It appears that a stealth Overwatch 2 Tracer buff has slipped out at some point since the multiplayer game’s release that lets the brash British DPS hero tear her way through other characters from a much further range than expected. The mid-season one Overwatch 2 patch notes are live, and they include nerfs for several of the strongest Overwatch 2 characters in the season one meta – although, notably, notorious newcomer Sojourn is not due to see changes until the start of season two.
Overwatch 2 pro player Dante ‘Danteh’ Cruz, typically a damage specialist for Overwatch League team the Houston Outlaws until his impressive run in the tank role this season took them to a third-place finish, highlighted the issue with a video posted to his Twitter account. He comments, “Tracer range got stealth buffed???” Overwatch League analyst Jonathan ‘Reinforce’ Larsson responds with a simple “WOW,” while his desk partner and former pro support player Scott ‘Custa’ Kennedy jokes, “Great time to be on holiday.”
The video showcases Danteh in the training room showing how consistently Tracer is able to melt targets with constant fire from long range. While her twin pulse pistols have always had the capability to rapidly burn down opponents, the range with which she appears to be able to do it on the live game is certainly rather staggering. Some players are responding to danteh’s tweet with initial scepticism, only to realise that it’s accurate after testing for themselves.
A few players claim that this isn’t a new change and has been the case for a while. That’s certainly possible – although, if so, it managed to evade the attention of the professional Overwatch scene during a time where Tracer was expected to be meta in the Overwatch League season playoffs until a last-minute adjustment to team strategies pushed Reaper into the spotlight in her place.
That’s certainly not the case any more. As Overwatch 2 streamer ‘Flats’ remarks, Tracer has become rather popular in the tier two professional scene, Overwatch Contenders. “So you know how in Contenders I was telling you that Hog’s being run? Hog, Tracer, Sojourn, Lucio, Kiriko is the meta – I was thinking to myself, ‘Why’s Tracer meta? Tracer doesn’t seem that strong.’ Because people found out that…” Flats then proceeds to demonstrate the damage at range in the training room.
Flats also watches the Danteh clip (you can see this in the video below, with the Tracer segment starting at the 13 minute mark). He remarks that if Danteh is confused about this then “likely nobody knew – didn’t Overwatch League just play for a million dollars? And their meta could have been way different, if they actually had information on what characters were broken.”
It certainly makes a case for Tracer to jump up the rankings of our Overwatch 2 tier list – we’ll be sure to let you know how new tank hero Ramattra rates once the Overwatch 2 season 2 release date arrives. You might find playing high-accuracy twitch heroes such as Tracer even easier by changing your Overwatch 2 crosshair settings. Just keep an eye out for a Mercy bug on Esperança, as the Swiss support can currently sink into the environment to hide from enemy sight.