OverwatchOverwatch Tracer Guide and Overview

The original face of Overwatch, Tracer has been one of the most game-defining heroes ever introduced. Zipping around fights, bursting down Supports, and getting multi-kills with a nice Pulse Bomb stick have made her a crowd favorite. Her kit and design are so good, the only time she’s ever fallen out of a top meta position was when her damage was nerfed into the ground. 

She can keep up with every dive hero and in coordinated attacks, she deletes backlines. Even when she’s not getting solo kills, just her presence poses a huge threat and interrupts the enemy team’s game plan. Most of her time is spent behind enemy lines, surviving on her own and looking for targets she can isolate. 

TLDR

Play As

• Dive the backline. The number one job of every Tracer is to either kill or distract the enemy backline. Even if the Supports live, they can’t heal the rest of their team if they're trying to fight you.
• Avoid Tanks. Most Tanks have armor, which negates a lot of your damage anyway. Tracer can annoy Tanks, but she’s wasting her time if she is focusing on them.
• Don’t go in without Recall or two blinks. Tracer can’t survive fights without the ability to dodge and rewind time. Waiting a few extra seconds for your cooldowns is far better than going in and getting sent back to spawn.

Play Against

• Keep your distance. Tracer has terrible ranged damage so try to position where it's difficult for her to reach you, or use mobility tools to dodge her.
• Track Recall. You can get used to the timing of Recall to predict where she will rewind to. If you see Recall used, that is your chance to chase and eliminate Tracer.
• If you see Tracer multi-Blink straight at you, expect a Pulse Bomb. Use a barrier, stun, or escape tool to avoid getting stuck.

Strengths

Self-reliant

Tracer can heal herself and use her mobility to grab health packs when needed. At very close ranges, she can one-clip enemy backlines without having to coordinate a dive attack. Unlike most heroes, she can pretty much ignore what her team is doing and execute her own game plan.

Evasive and mobile

Her small body and fast movement make her difficult to hit. She can reliably dodge enemy cooldowns and Ults with Blinks and Recall. She’s also one of the best overtime stallers in the DPS category because she gets back to point quickly, then touches, evades, and touches again to keep resetting the OT timer.

Nuisance

The hardest part about dealing with a skilled Tracer is that she is always being a nuisance. You can never fully ignore her, but it often feels impossible to kill her. She can single-handedly keep both enemy Supports preoccupied, while her team kills everyone else.

Weaknesses

Short range only

The main downside of Tracer's kit is the limited effective range of Pulse Pistols. Unless you can get close to your target, your damage will barely tickle the enemy. Wide bullet spread and harsh damage falloff prevent Tracer from dealing meaningful damage at medium to long ranges.

Mechanically demanding

One reason Tracer has always been a staple in pro and top 500 meta, even when she’s been weak in regular ranked play, is that she has a high skill floor and ceiling. Tracking and Blink mechanics make or break good Tracer mains. Even if you execute a perfect strategy, it won’t matter if you can’t land your shots, get lost while Blinking, or whiff Pulse Bomb.

Low health

Winning the award for lowest health of any hero, Tracer relies on movement to stay alive. She gets insta-killed by a lot of attacks and combos that every other hero would survive. You have to play extra carefully when using Tracer, as small amounts of spam damage quickly deplete her small health pool.

Primary Fire: Pulse Pistols

Tips for Pulse Pistols

• Stay close
• • Tracer’s ideal range is about 7m or closer. From this distance, the majority of bullets stay within an enemy's hurtbox, and the damage falloff doesn’t kick in.
  • The closer you are, the more consistently you’ll land all bullets. You’ll also be able to go for headshots at very close distance and benefit from the double damage.
• Poke
• • A bit of poke damage is better than nothing. However, your time will usually be better spent setting up flanks.
  • Any damage resets the universal self-healing passive. So, against Supports shooting just to get in some damage and stop their self-healing can buy you extra time to keep their health low while you close the distance between you.

[SHIFT]: Blink

Tips for Blink

• Dodge
• • Anytime you are attacking or dueling, Blinks are your primary means of staying alive. Change up your Blink movement with left and right Blinks, crossup Blinks, and Blinking behind corners. 
• Traverse the map
• • You should always use Blinks to get around faster, until you are getting near the enemy team. Don’t want to get caught with no Blinks and then have to immediately use Recall just to stay alive.
• Engage and disengage
• • Blinks help you get into your ideal range faster and safer, so you can start attacking. Be careful never to use all three to get into position.
  • Always save at least one Blink to dodge.
  • If you don’t have Recall or want to save Recall, Blinks are a great way to back out of a fight, reassess the situation then go back in.

[E]: Recall

Tips for Recall

• Use as late as possible
• • Focus on using Blinks to survive and only Recalling when absolutely necessary.
  • Waiting until you’ve taken more damage also helps to get more enemy resources out before you get to reset the fight.
  • Just don’t activate too late, as you can be killed or stunned during its brief startup animation. 
• Never die with Recall
• • Most importantly, better safe than sorry. If you die with Recall, 100%, you know you wasted a death and the long trip back from spawn.
• Play safe
• • Keep your distance when Recall is on cooldown. Don’t overcommit when you have no escape. 

Ultimate: Pulse Bomb

Tips for Pulse Bomb

• Sneak attack
• • Sticking a target is difficult. To improve your odds, always try to sneak up on people so they won’t be trying to dodge you. 
  • Wait behind walls, or come from behind and make sure they aren’t looking at you.
• Track counter abilities
• • Heroes who have abilities like: Moira Fade, Zarya bubble, Cassidy Roll, Kiriko Cleanse, etc., can use them to survive a Pulse Bomb stick.
  • Always wait until you see these abilities used before attempting to use Pulse Bomb.

Minor Perks

Blink Packs

• Best Minor Perk
• Powerful in 1v1 duels
• • Tracer puts herself in a lot of 1v1 scenarios. Health packs restoring a Blink give her increased survivability.
  • Also, she can now steal health packs from the enemy even when she’s at full health. Don’t let them grab it!
• Traverse the map faster
• • When pathing or flanking around the perimeters, there are usually health packs en route that will decrease overall travel time.

Blast from the Past

• Good against tightly grouped team comps
• • When enemies are sticking together like in brawl comps, the increased blast size can help you get more multi-kills.
  • Pretty useless when the enemy team positions spread out, since you don’t need more radius to stick one person.
• Margin of error
• • Sometimes you’ll still get a kill when you missed Pulse Bomb, and it lands on the floor if the enemy stays close enough.

Major Perks

Flashback

• Best Major Perk
• • The importance of managing Blink usage cannot be overstated. Flashback allows you to dump all your Blinks, Recall, and instantly have 2 more. It’s like having 5 Charges instead of 3.
• Survive and Fight
• • Two blinks give you the options to keep attacking after Recall, or use the movement to get away to safety.

Quantum Entanglement

• Helpful for confirming elims
• • Sometimes, enemies survive with a bit of health. Overhealth and extra ammo come in handy to help stay in the fight after Recalling to get that final blow.
• May still need to disengage
• • Even with the overhealth, if you have no Blink available, you should still get out of the fight and wait for your cooldowns to refresh.

Tracer’s mobility allows her to find value on virtually every map. The best maps for Tracer, however, are flat maps with plenty of side rooms for flanking. When Tracer can abuse corners and side routes with health packs, her job of being a backline assassin becomes considerably easier. Because she lacks vertical mobility, she can have trouble on maps with lots of high ground that the enemy can use to avoid her. On wide open maps with long sight lines, Tracer wastes a lot of time pathing to avoid enemies with superior range.

Best Maps

• New Junk City
• Oasis
• Hanaoka

Worst Maps

• Junkertown
• Circuit Royal
• Midtown

Coming Soon!

Coming Soon!