Running the numbers: Pharah gets a huge buff!

Survivability: +33% more availability of concussive blast is huge.

I happen to like the challenge of using her ult at the right time & place.

And the +33% concussive blast availability helps there as well, because it is used to move suddenly & surprise opponents with Ult.

Concussive blast is honestly used poorly by most pharah players. Not many use it to displace enemies / move a Rein out of position. It’s not honestly ideal all the time for her own movement and a hitscan that can aim in high tier play won’t give a hoot about this CD change. Especially Widow.

That’s not usually a good use of concussive blast. It is for mobility for surprise attack and escape, with occasional boops off the map. Teams rarely coordinate well enough to take advantage of a Rein displacement.

This is definitely a buff targeting the highest skill players. But even low-tier who use concussive poorly, will still have it available 33% more often, so that’s more chances to do something with it that happens to be useful.

This is like saying an allahu ackbar bomber only has to wait 9 seconds to blow a few people up with him instead of 12. Great survivability, much wow.
Is 100 hp as armor or cancelable barrage too much to ask for? I guess so
#BoycottBarrage

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This feels like it should have been a console-only change, honestly.

Yeah! I’m really excited… seems like I gotta get ready to pull out my trusty old Golden Rocket launcher sometime again. Bit of a dustoff and leading rockets right into the enemy phara’s face should be no problem again. :3

2000 hours on Pharah, so, yes. (too much time on my hands, don’t ask) And I watch grandmaster pharah streamers to see what they do (that I only wish I could do, lol)

If you are relying on splash, you can still 3-shot a 200hp hero AND do it in 20% less time than before. If you get one direct hit, you can 3-shot a 250hp hero AND do it in 20% less time.

I know how often direct hits come. But you are still ignoring the whole picture. You can now contribute significantly more to blasting down barriers (160dps vs soldier’s 171).

Your splash dps is only down by 2.5% if that is what you are relying on. You can get 6 rockets (390spash) off in nearly the same time(3.75 sec) it used to take you to get 5(400splash in 3.6sec).

If all you do is hang in the air and spam it’s a mixed bag – a small nerf for killing purposes, a pretty huge buff for busting down barriers.

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To a 430+ pharah main on console, these changes seem to be great but I sadly cant touch ptr :(. But that faster fire rate seems really good for my playstyle, I try to play as quick and flicky as possible and get constantly in the enemy’s face so that seems neato. That concussion change is huge too, it’s a huge buff to her survival mid fight because you can disengage or hell even engage quicker than before. Also juggling enemies with two directs was always a chore so I hope that knockback makes it easier to line up a second rocket.

Yeah… I hadn’t even thought about how less “juggling” can make my own 2nd shot easier.

But also, since your shots are coming 20% faster, you may even get more juggling of the enemy or at least just as much.

Here is some of the facts people are not considering.

First of all. The increased rate of fire can look good on paper when you factor ONLY the numbers of damage itself. Especially if you are accurate.

However, a factor that many people are not considering is her projectile speed. Due to her current projectile speed of 35m most Pharah’s that aim for accuracy and trully impactful damage do not fire at her live rate of fire of 0.9. They take their time to gather the information and results of their previous shot.

Depending on the range at which you are firing at your target the results of your previous shot are likely to not have occurred yet or just barely resolved roughly 0.2 seconds prior. Which means it benefits a Pharah player to wait until that shot is resolved before deciding her next.

Example: I fire a shot at a below 120hp target from her optimal range for lead time and survival. Which is at roughly the 25m range. This gives the projectile roughly 0.65 seconds to reach the target. Which results in a 0.25 decision window for the next shot at the 0.9 recovery rate. Most Pharah’s don’t have this kind of reaction speed and in fact wait a little past the window to ensure the right play.

Now change the recovery rate to her new found 0.7 and you now have only 0.05 seconds to decide your next action at that range. What are your options? Pre-fire the next shot, move on to the next target and hope your first shot was good enough to finish them off, or finally close the distance so that you know SOONER then 0.65 that the target was hit.

Option one encourages spam over accuracy. Not only that but if the target is killed by the first shot you have wasted 16.6% of your clip on empty air. Which is huge on a 6 shot clip with a reload time of 1 second.

Option two risks you missing the shot on the target and allowing a weakened opponent to escape and/or get healed and continue to fight you.

Option three reduces your survival considerably.

Want us to have a faster fire rate and encourage better accuracy? Fine. These changes do not do this on there own. Want to fix that? Give Pharah a faster projectile speed that matches her new fire rate so that Pharah can get the information she needs in proper timing so she can maintain a feasible engagement range and make decisions in a REASONABLE amount of time between shots.

Otherwise this is a flat nerf for accurate Pharah players.

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Um. Just no.

The .9 seconds between shots is extremely frustrating, when I could flick for 2nd shot and its not quite ready yet. I’ve lost count of the number of times I could have confirmed a kill if the reset was faster. It is nearly always possible to line up a good next shot long before the .9 seconds is up. And you learn to anticipate the timing – you don’t hold down M1, but you are ready to click it at the exact moment it is ready.

Even in the 1-shot scenario you mention, it is far more important to confirm kill than to save a shot, so the 2nd shot followup is almost always necessary, and if it comes faster all the better.

At a range long enough for flight time to be significant, you shouldn’t be waiting for it to hit before lining up your next shot. You’ve got to anticipate the knockback because you know where you aimed your rocket, not wait & see what it does.

Pharah does not shoot constantly, but when it is time to make an impact or confirm a kill the rate of fire will make a big difference. It is much better to get 3 shots off in 1.5 seconds or 4 in 2.25 seconds, than 1.8 and 2.7 respectively. That is far less time for your target to react:

Just .3 seconds in the 3 shot case is a freaking eternity of missed opportunities.

Agreed. it is more important to confirm the kill. However this is currently the case with live Pharah as well.

The only difference here is that is indisputably more punishing to play this way with the changes. Which makes it a nerf. Not a buff.

i disagree. most pharah players dont even shoot rockets at their maximum fire rate as of now. the lead their shots first then fire. “buffing” something that wasn’t a problem and nerfing something important is a net nerf. the boop cooldown is nice as shouldd have never been 12 seconds in the first place.

she seems to favor spam more now then before. if they would have buffed her rockets to do more damage on direct hits than before and less than before on explosive then it would be a buff to talk about.

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Her directs still do 120 damage. It’s her splash that goes down to 65. So if you dive a target instead of direct+splash you need direct+splash+melee. In most cases you can get away with a 3-tap on hitscans if you get close. I haven’t tested her on PTR yet but as of now I’m hopeful.

People like to use the numbers to try and show a buff, when they leave out things like hit% etc and just reality in general.

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This is a nerf overall.

Projectile accuracy is always largely based on luck, and a rate of fire boost will help her in the moments where she is able to fire without being instantly shot down, but she’s not ever able to just sustain fire and never wants to be in a situation where she has to fire her entire clip (because that means she’s being shot at and has no cover and basically has to).

It’s a splash nerf, not a damage buff, which means it’s a nerf to her output overall. Not that her splash was useful or anything, it just fed the enemy team healer ult. She’s a crappy flying turkey of a sniper, her direct hit damage deserves to be higher.

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This is a nerf overall. Part of her strength was shooting into balls of players (where you want to direct hit one player and splash onto others) and shooting around Bridgette shields/ Genji Deflect -where you intentionally miss.

Good players don’t see the full benefit of the rate of fire increase because they shouldn’t be spamming rockets every single waking moment. They’re waiting for openings and with her terrible reload time you can’t afford to be reloading when something does present itself.

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This is especially a buff if you miss a shot… you get your next chance 16.7% sooner!

I was thinking about this but did not include it… but yes, there are many times you make a bad shot with Pharah – which is a big deal for Pharah since she is then useless for .9 seconds, which is an eternity. Reducing this by 16.7% is big.

There will be missed shots at all skill levels. This buff eliminates 16.7% of missed opportunities.

even the ones with aim are worse bc the ones that aim are not utilizing the fire rate.

Take it from someone with over 500 hours of pharah experience across multiple accounts and ranks this is a huge nerf.