It’s underutilized because it’s… not great… It’s the equivalent of fighting in slow mode, making shots easier to hit and harder to dodge. That’s why everyone hates low gravity arcade mode.
Now if there was a hero based around controlling gravity, I woudn’t be opposed to that. Like making people have their gravity double or half based on abilities throwing off mobility.
I have to answer this post as I hope more threads like this will emerge.
I play Pharah since the beginning, I never had any other fun gameplay in FPS than projectiles characters, and Pharah is by far the hero I wanted to play the most when I first saw the trailer of Overwatch. (especially when she was raining some justice from above)
Today the game forces me to play other hero, in order to succeed and climb the ladder. I dont have personal problems in elvolving and getting better in other heroes as I feel its rewarding to be flexible and be able to play a lot of heroes in a lot of given situation.
What I’m complaining about is that SHE IS ABSOLUTELY NEGLECTED.
Pharah is a more complex hero than any other, complex and for sure UNIQUE in the game.
They refuse to make 2 different patchs for PC and consoles, as Pharah is insanely good with mercy on consoles, but soooo bad and hard to fit in a team without Mercy on PC and when you climb the ladder, reaching diamond, masters, GM, top500
Only Mercy can heal her with ease without losing any awareness:
*zen has to keep line of sight (which is hard if she’s always flanking and needs to hide behind walls to protect herself AS SHE HAS NO SHIELDS IN THE AIR), Ana can’t scope you a whole fight when the overall cast of characters in Overwatch today deal soooo much damage that it’s barely doable to keep everyone alive in a teamfight, AND she would lose a lot of her surrounding awareness when flankers try to harass her
*Moira is clearly not designed for her
*Lucio has been useless for her since his healing and speed radius have been reduced
*Brigitte will likely never use her pack on you as to save the main tank is a better option, and her passive healing useless too
So when you play Pharah, its either the enemy team dont have hitscans and play goats/semi goats and you can actually do some things, or the maps are Pharah friendly (mostly koth ilios houselight/ nepal village/ oasis garden/university and some good choke points such as first point eichenwalde, Anubis, Kings row second part, etc)
Today there is no way you pick Pharah because she’s a good or even better dps than what heroes like Ashe, Hanzo, Genji, Mccree, Tracer, Sombra, Widow provide to the game.
Her life keeps being hard since:
Mercy got butchered nerfed (and also because the game is dealing too much damage, which implies less synergie to the duo as she has to leave you more and more to support the frontline)
DVA got her micro missiles that shred you in 1.5sec if you dont have your concussive AND if she doesn’t eat it with DM first and because Pharah has one of the biggest hitbox with Doomfist (like her wings actually count as the hitbox when Mercy Valkyrie wings dont)
Hanzo reworked in such a horrible way: changing scatter arrow that was not such of a problem for Pharah, to a machine gun on long and medium range that litteraly gives you noooo chance to dodge it and win this 1v1 situation unless the Hanzo player is gold ( which in master/GM and top500 never happend right?), AND they gave him a 4-5sec jump in any direction that gives him even more chance to dodge your slow phat hass rocket
Hitscans overall buff to falloff damage, Soldier (even if he’s not the main threat counter to her), Mccree combat roll cd buff (which gave him faster amos)
Bastion buffs which lead back to pirate ship strats when Pharah is just a useless shield spammer but get schred with his new spread amos system when you just show your face half a second
Ashe introduction as if there wasn’t enough counter to her (what’s better than to highlight Pharah being destroyed in Ashe official trailer?). She is fairly a mix of kancer hanzo and mccree, so better than widow
Ana buffs from 60 to 70 with the 3taps back into the mix
Mei buffs on the amos which gives her more spamming on right click and actually not that bad against Pharah (but she’s not pick that much, thats the only reason she never makes the cut)
And so on and so on.
Its actually crazy how the game has evolve so much, characters have changed, have gotten buffs that completely make Pharah and her slight quality life change of 12sec to 9sec on concussive blast, look so stupid. She waited 2 freaking years to have this change, and nothing else good have been done.
As many Pharah players and streamers explain, the firing rate increase is blatantly uneffective as no Pharah hold the left click. It just confirms they want her to be more and more and only a stupid shield spammer
The truth is PHARAH IS NEGLECTED AF
Pick rate has always been low, even lower, Pharah mains are fed up, I’m fed up.
I feel like maining Genji or Tracer would have been such a better option. In such a game, any fast movement abilities, and quicker heroes, have such an advantage.
And i dont even go in depth on Pharah’s ult, which might be the worst of all time, seeing people surviving of it just because the rockets spread is absolutely bad, this ult is frustrating, maybe just as a Genji wiping the entire team 2shotting people and dashing in any direction, with you watching all of it and feeling completely useless if you dont have any trans to survive
This game has serious balance problems, and the fact they dont understand making Pharah so linked to Mercy to make her viable or a “correct pick”, is kind of not knowing the game they’re developping.
She’s in clear lack of both back stories AND balance changes
NS: and just not to be an idiot complaining without making any suggestions, i would likely see:
some armor in the 200hp of Pharah, like 150Hp+50armor=200
making the concussive blast a 2way ability(either a boop on long range that can still be eaten by DVA, or a disengage version similar to Ashe as she could use it in the air without any walls around in other to give her more chance to survive in the air)
giving her the ability she has in her highlight intro when she falls quickly to the ground
change the Barrage ult into a quicker version or with a damage resistance/HS immune, with straight rockets path (instead of the live zigzaging version that increase the spread). It would allow barrage more variations and less predictibility as you could use it more vertically facing your enemy and not just facing the ground.
Very well put, I Agree completely.
A Pharah I play with regularly uses this ultimate very well and gets several kills most of the time.
This is an interesting idea. What if you could use concussive blast like normal (explodes on contact), but have the ability to press the button again to set it off early, so that a double tap would set it of in front of you causing your own push in the air etc…
A character that can two shot should totally be buffed. (sarcasm) Like, really? and people are complaining all the time that the game is unbalanced. Yet pharah players want a buff. 
Sure, I can get in line with that. As I have the most hours on Hog, I think he should have two charges of hook. /s
She’s annoying and needs to be nerfed. 
If anything.
Yeah, it’s like these people have never heard of Valkia. Just go do what he does and Widow doesn’t even look like a counter to Pharah at all (that’s because she actually isn’t a “counter” and the matchup is more even than they want to admit but shh)
I suspect that valkia would agree with the majority of these posts. He was one of the first to say that the supposed “buff” to Pharahs rate of fire and change to splash and direct hit damage distribution was actually a nerf.
Well its a good thing we don’t nerf based on burst damage ability, because then hanzo and widow would be super screwed cause they can one shot the majority of the cast. Hanzo has a projectile speed almost 3 times that of Pharah. Widow is instant. If you can’t just walk out of the way of a pharahs rocket then you need to pay closer attention. And if a pharah is close enough to you that you can’t, then just shot back because she is an easy target that close.
The only hope that pharah has is very careful movement around the geometry of the map. So her play is extremely dependent on the map being played. Valkia frequently switches off Pharah for some maps.
I’m a Pharah main, but I just don’t play her when it matters. If I want to get through my 9 weekly Arcade wins, or if I’m in Comp… I almost exclusively use other heroes, usually healers. Even as Mercy I have given up on other Pharahs because she’s just too high maintenance.
I feel like Pharah on your team reduces your chances of winning as much as having your only “healer” be Moira.
Honestly I think a good part of that belief is purely psychological now. When the change first happened it was a nerf disguised as a respec. But, then they buffed the splash damage so that Pharah’s total damage actually increased slightly. Now, it’s still slightly nerfed in terms of splash damage, but not as much, while still retaining full direct damage. End result is actually better damage with proper aim.
But right now the field is rife with counters so it ‘feels’ bad to be a Pharah even ignoring the splash damage changes.
The max splash damage nerf was the worst nerf they’ve ever given her. BECAUSE of the nerf, Pharah can no longer:
If you are also referring to the ‘buff’ they gave her splash in the last patch, it was not a buff but a revert…
OF THREE DAMAGE
(I’m not yelling/mad at you, I’m mad at Blizz for this insulting amount)
bringing her absolute minimum splash from 16.6 back to 20 damage, this is inconceivably meaningless unless the exact specific circumstance where you’re fighting someone and they are literally at 3 hp…THEN you will kill them earlier than before 
Pharah really really needs a kit adjustment. Blizz, times have changed, the game was very different 2 years ago. SO many hitscan and sniper buffs have occurred, many new hitscan heroes have been added, and more healers whose entire kit doesn’t generally reach Pharah in the air
Good. She is one of the most annoying characters.
Hmm I am not so sure. I’ll have to take some time off of work tomorrow to read your whole post and contemplate on it to fully grasp its meaning though, so stay tuned when I add further thoughts and responses to your meaningful, thought out post
Apparently not. Her impact damage was changed in patch 1.29.
I agree that Pharah needs to be looked at but you’re wrong here bud.
sauce:
Don’t forget Mei. I’ve been downing the bluebird on the reg since they nixed Mei’s falloff.
I know they changed internal numbers but the point of that post was she still does 120 for a direct hit, just as she always has since launch. Someone was implying or thought she did more than 120 after the rework to her kit
Not as much?
I think going for a chance of 2 shots kills with either 2 directs hits or 1 direct hit and 1 splash damage of 80, to still 2 directs hits or 3 shots is a pretty significant nerf
Just as when Ana was on 60dmg/shot, it was like a 4shots/kill and then they revert the 70dmg so she could 3 shots again
The way Pharah is played and how little she benefits from your teammates, force you to play passive and rely on splash and “lucky” spam on choke point, or to play very aggro and go for the 2 shots or get killed in the meantime.
Out of all the flankers she’s the one that has the less probability to survive, and all the other heroes aren’t that bad at deleting people.
It doesn’t matter if you can 2 shots a target, such as Mccree can or Ashe or Widow or even Hanzo if they dont go for the OS
I mean all the other heroes can actually dodge dmg, and survive, when for Pharah its pretty much like doomfist (even if he has better speed mobiility than her), it’s like a whole 100% commit and succeed, high risks low rewards…
She’s clearly lacking of defensive tools, and she’s no way near a lot of heroes in that category
And again she should never be considered as a fine pick ONCE AND ONLY she’s paired with Mercy.
She absolutely can’t play agressive without Mercy, and if you’re about to play her passively on the ground or way behind not even flanking, then go for Junkrat he’s doing a better job
This forum is ruled by bronzes. Pharah will never get buffs.
…
you do realize that post was from November right
Uhh okay? they don’t but alright
I play a lot of Pharah and Widow. Honestly, a lot of Pharah players are dumb and are so predictable so much that even if I can’t one shot Pharah, I can easily 2-3 shot her to death. Just like when playing Widow, you have to be very careful with her positioning and not be so visible to make sure she’s not targeted by flankers and enemy Widow, you have to do the same with Pharah. I have at countless times bested Widow, Soldier, McCree, Ashe because often, they won’t see the first direct rocket hit coming and by the time they want to take action, it’s already too late. Good Pharah makes me want to switch off Widow.