A parting letter: Pharah

General Discussion
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Hello everyone. Hope your holidays are going well. I am here today because I had it growing on my chest for a while now. But today I just wanted to say some things about one of the two heroes that sold the game for me, those being DVA and mainly Pharah.
Being a dang near one trick of her since season 2(when I got the game) I think I can confidently say the following things started her decline in order:

  1. Less people playing Zen because of dive.

  2. Less people playing Mercy because of Moira release.

  3. Even less people playing her because of the rework .

  4. DVA DPS buff. I remember this one well. She would eat the CB so you couldn’t escape and then jump back to her line with a Zarya bubble.

  5. Hanzo rework. increased velocity of arrows made him better at fighting her.

  6. IDK but good Sombra’s and Widows were popping up. Not sure why but yeah…

  7. Mercy healing nerf.

  8. A neutral impact VS Hammond. Kinda hard to hit him when he gets going.

  9. Mcree and 76 buffs. This was needed. They sucked pretty bad TBH.

  10. And the nail in the coffin. Lady Calamity AKA Ashe.
    EDIT: I did not list the Pharah rework as I see it as a buff.
    EDIT2: Yeah so another hitscan was added. another nail if you ask me :stuck_out_tongue:
    Now I am not here to ask for a buff or anything. It was a good run. What? 12 seasons with almost no contest? Now if you are a Pharah main reading this I want to leave you with this. Competive games like this have metas. Things get buffed and balanced not for the sake of it but to keep the game from getting boring. The game will NEVER have a perfect meta or balance. It is time to maybe just pick up someone else. She is not in the meta and that is ok.

I have personally been playing Ashe and Genji. They are both decent counters to the rising amount of XIM using widows and they are actually kinda fun. Try to pick up a tank or another DPS. It might fill the void of not being able to play her as it did for me.

Would it be nice if she got buffed? Yes. Am I expecting it anytime soon? No.
Edit: Someone asked me what ideas I would see through if she did get changed.

I never liked how freakin Mercy has better air mobility than Pharah. It makes no sense.
It would defs be a mobility buff of some sort.

  • AfterBurner- At the cost of more fuel you gain increased speed.

  • Pulse jet -Air dash. On cooldown. Boost in any direction/towards ground.

  • Fire and Forget- Missiles track air targets. Has a lock on time(this way people who jump and shoot are not punished). Combo with Hammond/ Ashe x Bob/Winston etc.

  • Adaptive reload-Long cooldown+plus a reload. Next 6 shots take on the attribute of what you loaded. Napalm, Bigger explosives, Faster rockets. ETC

  • Shoulder check This one is more of a fun idea. To make her okay on the ground. She can use fuel to sprint forward. Unlike Rein it can be stopped and stops when fuel runs out. Like Bob though it pushes you to the side or maybe up?

The ideas are endless :slight_smile:

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If Pharah did get buffs, would you prefer “direct buffs” like more firepower, more health/armor.

Or would you prefer more “technical buffs” like increased mobility? Like this stuff:
𓂀 Pharah ideas thread

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Pharah is old news :frowning: they need to do something or it’ll be another Reaper situation

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I really like your attitude with the topic. You are truly mature and you understand the situation. Way to go

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Oh I don’t even need to read a thread because I have had ideas for her before Ashe came out.

I never liked how freakin Mercy has better air mobility than Pharah. It makes no sense.
It would defs be a mobility buff of some sort.

  • AfterBurner- At the cost of more fuel you gain increased speed.

  • Pulse jet -Air dash. On cooldown. Boost in any direction/towards ground.

  • Fire and Forget- Missiles track air targets. Has a lock on time(this way people who jump and shoot are not punished). Combo with Hammond/ Ashe x Bob/Winston etc.

  • Adaptive reload-Long cooldown+plus a reload. Next 6 shots take on the attribute of what you loaded. Napalm, Bigger explosives, Faster rockets. ETC

  • Shoulder check This one is more of a fun idea. To make her okay on the ground. She can use fuel to sprint forward. Unlike Rein it can be stopped and stops when fuel runs out. Like Bob though it pushes you to the side or maybe up?

The ideas are endless :slight_smile:

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The problem here though is that this statement says that you’re on console.

Pharah has been overbearing on console for the longest time, while on PC she’s been fairly balanced to underpowered, and then just keeps getting more underpowered despite the increase in her missile fire rate.

That increase also threw off the aim of 300 hour Pharah mains (like myself) and forced me to look elsewhere as honestly taking the time to retrain my aim on a hero that gets shot out of the sky so easily now just… didn’t seem worth it to me. And I LOVE Pharah. I really miss playing her, but I just can’t perform on her the way I used to. Somehow, I’m a way better Zenyatta now.

I’d like to be able to go back to picking Pharah and feeling like I have my hero, the right hero for me. I don’t really know what she needs so much, though I think something she could use would be an ability that pretty much lets her ground herself at a higher speed than the normal falling rate. It sucks to die to a dva bomb even if you are dropping to the ground because for some reason this muscular, nearly six foot tall, 150-160 lb woman wearing 200 extra pounds of armor floats down like a feather instead of falling like a rock.

But what even are physics?

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They need to give her more splash damage and an ultimate that isn’t a “press q to die” button.

That or give her more horizontal mobility in the air and more rocket fuel. If she can’t be made more powerful, let her be better at moving unpredictably.

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Well all things fall down at the same rate regardless of weight. Aerodynamics and air resistance determine rate of falling and climb :slight_smile: (But I see what you mean)

While Pharah was indeed OP on console. This was not true as you started pressing into Diamond. Good widows are common and WILL delete you from the game. TBH she is only really OP in gold and below. Which TBH have one been there once(I was a SYM main at that time. It was a phase)

I have decent aim since I only play FPS games pretty much. So switching to to Hanzo/Ashe and Genji were not that hard for me. Even after logging almost 300 hours myself.

It is like I said. She just is not the meta right now. Which I came to terms with. the day Ashe came out I did not even bother playing Pharah. I switch to Genji and am having a blast. I play Pharah when I can but more often then not I can’t. I hope Zen starts to suit you well though. Good luck.

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Some interesting ideas, I just don’t like the fire and forget one because that would take all the skill out of shooting another Pharah out of the sky which has always been a fun match up for me. The other ones are pretty cool though. I always wanted an ability that would allow her to quickly fall out of the sky, like her touchdown highlight intro. Or just a little more mobility in general to help her be more evasive, since her rockets are so laughably easy to dodge at long range I wish she had a few more options to dodge incoming fire from a longer distance.

As a Pharah main myself I do feel the struggle but I’ve been playing her at a high diamond low master level for a couple seasons now and I’m not giving up anytime soon, but it’s only a matter of time for them to add more hitscans into the game making her more and more dead. :frowning:

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I only added the fire and forget one as she has no synergy with characters other than Mercy and Zarya for the most part. Maybe it can be easliy dodged to offset it. it could work since most characters that CC you into the air make you lose mobility for a set time anyway.

You see I solo que. Mercy players are few and far and even then don’t like to pocket sometimes. TBH she needs a mobility boost. No reason I should die to DVA bomb and 76 Visor as often as I do because I am using my kit to you know, fly? Also the flight ceiling needs to be raised. Anubis is a pain. Makes me feel like a fruit fly bumping around a lamp shade on that map.

A damage buff is not needed as she is plenty strong and I feel she should be played in flanker. The problem is she does not have the mobility to get out if she commits. To offset NEEDING a Mercy and allow for solo accountability she needs a mobility buff.

I play on console. The higher you got the more impossible it becomes to play her. More and more XIM uses infect the ladder and it sucks.

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Yeah I wish Pharah’s viability wasn’t tied to having a Mercy pocket all the time. They need a way to nerf the synergy without making either hero weak on their own I just have no idea how they would do that.

I do agree I wish she had more mobility. If you’re fighting a widow and she’s scoped in at you there isn’t much you can do to make it harder to hit you since her movement in the air is slow and her shoulder hit box is absolutely ginormous. I wish she had some kinda ability while in the air to dodge or juke shots, it would raise the skill cap of her and make you feel like you’re not completely helpless when you’re fighting a widow that doesn’t miss, even if you can land two directs in a row if she just clicks your head anyway it kinda sucks.

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i love you’re take on this, i’ve been a pharah main all through my time on both console and pc overwatch, i’ve felt like both shes overbearing there and on the underpowered side of balanced side on PC, which is a shame as she’s probably my favourite projectile dps hero to play out of the entire dps pool but is hard to play now with her limitted mobillity and lackluster damage output from mid to long range (in most situations i’ve found this to be the case although im not perfect)

i do believe she needs a change towards the accessibility of her kit, which would naturally give her higher value, my suggestion is granting the old damage distrubution of her rockets

80 damage on a splash hit and 40 added on for a direct hit with her current fire rate

tightening barrage by around 30% so it feels more consistant rather than a spray and prey move and giving the pharah player the abillity to cancel her ult at a time (maybe or maybe not giving the remaining time in a small percentage of ult charge? im no expert and i dont know what that would do for her)

even with the redistubution of damage and a tightened barrage i feel like she would become alot more viable with her increased splash potential meaning that her counters will still be strong vs her but she will have an upper hand in other duels and her barrage will feel more consistent an ult to use rather than feeling like you either kill everything or do literally no damage, also meaning that you could barrage from a safer range increasing survivabillity :slight_smile:

these are ideas i’ve spit balled with other projectile DPS players and Pharah players i’m by no means an expert and only want the best for my hero :slight_smile: to much? to little? what you think? :slight_smile:

p.s excuse my grammar and spelling :slight_smile:

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The thing is though with Barrage is not that the range is limited it is the fact that she is immobile. Half the time I die doing it was because a hitscan cross mapped me while coming out of a stagger spawn. Maybe make it so it locks on like Mcree maybe? But because they are rockets they can be dodged? Idk. I’m at a loss with her ult. Maybe …

After Burner increased speed and rocket velocity with infinite flight? (If you haven’t caught on by now I really want to fly)

The splash damage is 50/50 with me. The few times I’m not pharah it admittedly feels pretty oppressive when a pharah dives. The only relief is if she is not a good shot. Making the splash stronger would only further frustrate people who want her nerfed into the ground.

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i would even go as far as to buff her splash a little bit, her barrage does need some love although its not impossible to pull off barrage it is the hardest ult to use in the game as of next patch, she would need that extra damage output whether from directs or splash potential, i feel as though especially after every one of pharahs counters being buffed to lethal potential the opression while diving is justified as Soldier 76 can shred you with basic tracking and if that fails just press q to outskill

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Rest of the post doesn’t matter…just glad you said this one part

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I wish more Pharah mains would read this instead of asking for a buff. But I think this is even more relevant now that another hitscan is being added.