So this is my megapost about all my issues I have with Pharah and I sincerely hope the devs will read this. It has been radio silence for so long for us Pharah players, we don’t know what devs think about her and I am determined to get a response, anything, even just a “We hear you and appreciate the feedback”
I am coming up on my 400 hours played for Pharah soon (across all game modes, 320ish in quickplay alone to give you a picture of my experience with her) and across the years Ive played her, I have an ever growing list of things that I wish would be addressed, updated, buffed, or reworked about my favorite hero. The most frustrating thing though (and I think this is the worst for pharah mains out of all the heroes) is that the community in general demonizes her and if you don’t play her, you are expected to hate her/be anti-buff towards her because that’s just the public opinion. There’s a longstanding false perception that “Pharah literally counters 99% of the cast and they literally cannot touch her omg she’s a literal untouchable unkillable god” I’m here to shed some light on the true picture.
ISSUE 1: MASSIVE POWER CREEP
What happens when tons of heroes get buffed, reworked, and improved over the years while a single one is left untouched, unchanged for that whole time? The single one gets passed up and becomes worse just by not being buffed in the same way. There are too many individual buffs to hitscan and snipers to list here over the years, but let me put it this way:
The last buff Pharah received was in November 2016, when she got better hovering capability, letting her fly forever if you manage your fuel extremely carefully. Let that sink in. While all the other dps have been getting buffs and reworks and changes month to month, she got a slight improvement and quality of life change to her core movement over 1 and a half years ago, and nothing since then. (please correct me if Im wrong…I kind of remember her minimum splash damage being buffed to 20 damage but her splash knockback being nerfed at the same time, but not sure if that happened before the Nov. 2016 patch)
This is made worse by the most recent round of hitscan/sniper buffs: namely how McCree and Soldier have gotten their minimum damage at max range buffed in damage, so a McCree can now triple tap a Pharah at max range before her first rocket even reaches halfway to him (for example), how Hanzo’s arrows have gotten a flat speed increase recently, how Mei’s icicles now have no falloff, and how deadeye can now be used mapwide at any range (not to mention a new hitscan with Hammond being added)
It feels like they will keep buffing and buffing hitscan like this, and never touch Pharah for fear of community lashback, which the community absolutely would because buffing Pharah in any way will bring about the apocalypse so it’s not allowed. -_-
ISSUE 2: AWFUL DESIGNED ULTIMATE
Barrage is the worst designed damage ult in the game. Let me explain. Freezing someone in place for 4 seconds is bad game design in an FPS, that should be pretty obvious. Doomfist players think their ult is bad when they land and are stuck in place for 0.5 sec? Oh please, I was suicide-ulting before you were born.
But WHY does Pharah die so much midway thru barrage? Why is “JUSTICE RA-HEUGHHH” a meme since the game literally launched?
-Because it freezes you in place in the open air, away from all of your team’s tanks/shields/barriers.
-Because ground based healing does not generally reach you in the air (Lucio aura, Lucio ult, Brigitte passive healing, Zen ult, Ana grenade, Moira in general
-Because you have to necessarily be within 20-30 feet for the barrage to even be effective, else it does tickle damage, which is the exact range for literally everyone except melee-based heroes to damage you no problem (even then, though, Rein has firestrike and Brigitte has rocket flail)
-Because barrage does too much damage for too long. Nearly every barrage goes the same way: you can have the most godlike positioning in existence, drop down, barrage your handful of targets, kill 2 squishies with it, and they die within 1 second, and you are left barraging at empty ground for another 3 seconds like an idiot and you just wait to die
-Because 6man grav is extremely rare. I have nearly 400 hours on Pharah, so I have literally done thousands upon thousands of barrages in that time. ONLY ONCE have I ever gotten a 6 person in the barrage and gotten a sextuple kill. Proof: h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qc5LKqZqgQ
If you aren’t getting a really good Zarya, a lot of luck, and the perfect position/angle/distance barrage, then 99.999999% of the time there will be other people outside of your little cone of effect who simply have to turn to you frozen in the air, and hold LMB at your literally unmoving head. It’s so easy even lucio and Mercy can kill you. Anyone can shoot an unmoving, unshielded enemy up in the air like that
-Because power creep exists in ultimates too. Imagine what a gamechanger it would be if Pharah got ONE of McCrees multiple ultimate buffs from over the years. JUST ONE: Deadeye now lets McCree slightly move while using, Deadeye can now be used mapwide at any distance with its ridiculous range, Deadeye can now be cancelled early if needed, Deadeye now refills your magazine after usage. Her survival rate would go from 10% to about 70% I guarantee you.
ISSUE 3: SUICIDE
Pharah is the suicide queen. She always has been. Have you ever tried to kill yourself with zarya right click, soldier helixing, dva micro rockets, or bastion ult firing? try it. go into a custom game and see how long it takes.Because I’m a maniac, I literally used a stopwatch to get the time. Here’s the suicide ranked chart, from fastest suicide to slowest:
Pharah
rockets: 3.92 sec
barrage: 0.75 sec
Tracer
pulse bomb: 1.6 sec
Bastion
ult fire: literally can’t kill himself before tank mode ends even if you fire all shells point blank into a wall
Zarya
right clicks at feet: 21.2
Soldier
helix: 32.7 sec
D.va
micro missiles: 1 min and 12.2 sec
None of them hardly count either or are virtually miniscule to ever actually kill you besides pharah. Tracer can recall and regain all her health/avoid her self-harm, bastion and soldier can heal, zarya and dva can regen shields, and dva has a 2nd life. Pharah just dies, that’s her super ability. If Blizzard insists on pharah being the queen of ****ing suicide, especially with her ult, why don’t they BUFF zarya, soldier, dva, and bastion’s self harm so everyone is equal self harming?
Another idea: Why don’t they REMOVE SELF HARM ACROSS THE BOARD? Dva and Junkrat already got this priviledge “But Peregrine, then pharah players would just sit on payloads and fire at their feet endlessly like Junkrat already does!!! It would end the universe it would be so OP!!!” It might encourage dumb behavior like that for some people yes, so why don’t they also give rockets a minimum travel time in order to do full damage? If you shoot a rocket point blank, then it can do significantly lower damage, and it has to travel in the air a certain amount before it can reach the 120 max direct hit damage like normal.
ISSUE 4: HALF THE HEALERS/MAIN TANKS DON’T REACH HER
As mentioned earlier, you will not be getting heals from Lucio aura, Lucio ult, Zen ult, Ana nade, Brigitte’s passive, or Moira in general. This is compounded with the fact that you don’t receive any protection by your team’s MAIN tanks/shields/barriers like winston/rein/orisa. And people wonder why Pharmercy is so prevalent…
ISSUE 5: BUGGY ROCKETS
Pharah’s rockets are a projectile and so they disappear into another dimension if you die while they are travelling midair…This is NOT the only character this happens to though (Mei’s snowball being lobbed in the air will sometimes never land if she dies as it’s traveling) It feels worse for Pharah though because it’s not her ult that disappears possibly once every few minutes, it’s her primary fire that possibly disappears every few seconds.
The most common way this personally happens to me is when I’m fighting McCree’s or Widowmakers. Due to the nature of instantaneous hitscan damage, it’s very common to fire a slow moving rocket, and be instantly killed by a hitscan…then the rocket disappears into another void before it reaches the target. It has happened probably 1000+ times to me personally, if I had to put a number on it, and no I am not exaggerating. Every time it used to happen, Id type ‘really blizz, rockets still go into another dimension?/McCree you saw that rocket disappear right?/something similar’ but it’s happened so frequently that I stopped typing because nobody really cares in-game except me.
People will say its because of my ping or something, but I have 300fps and a constant stable 58ms ping, way more than enough to have smooth gameplay.
Kills from the grave are extremely extremely rare to get as pharah, to put it in another way. You can’t kill someone after you already died, your shots will just suddenly vanish since you no longer are alive, it’s so stupid. I know I’m not the only one who has pointed this out. It’s even happened to me personally as Tracer, having my pulse bomb disappear as if a dva ate it.
The recent patch has given the rockets a really old bug too that I hoped would never return but it’s back…now about 1 rocket every minute will hit someone directly, but fail to explode and fail to make a noise, and will just disappear and they will take the damage. It’s so non-feedback that it feels really weird and bad, like you’re playing underwater. Getting direct hits is hard enough (I average about 40 per match, and I am in the top 5% of all players for accuracy with 53% accuracy) but to have the rocket not explode or make a single noise just feels bad.
This bug used to be in the game a long time ago but was quashed, now it’s back with the recent new Symm patch, I hope they fix it. I am slightly suspicious of it and think its connected to the server lag that people have been talking about (other threads about how their heroes just ‘feel different now and floatey’ which I also agree with)
ISSUE 6: BORING PLAIN LORE, VOICELINES, AND SKINS
Pharah is about the most plain 2d cardboard cutout of a human being on the entire cast. She lost a lot of good men at Anubis before. She had a poster of Rein as a child. She is Ana’s daughter. She likes guitar and basketball. That’s the literal extent of what we know about her. I know this issue can be applied for some other heroes too, but I want to discuss Pharah specifically in this topic.
Her voicelines are all robotic military speak. “Shot down. Not a chance. I’ve got you on my radar. Stay back. Form up. Target eliminated. Contact!.” I know she is military but I wish they’d make her more interesting…
As for her skins…nearly everyone in the game has gotten casual, silly, or beachwear skins now except Pharah. Every.Single.One. of her skins are head-to-toe bulky masculine military armor. Every single one. The same silhouette. The only argument I hear put forth is that she needs jetpack wings to fly, but that doesn’t necessarily warrant the fullbody armor literally every skin is, they could find a creative way to do it.
Just to name a few skins off the top of my head that are silly/beachwear/casual that I’m talking about: Dragon symmetra, Cricket Junkrat, Casual Hanzo, Bikini Widow, Scuba Sombra, Grillmaster 76, Detective McCree, Lifeguard McCree, beach Junkrat, Toga Victory Mercy, Pajama Mei, 80s workout Leopard yoga tights Zarya, I could go on and on and on…Now look at Pharah’s skins:
Fullbody bulky military head-to-toe armor in blue, silver, bronze, lavendar, black, white, blue with ice crystals, purple with glowing eyes, orange-blue-white, white-green, Native American red/white and green/black, golden with pharoah haircut, India colored, and the Helix one
Please, give Pharah something different this summer games…Us Pharah mains have been praying for something…anything for her, we fear Blizz has forgotten her and left her to die.
I also still hope deep down inside that they will finally acknowledge that she’s a freaking FEMALE. Im not asking for her to be in a thong or something, but the only skin she has ever shown across everything is her face…The only female or feminine thing she has ever done emote wise is (nothing), she just is a bigger tomboy than Sombra and that’s saying a lot. I know this is how they designed her though, It’s just a hopeless dream of mine that they will make her more feminine somehow, or give her a shred of sex appeal one day. Please don’t crucify me for thinking this, it’s my opinion and I’m stating it’s not factual or the ‘right’ way to think, it’s just what I personally hope for.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I don’t know that I will make more big threads about Pharah anymore, it’s so exhausting because it’s an echo chamber where the few other Pharah mains come in and say ‘yeah I agree.’ while the vast majority are screaming “NOO YOU CANT BUFF OR MAKE HER BETTER OR THE WORLD WILL END, HERE’S 84 THOUSAND REASONS WHY PHARMERCY IS RUINING THE GAME” So it feels a bit like smashing your face into a campfire and arguing with a brick wall at the same time. I still felt the need to make this megathread in one final effort though to get the devs attention and shed light on how us Pharah players really feel right now.
And I still hope to get a blue post on this, even if it just says “I read it lol.” I have 3500 posts on the old forums, and about 500 on here, and 80% of them are about Pharah but not once have I gotten a dev reply about anything so this is my final effort. I think after this I’m gonna give up, and just suffer in silence while I keep playing the suicide queen. Because even though she has a lot of issues that I’ve already mentioned, I still love her and can’t give her up.
Thanks so much for reading if you’ve gotten this far, and I hope to hear your honest, thought out opinions below!
![:confused:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/confused.png?v=5" ":confused:")