I'm quitting Pharah :upset:

I think you know this too, Pharah is the most frustrating hero to main on the forums because, no matter what you say or how amazing of a point you make, outsiders will always just fall back to one of 3 things without thinking, just as a mob mentality default answer:

  • she is literally untouchable by 95% of the cast she stays 83 miles away from the fight and kills people from afar therefore do not ever touch her kit, she is already too OP
  • barrage is a tradeoff lul
  • Pharmercy is cancer therefore buffing Pharah=end of the world

I think I’ve gotten jaded over the years of trying to address these points that fall on deaf ears, I think I’ll just link to my megapost about it from now on Megathread of Pharah complaints from a Pharah main it was the most successful one I’ve ever made and everything I wrote is still 100% accurate except for her boop now being 9 sec and she can suicide slightly slower (prob. in 4.5 sec instead of the current 3.92 sec lol)

How do you deal with Barrage by the way? Do you see the validity when I say I can get more done for the match by never using it and staying alive to use normal rockets vs taking 2 out with me and having to slowly walk back from spawn? It might be different in the high competitive scene but having a competent Zarya in quickplay/arcade is a huge request and doesn’t occur very often. Maybe if I had Zarya and Dva to protect me and we were all coordinated on comms every Barrage I would not have such a problem with it, but I kind of feel a dps ult should be viable alone, or at the least not end up with the user dying 9/10 times…

Maybe that’s too much to ask. I have dared Blizzard to release survival % chart of all ult users many times before, they’ve never done it though :laugh:

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Barrage is one of the best dps ults in the game. I really do not see what you mean by that. Use it close quarters only, it will instantly delete 2 people from the game. You’ll probably die, but your team will be 5v4.

I know, that’s what it is, a suicide bomber ult, that’s my fundamental issue with it though, no skill in a fast paced fps should be like that unless you are literally a bomb like in paladins or something.

No skill, especially an ultimate, should necessitate you pre-planning to die every time you use it. No skill should freeze you in place for multiple seconds in open air like that, it’s pure bad design in a fast paced FPS and so frustrating that the vast majority of people on the forums can’t understand that.

At the very least, BLIZZARD, can’t you just cut her voiceline to just say ‘JUSTICE!’ that way I won’t have to hear it cut short almost every time :stuck_out_tongue:

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Well there is another really good way to use it, which is only able to be used on defense. Which is find a wall above where the enemies have to come in and use it as they walk under you. Most of the time you’ll just delete their whole team/kill some and the rest hide back in the doorway.

But yah on attack you can basically only do the suicide bomb strat with her e. But trading 2 for 1 + diverting the entire enemies attention to behind themselves is pretty much a won attack. Not bad imo.

most of this whining doesn’t make a lot of sense, but i think cancelable barrage is a good idea

pharah is still very much played at upper levels in the game. on ladder, trying to solo pharah is probably quite hard since half the healers can’t hit you as you say…and without a decent dva/zarya your barrages aren’t very safe either. but I think they should prefer to balance for the pro level.

Well unless you’re psychic, which I highly doubt, you need to try the changes first, not for an hour or two but actually use her for a couple of days just to see how you she works and how you change in that time to adapt to her new play style.
You’ll probabaly struggle at first, but you might see some changes in your play style that lead to better games
If by the end of the weekend she’s still no fun for you-you can at least say you tried instead of immediately getting on the forums several hours after the patch came out.

Blizzard proved countless times - they don’t care about mains. And they right about this one. Hero should be good/decent for all, not just onetricks that plays one hero.

You don’t need to be psychic to know when a change will not accomplish the goal the dev’s envision. Just takes understanding of how a hero works to know that.

I’m more concerned about whether you’ve actually tried her, taking a guess at the effect is all well and good (if not annoying and whiny sounding I’ll admit) but have you actually tried her?

Piggybacking on this, you don’t need to play her new build for multiple days to understand this is a massive nerf to her (although I actually did play her on PTR for a while) it was exactly as I had feared, chaining splash to kill enemies is just not possible anymore unless you’re in bronze where nobody can hit you anyway.

Interrupting her counter’s aim was the only tiny advantage she had against them, now that’s gone, on top of it doing less damage as well. Now she is a worse sky-junkrat that can kill herself
#BoycottBarrage

Yes, Tons of wasted damage potential and confirming kills is infinitely more difficult to do.

Before it required a direct hit and near miss (at their feet) to kill a 200hp target. It now requires two direct hits or three shots one being a direct hit and two being near miss’s.

This is assuming no or supports healing at all.

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Were you perhaps damage boosted on live? Or perhaps the enemy wasn’t full when you did that? Because looking at the numbers a direct shot and a near miss should still be the same total damage, as they only shifted the numbers around. between the impact and the concussion wave.

Overall it looks like that this has been a nerf rather than a buff, specially because there have been 0 changes about her mobility. This means that Pharah still needs to fully commit each time she goes in the air and can’t save herself if not with the “skillfull use” of her E.

I want to try the new fire rate before giving a full judgement on the state of her but I’m not that optimist for now.

I think I just played a game with you in QP, Peregrine (same team). You were Lucio and I was Zenyatta, defense on Gibraltar. Unless that was your doppleganger.

I hadn’t thought of it this way…you’re right though :frowning:
When you are diving someone and get a direct hit out of pure luck or really good skill, it’s very likely you will miss the 2nd direct hit you go for, currently if you’re slightly off or they just move outta the way, you might still get that 80 dmg for max splash and still kill them.

NOW though, that will not kill them and it will drag the encounter out longer and they’ll stay alive longer and your chance of dying has now gone up drastically while your chance of killing has gone down

120 + 65 is not 200. This in infact makes Pharah MORE reliant on damage boost to confirm kills.

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Oh I see you’re 100% right. I thought they buffed the full damage of a direct hit by 15 and nerfed the explosions max damage non-direct hit by 15.

Instead they nerfed them both so that it only does 120 to the body post patch. I see, and prepatch/live it already does 200 if you do a direct and an explosion.

Interesting looks like this might be a nerf to pharah then. With a damage boost it’s a TTK buff, but if you don’t have a pocket mercy / she is needing to heal you this is just an outright nerf if you can’t land two direct body shots.

I think they should redo the numbers and give her back that potential if that’s what you guys are saying I agree.

Edit: hmm I actually don’t know. This is very confusing. Should a direct and a very close near miss 2 shot a 200 hp dps? probably but they probably had a bit of healing anyhow. If we assume the average was a 3 shot before anyhow this in most circumstances probably increases her TTK both damage and not.

It all depends on how often pharah could actually 2 shot prepatch non damage boosted.

Two directs is a buff.

A direct and a perfect indirect is a nerf (only when not damage boosted)

A direct and two close but not perfectly close indirect is a buff.

HMMM i’m just not sure what the stats really pan out as. Because again we’re ignroing it being easier to line up a second shot on people with the reduced knockback.

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Yeah, this is the issue too with how confusingly they worded patch notes. They should’ve just said:

  • splash does LESS damage
  • splash knockback boops enemies LESS distance
  • direct hits are the SAME they’ve always been
  • you shoot SLIGHTLY faster
  • concussive boop is now 9 seconds C/D and goes an extra foot of distance (I seriously cannot tell any difference)
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There you go. Don’t feel bad about it. Seems to be the most common misconception among people who think its a buff.

Could you do me a favor? Could you look at the thread I created about how this change does not encourage Pharah’s to be more accurate? Just look at my latest topic.

Give me feedback after a full read. As I think the numbers will explain to you what much of the issue is.

Not if you are playing Pharah for accuracy. It stays the same due to the fact Pharah’s don’t fire the moment a rocket becomes ready all to often.

Reduced knockback makes it harder to secure a kill and easier to be targeted by those who are targeting you. KNockback when you hit directly on the lower half of their hitbox knocked them slightly upward. Making it easier to follow up with another shot.