Pharmercy is busted beyond belief. Nano, damage boost, matrix, a coordinated team playing around their pharmercy looked impossible to play against. Even Ans struggled to get things done, as much as he did pop off in the series. Sp9rkle being awarded potm while being perma double pocketed and matrixed, felt cheesy.
The fact Shocks solution was just run pharmercy themselves is a testament to the fact its harder to counter it, and easier to just mirror. Pharah by herself imo is fine, but when she’s doing 150dmg per shot, and 210dmg per shot when nano damage boosted, it’s unfair, simply put.
I would put forward the idea of reworking mercy where she doesn’t have damage boost, but it would be to the guaranteed reply of “uwu no she’s balanced”, meanwhile owl pros are sat there unable to beat it.
I would like to see a reduction in damage boosting across the board, because its realistically the strongest possible type of ability in the game, and is a definite contributer to why tank is so unfun to play.
Im not a salty Shock fan, I support Philly so was a neutral watching this series. Still hyped over 3-0ing the Dragons tbh.
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Yep, especially when the hitscans were nerfed, which of course is an indirect buff to the Pharmercy combo.
Yeah, Blizzard has to be real careful with making changes to Mercy. The last time we had a significant change to Mercy, it led to the first (and so far only) megathread regarding Mercy (and the handling of said megathread is why we no longer see any more megathreads).
No argument there. That said, we should be a bit careful with what we request…if only cos OW2 and the switch to 5v5 is gonna mean a totally different balance philosophy, at least when compared to 6v6.
Just going to caution you that I doubt the Dragons are taking the Countdown Cup as seriously as they do the previous three, so I wouldn’t take much stock in the Fusion’s result over the Dragons. Heck, as of this writing, the Dragons and the NYXL series went to 5 maps…in any other tournament cycle, the Dragons would likely chase the NYXL off in short order. So if my NYXL win this 5th map, as much as I will celebrate (being an NYXL fan), I’m not gonna take much stock in NYXL winning over a Dragons’ team which likely is more worried about hiding playoff preparations than actually winning the Countdown Cup.
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Its what happens when you nerf the counters of X thing that has a very specific “niche” that is “hard to counter” or offers little counterplay.
You can blast people on the ground and cut off LOS easy vs Hitscans, vs a Dude on the air playing off angles? Good luck. Since they are OWL players, they are going to play it on the most optimal way and engaging in combat where the fall off range makes the hitscans damage easy to heal 40mt ish.
Thats what you get 
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Echo and ashe are both banned for this tournament so it makes pharah look a lot better than she actually is. Echo is definitely better than pharah.
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Just want to point out that this has always been the case even before hitscan nerfs….for years it’s been something that I’ve constantly pointed out about OWL:
namely that they have never bothered trying to counter pharmercy…
And I don’t say that because I think it’s OP….on the contrary it’s usually felt to me like there’s no need for them….like they will just deal with it….I don’t know…maybe it’s just me
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Trying to make balance conclusions when there are hero bans is extremely misleading. Especially when two of them are Pharah counters.
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You know that echo and ashe are banned?..
Echo counters pharah pretty much as pharah has a harder time hitting echo then echo hitting pharah.
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Hey, remember when Shanghai Dragons ran a pharah mercy comp against GOATS and was very successful with it?
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Its as if people dont realise theres banned heroes in the OWL currently
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In fairness, mirroring is the OWL solution to almost everything, even comps with hard counters. They like it because then they just have to have confidence in their own players’ abilities rather than their team comp.
You mean like the only solution to hitscan for years has been mirroring hitscan? Why is this suddenly a problem when it’s Pharah?
Are we also ignoring the APAC games? When Shanghai ran unmirrored Pharah against NYXL they lost. Same against Philly. Even with Pharah’s hardest counters being banned.
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Ashe+Mercy should shut it down pretty hard, but Ashe is banned in OWL now
Remember that Ashe and Echo are banned. Its much harder to be countered but for all the wrong reasons
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I mean I’m looking at general ladder play and it’s pharmercy nearly every game for me. Ashe and Echo aren’t able to do much from what I’ve seen
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yes but
pharmercy is better than echo mercy though
The medical shop disease duo need nerfs.
Idk, Echo and Ashe are banned. And Lucio too, so Rein and Winston are having a bad time. Without Sigma, they can’t play double shield and that is great vs phara.
In the match vs Boston, they won playing Torb and Cree (Boston played Phara).
And Shanghai lost 2 matches and they play Phara.
So it is not as easy as say “Phara is op”.
Pharah is fine. Pharah with perma healing and 30% damage boost, plus the nano on top, is broken.
I’m saying this as a support main, all damage amplification sources need nerf, apart from maybe discord.
Quoted for emphasis.
Nope.
They both have their niches.
Not really.
Biggest difference between the two is that Echo is burst-damage, and Pharah is damage over time. Only other differences are minor in projectile speed and how flight is handled. Echo isn’t really much of a counter as Pharah is to her, but the biggest counters to Pharah would be someone like Ashe, not Echo.
Unlikely. The biggest issue with Nanoboost isn’t the damage, but the damage resistance. That’s why it tends to favor Tanks. Really, a huge problem in the game is how much value Ana has a Support hero.
Barrage, by itself isn’t really a problem to deal with. Yeah it packs a lot of damage, but it’s got plenty of counter-play. Pair with Nanoboost and a lot of that counter-play goes missing. Or you pick up the support hero that can also counter-play it; Ana’s sleep dart.
Basically it’s the same problem that SC2 has with Protoss-mirrors. There’s no diversity when your best option is exactly same as the other hero. A counter that can only be countered by the same character.
Because you can also opt to run the other solution of “run over the rest of enemy team asap”. Sadly it’s not a thing in anywhere below t500.
I have yet to ever in 5 years of Overwatch encounter a Pharah that couldn’t be handled with Dva/hitscans. But im also not playing in OWL with Ashe & Echo banned & Godlike teams/players