This morning, after having placed in low Silver at the start of Overwatch Season 12, then losing enough matches over the course of the first few weeks of season 12 to drop down to around 1200 SR, I finally climbed back into Silver, ending this morning at 1501 SR.

However, when I checked the current edition of the Junkenstein's Revenge arcade mode, I noted that Tracer is now available in the roster of heroes that can be selected before each match.

"Why would I be offended?" she asked, with the same perfect voice, perfect accent, as if we had in fact queued up with Cara Theobold, and instead of speaking prerecorded voice lines was just having normal pre-match dialogue like anyone else would.

However, after much debate with other players I came to the conclusion that the root issue with Overwatch is not the toxic players, although they clearly aren't helping the situation. The root issue is the culture at Blizzard.

The worst toxicity, however, tends to boil out of those players who choose a damage dealing hero and play that hero very well, but are unable to carry the rest of their team to victory.

On the face of things, this appears to be a relatively minor change to Tracer's kit, and on the whole of things her kit is still rather strong. There are some additional factors that are not immediately apparent and need some thought and testing, however.

Roughly one year ago, after swearing off Overwatch due to the toxicity inherent in team based game play, I finally bowed to pressure from my oldest teen and gave Uprising a try during the final three days of the event. Suffice to say, I was hooked, and it was enough to bring me back to the game.

I think fell in love the first time I watched the promotional trailer, knowing full well that this was not in-game footage, and that this was not at all what the game itself would be like.