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Heroes8 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

The strategy behind Tracer talent selection


Let's get the obvious out of the way: I haven't played Tracer yet. No one but a select few balance testers, developers, and perhaps some Blizzard VIP's have and I fully admit that all of my views and opinions of Tracer come from pure speculation.
 

That being said, once you play, watch, and write about Heroes of the Storm for a long enough time, you start to see patterns. Patterns that tell what makes a hero powerful and what talents are too good to pass up. Now that the ability preview for Tracer has officially been released, there has never been a better time to, once again, release my wild and unsubstantiated theory crafting upon the world.

The Talents


LEVEL 1
  • Pulse Strike: Increases Melee’s Pulse Bomb charges from 10% to 15% against Heroes.
  • Slipstream: Reduces Recall’s cooldown by 4 seconds and increases the amount of time Recalled by 1 second.
  • Tracer Rounds: Your Basic Attacks reveal enemies for 4 seconds.


Choice: Slipstream

Slipstream synergizes well with level 4 talents and helps Tracer stay alive longer. Staying alive longer equals doing more damage and generally being the annoying pest Tracer aims to be. Tracer Rounds is a fair bit of utility that helps you navigate bushes and enemies fleeing behind walls, but it's important to note that it doesn't really help against stealth threats like Nova or Zeratul. It sounds like it does, but in practice, it doesn't. These heroes are looking to burst you down and they don't care if you see them once they have engaged.

Also, due to Tracer Rounds being level 1, your opponent has full information on whether or not you took it, meaning they can avoid any stealth based talents you aimed to counter. Not much to say about Pulse Strike: 5% more heroic charge just isn't as useful as reduced Recall cooldown.

LEVEL 4

  • Parting Gift: Recall leaves behind 3 bombs that deal 250 damage each to different targets.
  • Is That a Health Pack?!: Increases Regeneration Globe and Healing Fountain healing by 100%.
  • Untouchable: Takedowns increase your Basic Attack damage by 2% up to 30%. These bonuses are lost on death.
     

Choice: Parting Gift OR Untouchable for maximum greed and the ability style on pubs.

Both of these talents synergize well with our level 1 pick of Slipstream, and we can safely ignore the regeneration globe talent. While the added sustainability is nice, it won't help you in a team fight, nor will it help you secure a kill (which is why you chose Tracer).  On the other hand, Parting Gift is extra damage you don't have to work for that helps Tracers lame PvE skills and burst damage potential.

Untouchable is clearly the stand out talent. The majority of Tracers DPS comes from her auto attacks and our defensive choice of Slipstream earlier should help us avoid death long enough to get a bonus from this talent. Like every other variation of this "snowball untill you die" mechanic, it is greedy and only helps you win more. I have to include it as a potential talent simply because of the upside, but I think most Tracers will choose Parting Gift and be correct in doing so.

 

LEVEL 7
  • Jumper: Increases Blink’s charges by 1.
  • Bullet Time: Basic Attacks lower the cooldown of Blink by 0.1 seconds.
  • Spatial Echo: Using Recall grants 2 charges of Blink.


Choice: Spatial Echo

Keeping with the design philosophy of pairing like choices against each other, Tracer's level 7 talents are all utility. I think these talents will change depending on the map and enemy heroes, but I am confident that Spatial Echo will be the preferred talent and here is why:

The best case scenario of any of these talents is that they either keep you alive when you otherwise would have died, or help you secure a kill that you would have otherwise missed. With that in mind, which talent helps you do that most consistency?

Another way that helps assess these talents is to think of the most common way Tracer will die. The answer is, right after using Recall after already exhausting all of her Blink charges. Running out of Blink charges is Tracer's biggest point of vulnerability and Spatial Echo allows you to recharge 2 of them on command.

Jumper is probably the weakest out of all of these talents, as once you use your extra Blink, you only get full value once you allow all 4 charges to cool down. Bullet Time is powerful in a vacuum but assumes you will always have time to unload clip after clip on your enemies.

LEVEL 10 (Heroic Upgrades)

  • Sticky Bomb: Increases Pulse Bomb’s radius by 50% and enemies hit are slowed by 60% for 3 seconds.
  • Quantum Spike: Pulse Bomb deals an additional 10% of the primary target’s maximum Health.
  • Pulse Rounds: Increases Pulse Bomb’s range and charge rate from Basic Attacks against Heroes by 100%.


Choice: Sticky Bomb

The more I read Sticky Bomb the more I am convinced that it is the Heroic upgrade of choice. It provides Tracer with a large AoE slow that slows by a whopping 60%. If you are forgetting how much that slow feels like, it's the same amount of slow that Li-Ming's Storm Talent upgrade to Disintegration had before it was nerfed. The same amount of slow Blizzard developers admittedly was "demoralizing."

That being said, I Pulse Rounds has a lot of merit going for it, especially if you already chose talents that synergize with building up heroic charge quickly. The range is doubled with Pulse Rounds, but I don't think it will ever be feasible to pass up on the Radius and Slow Sticky Bomb provides.

Quantum Spike looks weak and linear, but it also has the  potential to be the preferred choice of Tracer's who are playing a more solo gank style.

 

LEVEL 13
  • Bullet Spray: Increases Melee’s radius by 50%, and causes it to damage all enemies in range.
  • Ricochet: Your Basic Attacks have a 50% chance to hit another nearby enemy, prioritizing Heroes.
  • Leeching Rounds: Your Basic Attacks against Heroes heal you for 20% of their damage dealt.
     

Choice: Ricochet OR Bullet Spray (but leaning towards Ricochet)

Leeching Rounds is a neat idea but it isn't what you want to be doing with Tracer. Her HP is so low that a grindy life drain talent doesn't help much, and the choices you are passing up on both cause you to do more damage.

Ricochet, on the other hand, helps Tracer do two things she wants to do better: clear waves and kill enemy heroes. I am very biased towards anything that improves Tracer's auto attacks (as it is so important to her kit) so this free DPS boost gets a clear win for me.

Bullet Spray gets a nod only if it synergizes with the previous melee talent and allows for super quick heroic charges when striking multiple opponents. It also provides Tracer with some much-needed wave clear.

 

LEVEL 16
  • Sleight of Hand: Reduces Reload time by 50%. This equals 20% more damage per second.
  • Focus Fire: If an entire ammo magazine is unloaded on an enemy, the last bullet will deal 90 bonus damage. This is equal to 30% of the total magazine.
  • Locked and Loaded: Reactivate Reload within the last 50% of its cast time to increase your Basic Attack damage by 35% for that magazine.


Choice: Locked and Loaded

These are all exciting talents and were the hardest to evaluate on a purely speculative basis. However, when taking a realistic look at how Tracer will be played in a competitive environment, Locked and Loaded is the only choice. Here is why:

Sleight of Hand and Focus Fire both assume that Tracer will be free to auto attack without interruption. If this is the case, then they both add some free DPS to Tracer's auto attacks without costing the player anything. However, these talents lock a player into constantly auto attacking or losing value on their talent choice. Focus Fire is the worst offender, as it punishes players for switching targets (regardless of switching targets is the right play).

But Locked and Loaded gives control to the player. We have the choice when to activate our 35% attack damage and players that are particularly skilled at reloading at the last possible second will consistently get the highest amount of extra damage out of Tracer's auto attacks. Locked and Loaded allows you to switch targets and doesn't force you to make use of a reduced reload time, it simply buffs your damage at the cost of some micro management.

 

LEVEL 20
  • Get Stuffed!: Reduces Melee’s cooldown by 3 seconds. Hitting an enemy with Melee who is stuck with a Pulse Bomb causes the bomb to instantly explode and knocks the target away from you.
  • Total Recall: Recall also heals you equal to the amount of Health lost during that time.
  • Composition B: If you successfully stick a Pulse bomb to an enemy Hero, you also drop another one at their feet that deals 50% damage and explodes slightly earlier.

 

Choice: Total Recall

Not only does this talent synergize with our level 1 talent, but it is absolutely insane and helps Tracer survive almost indefinitely when used correctly. At level 20, a single Hero death can cost the game, so defensive Storm talents are usually the favorite. Tracer is no exception to this rule. I compare this with talents like Caduceus Reactor 2.0 or Kung Fu Hustle. They transform the hero into something godly.

That being said, I think "Get Stuffed!", despite its funny name, has a lot of viability as well if the other Melee talents were chosen as well. The Pulse Bomb interaction is nice, but really the 3-second cooldown reduction is why you would choose this talent.

Don't Die

It sounds a little counter-intuitive, but some heroes don't mind if they die throughout a game of Heroes of the Storm. You have the obvious cases like Leoric, Murky, Diablo, Tyrael, and Uther, but also the nuanced examples like Gazlowe who just landed a big Gravo-o-Bomb or Kerrigan after landing a multi-target Primal Grasp + Impaling Blades. These heroes don't mind dying first in a team fight, as they have front loaded all of their cooldowns and abilities and already accrued large amounts of value for their team.

But Tracer is the exact opposite. When you die on Tracer you should feel really, really bad. Half of her kit is designed to avoid damage and get away safely, and her peashooter auto attacks only start stinging after Tracer has fired off multiple clips. A death on Tracer is more punishing than any other hero, as during the death timer your Heroic ability isn't cooling down: you need to be auto attacking things for that!

The Murky factor

Think of Tracer like a Murky who DOESN'T want to die. You want to be just as annoying and just as impossible to deal with, but the moment you get killed, you are negating any strength the hero might bring to an organized team. I think the best talents on Tracer are the ones that allow her to play smart, play safer, and never die.

We can even bring in a bit of practical Tracer strategy from Overwatch. Everyone in the Beta knows by now there are two types of Tracers. 
 

  1. One that manages to sneak into your back lines and cause chaos and confusion until 2-3 heroes are forced to stop what they are doing and kill her.
     
  2. One that aggressively focuses on killing a single target. Sometimes they make it out alive but most times they don't.
     

The first Tracer is a nightmare to play against while the second Tracer rarely gains any value. At best, they break even in 1:1 trades and sometimes die before their target is killed, netting the opposition the advantage. I think Tracer in Heroes might play similarly, with the best Tracer's constantly flanking and forcing opponents to focus on the buzzing orange hornet that won't go away no matter how many times you swat at it.

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