I don’t know when the last time you “experienced” Pharah from the giving POV, but at Plat and higher, especially given that Ana is so prevalent, you’re likely to see Soldier, McCree, Ashe and/or Widow right off the bat, or a Hanzo, she’s definitely not OP even in the most general sense of the term.
There was a time, back in seasons 3-6 where she could stomp unimpeded, but since season 7, the power creep has been steadily dragging her down to where she was fine back in January-June 2018, but July onwards has only made it easier to counter her, and harder to play her with the most recent change basically making her harder to play even at the higher skill tiers as oppositely suggested by the Devs. Stats across the board have fallen 15%-35% with only 2 examples I’ve seen out of 70 so far showing anyone who’s stats didn’t crash.
Damage is the same on direct hits. That’s a big change to pretty much all your rocket combos (4 splash instead of 3, 1 splash + 1 DH doesn’t deal 200dmg anymore, 1 DH + 2 splashes isn’t even reliable anymore).
But the real problem isn’t even this. They freakin reduced her knock on rockets, result : you can sidestep her rockets forever.
Let me explain, before change the first rocket was a setup, you’d knock your target up so you can predict better where you’d need to fire your next shot for a certain direct-hit.
Now it’s gone, if you don’t hit a DH your target won’t have enough air time for you to lead your shot.
This is extremely frustrating because everyone is saying stuff like “I don’t get it, numbers say that Pharah got buffed riiiiight ?”, but no.
This rocket knockback nerf also means enemies who are fighting you…their aim will be interrupted WAY less which means their aim will be way more steady on you…
Let’s just say I have gold deaths on Pharah every time I play her now. #revertpharah
Yeah, I’m a Pharah specialist and I’ve dropped like 500 SR since last season with all the changes they’ve put out to hitscan. I feel I CANNOT play without throwing unless someone picks Mercy. I’m not quitting overwatch or Pharah but I’m definitely playing a LOT less (Stardew Valley, Splatoon 2, and some other less salt inducing games)
It was far better before. I wish they’d revert Pharah. the changes make getting kills from medium/long range VERY hard so you’re forced to divebomb every single encounter and usually die trying to escape back to your team
Not being able to kill someone with Max splash hit+direct anymore was a HUGE nerf. Now you need two max splashes plus direct to get the same killing potential as before. I hate Pharah’s ‘rework’
PS I have 53% accuracy on Pharah after 400 hours, which has always been in the top 4 to 5% of all pharah players according to overbuff and masteroverwatch (when it was alive)
At first I was excited about the changes to her since I thought that they would be pure buffs to her kit and make her actually viable in high tier gameplay, but overall she’s now weaker against squishy targets and better against tanks which only ended up doing harm to her overall and made her less viable. She needed more capability to contest her 200hp counters without being any more oppressive against tanks, but they made her worse in those situations. I played her for like a week after the changes and instantly dropped her. It’s one of the reasons together with Mercy’s unfair treatment that made me almost drop OW completely some time ago
Which is exactly what they did to junk rat and look how much he sucks now. I honestly don’t understand the splash dmg reduction for pharah and junk when goats is so strong right now. Makes no sense.
I know the feeling. I used to play her 3 hours a day. Now I can barely force myself to play like 3 matches every couple of days just so I don’t become rusty. It becomes disheartening when literally 99% of all matches now have triple hitscan or double sniper+zen
or even a 6 man team that ALL counters pharah (happens all the time, enemy team is soldier, widow, ashe, ana, dva, zen or something)
No they didn’t. Don’t reply if you don’t even know what you’re talking about especially if you’re going to call other players ignorant. Here are the changes they made to her:
Concussive Blast
Cooldown reduced from 12 to 9 seconds
Rocket Launcher
Attack speed increased
Lowered recovery between shots from 0.9 to 0.75
Damage redistributed between explosion and impact
Explosion damage reduced from 80 to 65
Impact damage increased from 40 to 55
Explosion knockback reduced by 20%
Self-knockback range increased by 25%
It got rid of that old spammy gameplay of flying a mile high and left clicking stuff that died with splash damage.
I’m not a pharrah player myself but my duo queue friend is one and is able to constantly pressure and eliminate enemies, even more consistently than before.
If you were a Pharah player then you would know flying a mile high and spamming hail mary rockets was never the way to play her. The old Pharah let you chain splashes on someone to kill them since a max could do 80 damage but more importantly it booped them quite significantly, setting up a predictable movement arc and interrupting their aim.
The ‘new’ pharah had her splash damage nerfed AS WELL AS the boop it gives, so enemies are virtually instantly back on their feet and able to move outta the way plus their aim is not interrupted= kill you faster. I’m glad for your friend but there’s tons of Pharah players like myself on here that just want the old version of her back…
Being able to shoot 7 rockets in the time it took to shoot 6 is not a buff unless you tape down M1 nonstop to take advantage of the RoF and somehow magically get direct hits nonstop
Well you are a low tier player and don’t take this as rank shaming but at lower tiers this isn’t really an issue as hit-scan heroes get gradually worse the lower you go giving a Pharah more space to fly and therefore it gives her better positions to hit those rockets. Also players tend to have bad movement at that level so hitting Pharah rockets is twice as easy as it is in high tier gameplay. Lunafreya is 100% correct when she says: