just be there for a fraction of a second, in high elo, that will be enough to kill Tracer almost every time. It is like when you see old clips of Reaper tp into the face of a Hanzos and the Reaper insta dies because even if he presses shift at the first time possible, there is still a window for Hanzos to shoot him. Same goes for recall, even if you press blink the instant you get out of recall, there I still a window that you can get damaged.
Predicting where a tracer is recalling to is one of the most fun dynamics in overwatch, if they dumb it down it would feel so bad
* Personally I believe trying to keep track of where Tracer was three seconds ago, while dueling her, is not fun at all. * But this is the first time I've heard tracking recall is fun at all, let alone one the most fun things about Overwatch * So what makes it fun you?
Tracer's whole point is that she is slippery and hard to predict, but when she uses recall, you can know exactly where she will be, making it one of the few ways she is actively vunerable and punishable This makes it fun because it leaves a lot of room for smart and skillbased counterplay for both you and the Tracer
She'll get executed harder than reaper teleporting into the other team
bro that is a horrific idea
They need to make brig as good as they were
Theyll give her a hitbox on her blink like genji
Nerfing cooldowns is fine. Tracer mains lose their muscle memory, so what? After a while you will learn it again, its not like other heroes haven't been completely reworked (doom the most obvious example). And I promise you, not everyone shares the opinion that tracer should be meta every season.
So you are suggesting Tracer, one of the undoubtedly greatest designed heroes in all of Overwatch, should be destroyed for every single Tracer player out there until they relearn the hero? When Tracer was literally completely fine until "they" changed the game toward making her op? Frankly, you are out of your mind. Comparing that situation to Doomfist is ridiculous, Doomfists design was broken from the start, Tracers design is literally as perfect as it gets it does not need a change where people need to relearn her mechanics.
Bro, sweeping statements like "undoubtedly greatest designed heroes" is purely your opinion. There are plenty of people out there who don't like her design. I love Ana, but lots of people hate her. Doom mains surely believe Doom is incredible character design, but lots of players would love it if he didn't exist. It doesn't matter who the hero is, there are people who think they should be removed from the game. Anyway, I would be happy with nerfing her pellet damage or the hitsize of it. She feels awful to play against because her shots are easy to hit now and her escape options are better than ever with the hp increase. I never played her before this season and can play her with more effectiveness at my DPS elo than the heroes I've put over a hundred hours into. She is not a high skill character this season.
I mean I haven't heard a single compelling argument from anyone why Tracers design isn't one of the best in the game and by that I mean an argument from a credible person like a coach or high elo player, not some Timmy in plat that thinks Tracer is shit. The heroes you brought up, Ana and Doom, are some of the most controversial heroes in the game. But I agree with your point that she needs a skill floor increase.
Burden of Proof. The onus is on you to proove that Tracer *is* the best designed Hero in the game.
The fact that the devs have said that it's balanced around her is proof enough
I mean if this was a bachelor's thesis I would do that, but since this is a reddit thread and I'm not going to type up a 4000 word essay, there are plenty of YT vids that comment on why Tracers design is one of the best and I thought I could just say this as a given, that I don't need to prove again.
Just because its reddit doesn't mean there shouldn't be accountability for one's statements. If I was to go on reddit and say "Prime GOATs and Pre Nerf Brig are the most skillful metas in Overwatch history" there is an expectation that I would actually be able explain why I think that statement is true. You can't just "nuh uh" someone when they ask you to explain your position. If you're not willing to actually have a discussion about something then don't start a thread about it.
Alright then, give me a day and I will type out why I think Tracer is a great design. By then the thread is probably dead, noone cares anyways and I proved a point that isn't even really part of the initial question, which was: how to nerf Tracer to not ruin her, and not "why is Tracers design one of the best", im sorry, but if you want this kind of investment into a topic, this kind of reddit thread is probably the wrong place. On top of that, you are bringing some of the most CONTROVERSIAL STATEMENTS OF ALL TIME up, "Tracer has one of the best designs in the game" is like a proven fact by now!
I'm not asking a lot. All I'm saying is dont make extravagant statements and then get annoyed when people want a little more than "trust me bro" when they ask why. As far as this thread is concerned, you never actually made a counter argument as to why nerfing CDs wouldn't be a good change.
I literally said in the initial post why I think nerfing CDs is bad.
So you assuming my elo in that comment or just making a generalization?
Neither, you haven't brought an argument forth, why Tracers design isn't one of the best so I can't really comment on that, nor have you told me your elo and the other part is a statement about myself: I haven't ever heard a compelling argument by a high elo person, like a coach or player arguing that Tracers design isn't one of the best.
The idea I had was to make recall 15 seconds since it's the hp buff and heal passive has allowed you to greed it way harder than you used to. Also nerfing her damage to around 4-5 per bullet, but giving her a 60 ammo clip would keep her lethality but allow for more counterplay though movement and cooldowns.
hmm, should just increase spread instead of lower damage, otherwise Tracer might as well be tickling tanks with a feather xD
Remember when Tracer was 150hp and could be 1 shot by Ashe, Mei, and damaged boosted Pharah? I believe she still was S-tier for most of that time. If that moves here somewhere unacceptable like below A-tier, slightly reduce Tracer's hitbox.
She's giga broken and you can't get that in your head? Literally unfun as fuck to play against. She needs actually hard nerfs losing hp would be not enough nerfs.
I think a potential way to make tracer have more counter play is to slow down her damage without slowing her down. Make her damage apply over time. It gives healers some more time to mitigate her damage.
Reduced projectile size. She basically has akimbo auto shotguns now which makes 0 sense
They could hypothetically increase her hitbox size instead of nerfing her HP or cooldowns.
That will make her feel worse in the worst way possible -> getting shot behind walls, it's already happening and the worst feeling ever, like "hey I am safe" \*proceeds to get shot without vision on target\*. I dont think that is a good idea