Introduction
Hello, and welcome to my Tracer guide.
Let's get started!
As you can see, I don't go for any healing talents, keep that in mind while initiating in battle, or following someone. You need patience, and knowledge when to initiate and when not. You may need some extra experience with Tracer to handle this build well.
Everything below are my own opinions from the experiences I've had, if you disagree about something, please tell me.
Tracer is a very different type of hero, she plays unlike any other, that's the first thing you need to understand. Get a right mindset for her, and you'll start getting better.
Tracer is a quick ganker, she goes in to take out anyone that's getting away with low health. She gets in to hit hard the enemy supports or mages to force them to retreat from team fights. Tracer is like a surgeon, making fast and precise hits to weak heroes and get away with it.
Edit 27.4.: Made some visual updates and corrected few explanation mismatches that was left after talent changes.
Edit 20.11.2016: Needed to look again and change a lot of things, so many talents have changed so drastically.
Easy target examples
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Illidan can't really do much to you throughout the whole game, if he tries to get you out, he just makes himself look silly and you'll get an easy kill. Especially after level 20, it doesn't even matter if he uses
The Hunt on you, just
Total Recall the damage away and kill him while he gets mad. Keep your distance while shooting, if he leaps on you, blink away and keep shooting. He can not do anything to you, you should come out of it with about full health.
Still, Illidan can kill you easily if you have used your recall and blinks before he uses his hunt, just so you know.
Li-Ming is all about slow skill shots, so yeah... she's dead if no one comes to help her.
Only risk with
Murky is his
Octo-Grab, don't get caught in it and he can't do anything to you. If you see his
Pufferfish on minion wave, might as well take it down as it takes no time at all with your attack speed, it's almost an instant pop. Mainly Murky is quite a nice buff for your
Untouchable. Same goes for
The Lost Vikings.
Examples of your bad dreams
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Li Li is awful, don't try to go for her alone, because she will most likely take you down. Li Li does surprisingly much damage to you with AA +
Cloud Serpent, and with
Blinding Wind around you won't do much. She also heals herself freely, as you have nothing to prevent that. Li Li in a team fight sucks for you.
Brightwing is also bad news in team fight, you can't blink in for any kills, because if she uses
Polymorph on you, you die.
Raynor has more health than you, has more range than you, does more AA damage than you, and will heal himself with
Adrenaline Rush if you manage to get him that low. You'll have very little chance against him. Blinking around him is useless, as his AA targets you as long as you're in his range, which is longer that your range. Do NOT go 1v1 against Raynor ever, unless he's on low health to begin with and you can almost take him down with one
Melee, meaning his Adrenaline Rush is also used already.
There's not much you can do against
Johanna, you can't even dream of doing enough damage to her. She can also blind you, and her
Condemn stuns you if you don't blink away from it. Johanna is overall a good pick against Tracer, same goes for
E.T.C..
From the two cloaked heroes,
Nova is definitely the more dangerous one, because at some point of the game she is pretty much able to one-shot you down. But if you can evade her skill shot and therefor nerf her damage, she's not that bad. Also you can use
Recall to counter
Triple Tap.
Tips
You are VERY slow at wave clearing until level 13, it's better to keep helping your team mates and switching lanes. If your team doesn't already have roamers like
Nova or
Zeratul, you should definitely take that job, otherwise stay on lanes and soak all you can. Usually in early game you can end up with couple easy kills if the enemy hero follows your team mates too far. You can take them out on the way as they try to escape, just run along and melt them on the way, and if things look bad, just
Recall away before you die. Don't be too greedy! Kill only if you know you can get it safely.
If you must, you can solo lane too, but then try to keep it near your walls so they can do all the work. It takes over 2 full clips for you to take down 1 minion.
You are one of the best heroes to get Dagon Knight and Garden Terror, because when they die, you can blink away so fast that no one's able to follow you. Except maybe another Tracer, but she won't.
Use recall instantly if you get hit by Xul's
Poison Nova. It does ridiculously much damage to you, but if you recall instantly, it doesn't have to time to drain you all out.
At level 20, if you have picked
Total Recall, you can go take hits from Nova's
Triple Tap for a friend (considering you're at full health), and get your health back with
Total Recall. If it means saving allied hero's life, it's totally worth using your recall like that.
At level 20 Tracer has roughly 2780 HP and Nova's Triple Tap deals about 2320 damage total, so you can easily take couple shot off.
In
Blackheart's Bay the chests seems to takes %-damage per 1 AA regardless of your damage, so Tracer can destroy a chest in couple seconds alone because of her insane attack speed. It takes 2 magazines to destroy it, and that's really no time at all.
Level 1 - Pulse Strike
Now that
Total Recall has been nerfed and no longer being the obvious level 20 pick,
Slipstream is no longer the must pick on Level 1 for that extra 1 second worth of heal. Level 1 is now totally open, every talent is viable.
Slipstream is still very good, but only if you are going for
Total Recall on level 20. That extra 1 second for heal does surprisingly much.
pulse strike is a very good pick for Level 1, try to blink in and
Melee when you are reloading, as much as possible, to change up your
Pulse Bomb super fast. With
Bullet Spray and
Get Stuffed! this will end up being a great pick.
The big surprise here is
Tracer Rounds, I never picked it, it just felt kinda meh.
It's actually GREAT! There are so many benefits from this.
When you are chasing a low HP hero and he manages just barely to flee behind his walls, you will still see him and are able to keep shooting behind the walls. Also you can see them when they flee through bushes or around the corners, you'll never stop shooting at them!
Also it doesn't hurt to prevent cloaked heroes to get cloaked for 4 seconds after they flee from you, if they manage to do so.
Still more! You can reveal mirror images, such as
Nova or
Samuro clones, just by poking them, so everyone in your team knows who's real and who's fake. Very viable pick for level 1, but still not a must have.
I think all talents on level 1 are on a pretty even line, pick your favorite!
Level 4 - Untouchable
This is great when you know how to stay alive with Tracer and don't take suicidal risks. This gives Tracer the damage she otherwise lacks. Keep an eye on your cooldowns, don't blink in fight if you don't have
Recall ready.
Keep in mind the fact that you are still not getting any self sustain with this build. This can be a bit tricky to keep up sometimes, especially if the enemy team focuses you hard.
In Quick Match, if you dont get a healer in your group,
Is That a Health Pack?! can be a good pick to stay alive a bit better. Healing well pretty much always gets you to full health.
Level 7 - Spatial Echo
This is still in my opinion the best pick, even after the big change to the talent.
Spatial Echo no longer gives you 2 safety blink charges from
Recall (Recall away + get extra blinks to retreat even further), but instead if you have couple low HP targets to chase, they have no chance of running away, as you get more blinks per every enemy hero that dies.
It's no longer as safe as before, but a lot more offensive. Be careful not to get too excited on the chase, remember to recall back before you commit a suicide.
Level 10 - Pulse Rounds
Tracer's level 10 talents are great, all three are very viable picks, in the end it's up to how you like to play, and what do you play best with. And if all is well, make the choice depending on the team comps and the match so far.
Tracer is good at taking down low health heroes,
Quantum Spike gives your
Pulse Bomb a much greater chance of getting those kills fast before you need to recall back. In team fight this helps to easily take down any hero the team decides to focus on, even tanks, as you don't always have the opportunity to blink to the enemy's back line. That 10% doesn't sound much, but I've noticed that even with low hp heroes, that 10% often dictates if you have time to kill someone or not.
Sticky Bomb is also good, if not even better for most cases. If the enemy team is tanky and hard with CC, and knows how to keep you in check, this can end up being much more useful especially in the end game. This helps a ton in team fights if the enemy team doesn't dodge the one with the bomb, that 70% AOE slow is insane!
The downside is that this is very easy for team to dodge, and a slow for only 1 hero in team fight isn't always that big of a deal, unless they are already starting to retreat, hence your team will probably get a kill there.
That 50% increased range helps of course, and even if the bomb hits only 1 target, it still forces the enemy team to either get hit by it or scatter around in panic and possibly lose the team fight purely because of their bad positioning.
For some time I didn't consider
Pulse Rounds a good pick over the other two, but after giving it some love and testing it around more, it actually ended up feeling by far the best pick for me. Getting those bombs up way faster is actually a huge damage buff for you, you'll be bombarding much more damage with your bombs throughout the match with this, as it's simply up so fast and ready to be tossed around without second thoughts. Also it doesn't hurt to have a longer range. Even if you're good with those bombs, this will sky rocket your bomb hit rate.
Level 13 - Bullet Spray
On level 13 I prefer to pick
Bullet Spray. If the enemy team's back liners likes to stay close together, Bullet Spray is super good. Since your
Melee auto targets, there's a high risk you'll hit a hero you are not trying to kill. With this you'll guarantee a hit, don't even need to be that close, and in addition to hitting your target, you'll hit everyone else around too. Also with this you can easily take out minion waves with almost 1 hit.
Note:
Bullet Spray still only nets you the pulse charges of one target even if you hit more than one target with the AoE melee.
Tip: I especially recommend
Bullet Spray to
Infernal Shrines, you'll be clearing those shrines crazy fast.
Combined with
Pulse Rounds, both your
Melee and
Pulse Bomb will have increased range, to make ganking a little easier and safer.
If you feel that you take too much damage all the time and have hard time staying alive (bad positions, wrong timings, etc.), it might be a good idea to choose
Leeching Rounds. This gives you some sustain and keeps you alive a little longer when attacking a hero, to give your blink more time to charge. Also in Quick Match if you don't have a healer around, this is a good pick to get some self heal.
If you'll be buffing your AA later with
Locked and Loaded,
Ricochet can be a nice talent to take, to get even more hits with your high damage.
Also
Ricochet gives you Pulse Bombs faster. Still, I think Ricochet is the worst pick from Level 13 talents.
Level 16 - Sleight of Hands
Locked and Loaded is a bit tricky, and requires you to constantly focus on your reloads in addition to everything else. If you can share your focus for this, it's a HUGE damage buff. Combined with
Untouchable you will become a formidable damage dealer even against their front liners. Also when your team gets to push, you'll be melting their forts!
If you don't feel fine with
Locked and Loaded, just pick any of the other two.
Focus Fire gives more damage,
Sleight of Hand charges your
Pulse Bomb faster, and combined with
Ricochet and
Pulse Rounds you'll be having those bombs up all the time.
I later changed the Level 16 talent to
Sleight of Hand from
Locked and Loaded, you'll be having those bombs up almost always you get to a fight, those bombs are a huge boost to your gank power. I realized I get more kills this way and stay alive better.
It's more personal pick than "better" pick, I have hard time keeping my focus on hitting the reload, so
Sleight of Hand gives me more benefit in the end.
Level 20 - Get Stuffed!
Total Recall cooldown nerf back in the day was so hard that it no longer is the only viable pick on level 20, it might even make things worse sometimes, as you can't recall so often.
Still the heal can't be overlooked, it's super powerful talent and a very good pick.
If you picked
Slipstream on level 1, pick
Total Recall on level 20.
Get Stuffed! has now appeared to be a great pick on level 20. That 3 second cooldown reduction on melee is awesome! And it's too cool to hit a target having a
Pulse Bomb on him.
Also if you blink in and throw a bomb to someone in a group, you can now detonate it instantly before they have time to scatter. This is where
Bullet Spray from level 13 comes very handy!
If you picked pulse strike on level 1, you might want to pick
Get Stuffed! on level 20.
Still, level 20 is situational, regardless of your earlier picks. At level 20 you should have a good picture in your mind how the enemy is handling you.
If they have a lot of CC and keep on focusing you down alot, you should get
Total Recall to be able to get away and heal yourself after you do your job.
If they have hard time keeping you in check and you can go bananas in their back row, definitley pick
Get Stuffed! and make them cry just little bit more.
Composition B feels a bit waste, its only purpose is zoning, and it does that poorly too.
Thank you! Top
Thank you!
Please share your thoughts of this, give feedback, or just come say hi.
If you know any tips and tricks for
Tracer that might be worth mentioning, I'll gladly add them to the "Tips" section with credits.
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