The best way to learn is to make mistakes.
My advice is to start with this beam. You’ll be able to see how it works. Then do some reading on particles and play with cascade to make your tracer look how you want it to. A beam doesn’t have to look like a beam. My current setup now also uses allsorts of different effects and includes allsorts of modifiers like Rate of fire and critical hits.
In fact, if you still wanted to, you could use a projectile actor set up to follow the trace. You could give it a ribbon effect too. You’d just have some thinking to do about setting up what happens when it hits a target.
I recommended this function because it’s a lot less labour intensive, and when you fire, you only repeat this process for each shot. With a projectile you’d have to deal with more data, which may create overhead.
Ultimately though - this is your project - NEVER COMPROMISE! - Unless of course you have to. 