As a Pharah main, I am having a huge amount of trouble understanding her PTR changes. From the wording to the layout. I’m going to try clarifying it for everybody.
Concussive Blast
- Cooldown reduced from 12 to 9 seconds
This part is fine
Rocket Launcher
- Attack speed increased
- Lowered recovery between shots from 0.9 to 0.75
She now has a faster firerate. Blizzard could have said "The time between shots has been reduced from 0.9 down to 0.75
- Damage redistributed between explosion and impact
- Explosion damage reduced from 80 to 65
- Impact damage increased from 40 to 55
This is super confusing. The way Pharah’s current splash works is the damage ranges from 80-20, across a 2.5m radius. That means the MAX splash has been nerfed down to 65. HOWEVER, that 40 to 55 impact damage makes no sense. Her direct damage is 120, which means that 40 doesn’t represent anything. The only ‘40 damage value’ that exists in Pharah’s kit is her self-damage from her own rockets. However, This self-damage has been buffed in a later bullet point. The 40 → 55 damage
I cannot find where this change is in her kit. Upon doing Direct Hit testing in the PTR, her rockets still only do 120 damage.
My honest guess is that splash is only a 10 damage difference between the max and min, rather than the 60 it used to be. But this raises the Question: why was 40 used and not 20, when 20 was the original value?
- Explosion knockback reduced by 20%
Like her first change, She got her ability to juggle enemies nerfed. This seriously hurts her sustain at higher levels.
- Self-knockback range increased by 25%
This also makes no sense. I don’t feel any different when I rocket jump with her. The only notice I see from this is rather than the 40 damage per self-rocket, she only does 32.
This. Makes. No. Sense.
Now I will review what the Dev Comment says:
Which equates to what? Her direct hits have no damage buff, other than the fact that she can send rockets out faster. If this applies to splash, why isn’t it labeled as splash, like Min/Max?
So the nerfs target explosive damage. Is that her splash damage?
However, you also killed her survivability, espeically at higher tiers since the splash would be used to throw off enemy aim. Now that it doesn’t, you still don’t have the window to kill an enemy before they kill you, i.e. against Widow.
I still want to see how this plays out, but faster firerate is a horrible tradeoff when trying to dual your counters, which is necessary at higher elos.
Which is nice, but I’m drooling over the clarity here rather than it being a buff in the first place.
Overall these changes are hard to understand. The number values are very obscure, and don’t correlate with my testing.
Then I am also very disappointed because they nerfed her survivability in favor of second-hand mobility which isn’t what she needs at higher elos.
She is also unhealable outside of running a Mercy, which irritates me because I feel punished for playing her if my team doesn’t run a Mercy. That was my biggest hope for these changes, but now Pharmercy will do more damage. Pharmercy will be more mobile. Pharah still is crippled when non-Mercy healers are ran.
Overall, I want to wait and see how these changes play out. I am disappointed that these changes do not address her core issued from a Pharah player’s perspective.