Pharah small buff suggestions

General Discussion
1

Pharah is my main hero, I play her more than any other hero, and I’ve noticed, although her damage output is amazing, and her current abilities feel tight and responsive, certain heroes can eliminate her extremely quickly.

Soldier76 is the worst for this, especially on consoles, timing a recording of just him shooting at me from relatively long range, he eliminated me in less then one second, which is absolutely no time to react to it, and I understand that heroes like Soldier, McCree and Widowmaker are designed to counter her, and thats fine, but I think some counter her a bit TOO hard, so I’ve came up with some ideas that should increase her survival chance just slightly without making her too powerful;

Give her armor, replace her health with 100 or even 50 armor, this will make fully automatic heroes do just a little less damage to her, giving her a chance to retreat and survive the encounter.

Give her a dash, like Hanzo, maybe make her use up fuel for doing it, it would make quick getaways easier and it would feel extremely different than Hanzo on account of her flying all the time.

Give her some sort of quick drop down ability, basically the opposite to her Jump Jet, allowing her to quickly descend back into cover.

I believe that any of these would help her immensely, and make fighting her counters still be a huge challenge, but actually able to win if played perfectly right.

On that note, I would also like to address her Ultimate ability Barrage, although devastating with correct positioning and timing, Pharah almost always ends up dying from using it, to an extent where “Justice rains from-ughh!” is a well known joke the community uses constantly, and again, I believe some small buffs would definitely help;

Remove self damage, you already did it with D.Va and Junkrat, if im correct, Pharah is actually the only hero now that DOES do self damage with her ult.

Give slight resistance, not a whole lot, just a tiny bit, even just an extra 100 HP for the duration of the ult would help, a stationary target is extremely easy to eliminate for absolutely any hero.

Give her slow movement, nothing fast, extremely slow, but just enough to do quick positioning if you didnt ult in the PERFECT spot.

I hope the Overwatch team actually gets a chance to take a look at this, and considers my suggestions, I would like to clarify I dont expect, or even want absolutely all of these buffs to be implemented, as I think adding all of them would definitely make her a bit too strong, but I do hope a combination of them, or even just a single suggestion i made on this topic gets added in the near future.

thank you for reading.

1 Like
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Stopped reading right there

2 Likes
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i dont exactly understand why this is the case, but watching gameplay, Soldier is almost always worse than McCree on consoles, but its reversed on PC

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I doubt Pharah would get any sort of buff as long as Mercy exists. She makes Pharah very strong, and without a Widowmaker or Zenyatta (to offset the damage dropoff of other hitscans) to deal with her, she is almost unkillable. This is the problem with Pharah, very strong when pocketed, vulnerable when not. I think she would need a rework, and part of it should be something like reducing her healing taken while airborne.

4 Likes
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if you’re having a problem with hitscan dps heroes, as pharah on console, then you have a HUGE problem

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only the fully automatic hitscans, almost SOLELY Soldier, the approach i use for my counters are usually, to find out where they are, find a good angle, then concussion and jump jet my way on top of them, eliminating a Soldier quickly is key, but many times i swear that even just peaking for a brief moment to figure out where he even is gets me killed, they almost always have thier eyes glued to the skies, completely ignoring the rest of my team JUST to kill me

7

Nah, just means you have to get used to playing against competent hitscan players. The learning curve from an ok Pharah to a good Pharah is pretty steep.

8

I’m not a console player, but the forums are filled with complains about Pharah Mercy on console, and her being in the meta on console all of the time. Sorry but I believe that people that are not pharah mains on console.

one of example of it:

fun fact: the first and only player to reach 5000 sr on console was a pharah player

1 Like
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So you want to just single handidly wreck the enemy team even when they are running your counter. Seems fair

10

Yeah, Pharmercy is definitely overpowered on console and Pharah has always been a strong pick.

That doesn’t mean there’s no learning curve which can frustrate players. I was basically saying that OP needs to git gud.

11

Over half the roster cant even put damage into pharah theres only 3 or 4 they can do it reliably, add that to the lack of precision and turn speed on console. She needs a console specific nerf not a buff

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To weaken Pharmercy without weakening either Pharah or Mercy as individuals (whether they do need to be weakened as individuals is a different topic), how about giving Pharah additional fuel (and maybe some armour) in exchange for losing fuel whenever she takes damage? It would mean she’s more durable by herself, but benefits less from healing since healers can’t restore lost fuel.

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Pharah doesn’t need armor (even if it made sense since she’s covered by it) as she’s very balanced against everything else except Widowmaker, McCree and Zen+DPS hit-scan combo. Against those you’ll just sometimes die. That’s it. You just die. Especially against Widowmaker or McCree+Zen even when you’re playing Phamercy. Armor against these comps wouldn’t really achieve anything and it’d make her even stronger against other heroes that struggle with her. The only redeeming quality in armor would be that it’d make her able to sustain Tracer a bit better.

What she needs is a rework on her E ability. In maps with environmental danger it’s a good ability, but outside those maps it’s arguably the worst ability in the game (even worse than combat roll or venom mine) and does nothing but give you a conditional and clumsy mobility. A lot of people like to think that it’s useful in booping ultimates or heroes away from teammates when in reality it’s more inconsistent at these things than Sombra’s current hack. It’s not really something considerable. She could use some better ability as she’s already deprived from effective abilities due to her strong passive and rockets.

Hanzo got storm arrows instead of scatter that could never hit you, hit-scans are getting damage falloff buffs and mobility creep means that she needs help more than anything. Except on console where phamercy is top dog and should be balanced differently than on PC.