QP still fun. Arcade still fun. Ranked is a conceptual mess, but still fun.
If you lobotomize yourself to everything Blizzard is and everything they do outside of the literal match you are playing then Overwatch 2 is very good.
If I was 87, blissful in my roaring senility, and sundowning by late afternoon every day? Overwatch 2 would be a fantastic accompaniment to my pudding and bran muffin.
Watching the Game Awards right now and recalling that Overwatch was a 2016 GOTY contender. Wild what half a decade does to you.
It would be if they would fix the role queue times anyway. Give me a clean QP without long queues if I want to role queue as a tank, and then mystery heroes in arcade and I am generally happy.
Brig stops Rein and Doom charges. she doesn't stop a genji dash (that i've seen), or interrupt most anything else. the damage is just not worth getting closer to someone that can drop bombs on my head. As a movement its not the worst (having nothing is the worst) but its not great, let me aim up and do like a slight upward jump/bash!
You use it reactively to ruin Rein's day when they charge your team. If your team is at all awake Rein will get murdered while they're on their back so you don't get to the Find Out part of Hammer versus Flail.
I'm already tired of the new swarm of Doomfists who overextend by jumping past the enemy tank, punch around the corner, don't try to disengage until they're at 20% HP, punch the enemy tank into their own supports' faces getting them immediately killed, and then spam "Need healing" as they predictably die and then again as they respawn.
It's hard for me to tell since so many are Doom v Doom, and the first time I get someone punched into my face, I swap to Moira or Lucio and try to just follow the idiot around. Playing Ana or Zen right now feels godawful.
It's hard for me to tell since so many are Doom v Doom, and the first time I get someone punched into my face, I swap to Moira or Lucio and try to just follow the idiot around. Playing Ana or Zen right now feels godawful.
Yep. I was playing Cass for giggles on a defense right now and had to break down and switch to Tracer - partly because I just couldn't handle the Doom on Cass and part because they had Hanzo/Widow and no one was pressuring them at all. And I sure couldn't with the cowboy -.-
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
rama is definitely an interesting tank but for low tiers like i play in i see A LOT of bad play. He can delete backlines pretty fast but he has no way to get back to his team easily. he's got that long range pea shooter but i don't see a lot of tanks with the accuracy to really use it effectively. right now i see hogs, JQ, Doom just obliterating the teams and then Ram is easy pickings
rama is definitely an interesting tank but for low tiers like i play in i see A LOT of bad play. He can delete backlines pretty fast but he has no way to get back to his team easily. he's got that long range pea shooter but i don't see a lot of tanks with the accuracy to really use it effectively. right now i see hogs, JQ, Doom just obliterating the teams and then Ram is easy pickings
Yep, he's very Rein-y to me - huge, with dedicated supports keeping him immortal - tissue paper, without them, or just with bad positioning. And with Hog and Doom being so big right now - and his inability to protect them beyond that long-CD low-duration barrier - he's often without support.
He can do big work in Nemesis form - and 8 seconds of that block is pretty colossal - but I haven't met many scary Rams, yet.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Finally played the New Shambali without being backfilled, it is very defense friendly to a point it’s Horizon flashbacks. For a map based on moving vertically with twists and turns its also way too wide which makes flanking too much of a time kill if you can’t get your team organized.
Whoever is making maps needs to be moved to another position, this is not it.
I'm in the opposite camp. Granted I've only played Shambali twice - once on Mercy, once on Tracer, both on defense - but I really like how the verticality means the walk back for the defenders is super short, there's so much high ground and so many flanking routes I haven't been able to explore yet. It's like an entire map made out of the high ground turn on Casino Royale.
I just wish I could've played it more than twice since Tuesday. Maybe I'll hate it over time, but for now I like it. (Worth noting... I always liked Horizon so I may just have Map Taste Blindness.)
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Shambali has the second point as a super hard attack and a lot easier on defense. defenders have two high points to snipe/pick off from that they can easily stay out of sight and get healed/repeat.
Brig stops Rein and Doom charges. she doesn't stop a genji dash (that i've seen), or interrupt most anything else. the damage is just not worth getting closer to someone that can drop bombs on my head. As a movement its not the worst (having nothing is the worst) but its not great, let me aim up and do like a slight upward jump/bash!
You use it reactively to ruin Rein's day when they charge your team. If your team is at all awake Rein will get murdered while they're on their back so you don't get to the Find Out part of Hammer versus Flail.
Being a stunned and prone Brig at the front of your fight for 2-3 seconds is a very, very good way to guarantee your own death. Unless the Rein was charging in by himself, in which case you probably don't need the stun to kill him.
Brig stops Rein and Doom charges. she doesn't stop a genji dash (that i've seen), or interrupt most anything else. the damage is just not worth getting closer to someone that can drop bombs on my head. As a movement its not the worst (having nothing is the worst) but its not great, let me aim up and do like a slight upward jump/bash!
You use it reactively to ruin Rein's day when they charge your team. If your team is at all awake Rein will get murdered while they're on their back so you don't get to the Find Out part of Hammer versus Flail.
Being a stunned and prone Brig at the front of your fight for 2-3 seconds is a very, very good way to guarantee your own death. Unless the Rein was charging in by himself, in which case you probably don't need the stun to kill him.
I think the knockdown effect is only like 1 second - but so was McCree's flashbang. More than enough time to get obliterated by a team paying attention.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Shambali has the second point as a super hard attack and a lot easier on defense. defenders have two high points to snipe/pick off from that they can easily stay out of sight and get healed/repeat.
Just got it for the second time, once on offense and once of defense and even getting to the first point on that map is a slog. Defense always has the high ground.
i used to think torb but i have better luck with soldier, just plinking away and wait for that recall and then rocket them, plus self heal helps when guarding the healers
Is there a good tracer counter besides Winston now that they took away Cassidy’s flashbang?
i honestly think I miss Cassidy's flashbang more than I miss Mei's freeze. It was a really useful tool without completely taking away the target's control, unlike the freeze or Junk's beartrap. Cassidy's a very different character without it, and not a better or more fun one.
Is there a good tracer counter besides Winston now that they took away Cassidy’s flashbang?
i honestly think I miss Cassidy's flashbang more than I miss Mei's freeze. It was a really useful tool without completely taking away the target's control, unlike the freeze or Junk's beartrap. Cassidy's a very different character without it, and not a better or more fun one.
Yeah, I miss the flashbang.
F Mei’s freeze though. That can stay dead like a Mei’s cold dark heart.
Is there a good tracer counter besides Winston now that they took away Cassidy’s flashbang?
i honestly think I miss Cassidy's flashbang more than I miss Mei's freeze. It was a really useful tool without completely taking away the target's control, unlike the freeze or Junk's beartrap. Cassidy's a very different character without it, and not a better or more fun one.
Yeah, I miss the flashbang.
F Mei’s freeze though. That can stay dead like a Mei’s cold dark heart.
Is there a good tracer counter besides Winston now that they took away Cassidy’s flashbang?
I believe I can speak to this. The short answer is I believe the hero you're best with is most effective you can be Vs. Tracer. There are a few heroes who have a particularly hard time against her (I'd say Bastion, Zenyatta, Mercy, Rein and right now Ram) - but for specific breakdowns...
i used to think torb but i have better luck with soldier, just plinking away and wait for that recall and then rocket them, plus self heal helps when guarding the healers
Yes. A Soldier just keeping an eye out for me and pressuring me as he sees me is as detrimental to my work as Torb's turret. I can't afford to engage a teamfight with less than 121 HP, so any 29-damage scratch will send me for a health pack. Two Soldier body shots and a rocket - or rocket melee - will kill me, and a Soldier on his health pack won't die unless you land some meaty headshots.
If you have a Zen orb or Mercy pocket, you're almost impossible to kill unless I headshot you.
Torb. He's also a much better all around character than he was in OW1, so it's not even a loss to overall team power.
Also yes. Torb's turret 100% prevents me from engaging on a teamfight - it can take me from full to dead in about 2.5 seconds. A single torb headshot (single bolt) will do 140, leaving me with 10 hp or outright killing me if I've been scratched (say, by a turret). Torb's armor is very helpful, making it near-impossible to one clip him.
But... if your turret is a blink away from a corner, I can blink in and one-clip-melee it. Without support - or a sweet headshot - I will almost-definitely kill you 1v1. It is... uncommon for a Torb to reliably land headshots on me. I see far more from Cassidys and Kirikos.
Elsewhere in DPS, Cassidy's sticky is more threatening - and harder to dodge - than flashbang ever was (for me, the Tracer). It will force me to recall and retreat if I can't kill you with the next clip. Also worth noting - a Cassidy who can just consistently, bam bam bam land body shots on me, is fucking terrifying and ensures I spend a lot of time running for health packs, if not back from spawn.
Ashe, Hanzo, Widow and Mei can all one-shot me with a headshot, Mei's spray can kill me in like 1.5 seconds, now. A well-played Genji is very hard for a Tracer to kill, and can 100% kill a Tracer with dash-and-alt-fire faster than a Tracer could possibly kill the Genji.
Junkrat and Pharah will both 1-shot me with a single damage-boosted shot. Junk's trap is a death sentence for me. A Mercy pocket on a strong DPS is a strong deterrent (and makes Mercy the primary target). Sym turrets are just as troublesome for a Tracer as Torb's - and require more time for me to kill. A Sym orb that happens to clip an already-hurt Tracer is death.
For all matchups, whichever character you're most confident landing headshots on is the best choice. Skill trumps skill, perhaps especially vs. Tracer. If you're a strong Cassidy and you can headshot me, that will scare the fuck out of me. If Junkrat is your best hero, Junkrat is the best hero to try to kill a scary Tracer with. Nade, mine, g'day mate. Same with Ashe, Widow, Hanzo, Reaper and Echo. If you can land headshots on Hanzo, you're more dangerous than a net of Sym turrets. A well-played Reaper is a nightmare, for me.
It comes down to this, and it's so simple as to sound insulting, but - if you're landing headshots, you'll win Vs. a Tracer who isn't. If the Tracer is landing headshots and you're not, you'll lose. If you're both landing headshots (Cass, Ashe, Mei, Hanzo, Widow, Soldier, Torb, Echo), you win.A Soldier landing his rocket + 2 body shots will kill a Tracer faster than the Tracer can kill the Soldier while landing all headshots. Playing a low-skill hero (Torb, Sym) in a low-skill/low-experience way is less effective into Tracer than any other hero played with high skill.
Tanks.
In the tank role, Roadhog is strong into Tracer. A lucky close-range shot can one-shot me, and I've been one-shot by hog alt-fires. Hook+1-shot kills me more times than I can mention - I just had my clock cleaned by one on Rialto, tonight - and even 1v1 I'll be hard pressed to kill a Hog without using my ult. It's a lot of HP to burn through, and my blinks won't last forever. You'll probably throw 2 hooks before I can kill you. If I have pulse, I'm waiting for you to huff.
Winston is strong, but only when played by a strong Winston player. Well-timed, he can fuck my dives and chase me down. Poorly played, I can two-clip him with headshots and he's a big Pulse target.
Zarya is strong, able to deal the little chip damage when I expose myself and able to save teammates from Pulse with a bubble. Once grav'd, I have zero escape. A Ball can be strong into Tracer, if you pay attention to her and use your superior mobility to chase her down when she bails from a gank attempt. Queen can one-shot me with a headshot, Rein can kill a Tracer in 2 swings or 1 + a firestrike, two damage-boosted Nemesis-form punches on Ram will kill me. Oh, and Ram's Omnic form primary fire is surprisingly effective at scratching me up and forcing me out of the fight, for a health pack - if he's making me a priority.
Beyond Hog, though, the single-best tank into Tracer may be D.Va. She can eat my ult, prevent me from diving her supports with a well-timed matrix, and if a D.Va has clocked me as a problem for her team, she has very little trouble chasing me and bursting me down.
All this said, if your best tank is Sigma, the rock will fuck up my day pretty bad and you can easily rock-combo me to death (or at least, they sure make it look easy).
Support
Brig is still strong into Tracer. It's hard for her to solo kill me, but New Shield Bash does a ton of damage and whip shot does a ton of damage - and if I'm in the middle of a teamfight at 50% hp, that's all it takes. Brig can, crucially, survive longer Vs. Tracer than most other supports just thanks to her shield - but she also can't run from one like Moira, Kiriko, Lucio or Mercy.
The two swaps I see most often on the support front are into Moira and Brig. Moira does rough, consistent damage into Tracer that brings me below the important breakpoints - but if I'm landing headshots, it doesn't matter and I'll win the 1v1. If I'm whiffing, a well-played Moira can easily suppress or kill me.
As with DPS, if you're confident in your aim on Kiriko, Baptiste, Ana (sleep can kill Tracers) and most of all Zen, you may not want to switch off. All 4 are effective at keeping me at bay if not outright killing me with a headshot from Kiriko, barrage from Zen or just 2 solid body shots from Baptiste. Bap's lamp can screw a Tracer's gank attempt and Pulse, Kiriko's Bell can do the same, and Kiriko can easily bail when it looks bad.
As with DPS, if your best support is Lucio and you're confident you can land body shots on me and boop me around, your Lucio will be stronger into Tracer than a poorly-played Kiriko.
All this said... hang on, I need to go cut a clip...
All this said, if your team switches to Roadhog, McCree, Torb, Moira and Kiriko to counter a Tracer, but collectively you don't have a good synergy that the enemy team does, it won't matter. In the same way if my team just never groups up and trickles forever, I can't possibly win.
This is an example from a Colloseo game a few nights ago. The supports swapped from Mercy and Kiriko to Moira and Bap (both very effective in general Vs. Tracer), the DPS swapped from Sojourn and something to Torb and Symmetra (both very effective Vs, Tracer in general), and as you can see in the final fight, here, it didn't matter.
Their tank never swapped off Ram - he didn't care. I have a Mercy healing me, and they don't. I have a tank who didn't rush in without supports, and was perhaps smart enough to switch to Nemesis form if he got stuck with a Pulse and they didn't. I dove hard to make that final shot Vs. the Symmetra, and she could have killed me if she'd had the aggression to put an orb through that door. They played poorly as a group, the tank was not running on all cylinders, they trickled in to the final fight, the Symmetra didn't get aggressive when an opportunity presented itself, my team wrecked the turret so I didn't have to and I capitalized on all of that.
So I say play your very best hero and if you can land the shots better than the Tracer can, you'll win. If you can't, you won't. If your team together is better than my team together, you'll win and nothing I do can stop it.
Tracer is definitely enjoying a resurgence this week (wonder why haha), but I can't count the number of middling enemy Tracers who swapped off over the course of my games tonight. They'd go Ashe and Junk and Sombra and Pharah - and be more effective than they were, on Tracer. She's hard, for the record. Hard to play, hard to survive. Easy to kill, easy to fuck up on - easy to stumble between two enemies and get simultaneously bodied by a Hanzo arrow and a Brig boop to be instantly vaporized.
Sorry for the length.
Edit: oh, and I thrive on teams that don't turn around. I start from the back and work my way forward. If no one turns to swat me away, it's like leaving a Widow uncontested up on the high ground. She's gonna' do some damage.
Chance on
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
Chance covered it very well above.
An adequately skilled Tracer honestly doesn't have what I would describe as a good counter. She has the mobility to simply opt out of all the situations where things are particularly dangerous for her. This is going to sound ludicrous, but even OG Brigitte wasn't a serious counter to a good Tracer, because they knew there was a range where the Brig just literally couldn't touch her, and she could just stick around until the opportunity was there to jump in and take care of business.
Hog can be an answer, but it requires a real serious opportunity cost in terms of positioning and holding your hook, as Hog. To be quite honest in OW2 I think you simply lose too much value to commit too much of your tank's time to peeling in the backline, with certain maps and game situations being a bit of an exception to that. Hog turns around to address a Tracer on his backline and before you know it 4/5 of the enemy team is pretty much running you all over.
Torb turret in a good spot can be incredibly limiting to Tracers, and while they can eventually deal with it themselves sometimes it's in a spot where it takes a hell of a lot of the Tracer's resources to do so, and you're effectively taking her out of the fight for a good stretch even if she does get the turret.
All damage dealing supports can bat away a Tracer but the execution required to do that consistently is a fair bit tougher than the skill it would take for the Tracer to end you. And that's the problem - Tracer gets to just keep plugging away and re-engaging at her discretion.
The most consistent, replicable response to Tracer is two supports covering each other very well, with at least one of them capable of doing threatening levels of damage to the Tracer. Survive a bunch of her engages and show that you're aware of her and can respond fast, and then you're usually solid. Until she just decides to farm pulse off your tank and guarantee a kill on one of you.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I see the post, but I want to see the actual patch before giving them a pat on the back because I see the word "potential" sitting there as a big nope for changes.
It just really annoys me how it takes the most loyal content creators bitching and saying they're gonna play something else (Flats) to make Blizzard magically fix things the fastest they can, we saw this before when CC was at its most broken. Maybe the players really have dropped off hard enough to make them do something.
Sidenote, outside of battle pass skins, has anyone seen people using the shop skins in the wild? The only one I've ever seen was Witch Kiriko, but I've never seen any of the other halloween skins being worn, or some of the other cheaper ones like the police mustache Tracer.
I've seen one mobster junk in game, but that might be about it. The prices are a joke and I'm not surprised they're unpopular.
Moreover, the fact that you can only buy skins or get them from the battle pass kind of makes the weird skins less fun for me? I miss the lootboxes for their random drops. And that business model honestly felt way less price-gougey and predatory than what we have now.
I've seen almost any shop skin I can think of. Witch Kirikos galore, Popo Tracers, Mafia Junk (nice skin, tbh). People on consoles seem to be eating them up.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Yeah, I’ve seen a few of the shop skins. Not an overwhelming amount mind you, but they pop up on a regular basis. I do wonder how many of those were bought with legacy credits from OW1 though as opposed to buying the credits in OW2. That’s how I bought a Soujourn skin and my S2 battle pass.
I've seen one mobster junk in game, but that might be about it. The prices are a joke and I'm not surprised they're unpopular.
Moreover, the fact that you can only buy skins or get them from the battle pass kind of makes the weird skins less fun for me? I miss the lootboxes for their random drops. And that business model honestly felt way less price-gougey and predatory than what we have now.
When the current model makes you wish loot boxes were back because they were less scammy, Blizzard fucked up.
The ones from your bank that were ported over when OW2 launched. It wasn’t a 1:1 conversion if I recall. I had like 14,000 gold since I had all the skins I wanted that converted. I assume that’s where those came from anyway since I haven’t bought any and the current system only lets you accrue 50/week.
I did pre-purchase the launch pack the first season so maybe that came with some credits? I don’t think that many though.
As someone who didn't but had an assload of legacy credits, I have nothing but the scant weekly challenge ones.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I still have old legacy coins that can't even be bothered to spend on the color change skins for the new characters outside of the tracksuit Kiriko skin.
I did have way, way much more golden gun credits when I transferred over, way more than I ever should have got for how little I played competitive after season 12, that I bought 4 other gold guns with in case Blizzard realized they screwed up and tried to givesies backsies. And I still have 4500 sitting there but I don't know who to waste it on.
I think the Ice Queen Brigitte skin is new, and it's free. However they didn't mention any new winter skins in the shop. Also there isn't a new event, just the old ones coming back.
Kind of seems like they're not sure what to do with these holiday events. S2 has two of them plus a seasonal event, so I get why it's barebones, but it feels like an afterthought.
Seems like "one free skin, one free weapon charm, watch twitch streams for 6 hours for something else free, and then give us more money lol" is the plan for events going forward.
Seems like "one free skin, one free weapon charm, watch twitch streams for 6 hours for something else free, and then give us more money lol" is the plan for events going forward.
That free skin requires a fair chunk of Challenges. I'd normally be fine with that but I'm noticing quite a lot of "Win" requirements for the seasonal game modes. That could be a big issue for folks.
Sucks if that’s the plan moving forward. It was the free cosmetic skins in loot boxes during events that always got me to come back every time I fell off of playing in OW1. It kept drawing me back in, and then i’d keep playing for a few months until the next event like clockwork.
1 free skin and other I need to pay $20 for won’t work on me the same way.
I made sure to grab skins I cared about with leftover coins before they shuddered OW1. I played OW2 for maybe a day or two and like, the whole progression system and free battlepass required to unlock characters thing has pushed me away quite easily. Maybe I'll come back and play some more, I do love the gameplay, but the systems surrounding the gameplay make me feel gross for engaging with.
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It would be if they would fix the role queue times anyway. Give me a clean QP without long queues if I want to role queue as a tank, and then mystery heroes in arcade and I am generally happy.
You use it reactively to ruin Rein's day when they charge your team. If your team is at all awake Rein will get murdered while they're on their back so you don't get to the Find Out part of Hammer versus Flail.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Yep. I was playing Cass for giggles on a defense right now and had to break down and switch to Tracer - partly because I just couldn't handle the Doom on Cass and part because they had Hanzo/Widow and no one was pressuring them at all. And I sure couldn't with the cowboy -.-
Why do you do this. Is it supposed to be balanced around the middle and will look like a 'V' pattern once another support is added?
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Yep, he's very Rein-y to me - huge, with dedicated supports keeping him immortal - tissue paper, without them, or just with bad positioning. And with Hog and Doom being so big right now - and his inability to protect them beyond that long-CD low-duration barrier - he's often without support.
He can do big work in Nemesis form - and 8 seconds of that block is pretty colossal - but I haven't met many scary Rams, yet.
Whoever is making maps needs to be moved to another position, this is not it.
I just wish I could've played it more than twice since Tuesday. Maybe I'll hate it over time, but for now I like it. (Worth noting... I always liked Horizon so I may just have Map Taste Blindness.)
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Being a stunned and prone Brig at the front of your fight for 2-3 seconds is a very, very good way to guarantee your own death. Unless the Rein was charging in by himself, in which case you probably don't need the stun to kill him.
I think the knockdown effect is only like 1 second - but so was McCree's flashbang. More than enough time to get obliterated by a team paying attention.
Just got it for the second time, once on offense and once of defense and even getting to the first point on that map is a slog. Defense always has the high ground.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
i honestly think I miss Cassidy's flashbang more than I miss Mei's freeze. It was a really useful tool without completely taking away the target's control, unlike the freeze or Junk's beartrap. Cassidy's a very different character without it, and not a better or more fun one.
Yeah, I miss the flashbang.
F Mei’s freeze though. That can stay dead like a Mei’s cold dark heart.
This statement is a war crime.
I believe I can speak to this. The short answer is I believe the hero you're best with is most effective you can be Vs. Tracer. There are a few heroes who have a particularly hard time against her (I'd say Bastion, Zenyatta, Mercy, Rein and right now Ram) - but for specific breakdowns...
DPS
Yes. A Soldier just keeping an eye out for me and pressuring me as he sees me is as detrimental to my work as Torb's turret. I can't afford to engage a teamfight with less than 121 HP, so any 29-damage scratch will send me for a health pack. Two Soldier body shots and a rocket - or rocket melee - will kill me, and a Soldier on his health pack won't die unless you land some meaty headshots.
If you have a Zen orb or Mercy pocket, you're almost impossible to kill unless I headshot you.
Also yes. Torb's turret 100% prevents me from engaging on a teamfight - it can take me from full to dead in about 2.5 seconds. A single torb headshot (single bolt) will do 140, leaving me with 10 hp or outright killing me if I've been scratched (say, by a turret). Torb's armor is very helpful, making it near-impossible to one clip him.
But... if your turret is a blink away from a corner, I can blink in and one-clip-melee it. Without support - or a sweet headshot - I will almost-definitely kill you 1v1. It is... uncommon for a Torb to reliably land headshots on me. I see far more from Cassidys and Kirikos.
Elsewhere in DPS, Cassidy's sticky is more threatening - and harder to dodge - than flashbang ever was (for me, the Tracer). It will force me to recall and retreat if I can't kill you with the next clip. Also worth noting - a Cassidy who can just consistently, bam bam bam land body shots on me, is fucking terrifying and ensures I spend a lot of time running for health packs, if not back from spawn.
Ashe, Hanzo, Widow and Mei can all one-shot me with a headshot, Mei's spray can kill me in like 1.5 seconds, now. A well-played Genji is very hard for a Tracer to kill, and can 100% kill a Tracer with dash-and-alt-fire faster than a Tracer could possibly kill the Genji.
Junkrat and Pharah will both 1-shot me with a single damage-boosted shot. Junk's trap is a death sentence for me. A Mercy pocket on a strong DPS is a strong deterrent (and makes Mercy the primary target). Sym turrets are just as troublesome for a Tracer as Torb's - and require more time for me to kill. A Sym orb that happens to clip an already-hurt Tracer is death.
For all matchups, whichever character you're most confident landing headshots on is the best choice. Skill trumps skill, perhaps especially vs. Tracer. If you're a strong Cassidy and you can headshot me, that will scare the fuck out of me. If Junkrat is your best hero, Junkrat is the best hero to try to kill a scary Tracer with. Nade, mine, g'day mate. Same with Ashe, Widow, Hanzo, Reaper and Echo. If you can land headshots on Hanzo, you're more dangerous than a net of Sym turrets. A well-played Reaper is a nightmare, for me.
It comes down to this, and it's so simple as to sound insulting, but - if you're landing headshots, you'll win Vs. a Tracer who isn't. If the Tracer is landing headshots and you're not, you'll lose. If you're both landing headshots (Cass, Ashe, Mei, Hanzo, Widow, Soldier, Torb, Echo), you win. A Soldier landing his rocket + 2 body shots will kill a Tracer faster than the Tracer can kill the Soldier while landing all headshots. Playing a low-skill hero (Torb, Sym) in a low-skill/low-experience way is less effective into Tracer than any other hero played with high skill.
Tanks.
Winston is strong, but only when played by a strong Winston player. Well-timed, he can fuck my dives and chase me down. Poorly played, I can two-clip him with headshots and he's a big Pulse target.
Zarya is strong, able to deal the little chip damage when I expose myself and able to save teammates from Pulse with a bubble. Once grav'd, I have zero escape. A Ball can be strong into Tracer, if you pay attention to her and use your superior mobility to chase her down when she bails from a gank attempt. Queen can one-shot me with a headshot, Rein can kill a Tracer in 2 swings or 1 + a firestrike, two damage-boosted Nemesis-form punches on Ram will kill me. Oh, and Ram's Omnic form primary fire is surprisingly effective at scratching me up and forcing me out of the fight, for a health pack - if he's making me a priority.
Beyond Hog, though, the single-best tank into Tracer may be D.Va. She can eat my ult, prevent me from diving her supports with a well-timed matrix, and if a D.Va has clocked me as a problem for her team, she has very little trouble chasing me and bursting me down.
All this said, if your best tank is Sigma, the rock will fuck up my day pretty bad and you can easily rock-combo me to death (or at least, they sure make it look easy).
Support
The two swaps I see most often on the support front are into Moira and Brig. Moira does rough, consistent damage into Tracer that brings me below the important breakpoints - but if I'm landing headshots, it doesn't matter and I'll win the 1v1. If I'm whiffing, a well-played Moira can easily suppress or kill me.
As with DPS, if you're confident in your aim on Kiriko, Baptiste, Ana (sleep can kill Tracers) and most of all Zen, you may not want to switch off. All 4 are effective at keeping me at bay if not outright killing me with a headshot from Kiriko, barrage from Zen or just 2 solid body shots from Baptiste. Bap's lamp can screw a Tracer's gank attempt and Pulse, Kiriko's Bell can do the same, and Kiriko can easily bail when it looks bad.
As with DPS, if your best support is Lucio and you're confident you can land body shots on me and boop me around, your Lucio will be stronger into Tracer than a poorly-played Kiriko.
All this said... hang on, I need to go cut a clip...
All this said, if your team switches to Roadhog, McCree, Torb, Moira and Kiriko to counter a Tracer, but collectively you don't have a good synergy that the enemy team does, it won't matter. In the same way if my team just never groups up and trickles forever, I can't possibly win.
This is an example from a Colloseo game a few nights ago. The supports swapped from Mercy and Kiriko to Moira and Bap (both very effective in general Vs. Tracer), the DPS swapped from Sojourn and something to Torb and Symmetra (both very effective Vs, Tracer in general), and as you can see in the final fight, here, it didn't matter.
Their tank never swapped off Ram - he didn't care. I have a Mercy healing me, and they don't. I have a tank who didn't rush in without supports, and was perhaps smart enough to switch to Nemesis form if he got stuck with a Pulse and they didn't. I dove hard to make that final shot Vs. the Symmetra, and she could have killed me if she'd had the aggression to put an orb through that door. They played poorly as a group, the tank was not running on all cylinders, they trickled in to the final fight, the Symmetra didn't get aggressive when an opportunity presented itself, my team wrecked the turret so I didn't have to and I capitalized on all of that.
So I say play your very best hero and if you can land the shots better than the Tracer can, you'll win. If you can't, you won't. If your team together is better than my team together, you'll win and nothing I do can stop it.
Tracer is definitely enjoying a resurgence this week (wonder why haha), but I can't count the number of middling enemy Tracers who swapped off over the course of my games tonight. They'd go Ashe and Junk and Sombra and Pharah - and be more effective than they were, on Tracer. She's hard, for the record. Hard to play, hard to survive. Easy to kill, easy to fuck up on - easy to stumble between two enemies and get simultaneously bodied by a Hanzo arrow and a Brig boop to be instantly vaporized.
Sorry for the length.
Edit: oh, and I thrive on teams that don't turn around. I start from the back and work my way forward. If no one turns to swat me away, it's like leaving a Widow uncontested up on the high ground. She's gonna' do some damage.
An adequately skilled Tracer honestly doesn't have what I would describe as a good counter. She has the mobility to simply opt out of all the situations where things are particularly dangerous for her. This is going to sound ludicrous, but even OG Brigitte wasn't a serious counter to a good Tracer, because they knew there was a range where the Brig just literally couldn't touch her, and she could just stick around until the opportunity was there to jump in and take care of business.
Hog can be an answer, but it requires a real serious opportunity cost in terms of positioning and holding your hook, as Hog. To be quite honest in OW2 I think you simply lose too much value to commit too much of your tank's time to peeling in the backline, with certain maps and game situations being a bit of an exception to that. Hog turns around to address a Tracer on his backline and before you know it 4/5 of the enemy team is pretty much running you all over.
Torb turret in a good spot can be incredibly limiting to Tracers, and while they can eventually deal with it themselves sometimes it's in a spot where it takes a hell of a lot of the Tracer's resources to do so, and you're effectively taking her out of the fight for a good stretch even if she does get the turret.
All damage dealing supports can bat away a Tracer but the execution required to do that consistently is a fair bit tougher than the skill it would take for the Tracer to end you. And that's the problem - Tracer gets to just keep plugging away and re-engaging at her discretion.
The most consistent, replicable response to Tracer is two supports covering each other very well, with at least one of them capable of doing threatening levels of damage to the Tracer. Survive a bunch of her engages and show that you're aware of her and can respond fast, and then you're usually solid. Until she just decides to farm pulse off your tank and guarantee a kill on one of you.
It just really annoys me how it takes the most loyal content creators bitching and saying they're gonna play something else (Flats) to make Blizzard magically fix things the fastest they can, we saw this before when CC was at its most broken. Maybe the players really have dropped off hard enough to make them do something.
Sidenote, outside of battle pass skins, has anyone seen people using the shop skins in the wild? The only one I've ever seen was Witch Kiriko, but I've never seen any of the other halloween skins being worn, or some of the other cheaper ones like the police mustache Tracer.
Moreover, the fact that you can only buy skins or get them from the battle pass kind of makes the weird skins less fun for me? I miss the lootboxes for their random drops. And that business model honestly felt way less price-gougey and predatory than what we have now.
When the current model makes you wish loot boxes were back because they were less scammy, Blizzard fucked up.
You can buy battle passes with legacy credits?!
I did pre-purchase the launch pack the first season so maybe that came with some credits? I don’t think that many though.
I did have way, way much more golden gun credits when I transferred over, way more than I ever should have got for how little I played competitive after season 12, that I bought 4 other gold guns with in case Blizzard realized they screwed up and tried to givesies backsies. And I still have 4500 sitting there but I don't know who to waste it on.
I think the Ice Queen Brigitte skin is new, and it's free. However they didn't mention any new winter skins in the shop. Also there isn't a new event, just the old ones coming back.
Kind of seems like they're not sure what to do with these holiday events. S2 has two of them plus a seasonal event, so I get why it's barebones, but it feels like an afterthought.
That free skin requires a fair chunk of Challenges. I'd normally be fine with that but I'm noticing quite a lot of "Win" requirements for the seasonal game modes. That could be a big issue for folks.
1 free skin and other I need to pay $20 for won’t work on me the same way.
And certainly not going to subject myself to multiple hours of those awful winter minigames for that one.