Surely there’s still the additional value of more burst and mobility that possibly gives you more time to do more damage before dying and more possible environmental kills but I agree that the numbers are a bit alarming
The ttk is slightly faster IF you land direct shots all the time.
Lets layout 2 scenarios with the new Pharah:
-
You have 100% accuracy and always land a direct hit vs a 200 HP hero:
Old Pharah: Direct hit -> Direct Hit -> dead (1.9 seconds)
New Pharah: Direct hit -> Direct Hit -> dead (1.5 seconds) -
You are a top 500 Pharah and 50% of your hits are splash on average:
Old Pharah: Direct hit -> Max Splash -> dead (1.9 seconds)
New Pharah: Direct hit -> Max Splash -> Direct hit -> dead (2.25 seconds)
If you ever do not direct hit with her projectile you kill slower
Remember this is a projectile and it can be dodged and juked out unlike hitscan weapons so 100% accuracy is unreasonable even at top 500. You can mitigate the travel time by getting closer but Pharah is penalized by getting too close with splash damage (the only character that can primary fire kill herself).
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that’s an interesting direct hit statistic since seagull’s direct hit accuracy is only 14% because he plays passively in the sky and uses rockets a lot for zoning
i never really watched valkia because watching pharah for 90% of games gets pretty stale and i don’t remember how he plays
some pros say it’s a buff and some say it’s a nerf so only time will tell i guess
Valkia plays close and dive bombs his targets. So that could be the discrepancy in accuracy.
Also, i’m not 100% sure how the game calculates the Pharah direct hit statistic. If it’s calculating only based on shots that did damage then 25% of 50% is 12.5% direct hits over all shot fired. However using this value makes the new Pharah even worse so I decided to base it on the best case scenario for new Pharah.
It’s based on total shots fired.
Personally, I think it’s a buff mostly because of the CB buff. With the CB cooldown reduction, the quick and aggressive Pharah playstyle (which has higher direct accuracy) will be much more effective.
Maybe… I hope so. The problem is concussive blast doesn’t translate to damage. I think it’s more of a survivability thing in order to compensate for the falloff buffs to hitscans plus the upcoming buff soldiers accuracy. He shoots 50% longer before being affected by accuracy drop.
Good analysis but let’s wait for the thing come out and see how it feels for the larger masses. For all we know this might be changed before it’s pushed to live.
Shame they didn’t touch her suicide ultimate.
Here’s the link for you!
I tried the new Pharah a bit and so far, it looks like the biggest benefit goes to aggressive, accurate and low flying Pharahs. Which also happens to be very risky. Flying low exposes her to easy shots by pretty much any hero, including Junkrat, and since the Mercy nerfs, she’s unlikely to have a pocket.
However, a very good, evasive and aware Pharah will likely be able to swoop in and assassinate someone from close range much more easily. It’s based on a lot of assumptions though, and my biggest concern is that expecting that type of accuracy from the average player isn’t very good for the hero overall, excluding the highest tier. We really don’t need another Widow problem where the hero is consider a throw pick for 90% of the players but is very oppressive in higher tiers of play.
We have yet to see the results though. I personally like how it feels rewarding to get two direct shots in a row.
Thanks, can’t quote your post so I did a link to it. For some reason I can’t post any non-blizzard links???
After further thought I think this is a nerf to low rank Pharahs who solely rely on splash (this is good). HOWEVER, a nerf to intermediate Pharahs who can’t quite get 2 direct hits in a row. Since direct hit and max splash won’t kill anymore requiring a minimum of half your clip to kill a squishy if you only get 1 direct shot.
Edit: Getting 2 direct hits with the new Pharah will probably feel just as rewarding as it does to do the same feat now.
Yeah, that’s what worried me a bit. Nerfing pure spammers is fine, especially since this will help people on consoles too, but very low skill and very high skill players are two extremes.
The average player will most likely feel this as an overall nerf. Perhaps it will do well to help better Pharah players who are stuck in some lower rank to climb because it should help them if they’re actually very good with this hero. We’ll see. With the hitscan buffs, I’m afraid Pharah being less consistent won’t fare too well overall.
Just played on the PTR. Getting murdered by Soldier and constant Torb turrets. The concussive blast is nice but it’s not helping with survivability enough (to be fair mobility is useless vs Torb turret). I also find that i’m still holding shots - waiting for opportune times to fire and not capitalizing on the new fire rate.
130 direct 70 splash would’ve made more sense to reward accurate Pharah’s and still reduce splash. The rate of fire increase promotes spam but a missile speed increase still requires thought and skill to land. After talking with some top level Pharahs the consensus seems to be that it’s pretty situational to hold down fire. Basically when shooting down spawn doors or for large targets such as a tank taking a extra .25 seconds to get a better shot is better than missing your shot and waiting 0.75 second for the next one. Though Pharahs focus was never to focus tank’s anyways as her slow DPS compared to another damage character and high burst was more conducive to fighting squishes.
I’m a bit confused why there is a nerf to Pharah’s as Pharah isn’t in the top 10 on any platform at any rank EXCEPT for PSN at GrandMaster and top 500 where she’s #4
Paper dps has little to no meaning in a real game environment like this game. We aren’t standing around for 5 minutes attacking anything. Every ability exists in a vacuum of opportunity windows and a thousand other variables.
It’s a neat experiment, and kudos to you for doing it. But any conclusions to be drawn from it are heavily “ymmv”.
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I don’t doubt this is a buff to pros (once they adjust their muscle memory)
With the CB buff and even the self knockback will def work in their favor. The issue is your going to be need to playing near the skill ceiling to achieve the value from her fire rate increase.
Anything below that and your game play will suffer
Yeah, I thought this damage change would be the worst part but a lot of Soldiers are appearing and melting me pretty quickly now. Sure the CB buff would help with survivability but a good chunk of encounters don’t last 9 second to actually see full use out of it.
Thank you!
This post highlights the idea that all the changes allowed for greater damage potential but it’s just that, potential.
Edit: post may have been necro’d but it’s highly relevant with a firm basis.
From my experience, it seems pretty difficult to manage the new rocket speed and keep accurate.
Well, we now have her on live and can test it for ourselves without a spreadsheet.
From my experience - she’s weaker now.
The change to splash really does hurt against faster characters like Genji and Tracer or even just running soldiers.
And I virtually never fire at the rate of fire this change gives because I need to aim between shots.
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After playing the game with these changes I don’t think the damage is the biggest issue anymore. Her survivability and usefulness has gone down.
The biggest thing I think was all the changes that have been building up these past few weeks with other heroes getting buffs being able to damage Pharah more effectively. Now buffs to Mei and Hanzo’s projectile speed affected everyone but Pharah doesn’t work well with barriers in the game. The hitscan drop off buff was pretty huge and Pharah’s biggest counter’s McCree and especially soldier have gotten some buffs to help them to dismantle Pharah. All the meanwhile the only buff to survivability we’ve gotten was 3 seconds off a 12 second cooldown. Right the pressure from everything becomes too overwhelming before 9 seconds is up.
There are quite a few very fast mobile characters that that were added recently. Pharah doesn’t optimally do damage to with her slow rockets like Moira, Doomfist, and Hammond, of those Moira and Hammond can pressure Pharah enough to force her to run or die interrupting her impactfulness. Finally these characters don’t really synergize well with Pharah.
Mercy was the most consistent healer and right now if you want to reliably be able to 2 tap people with a direct hit and a near miss you need her damage boost. Sure, I can fire more rockets but there was no consistency change (like faster rockets) to actually help skillful player land shots. I feel like i’m MORE dependant on Mercy now to perform well where I wanted to LESS synergy with Mercy and more independance.
- Theres an error in your spread sheets.
When Pharah has a full magazine of rockets (6), theres only 5 recovery instances- Not 6.
The first rocket has no “Recovery” time, its already in there, ready to go, and fires instantly. She then only needs to “recover” for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th rocket.
- More importantly: You need to be very, VERY careful when attempting to make assertions about “reality dps” when using overall accuracy ratings.
Overall accuracy ratings are just that, overall.
A player who gets 50% overall accuracy, is not going to play like theyre a flipping a coin to see if they do damage.
There will be situations where they probably land most, if not all of their rockets- 100% of the time.
Then there will be situations where they miss 3-4+ rockets.
Maybe theyre far away, spamming chokes, poking at someone way in the distance- and are hoping for lucky shots or laying suppressive cover.
Maybe theyre right above their targets, and never miss.
Either way- Using their overall accuracy to make assertions about “Reality” dps is dubious under the best of circumstances.
All said and done at the end of the day, pharah can empty her magazine 20% faster than she used to.
Where it used to take her 4.5 seconds to empty all 6, it now only takes her 3.75. Shes basically getting that 6th rocket off nearly a second sooner- And shell have all 6 down range in the time she used to have 5. One extra rocket, can be the difference between “Dead” or “alive”.
This is nothing to scoff at.
Context, never underestimate it. Never forget it. Never overlook it. Contextually, pharah is capable of releasing her volley 20% faster.
Sometimes she wont be capable of this- and will need to take time between shots.
Sometimes she will be capable of this- And will be dishing out her damage in a smaller time frame.
Its going to be a nerf for people who had a hard time landing rockets directly. Itll be a buff for people who can consistently land them in appropriate circumstances
Pharahs win rate has shot up a few % on PC in the GM level basically overnight since this change. There is a reason, and im not inclined to believe its “cuz gms dont know how to handle pharah”.
All said and done- We need to watch and see where the dust settles. But its looking like its going in a good direction, not a bad one.
Just be careful with math- emphasizing again, keep the context in mind. Overall accuracy ratings are devoid of context, and poor foundations to build such conclusions on with much merit in these regards.