Do you think reaper should be as good as tracer
or should tracer be as good as reaper?
Is this your question you mentioned?
Here is my answer…
I think Tracer is a little better, but both in a fair place. Tracer is just more useful atm as comps tend to be more mobile. I don’t think either need any changes atm.
Once a more static comp returns, Reaper will find more value again.
so it’s a no, keep the status quo?
i was just wondering what if reaper was played in the same metas as tracers and being on equal footing as her in those terms.
obviously they excel at different aspects and mobility tends to be allways be good but still, the question isn’t directly saying that either one is better.
it’s more so to get a response out of people showing who they think is stronger and for what reasons and if they really should be stronger than the other etc.
like a philosophical balance question.
for example : if reaper “takes less aim” should he get the same amount of value as others who has to aim more?
that sorta thing.
I think Tracer is better in most comps.
She is just more effective as harassing people and forcing them to use cool downs and move their attention.
Reaper is more powerful in terms of damage, but he is so much easier to negate with just simple coordination.
I think both get about the same value, if all things were equal. I think Tracer is just a little easier in most ranks to get some base value.
i don’t think tracer is better at forcing cooldowns, i think tracer just has more cooldowns to bait with.
reapers coordination is basically very limited since he’s not at all that great in 1v1 scenarios except maybe against reinhardt but i don’t even know if that’s true anymore.
as far as value goes i think tracer just gets more value by virtually being a better version of reaper really, but that’s my bias showing.
i think anything reaper can do, tracer can do better.
however i don’t know if reaper should be as good as tracer or if tracer should become as “good” as reaper if i were to answer my own question.
Depends on the 1v1.
He’s better than tracer at fighting some healers (Moira or Brig), since he can brute force through any stalling/ healing they do with his higher damage and self healing. As well pretty much every tank in the game, for the same reasons. Where he falls short is in team fights, having considerably lower mobility, higher cooldowns and a huge hitbox.
And since this game is about teamplay, that’s why tracer is considerably better.
moira who just fades away? or brig that just bash and whipshot you to the fourth dimension?
no tracer still is better against these 2 since tracer can hunt down moira and can outplay brig quite much more easily.
as for tanks, most tanks can deal with reaper quite well either dodging him or making him a non-threat or kill him outright.
d.va just counters reaper, winston just leaps away constantly and reaper can’t keep up, ball just rolls through so reaper never gets more than maybe 1 shot off at best and reaper can’t keep up with him, sigma got both a rock, kinetic grasp and a versatile barrier making it hard to ever really kill sigma with reaper, basically sigmas all 3 abilities has to be down.
now maybe reinhardt and orisa reaper can do quite well against, but reinhardt still got an ace up his sleeve and orisa, well sure you might be able to get her, but that depends if you are able to kill her through armor+fortify which leaves you with very low self sustain as reaper, it’s doable but you have to jump through so many hoops to get there though and even then it’s tough.
oh and zarya, this is probably reapers best match up as reaper can just burst through that bubble of hers and zarya can’t really escape that well and zarya has zero armor, but it’s still a bit risky since zarya with damage still hurts.
hog, well hog is a better reaper than reaper and can delete reaper from further away aswell as having a hook that cc’s reaper and pretty much kills reaper everytime it lands which will be every deathblossom at the very least.
but basically if they just run anything with d.va, reaper is not even a concern at that point anyways.
reaper do excel better in teamwork situations that actually removes a lot of flaws reaper has, and in those scenarios he’s at equal footing with tracer, because if you got something like a mei freezing that ball making you be able to just lay into it, reaper can do some amazing things.
but with that said, this game isn’t being played like a teamwork heavy game unless you are playing in high level scrims or in the OWL.
soooo… why would you ever play reaper over tracer in any casual setting?
If you can’t kill a Moira or a Brigitte in a 1v1 scenario as a Reaper, I think you aren’t qualified to be discussing the character.
I main both and believe they should be equally strong in their own unique ways even though in a duel, Tracer will 1up Reaper 9/10 times.
the thing is, if they know you’re coming you can’t touch them.
obviously reaper can kill them when they don’t have cooldowns because their damage is very low and reaper can basically 1v1 anything with low dmg because lifesteal, but as i stated that’s only if you can get within 10m of them and stay there for atleast 2-5 shots or maybe even more depending on the situation (brig shield) and i’m venturing a guess you haven’t played reaper more than maybe 5 hours you have no idea what reaper should do if they have their cooldowns up.
basically you would normally say just use wraith to bait their abilities or outplay them but it’s actually impossible, for first off the distance that moira gets off fade is greater than reapers wraith, and brig can just wait and use shieldbash to create about enough distance to make you not very scary and ontop of it just whipshot you, and even if she whiffs that whipshot, her barrier can hold her out until she gets another whipshot and if that brig can’t do that, that brig is worthless and would have died to any other dps much quicker.
i would know because i have a lot of hours on both brig and reaper, reaper shouldn’t be able to get close to you if you play decently.
and since you have no counter arguments to any of these actual real scenarios that does happen in the game just means you have no good idea how to tackle either a moira or brig as reaper.
i can tell you who the easiest support it is for reaper to actually counter and you probably wouldn’t believe me if i did say it, but it’s zen.
zen can’t run away or have any CC, all zen has is damage which sure can kill a reaper but you can outplay it at 10m distance with a well placed juke or wraith since zens hitbox is very generous and fits reapers spread very well it’s more likely you need less shots on zen than any other support, as far as transcendence goes, you can actually kill through it as reaper and it’s actually a huge bait for their team if they think they can ignore the reaper during zen trans.
but the likelyhood of any player being able to one-shot with reaper is very low, it’s still very much so there, it’s just very hard to get into that 0-2m range where it’s possible.
i mean you can try one-shotting people in practice range with reaper, just jump on their head and shoot down right into their head, if you don’t crouch you’re probably not gonna get a one-shot so you have to crouch.
things i’ve personally tested myself, but what do i know.
getting a one-shot with reaper is rare, how rare? more rare than actual being able to land a pulsebomb that will stick on an enemy if you play tracer.
yeah, unless they do something about reapers spread reaper will most likely lose to a tracer unless the tracer is completely unaware and blinks right into reapers shotguns.
but really i’m not that worried about that, tracer can constantly create distance and that’s her power as hyper mobile character and that’s fine, it’s just reaper doesn’t get a lot of love because he’s seen as an easy character which i think couldn’t be further from the truth. sure reaper is easy if the enemies don’t know to not stand close to reaper, but basically everyone knows that from around high silver and up.
and with that said i’d say reaper is harder than people give him credit for.
but still i don’t know if i necessarily would want reaper to be as strong as tracer because i don’t know if that would do the game any service since he’s not really liked and would probably make a lot of people more frustrated than needing to deal with just tracers, and even if they would make tracer as “good” as reaper i think there would still be other characters that would just take tracers place anyways as a point of annoyance.
They are just different. What makes Tracer good is her mobility which makes her incredibly versatile and low resource.
What makes reaper good is that he can sustain himself quite well while doing massive damage when playing against big hitboxes.
You can’t really have reaper do tracer’s job because he isn’t fast enough.
but you can put tracer in to do reapers job, weird how that works out.
there is a small niché that reaper fulfills that tracer can’t do.
however it’s only been in the most obtuse metas we’ve had so far in overwatch.
there’s been 3 metas.
you get a like if you can name or identify all 3.
but still the same remains, there’s not been a ladder meta however except 1 that reaper was the key component where you couldn’t replace him with tracer and it was broken as hell.
True, but what’s the alternative? Do you want to buff Reaper’s mobility to the point where he’s a Tracer with Shotguns that can do about the same damage Tracer does with 1 clip with 1 shot?
Mobility is what makes Tracer versatile, nerfing it is the same as deleting her really.
that’s the point of the question, i wouldn’t want reaper to be as mobile as tracer, but i wouldn’t necessarily want tracer to have as much possibility on range that she currently does either.
so the question becomes, do we want reaper to be as good as tracer or vice versa.
and that’s a question i can’t really answer myself because i’d probably don’t want reaper to be as obnoxious to deal with like a tracer at all levels of play, but at the same time i don’t think anybody wants tracer to be as irrelevant as reaper.
Weren’t we pretty close to that with 50% lifesteal reaper? At least in most ranks.
thing is, i don’t think lifesteal reaper is good for the game, it’s a mechanic that allways gets shafted and is allways underperforming no matter the game because you can’t buff it to be competitive because it would only be broken.
the only solution i have is the one i’ve had since the beginning, reduce spread, remove lifesteal, if he needs a passive, bring back spirit orbs, if he needs more nerfs to make him less strong just nerf all the QoL buffs he’s been given.
that’s my take on it.
my stance is that shotguns should be scary at 5~10m distance, so scary in fact that a hanzo would need to think twice before peeking him that close.
but obviosuly letting him still have lifesteal per shot is too strong.
and as far as tracer goes, it would make her not be able to replace reaper as quickly, but tracer remains the more mobile version of the two.