As much as I hate playing into Pharah, yeah, she needs a buff.
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She has the biggest hitbox of all the swuishy heroes but absolutely NO defensive abilities. She needs 250 health especially after the past 2 or 3 hitscan buffs
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That I donāt know, funny thing is though her changes in July actually promoted her at lower ranks and on console (mainly PS4 as compared to Xbox for whatever reason) rather than diminished her use as was intended.
I have a list of ideas that could work with some tuning, but this thread is more of a venty ramble than a suggestion/ideas thread, and I donāt wanna make it a mess from my end. Iāll have a discussion one up later.
One of the things I picked up from Valkia early on was to know the areas of all the health packs on a level and make sure you can make quick escapes to them if needed. And for the longest time it worked incredibly well even if I had a mercy to rely on. But now itās not nearly enough.
I truly think that the problems donāt stem from the fact nobody can reliably healer her, and more from the fact that she canāt reliably fend for herself on her own. At least in some capacity.
Agreed, or at least some mobility as well, maybe a momentum increase as sheās falling down?
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It might have been some of the mains from further up falling in ranks and continuing to play her. That happened with Tracer when Brigitte come into the game, and you see it when heroes are nerfed in general.
The changes were not meant to be an overall nerf, they WERE meant to make good Pharahs better, and bad Pharahs worse.
more importantly It wasnāt designed to stop her being played down there, it was designed to make it less of a stomp when she was.
I have an old post on it before it happened laying out those changes and why. To see the changes I had laid out get implemented was a surprise. But, I had a lot of the reasoning behind them written up.
Iāll be happy to join that talk, since, how Pharah interacts with different ranks is something I have put a lot of thought into. I still havenāt worked out how to solve the problem completely. Especially the make her independent from Mercy part.
Iām not sure even how to start on that, and the longer I have been playing, Iāve grown to think it may not even be a good idea to try.
One of the biggest issues surrounding her is that sheās a target.
And I had a hard time trying to figure out how to explain that, except coming out of a game where I was singled out literally by all 6 of the enemy team regardless of potential of them killing me or not. It was in QP of all things too.
Came out of a DM just now where a group of 3 Genjiās and 2 Tracers were all dueling, and all 5 diverted their attention from the fight to focus on just me, a full 200hp Pharah who was trying avoid that mess. 5 players diverting their attention from an in progress potential kill, to attack a fresh spawn flying Pharah. Sheās in a rough spot.
On the contrary, heroes that do put themselves in risky positions to become more effective like Doom and Genji find that they have ways of maximizing their survivability by getting shields for ability hits, or resetting their primary killing/escape ability upon an elim they might not have even secured.
With Blizās goal to make Pharah feel more ārewardingā they took away the reward of a direct hit, and simply made missed shots more punishing.
Again talking about these ārisk/rewardā mechanics, sheās an incredibly risky hero to play with a fraction of the reward of other heroes of a similar build would present, sheās lacking severely where other heroes arenāt.
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I like where Pharah is right now. Part of her strength is that she DOES command so much attention from the enemy. The rest of Pharahās team can get a lot done while the enemy team is having to focus on her, and, if anybody takes their eye off of her for a second, she can erase people.
You might appreciate the way Chengu Hunters used her last night to completely annihilate a GOATS comp on attack on Anubis yesterday. I was glad to see it. She can still be very effective when sheās correctly played around.
Yeah. Mercys nerf plus all of the hitscan buffs/# of heroes that are able to shoot herā¦ Itās hard to run a Pharah at all. And impossible if thereās a Zen on the other team.
Give her some shields or armor tbh.
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I wouldnāt mind a 150 HP 100 Shield or 200 HP 50 Armor Pharah to be honest.
Over all the Higher Healthpool would give her some more Survivabillty. Shields that recharge make her morie able to poke and be ok with taking some DMG while armor would help her survive against all the low dmg per pallet heroes.
Another way of buffing her would be giving her added bonuses for direct hits or Kills that could reduce or reset cooldowns on her mobility skills. Imagine a pharah that takes 1sec of her concusive Blast each time you achive a direct hit or reset the CD on Jetpack for each kill. This would make her a way more agile flying threat.
Overall the hard part balancing Pharah, I assume / believe is, that she synergys so well with Mercy that she can easily become unstoppable when played in a decent pharmercy. On the Other hand I hate the Idea of making her depending on another hero all together she should be able to Stand her ground solo.
Most other Synergies besides Goats, Rein/Zarya and Monkey/Dva are all around Ult-combos, a Grave or EMP without a follow-up is rather weak. But this makes the Kit overall not weak for those Characters.
Edit: One Thing I didnāt like since the Beta and it felt even worse after the Hitscan falloff Buffs: There is no disadvantage to your aim for running, jumping Moving at all. My Shooter-background is in CS1.5 /1.6 if you jumped around like in OW as soldier you wouldnāt hit jack (no pun intended) the recoild would just go through the roof. But in OW? Its just totally fine to Run Circles and jump a oplympic acrobatics performance while shooting Pharahs from 500m distance out of the air.
Just my 2cents
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Rocket Queen main here, and you have no idea how much I believe Pharah needs a buff, and a hard buff. Not just some sort of extra movement, she requires some sort of projectile buff and health buff in my opinion to be playable again. In my opinion, every hero in the game can counter Pharah in some way shape or form, and that is completely unacceptable for a hero like Pharah. No other hero in the game has counters like that, and Pharah needs some sort of help. Please Blizzard, help our Queen reign in the skies again.
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hereās an idea for playing pharah - donāt fly in the open. Jump to high places, hover around covers, flank when no one can see you, spam hiding behind tank
And suddenly pharah works pretty decently (dies in ult anyway)
Youre preaching to the choir by laying out the most basic blueprint for any sort of Pharah play there is.
The fact of the matter is, Pharah is nearly outclassed by every other DPS on the roster.
Low health/no defensive capabilities for a a very risk/reward hero, slow fire rate with even slower projectiles, cumbersome aerial movements making her an even greater target in the air than other heroes that get much more momentum both going up and down, paired with that low attack speed to their high ROF and shot feedback (Widow/Ashe/Genji). Most heroes only take 1 or 2 shots before they get knocked down yeah, but Pharah is at risk nearly her entire lifespan if sheās picked because she doesnāt get the luxury of a team behind, or rather in front of, her.
ā-
The newest PTR gave her about 4dmg points back on the worst case scenario outlier for missed shots. While Iām not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, I will say that 16dmg to 20dmg in the worst case scenario outlier doesnāt do much for her considering the primary function of the her nerf āchangesā was to make her direct hit shots mean more. Funny thing is since implementation, her overall accuracy stats (average, direct hit) are down across the board, itās almost as if they noticed this and said āmaybe she needs somethingā and moved the damage slider a fraction of a hair and breathed a sigh of relief.
The very outer edge of her effective splash radius shouldnāt be a concern, especially with a āfocus on direct hitsā. While I can say with certainty that my stats have suffered immensely, I can also say with certainty that my stats havenāt suffered so badly that Iām relying on very outer edge of my splash damage radius to be effective.
Comparatively speaking, Soldier got a point added to his damage. This does a way more for Soldier than the 4 points do for Pharah as those are points going directly into his primary damage output as shots connect with their target, not shots missed at the very outer edge of the effective range.
Again, Iāll take anything I can get, but the changes on the PTR do near next to nothing to reward the idea of āsecuring direct hitsā and just gives incentive for more rocket spam albeit miniscule.
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So the new changes werenāt up to your standards?
Nope, especially considering that Bliz just added a new hitscan to the game as well.
Letās just tally it up shall we?
- 7 direct counter/clear advantage hitscan heroes, soon to be 8
- McCree Deadeye buff thatāll kill her even faster now without any chance of being able to dodge once activated
- Soldier can now output 20dmg per shot
- Widow can now see health
And after patch after patch of hitscan buffs leading up to this, Pharah gets 3.75dmg added onto her minimum splash damage to compensate?
Yeah thatās not gonna cut it chief.
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Baptiste is prob not gonna her her also. Not only is he hitscan but he takes up a heal spot and he wonāt be healin her at all
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I think itās also worth mentioning that because heās a healer, there is a much higher chance of him being in your games. This will result in pharah being countered more often.
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Good news tho everyone:
D.Va and Orisa are finally affected by Concussive Blast while firing.
Just booped my first Orisa off a cliff, feels so good.
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Ashe and Bap being the new kids on the block suggests that playing Pharah wonāt be possible for a whileā¦
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I really miss being able to play Pharah. Unfortunately I think she is done being a relevant character for the forseeable future. Too much McCree, Widow, and Ashe in the game right now to even think about playing her.
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Itās gotten a lot harder for sure. Iāve had to step up my game significantly to keep up with the hitscan buffs and new additions
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Amen. Pharah is niche now at best. Even Pharmercy is laughably easy to counter now with all of the powerful hitscan. You can field an entire team of Pharah hard counters and have some still strong counters sitting on the sidelines just in case.
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