✅ Nerf PharMercy, Buff Pharah&Mercy

General Discussion
1

One of the limiting factors that made it really hard to buff Pharah and Mercy is that the combination of PharMercy exists.

That said there have been plenty of buffs to McCree, Soldier, Hanzo, and Widow is always strong. You also have low-aim heroes that can mess with Pharah like Sombra and D.va getting sizable buffs.

But still you are largely limited by that PharMercy combo. So why not reduce that, to make way for buffs:

Mercy:

Guardian Angel

  • SelfHealing from this passive reduced to 0 while using Angelic Decent.

Presto, as long as there some sort of bullets flying up at Mercy, she’s going to have to touch down eventually.

This opens things up for some buffs:

Pharah, who’s nearly the least picked hero in the game, and the very least picked in GM:

Pharah

  • 50HP swapped out for 50Armor.

Concussion Blast

  • Cooldown reduced to 6sec, down from 9sec.
  • Blast radius reduced by 30%.

Rocket Barrage: (Ultimate)

  • Can be cancelled midway through by using the Reload button.
The extra armor offsets the large amount of hitscan buffs. The concussion blast change increases Pharah’s mobility quite a lot. And the change to the Rocket Barrage provides more flexibility, speed, and makes it less of a death sentence.

Mercy

Empower

  • Increases Mercy’s Caduceus Staff healing to 70hps for 3sec, with an 8sec cooldown.
  • During Valkyrie, the ability increases the healing on only the main beam of the Cadeceus Staff to 80hps.
There’s been a deep wound for the Mercy playerbase from the redesigns. This additional ability provides some extra “Oomph” to Mercy without substantially changing her design. It also provides some mental exercise in when to use the cooldown to best effect. Rather than just holding left mouse 90% of the time.

And there you have it. Solves the PharMercy problem. Buffs 2 heroes back to be more Fun. And clears the way for any complications of adding another flying hero with Echo.

Note: VoltairAro thought of the change to Mercy’s regeneration.

16 Likes
2

that looks good overall, however

I’m guessing you mean regeneration?

is that a rez alternative or the reload button?

3 Likes
3

Yes, and new ability on the R button.

4

Just get rid of Angelic Descent. Problem gone.
Perhaps a longer cooldown on Guardian Angel while giving Mercy a bunch of compensation buffs would be a good idea too.

5

I feel honoured to have been invited to this topic :joy:

I’m not really sure what Pharah needs. I think the devs are avoiding her being buffed because a lot of heroes in the game can hardly interact with her.

I’m nowhere near a Pharah expert but I feel like she should have: Here are the random ideas I came up with on the spot:

  • Faster air movement (avoiding that heavy hitscan damage)
  • Less fuel, to make her stay on the ground a bit more and because the air movement speed is being buffed. This would also help get rid of her infinite flight.
  • Faster projectile speed
  • Revert on splash damage nerf
  • Revert on her fire rate buff

The idea behind this is to make her less of a vulnerable skybox hugger and put more power into the rest of her kit.

Wouldn’t the alternative fire button make more sense? That’s how you cancel Deadeye.

I think it would be better to just keep it consistent as +10 hps and upon activation, Valk does an AoE heal that will make up for the cast time’s loss of healing. I’ve also seen the suggestion to make the primary beam for Valk stronger, so you can still beam juggle. I like that idea.

1 Like
6

The idea is would go from
60hps main beam, 60hps chain beam

To be this for 3sec
80hps main beam, 60hps chain beam

Then back to
60hps main beam, 60hps chain beam

1 Like
7

Buffing Pharah’s flight speed is perfect because it doesn’t directly affect Mercy at all and gives Pharah a better handle on movement against her counters (which are all hitscan).

There’s good reason why Tracer is playable and Pharah is not. One reason is her smaller hitbox, and the other reason is faster strafing (because faster movespeed).

5 Likes
8

i like these ideas but please replace rez with empower
on console i don’t have enough buttons for another cooldown

9

Fair enough, I guess if the buffed healing is for 3 seconds it’s not too bad. I just wish beam juggling was a thing for the entire duration of Valk.

10

Mercy is always airborne when using GA. Her regen would go away every time she flew somewhere.

7 Likes
11

Pharah never seemed like she was allowed to be good because Pharmercy exists.

1 Like
12

Or just make pharah take 50% less healing while airborne and give her armor

4 Likes
13

I agree with the idea of nerfing their synergy but buffing then individually but it’s easier just to reduce the amount of times mercy can guardian angel without touching the ground and then giving mercy 60 HPS and then giving Pharah 150 health and 50 shield

14

how you can buff pharah with no a rework?

if she is to strong, she will hardcounter to many no range heros and we will see mcree 24x7… and he right now have a ridiculous pickrate.

15

I kinda like these changes for them but also sometimes you don’t even have a pharah on your team and you stay airborne because your running a super mobile comp I personally played a dive comp on ilios ruins where they had a junk and a reaper so I just stayed airborne all round because of boosters , monkey jump , dash , our Lucio wall riding around and Our junk flying with mines I was literally airborne 98% of the time so I’m not sure about the Ga Change and pharah having armor is better because it makes hitscans damage weaker against her but maybe giving her armor and shields could be fun

16

I would say change it to while using angelic descent because it would be kinda terrible if when ever you’re airborne (besides jumping ofc)

17

Her passives name is Angelic descent

1 Like
18

Thanks ;D

19

In Platinum through GM she’s got a similar or worse pickrate to Bastion.

If console is the issue, just reduce the rocket explosion radius on console.

So just disable her passive while using angelic descent?

1 Like
20

man i know that pharah have bad pickrate and maybe winrate… but this is because she is not strong right now… my question is how to put pharah on strong position when she hardcounter to many no range heros.

1 Like