I recently picked up tracer.
Not being in masters yet, I don’t see GOATs too often, and try to play tracer as much as possible. However, I feel that her ultimate sometimes feels a bit underwhelming. I get it shouldn’t be able to one-shot tanks because of its wickedly fast charge time, but it still feels weak in some situations.
Well you pretty much answered the question yourself.
It was nerfed so she wouldn’t delete tanks anymore.
Sadly they nerfed it so much that even 200hp heroes sometimes survive being stuck (Brig armor).
Personally I would love to see the damage buffed by just 5-10 points.
With Tracer you don’t really rely on her ult (besides it’s one of the fastest charged ults so don’t expect too much). I feel like her abilities and her ability to one clip 200hp heroes make up for the underwhelming ult.
Lucio can 1 combo 200hp targets. Lucio is also a hyper mobile hero. Lucio provides healing and utility for the team. Yet Lucio still have a very powerful ult.
Genji can also 1 combo people, is also hyper mobile, his ult is also extremely powerful.
I don’t think simply her ability to one clip is what’s really making up for her low impact ult.
Because her ult charges a lot faster than others, and back in the day, tanks stood no chance. Now that wouldn’t be a problem, if her ult required a lot of skill to land, but as you probably know, sticking it to tanks is really easy. Now she’s in the perfect spot: stick a squishy (hard to do) - they’re down, stick a semi-squishy (medium difficulty) - they can be saved with some skill but are still heavily hurt, stick a tank (easy to do) - they’re in a really bad spot but require more attention either before or after the bomb.
Get lucky and/or combo it with Graviton and you get insane value.
And again: she takes about 2 thirds as long to charge as your average DPS ult (tank ults require fewer ult points than DPS, but still more than Tracer - except for fully charged Zaryas, they do a lot less damage though). The general idea that there is a correlation between the power of an ult and it’s average charge time is rather logical. (see also: Valkyrie - Nano Boost - Transcendence - Sound Barrier (although I find Trans stronger than SB, but then again I played a lot of Lucio with the old SB and not so much with the new one^^))
Now see that’s the thing. I’ve often had squishies survive a stick, because they had brig armor.
200 hp + 100 armor - Bomb stick deals 5 damage, which is reduced to 2.5. Explosion deals 300 damage, reduced to 297, that leaves ½ hp which i’m pretty sure is rounded up to show 1 (before the armor nerf they would have 2.5 hp left)
The only reason i’d ask for a tiny damage buff is so sticking an armored squishy will still be able to consistently secure the kill when you stick some1 who can’t get zarya bubbled. Heck, buff it by 1 damage just so they won’t survive with ½hp.
Do you think that’ll be too much of a buff, or make tracer broken again? 
As for ult charge rates.
[only need to watch to about 7:50]
If you talk about more realistic situations, there’s this clip of Fissure charging rein ult in 8 seconds, which is faster than I’ve seen any Tracer realistically do.
Heroes potential ult charge speed is not only about how many points they require, but also how fast their kit allows them to gain them. Tracer can only shoot a single target (well technically multiple, but the damage doesn’t go up) while other heroes have AOE damage which can potentially allow them to charge their ults faster even though they may require more points.
I didn’t really intent to make any real argument with these videos, it’s just some stuff i wanted to point out about charge rates
That’s the whole point of Brig’s armor. If it didn’t save her teammates why use it?
I don’t play Tracer that often but I feel like you should be able to finish them off even if it didn’t end up killing them.
While this is true, heroes with boop abilities or abilities that go through players can get ult pretty quickly.
But if you compair Tracer to other heroes without those abilities she charges way faster
(I know you didn’t want to a real argument with these videos but just wanted to give some feedback )
Brig armor already reduces tracers damage by soo much, the bomb is actually the only thing tracer has that can really touch an armored target. The armor also reduces her ult charge rate by soo much. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to have the stick deal 6 damage instead of 5.
Sometimes you’ll make an attempt to assassinate a squishy hiding near the team. Blink bombs allow you to go for such a play, but you don’t really have time to start shooting, and so even them surviving with 1 hp can be difficult to finish, without dying.
Don’t get me wrong, i don’t find it to be super important, I just think it’d be a nice little buff
1 Like
Yeah, that wouldn’t really be that much of a problem. I just feel like Blizzard should focus on other things before this tho 
2 Likes
Brig’s repair pack only gives 75 health above the max. Rally gives 100, but that’s an ult in and of itself which makes it feasible to counter another ult, right? Especially since Rally takes a lot longer to charge. Also, if you expect them to survive with 1 HP: Stick, shoot a bit, recall. Problem solved. 
From a statistical perspective, it’s not really helpful to look at the extrem edge cases, because they generally don’t apply. Sure, if you let the enemy Pharah spam all 6 heroes at once with her AoE, she will get Barrage more quickly. And if Lucio boops the entire team off the map, he will charge SB in 2 seconds.
In addition, you have to look at the structure of a game as a whole - ults and counter ults, downtime between fights, etc. Having an ult that charges quicker than the enemy support ults can open up the first fight and start a snowball. The first 30sec of a game without enemy contact means 150 free ult charge for everyone - Tracer now only needs 975 damage while Junk still needs 1412. In other words, low-charge ults benefit more from the time between fights.
I mean, Rally reduces most of Tracers damage by 50% (unless you headshot) which in turn increases her ult charge rate by close to 100%. The bomb being the only thing Tracer really has against armor, it would be lovely if it was at least consistent value if you manage to hit the stick without DM or Bubble eating it.
It’s not that easy to see if the enemy is missing 1 of the 100 armor or not and you don’t always have a big enough opening to start shooting after a stick, especially not with a brig on their team.
But in the end i don’t really mind it too much. It would just be a nice little quality of life thing.
As i said, i never really made an argument against all this. I’m aware of it and agree. I just wanted to post some stuff about charge times.
I do find it a bit fascinating how fast Rein is able to charge his ult for example, especially when you look at how big impact it is, and how the ult itself can assist in setting up charging the next.
A Rein that goes full aggro can charge his ult rather quickly, but a Rein can only go full aggro if his team backs him up. There are times and comps where Rein just stands holding down his right mouse button letting his team do the work - and he would still be playing correctly. Most of the time you don’t play expecting the best possible outcome to happen, especially not regarding ults. As Rein you don’t just Shatter, because you hope that it’ll connect and because you hope that you get it back after 8 seconds - you need to get the most out of it, hold it until you’re fairly certain it’ll have an impact - because if you don’t get the impact and die instead, that might be the difference between winning that team fight and losing the team fight as well as the next.
Also, when it comes to ult charge time, I did the quick research - in OWL Season 1, those are the average numbers of ult per 10 minutes for the fastest heroes:
Tracer - 5.76
Moira - 5.61
Widow - 4.92
Junk - 4.82
Sombra - 4.72
Disclaimer: Moira suffers here from more often being switched off of, and in fact she charged faster than Tracer on average. McCree also charged faster but held his ultimate a lot longer than Tracer - which is another crucial aspect: ults with a relatively low impact (Moira, Tracer) can get thrown out more freely, allowing those heroes to start charging again more quickly.
To be fair, I think goats vs goats kinda makes it somewhat easy for rein to charge ults atm. Back when we had meta’s with more long ranged heroes or more mobility, it was harder for him to get the damage required to charge his shatter.
Ofc in goats he still has to be careful not over engaging, but this was true in any meta.
Yeah, low impact ults will be thrown out faster as it’s less big of a deal if you miss. Generally low impact ults also mean the hero can get a lot of value without it. Which is definitely true for Tracer
No eye deer. Now that Blizzard are desperate to get rid of goats (only because of Esports - they don’t care about the people who actually play their game), they must be bitterly regretting this decision. But they’re too busy catering to other DPS characters and nerfing the healers into oblivion to address the real issues with Overwatch.
It would be laughable if I hadn’t given Blizzard my money for their flawed game. I won’t fall for their deception again. No more money or support from me, Blizzard, seeming as you don’t support your paying customers. I’ll save my money for developers who actually care about their player base.