Re: Seagull's comments.. Pharah is in a worse spot than Tracer

General Discussion
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I don’t know why Tracer is always the one to be lamented over being made useless and used as the centerpiece of these arguments. I guess it’s because she’s the DPS darling of the GM’s who can use her to her max potential, so people forget about Pharah. If there’s a hitscan that’s even halfway decent on the enemy team, it’s likely you need to get off of Pharah. She has so many hard counters, and then they go ahead and nerf her splash damage while buffing falloff damage on the hitscans for such a bizarre reason.

At least with Tracer, even if enemy has a Brig, it’s not a given you really need to switch. You can in theory just avoid her range. Brig’s armor can’t be everywhere at once to foil Tracer’s effectiveness. Pharah vs. hitscan though, good luck.

IMO they need to revert that falloff damage buff and give her a self armor ability like torb or something as well. She’s just in such a horrible un-fun spot if you have someone on the enemy team that can mildly aim. Sure if the enemy team is dumb and no one goes hitscan in hopes the Pharah just disappears in lower ranks, then yeah you have your fun… And even then, you still get countered somewhat by Dva, Ana, Tracer, Reaper, Moira, Zen, Sombra, Torb, Orisa…

The biggest issue is her mobility in air and being able to get to cover as fast as a ground unit can. Her usefulness is optimal when she is above the enemy, but not so far in the air that you can’t land direct shots. But this is really a suicidal play style since she has no good way of ducking out to cover and it puts her in range of so many attacks.

What if she could actually just straight up fly through the air instead of only hover at the speed of a Lucio speed boost every 15 seconds or so? Just ideas.

Some comments from a Reddit thread from those that have spent a lot of time on her:

" As an ex-Pharah main with over 100+ hours, I approve this message,

1. Personally, I’ve always hated pharmercy. Most the time my mercy would die/forget to heal the team/or games would feel unnecessarily stalled.
2. I remember a time when I could outplay a hitscan, and jump a hanzo, but now Ana literally 3 shots you in less than a second(also applies to mercy pockets)
3. Why can junkrat take practically no damage to his bombs and ult(D.VA too), but pharah(now that I mention it, what about bastions ult) dies to her own ult
4. Ashe is out, pharah is unplayable at this point

Lucky I quit pharah by season 6"

“Former Pharah main (now sym main lol) with over 2000 hours since season 1. GM for every season and reaching the top 500 in two seasons. I gave up Pharah after realizing that without Mercy she is pretty much worthless and with mercy, you better hope she is being played by someone who can balance between flying and supporting the rest of the team because if she can’t, YOU as the pharah will be blamed for it. Now that every single character except like 3 can hard or soft counter pharah, there really is no point in playing her.”

2 Likes
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Theres a LOT of DPS in a worse spot than Tracer

2 Likes
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Something cool for Pharah could be to let her do a “ground pound” kind of attack if she presses shift while the jet pack is on cooldown (she even has a highlight intro about it). This could let her do a little damage or more importantly get out of the air much faster if she was in a bad spot.

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The brig changes don’t help tracer.

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i have watched the valkia stream on blizzcon with the developer josh.

he said that pharah was also changed because of ashe.

actually they tried to improve her against ashe so far i understood…

it just made pharah worse… without mercy on her all the time she is free meat on pc for every hitscan.

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I don’t understand the logic behind reducing splash damage but increasing rocket speed as a buff. Reducing splash means you need to be even more accurate with your rockets in which case speed in firing them means not much since if anything you need to fire less to promote accuracy. being more accurate means your brain needs to be a genius at trigonometry or you need to be in closer to the enemy to be more accurate meaning you’re just suiciding.

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Um… Pharah can kill hitscan players. Especially with her recent changes, Pharah’s TTK with direct hits is much faster than before and she can actually compete with hitscans at mid-range. It’s just harder for Pharah to lead her rockets perfectly than it is for hitscans to shoot back.

Pharah vs Hitscan is only in the hitscan’s favor if Pharah is playing out in the open where everyone can shoot at her. If she uses her jets to peek high corners instead of flying around directly overhead, her burst damage can get a lot of work done with very little risk required. A ground Pharah is now about as effective as a Junkrat outside of Junkrat’s mine range.

Seagull’s commentary on the subject was the Hitscan has an advantage against Pharah, but that Pharah can pretty easily play around them and still get things done. The presence of hitscan dictates where Pharah can safely play, but it doesn’t prevent her from entering her effective range.

The contrast with Brigitte vs Tracer is that Brigitte prevents Tracer from entering her most effective range. Tracer’s damage falloff comes into play. Pharah doesn’t have damage falloff, so Hitscan vs Pharah isn’t as strong of a counter as Brigitte vs Tracer in a team game.

The only reason why Pharah is in a bad spot right now is because Mercy’s healing output kinda sucks.

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not even that its because tank heavy comps rule the meta right now.

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Pharah deals more damage to tanks now than ever before because of her fire rate increase. She’s a pretty ideal counter to GOATS with the right support behind her. D.va is the only hero in GOATS that can effectively harass Pharah.

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right, however goats is heavy sustain heavy health, you may be hitting a lot of shots and building a lot of ult charge, but by the time you’ve done enough damage to kill anything the comp has killed your team

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Why should any one character’s strength be so reliant on there needing to be a certain other hero on the same team to support it?

None of this really makes sense. Your point is that she can still be effective, but only if she makes her life hard by having to duck and poke around environment. OK, so that means she can’t really spam if she’s in cover half the time trying to avoid being 3 shot or 1 shot by a sniper. Spam which has been made even less effective with the range reduction recently. Then it also makes it hard to be in the open long enough to calculate direct hits.

The “best” playstyle you’re promoting here is a chore and not worth the risk/reward of the hero in any way. If by your opinions, that is the way Pharah needs to be played, WHY play her over other DPS which are way more consistent and have easier means of survivability when engagements get iffy?

1 Like
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That’s a good question, and I don’t have an answer for you. I can say, though, that Pharah isn’t the only one with that kind of problem. At least she only requires one pocket support to function properly. Other heroes, like Bastion, currently need an entire team built around them instead of just one other hero.

Only until the biggest threat gets picked off. Pharah vs Widow at mid-range is all about who sees who first, and if Pharah can sneak around into a position that lets her kill the Widow, she gets 15-30 seconds to fly around killing everyone else uncontested afterward.

Pharah is the only damage hero in the game capable of loitering in the air. She has projectiles that are effective at all ranges, and because of her flight is uniquely capable of finding angles from which to use them against slow-moving or stationary targets. She is the ideal damage hero to play against Torbjorn and Symmetra for that reason, because she can easily destroy their buildables without having to deal with walking through chokepoints and getting hit by them.

There are other specific uses for Pharah, but the important thing is that she does have her niche where she’s very effective even without Mercy at her side.

Killing triple tank comps just takes a bit of extra help to get the job done.

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S76 reaper and junkrat are 3 that are worse than pharah and tracer.

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tracer’s being in a bad spot is basically entirely on the meta

tracer herself is amazing in a world where brigitte doesn’t exist

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Which isn’t really a good thing considering the vulnerability and how so many other heroes can make that loitering hell.

Eh “effective”… If her splash radius wasn’t reduced, she would be more effective at longer ranges, right now it’s like mid range and nail those direct hits or bust.

I’d say Torb yes, but Sym I would say it’s more Dva and Winston. Pharah would likely more often need to be in front of the team and aiming backwards to take out turrets since any smart Sym isn’t going to put the turrets on the path of the enemy in the open (Meaning Pharah is now in the air and looking away from the enemy), they get tossed behind the enemy or above a choke. How would Pharah safely get rid of turrets in front of the team above a choke if she has to fly in front and expose herself?

How? Reaper has wraith to get to safety, junk can spam for much safer spots.

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yep. reaper can spam from safe spot to do 5 damage a pop

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But that’s not you play reaper to his most effective. Backline the squishies to death and wraith back to your tanks.

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he is just bias because his main heroes are 50% countered when reaper bastion and s67 are 90% hard countered GG give him a lolipop to shut him up.

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… Symmetra Mei bastion Sombra mcree…

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Oh and Moira…