Since Echo isn’t a Support (for some reason), she kinda makes Pharah obsolete in almost every area. She has better movement in the air, more damage output, far more oppressive on snipers, an ult that gives her two lives instead of killing her instantly, and Mecho (Mercy/Echo) will probably be just as nightmarish as Pharmercy ever was in the past.
How would you help Pharah?
IMO: Giving her 50 shield HP would be so good for her. Also letting her move while ulting.
Ability to cancel ult (make it universal)
Crouch dive per intro
Self boop knockback and speed increased
Those three along with restoring her splash at the bare minimum
I think I’d like it if she had more horizontal speed, and higher damage. I don’t play pharah that often, but when I do, I wish she’d move faster
New passive: Iron suit, Pharah cannot be headshot at full health and will experience 20% damage resistance after the first hit from full health.
2 concussive blast charges at 12 second cooldown each, would help to improve mobility and disruption.
Ability to cancel ult early.
Permanently getting rid of mercy’s damage boost in her base kit so that the characters she has objectively OP synergies with can actually get buffs that let them shine on their own right. Pharah, ashe and bastion have needed buffs/ reworks for a very long time. Mercy needs buffs that don’t make her overbearing with her current kit, and getting rid of damage boost in her base kit allows for that.
i would give her a passive called “Solo Flier” or something that gives her maybe damage resistancr or faster air movement when not currently receiving healing and/or buffs. idk i feel like it would open up more alleys for her to be viable without a pocket and more independent. the most effective way to play her wouldn’t have to always be with a mercy pocket. it would give her more of a chance to get back to the healers in a non-mercy comp, and she would work decently well with more bursty heals in less frequent intervals as opposed to having one attached
the only big negative side effect is really hurting how she would work with a zen and she would have to watch herself around brig and lucio to make sure she is out of their radius when she needs to be, but idk i think if you buff her in any way everyone’s first concern will be how op it makes pharmacy. this would effectively change nothing over the course of a game if pharmacy is played as it usually is, however it opens up new paths and options, some of which may be better for a certain scenario, which means you would see more pharahs with no mercy’s around
i also think they should give her 2 conc blast charges. probably in exchange nerf the boop effect on enemies so it takes using both right after one another to get the same effect you would have now, because that isn’t the part i would want to buff. i just think it’d be more important for her to be able to use them to boost herself and be able to more reliably engage and disengage
Faster rockets
Revert boosters and jump jet buff from 2016
Faster flight speed
It’s hard to say how to buff Pharah because whatever you do she’ll still end up with a Mercy attached to her unless there’s some background ability that reduces Mercy’s effectiveness while in the air.
Or, when they buff Pharah, Mercy loses the ability to fly with Pharah. But only with Pharah
I think Pharah should be reworked into a highly mobile bomber-type hero rather than as a flying hero. Maybe she could have her concussive blast reworked so it has less enemy knockback but much more self-knockback, and more controllable, think of TF2 rocket jumps. She could have multiple charges of them that slowly regenerate over time. Right now only a handful of heroes can interact with her, but those heroes shut her down hard, which is her main problem.
Looks like Pharah and Ashe are getting their buffs going to experimental now and Mercy still has her damage boost. I think the Pharah buff is a mistake as she is already oppressive in low rank “will someone please shoot the Pharah” or “please someone go hitscan to counter the Pharah” games. Pharah’s often dominate the whole match and now she is getting better splash damage and so has to be even less accurate to do OP damage.
Pharah and junk make tanking (and probably all roles) too frustrating as they just spam in low ranks. The amount of damage is not tied enough to the amount of skill - too much damage for very little skill (more skill more damange, yes, but the damage floor is too low). Plenty of junks just hide behind walls or corners and spam constantly not even seeing what they are hitting, but severely impacting the game. Pharah is the same where many in low ranks just shoot in the general area of the fight and get too much damage even at low skill.
Something should be done to lower their damage floor so unskilled players get much less damage. I don’t have an answer though.
Honestly, they keep tweaking her damage numbers to try and help, but that’s literally the point where she’s fine. Leave her damage numbers alone and focus on her solo survivability so she doesn’t always need a Mercy pocket. (How you’d do that without further strengthening Pharmercy, I’m not certain, but that’s probably part of the reason they’ve been trying to mess with damage numbers instead.) Even something as simple as 50 armor or 50 shields could help her.
Another option, give her more horizontal movement in the air. Some sort of dash or something, perhaps.
Also, just as QoL, make her ult cancelable and make crouch rapidly bring her to the ground.
IMO her splash damage should stay—IMO they shouldn’t balance around scrubs—let them learn and as they move up the ranks, they’ll stop complaining
Include Resurrect there and sure. I think its a great idea especially for ults that last a certain amount of time like Coalescence or Valkyrie where it might be a good choice to cancel it early once a fight is over to be able to start getting ult charge for another one.
Jump boost 4 sec
Push grenade 4 sec. EAsy.
I think the biggest problem with Pharah is how few supports can heal her, I’d like to see Lucio get a 20m healing aura, Zenyatta get a Harmony Orb that doesn’t break without LOS,Baptiste get a 20m Biotic Burst radius and Moira get a 20m M1 radius so that the whole cast can actually heal her instead of having to have a Mercy.
Pharah herself is fine, her support synergy options just suck really bad.
Yeah cancel ult or allow her to move somewhat while ulting.
Maybe shield while in the air but degenerates. After her boost ends then her shield or armor kicks in but degenerates to 0 within 6 seconds? 50 HP shield?
More lateral movement.