A recent bug that has given Tracer a major buff in Overwatch 2 was expected to have the character disabled, but Blizzard says that won’t be the case.
The bug in question removes any damage drop-off when she shoots at an opponent player under 20 metres. Normally the amount of damage you do scales based on how close or far away you are, but this bug means that as long as you’re within 20 metres, you’re essentially doing the maximum amount of damage, presuming that your aim is good.
It’s generally been expected that Tracer would be disabled as a result, but as spotted by PCGamesN, a comment from the game’s director Aaron Keller on a Reddit post about the bug has explained she won’t be taken out of the game.
“Hi all. We’re currently investigating and planning to address this bug in a future patch,” wrote Keller. “However, this has seemingly been in the game for the last few builds (we just verified it in the Halloween patch), and while the sharp damage drop off for Tracer is definitely a bug, her overall power level has been ok. We are not planning to disable Tracer, and when we fix the bug, we will also look at additional changes to her kit to compensate.”
The Reddit post gave us a good look at the clip in action that shows one burst from Tracer is enough to take down an enemy from just under 20 metres away, which obviously isn’t the most fair thing in the world. Though for Blizzard it clearly isn’t enough to remove her from the game, like they have done with characters like Mei and Bastion.
Blizzard does have a number of features and changes planned for Overwatch 2. Recently it began testing voice chat transcriptions to help take on toxicity in the game. There are also plans to change how the battle pass works in future seasons, as the team currently isn’t that happy with how player progression is going.