Some fans ofOverwatch 2have noticed that a new glitch has been brought along with the game’s latest balance patch which reduces Tracer’s damage falloff under 20 meters and effectively boosts her damage output capability. The initially-delayed balance patch rolled out for allOverwatch 2players just the other day, introducing controversial tweaks to heroes such as Genji, D.Va, and Junkrat.The patch primarily aimed to address a wealth of complaints from fans directed at Zarya and Sombra, two heroes that have beeninfamously overpowered since the launch ofOverwatch 2earlier in October. Zarya’s huge potential damage output and lengthy shield uptime, along with Sombra’s hack effectiveness and high damage to affected targets, proved to be among the biggest gameplay imbalances that negatively affected the gameplay experience for a lot of fans. While Sojourn has also been consistently been dominating many high-levelOverwatch 2lobbies, Blizzard strangely opted not to make any adjustments to her capabilities whatsoever, instead bringing controversial nerfs to Genji and some others.RELATED:Overwatch 2 Adds Controversial Aim Assist Feature to Crossplay MatchesIn addition to the many tweaks that were brought with the patch, 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 put the spotlight on this bug, showing gameplay as Tracer inOverwatch 2’s practice rangewhich demonstrates the atypically high amount of damage done by the hero at a distance. This boost in effective range is of particular benefit to Tracer, as her ability to traverse the battlefield so quickly is supposed to come at the cost of only dealing high damage at close range.
This presumably accidental 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 sinceTracer’s capabilities are carefully designedso that players are encouraged to play as her at a close range. Though Blizzard has been accused of implementing stealth buffs and nerfs for certain heroes throughout the game’s history, it seems that this instance is the product of a simple and unfortunate bug.
Many players joke that Tracer could even be removed for a short time due to this issue, ashas been the case for a couple ofOverwatch 2’s heroes already. While Bastion was temporarily removed from the game within the first few weeks due to a glitch with his Ultimate ability, Mei was also removed and only returned to the playable roster with the latest patch. How Blizzard will respond to this issue is yet to be seen, but if the issue is more complex than it seems, players might well see another hero temporarily removed already.
Overwatch 2is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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