Is pharah a good hero?

General Discussion
1

It feels like she sucks outside of Pharmercy, she’s so vulnerable. When she ults she’s vulnerable and the amount of burst/hitscan in the game. I think she needs 100 White health and 100 armor health. I play symmetra and i kinda relate symm to pharah. They both have bad survivability.

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2

If they don’t have a hitscan, Pharah will carry

If they do, it’ll be a bad day for Pharah

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3

no

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4

She is generally trash. I still don’t know why they nerfed her.

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5

At this point even as a Mercy player id rather not have a Pharah.

6

She was pretty marginal before PTR.

And PTR was nothing but nerfs to her.

I expect she will get buffed soon. But, for now, she is really good in low ranks, and on console, but, she seems pretty bad everywhere else.

It isn’t going to happen. They can’t make her stronger at low ranks.

I expect the buffs will be to concussion making it effect her own movement more. Which will make she stronger at higher ranks where people can use it effectively, while not changing her power at lower ranks where it isn’t used for mobility.

7

She needs buffs.

Big time.

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8

Not to mention console.

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9

She needs a couple of buffs to make her viable - and virtually all of them should go to her rocket launcher.
Either Faster projectile speed, or 135 damage on direct hits (So direct + splash still kills a 200 HP hero) is what I’d go for.

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10

It is off the table, because they already regret doing the same to Hanzo’s arrows. They won’t make that mistake a second time.

Maybe. The splash “buff” on ptr was pathetic, ESPECIALLY given the nerf to damage boost for her. I still can’t believe they did that.

But, more damage, even if it is for direct hits still buffs her for low ranks and console, which is why they don’t buff her now.

If I was going to change her rockets, I’d buff her direct damage by a lot, and just remove splash. Because people in high ranks hit more often than in lower ones, it would buff her more up there, than down in lower Elos.

but… honestly, I’d just make concussion’s self effect a LOT stronger, and have the fact she would have greater mobility at higher ranks help her more.

11

I’m not saying Hanzo arrow levels - but 50 meters a second (less then a Zen Orb) would at least make landing a rocket on distant targets a practical thing).

You legit can’t remove splash without buffing the rocket speed.

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12

No. I wish she was, but she isn’t.

She’s okay on a couple maps like Lijiang or Ilios, but hardly indispensable. Running her almost mandates PharMercy unless you just want her to feed an absurd amount. She was better prior to her most recent changes (not the minimum damage buff… that’s laughably small), but still not incredible unless you’re on upper rank PSN. Now, she’s kinda just a worse Junkrat, and given that he’s really not in the most amazing spot in mid or high ranks… Poor Pharah

13

As an ex-Pharah main I’ll have to say no. She’s currently in such a bad spot that playing her outside a few select maps and Phamercy comp will probably lose the game for your team. If you’re interested in her you should wait for them to buff her properly

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14

The higher you go in ranks, and the more the fights are happening in close range.

Hear me out, this is with QUITE the damage increase.

At higher ranks they don’t miss NEARLY as much, and this is where she is struggling right?

She only has issues diamond+, below that is she fine, and once you hit below gold she is pretty oppressive.

So by removing splash, and boost direct damage, you are giving her a higher average damage at higher ranks, while not giving her higher average damage at lower ranks (since they miss a LOT more).

Higher ranked players ALSO play closer, where lower ranks tend to skybox her. So, they are already dealing with a shorter flight time of her rockets.

The other choice (which may work) is to give her more damage, but damage falloff, for exactly the same reason.

High ranked players play her closer on average.

15

How much of a buff ?
Because unless you’re talking “One shots Tracer” level then asking Pharah to get up-close to anything that can actually fight back without splash is almost suicide.

Skybox Pharah is mostly a useless strat - you mostly just feed the enemy healers ult charge.
But up close - Pharah’s larger then average hitbox makes her WAY too easy to hit.
The splash damage has the advantage of also knocking people around to counter that.

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16

She’s actually not doing great at any rank, just less bad in low ranks. Her best performance is in Silver/Gold, but she’s not amazing there.

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17

And I bet the only reason she does netter is because Mercy.

Edit: Puffy- Fastest like in the west.

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18

If you don’t have someone who can hit her at low ranks? She RUINS you.

The first time I got to plat was when we convinced a friend to take up playing Pharah, and I’d mercy for them.

We just pharmercyed to plat in a couple of weeks. They were not a good player, and at the time, neither was I.

Both of us dropped to High Bronze / Low silver the moment we stopped.

Like, it was crazy.

On console, most of the top 500 are Pharah mains.

This is directly because the skill for hitscan to hit her, is more than the skill she needs to hit back.

At higher ranks, on PC, she just gets WRECKED, and needs help, but, that is not the case at lower ranks, or console, where people have a harder time with accuracy.

so… when balancing her you need to take that into account.

We ALL know she needs buffs, but, because of this, we have to be careful WHICH buffs.

Look at the last time they buffed her, they give exactly the same reasons to why they were buffing the parts of her kit they did.

So, we have to be careful there. But we NEED to get buffs on her.

So, how do we buff her in a way where higher skilled people can take advantage of the buffs MORE than low skilled people.

Because you crack that, and you will get them to buff her.

You ask for buffs which effect the whole range? and they won’t do a damn thing.

The Blizzard dev ARE our target audience here.

19

Pharah kinda plays like a twin stick shooter when she’s airborne. It’s difficult to control and manage thruster gauge when the gameplay feels like Ace Combat. This is mostly the reason why I want to play as Pharah, but I simply can’t. She just kinda floats there and it’s hard to maneuver away from stuff, even in practice range, I really can’t feel comfortable with the controls. This may be because I play on PC, which feels a little wonky when it comes to playing Pharah. Then again, I suck at Bullet Hell, so let’s just say I’m part of my problem also :joy:

20

She is super fun once you get the controls right. It takes a while though.

I got ok with her for a while, but, I was a better Mercy for the pharah, than the Pharah themselves.

Hell, I wrote the guide on Pharmercy which people used to quote from on the forums.

People didn’t know about tapping RMB as the rockets hit, and how to jink bounce as Mercy.

A lot of mercy players don’t know how to actually pharmacy properly. It is a bit of a lost art.

The PTR changes were SO bad for it though :frowning:

I can’t believe they did that.

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