Everyone makes mistakes, but when those mistakes lead to Overwatch 2‘s most powerful (and arguably most annoying) damage-dealing heroes becoming even more overpowered, you’ve got to fess up to those mistakes and make things right.
Blizzard owned up to a pretty significant mistake today in the season five patch notes, uncovering a bug that “that was setting Tracer’s maximum weapon spread” to be “smaller than intended” on her Pulse Pistols. For those out of the loop on the semantics of weapon spread, a smaller spread means that the rounds fired spread out less when the weapon’s primary fire is held down, thus ensuring better accuracy when sprayed.
Given how much damage Tracer deals at closer range, a reduced weapon spread on her Pulse Pistols effectively increased the range at which she could deal lethal damage relative to what her intended damage range and damage falloff should be. As such, Blizzard has made the change with the launch of Overwatch 2 season five to increase Tracer’s Pulse Pistols spread by 15 percent.
Related: One Overwatch 2 hero was accidentally buffed in season five, but Blizzard is ‘keeping it in’
This could potentially still be altered in the near or distant future, with the developers promising to monitor the results of this change “closely, as fixing it may have a significant impact on her overall effectiveness.” But if you ask any healer or DPS who gets lit up and eliminated by Tracer before she warps away, they’re likely pretty happy to see the British-born time skipper get taken down a peg.
The disdain towards Tracer and the level of frustration players experience against her might explain why her overpowered, bugged damage went unresolved for so long. Despite clearly being noted as one of the most played DPS heroes amongst the Top 500 players, she wasn’t even mentioned in numerous Blizzard posts regarding balance changes heading into season five.
Still, it’s better late than never, and Tracer’s position on top of the ranked leaderboard could change quickly into season five.
