Standard disclaimers:
-I'm a PS4 console scrub.
-Overwatch is my first multiplayer shooter.
-I'm not very good.
-I have fun.
Tracer has a rhythm to her. She fires her guns for 1 second (if you hold down the trigger) and then takes a further full second to reload. One full clip of body shots gets you 240 damage, which means she can do 480 if she lands all headshots (good luck!). No other hero spends as much time reloading compared to shooting as Tracer, and thats where her rhythm comes in. In its most basic form, it is this:
Shoot blink as you reload, acquire target shoot blink as you reload, acquire target shoot. By the time youve reached that third shoot, three seconds have passed since your first blink which is how long it takes a charge of blink to appear. You can maintain this for a deceptively long period of time, but you never want to be caught without a blink or an exit route. The reload continues during your blink, and is not interrupted by it. Prostrats: you dont stop shooting as you blink, either. You can acquire a target from 15 yards out, start your clip, blink straight towards them and get that all-important zero-damage-dropoff damage on them after the blink. You can also start the animation of throwing your pulse bomb, blink in and finish the animation.
It is very, very tempting to just stick with the above rhythm once youve grown accustomed to it. I still have a bad habit of blinking as soon as the red skull pops, regardless of whether or not Im actually in danger. As you grow more confident, youll find its equally important to know when you just have a good position and you shouldnt be blinking (see: the longer Tracer duel in that Junkertown montage). Holding your blinks permits you greater freedom later in the fight, and gives you the opportunity to use the rarely-seen double-blink to achieve unexpectedly broad movement.
Whats really important to remember about Tracer is how squishy she is, and she is the absolute squishiest. When a teamfight starts or is about to start, you do not want to be behind your Reins shield. You do not want to be next to your healer or anyone else, because thats where the spam from the reds will be headed and you will die seemingly (and literally!) by accident all the time. When the teamfight starts, your attack comes not from in front, but from the side because YOU are the other two raptors they didnt even know were there. You are The Clever Girl.
You obviously are responsible for focusing the healers (and, IMO, Bastion and the tanks), but for most teamfights youll be very effective if you just blink around and through the reds, landing clips wherever the opportunity presents itself and either finishing off targets your team have softened up or softening up targets for them to pick.
Important: once youve put the Fear of Tracer into the enemy team, be sure to blink through their lines without shooting while spamming her ooh, scary! voice line. This is effective psychological warfare, and tactically valuable.
Rewind is incredibly important and very versatile. As a general rule, you dive in, do the Tracer Shuffle and as soon as you get bodied by a McCree or a Junk as soon as you hear her gasp hit rewind, get out of the fight, wait until you have all your blinks and rewind is 4 or 5 seconds off cooldown, then dive in again.
It can also be used to achieve movement that would be impossible for any other hero (leaping off a tower to duck an enemy, letting them think youve run away and pop appearing behind them), but using it in such a way puts your teensy tiny health bar at yet further risk, because rewinds your one oh crap ability. It refills your ammo, but it doesnt refill your health it just puts your health back where it was three seconds ago, so
0:00 - Lets say youre at 20 HP.
0:01 Ana hits you with a shot. Youre at what, 100HP now? (I get healed by Anas so rarely, I wouldnt know
)
0:02 Roadhog hooks you, but only takes you down to 6HP.
0:03 you Rewind. Rewind lasts about 1.25 seconds, and deposits you back at the same location, facing the same direction, with the health you had 3 seconds ago.
0:0425 you reappear with 20HP.
Knowing how long it takes Rewind to execute is important for two reasons. One, that 1.25 seconds is 1.25 seconds that your blink is using to recharge if youve been hanging out in a room and youre halfway to your next blink, you can rewind to let that second pass safely, get a blink and then bail. Two, Pulse Bomb detonates exactly 1.5 seconds after it sticks to a target (or lands on the ground), and youve no doubt noticed that Tracers tend to rewind after they drop the bomb. Youre invincible to all damage during rewind timed properly, you can use it to deke D.Va ults (there's an example in the Junkertown vid) and escape when another Tracers stuck you with a pulse bomb and most common, Tracers use that invincibility to ensure they wont die to their own pulse bomb after they toss it. Because pulse bomb takes 1.5 seconds to detonate and rewind takes 1.25 seconds, it is entirely possible to drop the bomb, rewind a smidge too fast and reappear just in time to get gibbed by your own bomb. So toss the bomb, wait 0.5 seconds, then rewind.
It is, naturally, better to just blink away if youre confident that it wont find its way back to you and not waste that hugely-important cooldown. I like blinking backwards, or, if its on a Reinhardt, I like coming up behind him, giving him a full clip of the pistols, sticking him with the pulse bomb, blinking through him, and then not looking back as I reload, the bomb detonates and the red skull pops up on your crosshairs. This is tactically important, because it makes you feel super cool.
Finally, pulse bomb. It does 400 damage, has a 1.5 second fuse time after it sticks, and a very small area of effect.
Pulse bomb is one of if not the hardest assault ults to get value out of. Watch some pro streamers and count the number of pulse bombs they completely whiff. This isnt a Death Blossom or a Tac Visor or Dragon Blade that has teams cowering behind shields and popping ults to counter its a very tiny area-of-effect with a little arcing throw, and is very, very easy to mess up. Dont feel bad when you toss your pulse bomb and get nothing out of it! Thats normal and it happens to everyone, even Surefour.
Whats important is that you tossed it. You saw an opportunity and you threw it. Thats what you need to be doing all the time. Tracers ult lacks the teamkilling potential of Genji, Reaper, Pharah and Soldiers but it builds so fast, you have far more chances to get value out of it if you toss it when you have it, and start building the next one. Youre blinking around in the middle of a teamfight, emptying clips, your ult pops and theres a Roadhog in front of you? Toss the bomb.
Youre never gonna, throw the bomb and wipe a team (outside of a perfect Zarya ult) but it also builds incredibly fast and permits you to basically pick and assassinate high-value targets at little risk. There are, thus, three reasons to hold your ult:
to drop on Bastion. Itll one-shot him.
to drop on Symmetras teleporter/shield gen, if she has the room blanketed in turrets and you need to bail fast.
you have a Zarya.
Protips:
-if the enemy Mei uses her cryo freeze for its full duration, you can reliably stick her coming out of it by counting to four. (Onethousandtwothousandthreethousandforthousa-) throw the bomb.
-if you drop it on a D.Va at the precise moment her mech receives the last bit of damage it needed to die for example, the 5 damage the pulse bomb does as it sticks to her mech is the last 5 health she had on the mech she will pop out of the mech and be instantly killed.
-Rein has to have suffered 100 damage to be killed by it.
-Hog has to have suffered 200 (1/3 of his health bar), and can tank it with the new huff.
-Orisa will be 1-shot, but her Fortify can let her tank it.
-Winston needs to have taken 100 damage.
Otherwise, it goes like this.
Build ult.
Drop ult on a large, easy-to-stick target a Rein, Orisa, Hog, Bastion, Winston and hope an ally is close enough to them to make it a double.
Repeat from step 1.
Its also worth throwing in to tight groups, obviously, and I enjoy dropping it on stationary targets like snipers looking through their scopes. Tossing it at a group of reds is fine, but 1.5 seconds is actually more than enough time for them to just walk out of its effective range if you dont get a stick. Thus, sticking it to an ulting Junk if you dont have time to empty a clip into his head is a good idea. Sticking it to a Widowmaker whos got tunnel vision is better than throwing it at a Mercy and missing, and it allows you to pull off stuff like the first clip of this video:
https://youtu.be/2fU9iOo1xKc
Very satisfying.
And thats pretty much it!
-get the rhythm.
-never go in headfirst, be a Clever Girl.
-rewind is your lifeline, and you are very vulnerable without it, but it opens up a lot of options for you.
-throw the pulse bomb at every opportunity and dont feel bad when you miss. Youll miss. A lot. And thats okay!
Enjoy Tracer! She has the smallest health bar and the biggest fun factor.