Small Overwatch 2 change may have made Tracer the worst DPS character

The newest patch for Overwatch 2 has caused Tracer’s damage output to become incredibly low, possibly rendering her the worst DPS character in the game.

This update saw the armor system from the first game come back which changes the way it will reduce incoming fire. There is also a new 25% reduction on headshots for Tanks as well.

Unfortunately, because of the way the damage reduction scales in a non-linear fashion, this is having an effect on Tracer’s Pulse Pistols that are making the shots negligible. The damage output is so small now that Tracer has become borderline unusable in Overwatch 2 matches.

Before the update dropped, Tracer’s could do a raw damage of 4.2 to armor with body shots, and 8.4 with headshots. Now, however, those numbers are reduced to 3 with body shots and 5.25 headshots.

This means that even when unloading a full clip into a Tank’s head, the damage done is minimal and requires an absurd amount of shots to take them down.

An example of this is spreading around social media, showing a Tracer unloading into Reinhardt’s head in the practice range and doing next to no damage.

What stands out is that this is a confined situation in which the player is able to line up their shot perfectly, and the results are still bad. Move this into an actual match of Overwatch 2 where shots will be missing, and it gets even worse.

The change in armor was made to help with “better resistance rapid fire damage and shotgun-type weapons,” according to the devs in the patch notes, so they serve a purpose.

The downside is that it has had a serious impact on what is literally the poster character for the game. Now, there are other characters such as Reaper and Sombra that are affeted by this as well, but Tracer is by far the worst.

As of the time of writing, there has been no word from the Overwatch 2 devs on if, or when, a change could be coming to help alleviate this issue.