Any advice for learning Tracer? Should I blink into people and 180 them? The do's and don't's of Pulse Bomb? Sensitivity settings? I have PB assigned to R3 cuz it seems best suited to split second reaction situations.
(Cracks knuckles.) Be right with you.
Edit:
Standard disclaimers:
-I'm a PS4 console scrub.
-Overwatch is my first multiplayer shooter.
-I'm not very good.
-I have fun.
...but I've also spent a ton of time on Tracer, so here we go.
PB on R3 sounds like it could work just fine, as long as you also have a very comfortable option for melee. Melee's important for Tracer.
My control scheme is...
L1 - Blink
L2 - Jump (for everyone)
L3 - empty
R1 - Pulse Bomb (aiming it is very important)
R2 - Shoot Mans
R3 - Melee
Triangle - Rewind
Square - Reload
Circle - Crouch
X - "Ooh,
scary!"
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 that's 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 you've 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 don't 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, throwing the bomb.
It is very, very tempting to just stick with the above rhythm once you've grown accustomed to it. I still have a bad habit of blinking as soon as the red skull pops, regardless of whether or not I'm actually in danger. As you grow more confident, you'll find it's equally important to know when you just have a good position and you shouldn't be blinking (see:
clearing the payload here - no blinks, my position is perfect except for the Widow. Then I use blink to advance on the Widow, then I do The Rhythm on the Hog - then no blinks required to take Mercy). 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.
What's 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 Rein's shield. You do not want to be next to your healer or anyone else, because that's 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 didn't 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 you'll 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 you've 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 you've 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 rewind's your one ”oh crap" ability. It refills your ammo, but it doesn't refill your health – it just puts your health back where it was three seconds ago, so...
0:00 - Let's say you're at 20 HP.
0:01 – Ana hits you with a shot. You're at what, 100HP now? (I get healed by Anas so rarely, I wouldn't 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 you've been hanging out in a room and you're 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 you've no doubt noticed that Tracers tend to rewind after they drop the bomb. You're 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 around 1:35) and escape when another Tracer's stuck you with a pulse bomb – and most common, Tracers use that invincibility to ensure they won't 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 you're confident that it won't find its way back to you and not waste that hugely-important cooldown. I like blinking backwards, or, if it's 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 isn't a Death Blossom or a Tac Visor or Dragon Blade that has teams cowering behind shields and popping ults to counter – it's a very tiny area-of-effect with a little arcing throw, and is very, very easy to mess up. Don't feel bad when you toss your pulse bomb and get nothing out of it! That's normal and it happens to everyone, even Surefour.
What's important is that you tossed it. You saw an opportunity and you threw it. That's what you need to be doing all the time. Tracer's ult lacks the teamkilling potential of Genji, Reaper, Pharah and Soldier's – 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. You're blinking around in the middle of a teamfight, emptying clips, your ult pops and there's a Roadhog in front of you? Toss the bomb.
You're 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. It'll one-shot him.
– to drop on Symmetra's 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, but because of his armor it's more efficient to put the bomb on him, let it blow through his armor (395 damage) and then finish him with the pistols, as if you use the pistols on the armor first, each shot does half damage. On the other hand, a Rein who's at 400HP isn't scared for his life and trying to juke you with the shield - a Rein who just got Pulse Bombed is terrified, and will do his best to stop that last 100HP from being cut off.
-Hog has to have suffered 200 (1/3 of his health bar), and can easily tank Pulse Bomb 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.
It's 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 don't get a stick. Thus, sticking it to an ulting Junk if you don't have time to empty a clip into his head is a good idea. Sticking it to a Widowmaker who's 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 that's 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 don't feel bad when you miss. You'll miss. A lot. And that's okay!
Enjoy Tracer! She has the smallest health bar and the biggest fun factor.
