Please remove pharah from the game

This is not a tilt. this is not a rage situation, nor a skill issue. Hear me out.

It’s just boring and unfun. It’s a terrible design. Now that the second tank is gone, there’s less mitigation and everyone else except tanks are super exposed of being 2 shotted by pharah’s boosted damage.

“JuSt TaKe A HitScAn aNd ShUt HeR DoWn!!1!1!” has many issues.

First of all, people from bronze to diamonds are the huge majority, like more than 85%. And many of them don’t have the aim required to land 4-5 shots in a row with ashe, for example. (And don’t forget the mercy res after that).

Second, same low rank supports don’t know that they actually need to support their hitscan to kill pharah. They just expect you to switch to hitscan and the job is done.
I don’t know about others, but 9/10 in my games that I play junkrat, they will switch to pharah mercy. And in gerenal, I rarely see pharah mercy from the beginning of the game. It’s always picked to create unfair disadvantage. I am so tired of being forced to switch from junkrat and mei to cassidy and ashe. I don’t want to play these chars.

And no, echo is a different story, because echo needs much much higher skill to perform, while pharah just needs to press left click on others from the sky, and even if misses, the splash damage will do the job.

Here is the list of heroes who can kill pharah.

Widow, Cassidy, Ashe, Bastion, Soujourn if conditions are good (5). IF!

Here is the list of the heroes who can reduce her health, sometimes even kill, but it’s much harder than the heroes above and will most likely lose against pharah mercy.

Soldier, Dva, Sojourn, Ana, Baptiste (5).

Here is the list of heroes that can do absolutely nothing against her.

Doomfist, Junker Queen, Orisa, Ram, Rein, Hog, Winton, Sigma, Ball, Zarya, Echo, Genji, Hanzo, Junkrat, Mei, Pharah (yeah, it’s such a terrible hero desing that they can’t even duel each other properly), Reaper, Sombra, Sym, Torb, Tracer, Brig, Kiriko, Lucio, Mercy, Moira, Zen (27).

27 heroes that can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING against her. And the other 5 hitscans who can must be either very high rated skilled people, or meet perfect conditions to shut her down. And if you are a tank or a poor support against pharah mercy, good luck losing 9/10 your games.

You can always give suggestions that will slightly increase your chance against her, like hiding, switching to a pocketed hitscan, and etc, but pharahs will always have an answer to that. And I know all these suggestions, that’s not the problem. Again, people below masters ranks will not be able to constantly shut her down. Just sometimes, or even never. And it’s absolutely a horrendous gameplay when there’s a hero that forces everyone to hide just by left clicking and existing. I don’t want to hide, I want to play my game.

Yes, skill issue can be a reason to lose against pharah mercy, I don’t deny that. My main point is that it’s very boring and unfun to play against, and it should be removed, or reworked to something else completely. And from now, new heroes need to be designed like ramatra, which means they should have powerful abilities (xcept for his ult which is kinda op i think), but they should not create huge disadvantage just by existing.

39 Likes

I actually agree with flying in this game being a mistake, especially when it’s been years and people still can’t deal with it.

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Maybe it’s time to leave hyperbole-land? :woozy_face:
Dont mind me just re-quoting myself for the billionth time

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Nerf mercy and pharah becomes balanced

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Hard countered by Dva, Soldier, Sombra, and Baptiste? This is a joke, right? The only people who can constantly shut her down are the 5 chars I mentioned. Others can fight against her, tickle her, nothing more.

If you think about it, some ultimates allow you to fly for a long period like Sigma and Mercy. It’s so obvious that flying is a big advantage, otherwise why would they add it into ults, rights?

I don’t agree with any nerfs toward supports. We already having hard times.

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No it’s not a joke. They literally hard counter her, are you just closing your eyes and pretending they don’t exist?

Have you ever seen defense matrix eat entire barrages or her bullying pharah and killing and she has enough health to do so every time

Soldier’s whole kit including his self heal and Tac visor (one of the three autoaim guaranteed kills on her)

Sombra’s ability to turn off her flying and hack status makes her take more damage too,

or bap’s long range hitscan gun/self heal/immortality/ability to keep jumping and never be in splash on ground (airborne targets are extremely harder to hit with rockets too)?

You’re just gonna make yourself look silly if you keep trying to argue that “27 heroes can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING against her”

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it is an advantage and it’s also counter intuitive in a lot of ways. You either look up or you don’t, and then miss on something else that’s going on

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Not supports, just mercy

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Depends also on the rank.
In lower ranks hitscans can’t easily shoot her down and if she has a Mercy pocket she’s very problematic, because you need to delete her down quickly or she will be back to full health in no time. Also, Mercy will most probably resurrect her if she’s shot down far enough.
I think that having a hero that is basically a free win in lower ranks is not healthy.

6 Likes

I personally don’t hate Pharah but she does seem like one of those heroes that goes against their whole “no hard counters” thing they supposedly wanted for OW2. A significant portion of the cast can’t do any meaningful damage to her. But her flying is a significant part of her hero identity.

If they made her a rocket jumping hero with a jetpack type boost instead of permanent flying, that’d be fun, make her a skill-based mobility hero.

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This might be an argument against just pharah, but there’s a ridiculous difference between pharah and pharah + mercy. Very few things in this game require comp swaps like pharah mercy

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This sounds a lot like people complaining about one shots like widow. You’re forced to play behind cover and you need to change your comp to counter her. However, it seems like you don’t want to or refuse to switch to a counter to pharmercy.

A single dps should not counter pharmercy for the same reason a single diver shouldn’t be able to kill a pocketed widow - you’re fighting a 2v1. Get another teammate to help you since it’s a team game.

Good tracking with soldier can delete pharah even when pocketed if they don’t pay attention to cover.

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I do hate pharah she is very annoying to fight but my reason is i always in games like this 1 trick the tank role as i am not a good dmg and i cant play support well.

Pharah practically counters every tank which is very frustrating and what annoys me more is if anyone should counter her its ramattra but his ability is not high enough.

Pharah with mercy is toxic and is very unfair to play against especially now where there is 1 less tank less shields and cc in ow2 the main issue though is mercys dmg boost and the fact blizzard are removing one shots like roadhog was a great counter to her.

What i would do to balance pharah is to make her 15% slower in the air and slightly increase her fuel consumption. Flight is very powerful and unfun to fight against.

Pharah still would have good dmg but be more punishable but she still can use buildings and roofs to play around but with mercy and her current flight speed she is not easy to hit has good dmg and when there is pharah a support will go mercy and pocket them so she barely gets punished flying out in the open as mercy especially if they are good will not die and keep pharah alive or res her.

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Yeah you can’t really do much unless you pick dva and fly at her. The thing is, not every role is meant to have a counter for every character in the roster. Unfortunately, you have to rely on your teammates. If they refuse to deal with her, then just accept that it’s GG and move onto the next game.

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Pharah forces people to switch off Junkrat + Reaper. That’s about it. The only support that can’t at least harass her is Brig. The tanks that mostly can’t harass her are Reinhardt, Ball, Doomfist, and Zarya.

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I completely agree with you man

Flying isn’t the problem. Because Echo can fly and she’s never talked about in the same problematic fashion.

It’s Pharahs erratic flight, he ability to stay in the air for long periods and how she interacts with Mercy.

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I agree with most of this besides sombra. I would hard argue against ow2 sombra countering pharah. Its hard for her to even land a hack on a competent pharah, and even if she does, pharah’s flying is only disabled ror 1 second. Id put her in the problematic list if anything.

The list of either extremely anti-fun or incredibly unfair characters in OW is massive, and OW2 made it worse with Sojourn.
Hog, Sombra, Symmetra, Sojourn, Junkrat, Cassidy with flash (even now really), Mei, new Orisa…other characters can be super annoying like Widow or Tracer, but in fairness, they demand skill. It’s annoying to be pounded by them, but at least they are characters you need to get good for.

But far and away atop the list of horrible mistakes, Pharah holds the throne as the most unacceptable character of this game. There’s just no comparison to how unfair she is. Fly behind, instant boop to death, double rocket strike to death, infinite sustain with Mercy, hide far away and pelt forever, get shot, instant rez from hiding spot, 3D movement with no damage reduction from distance vs 2D movement that needs to aim, AoE damage, instant escape button, flank without footsteps, aim poorly and still get free value, and an ult where all you need to do is come behind and press A to delete an entire team.

Pharah is so incredibly broken and unfair that she is worse than Hog. And Lord knows I can’t stand to see his fat behind anymore even on my own team.
Everyone in the higher levels basically goes “meh, if you can aim, it’s fine”. When in truth, by their standards of “aiming”, you are either in the top 10% of players, or you’re bad.
What an enlightening take on game design by our elite tryhards.

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I think Echo is just as annoying from a design perspective.
When originally thought out, it was probably amazing for the team to think “let’s make characters that can fly, yeahhh” and then in gameplay it’s like ehhhh…

1 Like