Between the buff to hitscans’ falloff damage and Mercy’s reduced healing output, this is supposed to be on paper the worst meta for Pharah ever. Not in the ranks I play though, apparently. All my games in Competitive lately have been my teams getting absolutely wrecked by enemy Pharahs because they’re too incompetent to properly counterpick her. It’s painful to me how Pharah has obvious counters yet people don’t switch to counter her… same goes for Junkrat who is also a major pain in my elo that my teammates don’t switch to counter even though he too has obvious counters…
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Hitscan buff did basically nothing for McCree and Soldier against Pharah. At best, it helped them against Widow, but they’re still low tier DPS.
Truth is that Soldier and McCree were never counters to Pharah. They were just one of the few who can hit her. That doesn’t make them counter Pharah. That just puts them on even footing. They have nothing else in their kit other than Left Click to interact with Pharah. Rockets will not hit Pharah. Fan the Hammer and Flash will not hit Pharah. Pharah still has no drop off on her damage, can two shot both these guys, and is even more durable now that she gets armor from Brigitte while also being pocketed by Mercy.
The only real counter to Pharah is Widow, and good luck finding a good one.
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I have to disagree with you on the “Only Widow can counter Pharah” statement. In my opinion, the best counter in the game to Pharah (and even Pharmercy) is D.Va. She sounds like easy picking for Pharah due to her being a close-range, easy-to-hit tank… but she can fly up to her face for a bit, harass her in the sky to force her down, and eat up all her rockets (and even her ultimate) with Defense Matrix. Even if she doesn’t outright kill Pharah, she can easily neutralize her. If my team is having trouble against Pharah, D.Va’s my go-to hero for countering her.
Soldier, McCree and Widow can counter Pharah only if the player’s aim with those heroes is good enough. With D.Va you don’t have to have godly aim to harass and neutralize her. If you know how to use her tools properly against Pharah, you shouldn’t have major issues countering or neutralizing her.
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If that’s your point, why bring up the hitscan changes? The hitscan changes barely affected D.va.
I brought those up in response to how the hitscan changes sounded like on paper they would be Pharah’s ultimate doom… but apparently that doesn’t seem to be the case lol.
To add to what I said about D.Va being the game’s best Pharah counter… even Valkia (probably the most well-known Top 500/Grandmaster Pharah main out there) finds D.Va to be the most problematic hero for him when he plays Pharah. I think I remember him saying at one point that he wished for D.Va to be removed from the game XD
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I agree with this to an extant. I’d also say that low elos simply don’t have the aim to hit Pharah consistently. That’s why she’s such a terror down there. The same goes for heroes like torb, bastion, and symettra. Their turrets (and bastions high dps) wreck people, because they dont coordinate focus fire, can’t aim well, are not aware enough to spot turrets before getting hit by them, and can’t aim fast enough to destroy them before they die.
Honestly, if the enemy is wrecking your team with a pharah, and you can’t kill her fast enough with soldier/mccree/widow, id either play Torb and put a turret where it will kill her consistently, or play Pharah yourself and wreck the enemy team back. Low elo Pharahs can be killed by another pharah, and it’s unlikely that team will be able to hit you, just like yours can’t hit theirs.
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Those are good tips. Pharah is one of my better DPS’s, but I’m not great at the role in a team setting, and I feel like I die too frequently when I play as her… but on the bright side, Deathmatch helped me hone my Pharah v. Pharah skills. I’ve killed a good number of Pharahs as Pharah myself in Deathmatch 
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Pharah, at least on the majority of maps, is a great dps pick in low elos. If it were me, and I wanted to climb playing dps, id near one-trick her until the enemy team proves they could kill me consistently and force a swap. The only consistently good counter to her (as you pointed out) is Dva, and I doubt every Dva you’ll meet will be able to punish you. She can be difficult to play with a team, but most games in lower elos don’t have much coordination in the first place. Just play around healthpacks a lot, since you probably won’t get healed much without a mercy, but it’s doable.
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I’ll keep that in mind- makes sense, she’s a sort of flanker much like Tracer and Genji are, and those two heroes rely heavily on healing themselves with the health packs around the map as opposed to their team’s healers.
Although D.Va is the best Pharah counter in the game, unfortunately most D.Va players (especially in the lower elos I play in) don’t bother to counter Pharah as D.Va, if they even know how to. Makes playing against Pharah in competitive all the more excruciating
You can counter Pharah from every role so why don’t you do it yourself?
pick Ana as a healer
DVA as a Tank
Soldier /Cree or Widow as DPS
problem solved
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counter pick her -> be good at shooting.
if ur teammates cant do that then do it.
if you cant no need to come to the forums and complain about it.
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do you even comprehend what the hitscan buff means to you?
Do you comprehend that a buff can sometimes effectively do nothing interesting for a character? Yes, they do slightly better, but that doesn’t mean they suddenly demolish pharah whenever she leaves spawn.
at max range+ you literately do 65% more damage if my maths right.
since it was 5.7 at 30% falloff to its now 9.5 at 50%…
That doesn’t mean they suddenly do 60% more damage. That just means they start being relevant at longer distances. Their max damage doesn’t go up. Just their effective range. Not having your damage reduced is not the same thing as having your damage increased.
Considering what they bring to the table, they’re not good dps units at all.
50% maximum falloff… you can shoot someone 500m away and it will still do 9.5 damage instead of 5.7
Which isn’t a lot. I’m not sure how you’re taking down a Pharah with 85 DPS at 500m with Soldier’s spread.
his first 3 shots in a burst is 100% accurate
Did you miss the 85 DPS part?
Nah. The mcree buffs were huge. When I’m playing pharah and see him I actually switch off now. Also, soldiers rockets travel fast and are actually pretty easy to land, plus his healing helps him deal with pharah. Another good counter to pharah is another pharah
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