Overwatch 2 Tracer Guide

Tracer is one of the most popular Overwatch 2 heroes, and for a good reason.

She is pretty much everywhere when it comes to Overwatch in terms of marketing. Besides that, her fast-paced and deadly playstyle is quite fun and exhilarating. And let’s face it, she also looks super cool with those assassin shades and twin pistols.

But while playing with Tracer is extremely fun for you and equally annoying for the enemy team, she requires a bit of mastery and game understanding in order to be effective.

A weak Tracer usually ends up getting killed without doing much, so it’s good to know what to do, and how to do it when playing with this hero.

Thankfully, you’ve landed on this short Tracer guide that can help you take your Overwatch 2 game with this awesome hero to the next level.

In it, you’ll learn:

- Tracer’s abilities and how to use them

- How to play and exploit her strengths to increase your win rate

- The best team comps she excels with

- Counters

- And other useful tips and tricks

So if you’re looking to get better with Tracer in Overwatch 2, sit back, read on, and take notes.

Tracer is a super-fast squishy that likes to flank lone enemies and take them by surprise when the opportunity presents itself. Thanks to her abilities, great close-range damage, and incredible speed, she can dash toward her targets and take them out in an instant.

When you’re playing with Tracer you don't want big, prolonged fights. Ideally, you should aim to go in, take out the enemy target as fast as possible, and then retreat to prepare for the next quick assassination. Rinse and repeat.

The most skillful Tracer players can take out enemies before they even know what hit them and then retreat to safety in an instant.

But while Tracer is super fast and deadly, her weakness is that she can die very easily, if played poorly. Her base HP is very low, and while she has decent survivability in general thanks to her kit, you have to use it well, or you’ll get shot down very quickly.

So make sure you execute your attacks properly and don’t just get killed by the enemy team before you manage to do anything significant.

Pro Tip # 1 - When playing with Tracer, you want to be sneaky, a.k.a make as little noise as possible. One way to lower the in-game noise you give off is to eliminate the little grunt Tracer makes when jumping to the ground.

You do this by simply falling off whatever high ground you’re on, instead of jumping from it. Then, as you’re falling, you need to press the jump button and hold it until you’ve landed. This will eliminate the grunting noise if you do it right.

Note that if you press the jump button before you’ve started falling off, this will not work. You need to press and hold it after you’ve already started falling.

Passive
Tracer doesn’t have a recognized passive ability like a lot of other Overwatch 2 heroes. But her base speed is the highest in the game and only one other hero - Genji has such a high movement speed.
Pro Tip # 2 - You can use ‘crouch spamming’ to help you flank enemies more effectively. If you’ve watched any top players playing with Tracer, they do it all the time.
The main reason is, it keeps your movement speed almost the same, while significantly lowering the noise your steps make.
This will not make you deadly silent as full crouching would, but it’s a nice balance between speed and quietness.
So if you’re crouching behind someone, but he starts to get away, you can use crouch spamming to increase your speed and close him down without giving out too much noise.

Blink

Tracer’s first and probably most important ability is Blink. It teleports her forward in the direction she is going. This allows you to close the distance towards your enemy and get into their face before they can react.
You can also use it to move quickly around the map, but make sure you have it ready to dive into the enemies.
Blink holds up to three charges at a time, which allows you to sequence some nice combos and cover a lot of ground in a flash.

Recall

Tracer’s second ability is Recall. After a short delay of activating, it teleports her back to the spot she was three seconds before you pressed Recall.
In addition to teleporting her back, this ability restores her health to its highest value during those 3 seconds. Plus, it reloads her weapons, which is quite useful. This is your main survivability skill.

Pulse Bomb (Ultimate)

This is Tracer’s ultimate ability. When you activate it, she sticks a bomb to the first enemy or surface she touches. Soon after it’s placed, the bomb explodes and deals massive damage.
The blast range is relatively low, but the damage is great, so landing the bomb at the right spot is going to be one of the most important things you need to learn.
Pro Tip # 3 - If you’re at 98% towards your ultimate, and you can’t possibly wait another half or a full second to have the bomb, you can do the melee cancel animation and get the bomb immediately.
You do this by dashing toward the enemy with blink, using a melee attack, and then instantly canceling it with the Pulse Bomb.
This is a super useful little combo that can make a difference in your game if you manage to pull it off often enough.  

Twin Pulse Pistols

Tracer likes to use twin pulse pistols with an automatic rapid fire to quickly take down enemies. They are very effective at short range, and their reload time is very fast.

Long-range, though, they are pretty useless. Their fire spread is quite big, so there is no point in shooting from afar and giving away your position.

Instead, you’d be much better off trying to sneak in unnoticed close to someone and take them down before they can do much about it.

Pro Tip # 4 - You already know about crouch spamming to be more silent and keep your movement speed. But crouch spamming can be very useful when you’re in a 1v1 gunfight. It makes you harder to hit, but there is one key element to this that many players miss.

You never want to establish a pattern with your crouch spamming and movements. If you do this, people will learn it and you’ll be as easy to hit as if you didn’t move at all. So what you want to do is - randomize your movements and crouch spamming.

This will make you much harder to hit because you will be unpredictable. So how do you do this? Well, this is the hard part. You have to consciously think about your movement and make sure it’s unpredictable. Don’t follow the same patterns, change stuff up and you’ll see the difference in your 1v1 fights.

Tracer seems to work very well with another diving hero on the team. Especially if that hero is Genji.

The main reason for this is that it creates a real problem for the enemy team on who to focus on. And when Tracer and Genji coordinate their attack, it’s really hard to prevent them from taking out their target. Plus, they can make some spectacular combos.

In terms of tanks, D.VA, Orisa, Winston, and Wrecking Ball are usually a good pair with Tracer. Their abilities allow them to take the pressure off of her and give her a few more seconds to do her work.

For support heroes, Lucio tends to work great with Tracer because he can make her even quicker. Zenyatta is another good pick thanks to his Orb of Discord. The Healing Orb can also be handy at times.

Before getting into specific counters, you need to be aware that any headshot you receive is an instant trip back to spawn. To avoid this, you need to move well. If you get your movement impaired, you become a very easy kill as Tracer, so keep that in mind.

Briggite and Cassidy used to be strong counters to Tracer thanks to their easy-to-apply stuns. But since the recent changes, they are no longer such powerful enemies to her. Still, if they manage to land some shots on Tracer, they can take her out with ease.

Roadhog is a pain in the butt if he lands his hooking ability. This is one of the more annoying heroes you need to watch out for. Symmetra and Torbjorn can also give you trouble, especially Symmetra’s turrets.  

As for who Tracer counters well, basically, anybody that moves slow and is easy to land headshots on. If you manage to sneak on Ana, Ashe, Bastion, Cassidy, Orisa, Reinhardt, Torbjorn, Widowmaker, or Zenyatta, you should be able to take them out with ease.

Some heroes like Mercy, Sojourn, Soldier: 76, and Wrecking Ball might be able to make some distance, but you should still be able to keep on their tail and catch up.

Tracer is super-fun to play with and potentially very strong if you master playing with her. But mastering anything in Overwatch 2 is time-consuming and sometimes even nerve-wracking.

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