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.