Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller has confirmed that Tracer will not be removed from the game following the discovery of a bug affecting her damage falloff.
As reported by PCGamesN, Keller shared in a Reddit comment two days ago that the Overwatch 2 development team is aware of the bug and is working on a fix, which will come to the live game in a patch somewhere down the line. “We are not planning to disable Tracer,” he said, following the statement with the suggestion that she may even receive some balance changes after the bug is fixed.
Players have been noticing the bug since the mid-season patch went live last week. A video shared by professional Overwatch 2 player danteh suggested that Tracer may have gotten “stealth-buffed” in the patch since she was able to do high amounts of damage from longer ranges. The Reddit post that Keller commented on claimed that Tracer seemingly had “no fall off under 20 meters,” meaning she could get up to 20 meters away from the target and still deal the same amount of damage as she would if she were right in front of them.
Since its release, the development team has frequently removed heroes from the live game temporarily to address major bugs concerning their abilities. Shortly after launch, Bastion was removed from all modes and Torbjörn was removed from quick play to undergo bug fixes. The two heroes were out of the game for 15 days. Mei was removed from the game on Oct. 31 so the team could address a bug affecting her Ice Wall ability.
Knowing this history, Overwatch 2 players were understandably concerned that the team would remove Tracer to fix the damage falloff bug. But Keller has reassured players that this won’t be the case.
