I’ve seen countless metas but this specifically, where everyone and their grandma go Pharmercy for an easy win, is simply the worst. Don’t take this as a “quit” thread, but I genuinely do not want to play Overwatch until something’s done about it, I’m saying this to indicate how unfun it is to play against Pharah. Even double hitscan can no longer pressure those two enough.
And please don’t give me the blatant “git gud” advice. I’m above masters rank and I can easily say she’s worse due to her current valuable position here. -Because- of better communication, teamwork and her current value, she’s constantly shielded by Zarya, Sigma, constantly nano boosted all the while a Mercy dedicates her entire 15 minutes to right click on Pharah nonstop.
Pharmercy especially is such a clear example of a terribly - designed, low skill - high reward (and now, oppressive) combo because it not only requires the enemy to be at the very least competent at Hitscans, which therefore crosses out the entirety of low ranks (don’t even get me started on console environments) from being able to counter the combo, therefore creating a major design problem in the meantime.
And even if the enemy can play Hitscan competently, the amount of skill required to play said sub - role cannot even be remotely compared to that required to run Pharmercy in the first place (which is composed of one of, if not the easiest - to - play hero in the entire game and Pharah, who can get so much value from mindless projectile spam that it’s crazy).
Nah, they’re not GM and probably not even a Master player. The tell is that Pharah is played there even less tan Doomfist who is played even less than Torbjörn who is played even less than 76
If anything considering her state in the highest tiered gameplay even after the hitscan nerfs, they’re probably going to buff Pharah in some way in near future
I personally dont see any aspect(s) of Mercy, Pharah, or the Pharmercy combination - a synergy available to both teams, mind you - as something that can reasonably be called “terribly-designed”, whether clearly or otherwise
Pharmercy can’t easily be killed by Pharmercy, that just becomes a war of attrition with both Pharmercies attacking the other team’s ground troops, which tends to make the other 4 players on each team very unhappy.
Multiple hitscans is the most expedient solution, and they don’t all have to be DPS, Bappers and Ana can help too.
Hitscan can also be combined with Zenyatta’s discord (and Zen shots if the Zen is very good or the Pharah very low-flying) or harassment from D.Va.
Alternatively, Echo-mercy can simply go beat Pharmercy, given roughly equal skill, but that does require having a decent Echo player.
Junkrat, Doomfist, Genji, Symmetra, Reaper and Mei are the projectile heroes that are all pretty bad against Pharah. (Hanzo isn’t great, but his Storm Arrows are very fast, so he’s not terrible either).
Tracer and Bastion are hitscan but Tracer is short-range and Bastion’s Sentry makes him a sitting duck for the missiles. If you’re going to fight in Recon only, you’d be better off as Soldier… so those two are pretty much as bad as the projectile heroes.
Torbjorn’s turret does shoot at Pharah, but that’s a tactic that will only work well at low Elo, a good Pharah will just peek-shoot the turret, and even at low Elo … it’s really not that much of a threat to Pharmercy which can just heal through it.
Also Lucio, Brig, and pretty much all of the tanks besides D.Va are ineffective against Pharah/Pharmercy, so if the DPS won’t switch or need extra help supports are slightly limited and tanks very limited.
It’s not really as bad as “must have cracked Widow or we die” … but it’s also not “just makes you switch off Junkrat” either. It does very often demand DPS switches and sometimes support switches.
that, and the fact that characters who are not hitscan can also take down Pharmercy. Almost any character can do so…hitscan isnt the necessity some portray it as
What is the worst about it, and this is from a GM support, is Pharah is relatively underpowered. This is all boiling down to Mercy. Mercy’s pocketting is starting to become really detrimental to the game; the metas are just careening wildly from ‘pocket du jour’, and every hero Mercy synergies well with and is a strong pocket gets nerfed -even if they underperform without Mercy. This keeps happening, but the key problem is left untouched, and that’s Mercy.
The way Mercy enables hard pocketting really has to be reworked by this point.
mercy (with rez on cd after rework) is destined to be the pocket hero. She is indeed the problem but they will nerf every dps instead of her bcs of the huge playerbase behind her. the worst part is that countering mercy’s pocket hero is easier if you have your own mercy to pocket your dps.
That’s what the shame is; I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to boot up a game of Overwatch, excited to play a fun game…and just get begged to play Mercy for someone. It’s so boring. Her kit is boiled down to such a boring playstyle to win. I wish they reworked her to make her more interesting and engaging to play. I wish they did something to put more of a skill ceiling on damage boost for Mercy herself.
EeveeA suggested an overheat function attached to Mercy’s beams, where being attached to one teammate too long began to give diminishing results and you have to swap to someone else to recharge…something like that. Or I’ve seen people cite an inverse to Moira’s resource system, where her damage boost is a resource that needs to be refilled by healing, or something.
I don’t claim to be an exert on how to balance the hero, all I know is that it doesn’t feel good to be one of the other 5 members on a Mercy’s team (particularly as the other support, where you can’t focus on your role as much, as you’re picking up the slack for Mercy pocketting too), and it doesn’t feel good to be one of the six people playing against a Mercy, either. And, frankly, it doesn’t feel fun or engaging to play as Mercy. I know that’s an ‘opinion’, but I can pick up any hero in the game and find something fun about them, but the Mercy ‘hard pocket’ just feels boring; give her something more to do, that raises her skill ceiling to really good Mercy players can find value of their own accord, rather than through having a really nutty DPS to pocket.
I’m talking about the general use statistics for each individual heroes passed on as representative of the effectiveness of a specific composition and its counters when played in the same match.
So yeah, Pharah’s pick rate has nothing to do with this.
Thx for the non hyperbolic response. I’m curious what skill level this assessment is from. I don’t want to say get good, but I also have a hard time imagining some of the fast projectile heroes having a hard time consistently hitting a pharah. Also why do you think pharah isn’t more played at high skill levels? Do you think your assessment might only be true on some maps?
