No, Pharah needs to stop flying because “RNG your way into someone and/or multiple someones who can/will play hitscan at a decent level or lose” is atrocious game design. There aren’t very many characters left who hard force enemy comps like Pharah does. Widow and Ball are the only two others I can think of and they both get regular complaints about how multiple people have to switch to specific characters to have a realistic chance of killing them.
People love to mention how Overwatch was designed as a game about switching to counter from some dev interview at launch 7 years ago without realizing that by and large the game has moved away from hard forcing swaps with the exception of maybe 3 characters. Pharah among them.
Very considering she is the most mobile characer in the game on top of having small hitbox on top of also having hp regen.
Also gl trying to aim at her while getting booped by pharah missiles.
You can deal with AD spam on the ground very easily. High rate of fire, AoE, spread, etc. When you have a character in the air that moves up down left and right from range many of those options are not viable anymore. Nothing AoE explodes in the air except Sigma hypersphere and junk concussion mine. Spread weapons (shotgun) have dramatica fall-off after 10m and none of them (except Dva) fly in the air to close distance.
Predicting projectile on a character that can concusion blast herself, thruster, or use passive rocket booster to instantly change momentum in various ways prediction projectile is insanely difficult to pull off reliably.
While Pharah actually has that very option that works well against AD spam. A massive AoE explosion.
This is the core reason Echo is actually far less of a problem. Echo does not have perm flight and she doesn’t have easy aim AoE explosion.
Mercy + Pharah is the better support combo, but you can still have a very annoying Pharah with just Brig repair pack + inspire, a zen orb on her 24/7, Ana boosting her, a Kiriko pre-firing heals. There are many supports that can make Pharha very survivable.
In many cases it really is actually easier to not counter hitscan and just go full dive as a team and watch as Pharah struggles to get any value because all of her targets are zipping through the air, moving quickly, wall climbing, recalling, teleporting, etc. and not being easy to hi where her slower projectile speed is actually a weakness.
In many cases, I’m like place stay on hitscan when I’m Pharah. Its so easy to hit you Widow/Ashe/Ana when you move at 50% speed scoped in making 2shotting you insanely easy compared to actually trying to hit a Genji with wall climb, deflect, and swift strike making him never touch the ground.
If she isn’t healed 24/7 she is really not that challenging to deal with.
Even if you don’t kill her she needs to bail out before can get annoying again.
Mercy + echo is also very annoying but is used less only because it is less efficient.
If you ever studied top 500 picks or OWL you’ll find Echo makes appearances without Mercy in high ranks alongside Tracer, Sombra, Cass. etc. Echo is probably one of the strongest projectile DPS in the game alongside Hanzo, but they tend to get overshadowed by the DPS picks. Tracer, Sombra, Widow, Ashe, etc.
Mercy/Echo is very powerful, but the skill required to use it is much higher for many of the reason mentioned before. You aren’t using a massive projectile AoE ot hit targets easily. You have to actually learn how to aim from far out and up close as Echo. Her value is much higher as well in her ult and better burst damage. Pharah only only two tap.
Echo dumping 2 abilities and some primary fire damage can burst through 300hp in <1sec if you know how to aim. Though you get value based upon how good your aim is at. Pharah is to Moira as Echo is to Ana/Baptiste.
What hitscan are too good? just Widowmaker atm and she doesnt have falloff damage.
Soldier lacks kill potential without a pocket Mercy, Sombra it’s just used for E.M.P and to counter some tanks like Doom or Ball with the hack ability, Tracer you have to be really good with her to add value in the match…
Because you remove Mercy, and buff Pharah to be good without her, and…
Nothing in their argument changes what so ever. It is still just as valid.
If you removed Mercy from the game, you would end up having to buff Pharah right? Since she isn’t good with her.
Once you have done that, all of the things which OP is complaining about STILL applies. So it is not a Mercy problem, since removing Mercy doesn’t remove the problem.
I’m with Lara on this one, removing the falloff from hitscan would be an awful idea.
My point is saying “It is Mercy’s fault” when OP is saying something, when removing Mercy wouldn’t fix it… it isn’t really thinking the problem though.
I would LOVE to see your theories on what that would look like, because…
It would have to be REAL strong in high ranks, and not real strong in low ranks (since Healing is the other way around).
And it should be something people complain less.
And honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen a single person manage to tackle that problem. It is CRAZY hard to do.
Also, almost anything they replace it with, would probably be a bigger headache than Rez.
That said. There is a better Pharah nerf, now that I think about it.
Make it so that the splash damage has, increased explosion falloff radius at range, so direct hits count for full damage, but it does even less damage for indirect hits at range.
Either dependant on where the rocket was fired from. Or even better, use the TF2 method and make the falloff dependant on where the Pharah player is, relative to where the rocket explodes.
Unlike pharah you can skip countering almost every hero in the game without being at a severe disadvantage. Countering exists if someone needs some stopping power. Like how you can play a beam hero/winston against a good genji. And a good genji player can usually still do well if he plays his cards right. He’ll just be limited.
You’re making up words at this point. At what point i said i didn’t like aiming?
Just like Ducky said Echo falls down faster compared to pharah. Her flight is usually used as a movement/escape ability while pharah’s whole deal is to hover.
You don’t see me complaining about Junkrat , Genji , Torbjörn , Mei , Winton etc. do you? If i want to play a game i want to have fun not play a be locked behind only handful (maybe even less) of heroes because you constantly see a single character simulation.
Because i don’t like being locked behind handful or maybe less characters because people play a specific character constantly. Like i said before , not a deal problem but a being annoyed of being forced to play specific character(s) problem.
Felt the same when Winton was meta on OW1 (ngl though i kinda liked reaper)
Felt the same when Pharmercy was meta on late Y1/early Y2 of OW1
Counter is supposed to be used as a strategy and is supposed to be optional. We’re not playing chess.
Not to mention that devs said that they are aiming to make the game around less hard counters.
Exactly what i’m trying to mean. Thank you.
Pros also mentioned that at some point instead of dealing with pharmercy you should deal with the team instead and kill her last so you’re right on that definitely.
And agree on the hitscan part. I usually avoid playing widow,ashe because of that. Was using Cassidy to deal with her but recently switched to 76 because 1- It’s easy to keep pressure on her and 2- I kinda started to suck at aiming with cass since i kinda put him down because i got bored of him.
Putting an end note after all these replies :
I’m not sure what people aren’t getting here. I’m not saying nerf Pharah , not saying make her useless but instead saying REWORK her. Make her less of a headache and keep her fun for the people who geniunely main them. People i saw who played pharah usually played for cheese not for fun.
My whole point here is that i want to have fun with the game , play a variety of characters and so on. How fun would the game be if you would just play a single character since 2016?