How do I counter pharmacy?

Competitive Discussion
21

Widowmaker is obviously is the best counter, if you have anyone decent at her - though you do need SOME distraction for phara or she can suppress widowmaker and make her life hard.

Most other hitscan is actually not good enough by itself, save perhaps for a really badass McCree. If there’s a pharmacy up there, you really should have at least two players shooting at it full time or you’re screwed. Take it seriously or die.

DVa is pretty good at killing a mercy or unsupported phara - but she needs someone to either soften them up first, or to quickly finish them after her leap - it’s very hard for her to execute a leap assault well enough to secure a kill solo.

Winston can kind of do the same thing, but he is virtually incapable of securing a kill unless he has some supporting fire, and the jumps are trickier.

Moira and Sombra are both effective against phara or mercy in places where they cannot fly too high, or if they are being forced to float down - they both have pretty good effective range.

But again, ONE CHARACTER ISN’T SUFFICIENT TO COUNTER A PHARMACY (except widow) - have at least two of the above characters constantly tasked with dealing with them until you’ve driven them from the sky. Or get the crap blown out of you. Your choice.

22

So, that would not include you at silver rank with sub 20% accuracy on Hanzo and Widow. PharMercy must suck for you…

1 Like
23

I’m a DVa main, so I kill pharmacies with vertical dives. I suck with snipers.

24

Sorry, was replying to Xero.

25

For the most part it’s a team effort. Hoping that single hit scan will do the job is unfortunately naive. One of the most important things is to shot call when you hit one of them below half. At that stage, a lot of characters can effectively get in the action to help out. That’s pretty much how most of the best OWL teams go about it.

You should either be all in killing Pharmercy or all in trying to out work them. Often the other 4 characters will be extra susceptible without their primary healer and a DPS nearby. Pharah also still has some trouble securing kills. The more you do on them the more likely Pharah will loose her Mercy, at that point, everyone’s vulnerable.

1 Like
26

Torb Turret with an Orisa or Rein shield makes a lot of players switch fast…

27

You could annoy her with d.va, or even do the same and go pharmercy too

28

Why?
Being near a wall is one the worst thing you can do against a Pharah… As she doesn’t have to aim in order to do massive splash damage if you’re standing against a wall. If anything I would say try to get as far under Pharah as possible, as you can safely operate outside of her range of motion, meaning she would have to pivot to deal with you… Making her a better target once she does.

29

If not Widowmaker, then D.va. She is the second scariest hero to go against as a pharah (for me).

30

Low gold?

D’va and / or Bastion.

First few seconds of this shows you how to end her (he isn’t even talking about it, just talking about the series he is going to run). while he does so

1 Like
31

A decent hanzo can’t whoop pharm now. Which I love.

32

In silver I see more of run away and leave you healer to the wolves when pharah is in the skies…

I asked for help with pharah and got “shoot her, you have a gun”… I went battle mercy and then the chat filled up with:
“Worst mercy ever, no heals! Why won’t you heal me”.

Ummm, I’m dead trying to be a bird hunter because you thought it better your healer fight solo…

3 Likes
33

The nr one issue in the metal ranks is target priority. Everyone starts shooting at the Pharah, instinctively, since she’s the one they percieve as the threat. This just feeds Mercys ult.

Focus the Mercy, and she’ll go hide or die in seconds, leaving the pharah vulnerable while at the same time decreasing her damage potential a lot.

34

Alright here’s the deal, there’s 4 main ways (variations of course) to counter a Pharmercy.

  1. Run a hitscan and Mercy: Easiest one to comprehend but its a lot harder than one thinks. Plat and under all have huge problems hitting a Pharmercy out of the sky. A nice Strategy is to run a Mercy damage boost pocket on a hitscan so even if they miss 3-4 shots, one shot still does a lot of damage. The issue with this strategy simply comes down to mechanics. If your hitscan can’t hit the pharah for sh*t, then even the damage boost won’t help.

  2. Run a Zen and Dva: Phattttt discord. Discord is wonderful and running a Zen + Dva can do enough to make the Pharmercy feel threatened.

  3. Run your own Pharmercy: I don’t understand why teams fail to understand this. A Pharmercy vs Pharmercy keeps both occupied and can honestly pose the same problem to the enemy as you did.

  4. AVOID THE PHARAH: Holy lord, this one is the best and honestly the least used in play. What people REALLLLLLY need to understand that Pharah is only good when she can see you. Pharmercy without a point of view is essentially a 4v6 team fight you can win easily. A really simple strat I’ve run to really good effect was running a Reaper, Junkrat, Rein, Dva, Lucio, Moira. The Lucio speed boost was enough to zip us into favorable areas while terrifying the opponents seeing a fast Reaper up close. The Rein was there to help mitigate splash while the Dva can be a huge annoyance to the Pharah. It was easy and over and over we’d roll the other team with only the Pharmercy left. They can’t 2 v 6 and they’d have to retreat.

35

It is time, my brother.
Pick Widow in deathmatch and learn her, Wishing you best of SR.

36

Dang yo! Only posted twice and it was all targeted at me. I’m so honored! Thank you!

37

I’ve started telling my overwhelmed hitscan teammates to just target the tanks first until we peel mercy. Seems to kinda be working.

2 Likes
38

Pretty much, Mercy will eventually peel to use her rez.

39

You can’t counter pharmercy. Just surrender. (I may or may not be a Pharah main)

40

I have a few ways to handle her.
For MD the easiest way is stalk her on ledges as sombra and hack the Phara so she drops, then target the mercy of she stays, translocate back to a med kit if needed. With her out of the sky your team has a numbers advantage even without you there for a second.

Zen + Hitscan or Hanzo because honestly it’s just simple geometry.

Or since she does move pretty simply in gold… Orisa and just gauge your projectile speed with her slow float, most Phara players don’t use buildings or know how to fly forever in gold so Orisa is decent pick for sure

The dva dive the Phara works too for some reason XD a DVA diving me just makes me use my boop grenade against a near wall and hopefully get behind or on the side of DVA :stuck_out_tongue: