Some fans of Overwatch 2 have noticed that a new bug has been brought along with the game’s latest balance update that reduces Tracer’s damage drop below 20 meters and effectively increases her damage output. The originally delayed balance patch rolled out for everyone Overwatch 2 players the other day, introducing controversial tweaks to heroes like Genji, D.Va, and Junkrat.
The update primarily aimed to address a wealth of fan complaints directed at Zarya and Sombra, two heroes who have been notoriously overpowered since the launch of Overwatch 2 earlier in October. Zarya’s huge potential damage output and long shield uptime, along with Sombra’s hack efficiency and high damage on hit targets, proved to be among the biggest gameplay imbalances that negatively affected the gameplay experience for many fans. While Sojourn has also consistently dominated many high level Overwatch 2 lobbies, Blizzard oddly chose not to make any tweaks to her abilities at all, instead bringing controversial nerfs to Genji and a few others.
In addition to the many adjustments brought with the update, some players have noticed that Tracer has been doing unusually high amounts of damage from further away. A clip provided by Naeri X on Twitter spotlighted this bug, showing gameplay as Tracer i Overwatch 2his training area which demonstrates the atypically high amount of damage the hero does from a distance. This increase in effective range is particularly beneficial for Tracer, as her ability to traverse the battlefield so quickly is meant to come at the expense of only doing high damage at close range.
This presumably random buff quickly became noticeable to many players who found themselves getting killed by Tracer. Some fans have even gone so far as to speculate that this change in damage output is actually the result of a stealth buff implemented by the developers, but this is highly unlikely as Tracer’s abilities are carefully crafted to encourage players to play as her at close range. While Blizzard has been accused of implementing stealth buffs and nerfs for certain heroes throughout the game’s history, this instance appears to be the product of a simple and unfortunate mistake.
Many players joke that Tracer may even be removed for a short time due to this issue, which has been the case for a couple of Overwatch 2its heroes already. While Bastion was temporarily removed from the game during the first few weeks due to a glitch with his Ultimate ability, Mei was also removed and only returned to the playable catalog with the latest update. How Blizzard will respond to this issue remains to be seen, but if the problem is more complex than it appears, players may well see another hero temporarily removed already.
Overwatch 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
