“Brigitte, I’d love it if you could take a look at my armor sometime!”
“It’ll take some time for me to get familiar with the design, but if you don’t mind, I’d love to!”
The more I play, the more convinced I am that it’s a nerf, and a hard one at that.
She’s rewarded for actually aiming her shots? No, she’s punished for aiming her shots because you have to hold down M1 like you have a lead finger to actually see the one buff she got.
Before, you would shoot directly, and the enemy would see your rocket and try to dodge. However, they’d still get mostly hit and knocked in a predictable direction, both keeping them from shooting you and allowing you to follow up with a direct hit due to their predictable knockback trajectory. 80 + 120 = 200, so a regular squishy would die from that two-hit combo.
Try that now? You’ll still barely miss because your rockets don’t travel any faster, except you’ll only do 55 damage instead of 80, and you won’t even knock them back as far, reducing your ability to follow-up AND allowing them to more easily shoot back at you. And even if you do follow-up you’ll need a third rocket to kill them. So basically, what that amounts to is that it’s harder and more dangerous to be doing less damage.
People keep saying “it’s a buff if you can aim”, but I can’t seem to find the Pharah in the roster with the hitscan rockets everyone else is apparently using. I guess she’s better at barrier breaking now, and that’s totally a niche that’s worked wonders for other characters! /s
So adorable I vomited a little.
1 Like
It’s a nerf to people who aren’t good with her.
It wasnt people on console having a tough time (she though is literally filling the Top 500 ranks on console). It was the Aim Assistance they made for OW was terrible until the recent update (prior the Halloween update) when they reworked it and said they rewrote the aim algorithm
1 Like
It’s not even most, it’s split pretty much down the middle.
Also in the absolute best case scenario it doesn’t even benefit her that much.
But OP I totally feel the same way. There’s no real safe way to harness the new changes, even then the risk isn’t worth the reward.
“AND allowing them to more easily shoot back at you”
Forgot about that. Yeah they tried to say it made it easier for Pharah to follow up with another shot but the truth is that it just means your shots are less disorienting to the target.
You put so many hours into Pharah I think you will find a way. If you just play QP it maybe more often you get unhelpful teams. You may do well or better in Competitive? Competitive will still be hard with organized teams to counter you but it also means you will get organized team mates. I personally make it a mission to keep Pharah up when Ana and Zen. I literally sometimes just leave my Harmony Orb on Pharah and they do well. So supports will adjust or if you keep telling them but also aware when your team is needing heals so you dont just hog the heals.
1 Like
Pharah main here as well Jinx. Just posted last night about this… I’m done with Overwatch. It’s not fun anymore with these constant awful changes. The dev team is ruining the game; no clue at all what they’re doing. They’re more concerned with profit maximization vs. game balance/experience. All the other “grounded” heroes are boring to me; pharah was one of the few dps characters that was different and challenging. Time to play other characters since they’ve decided to cripple Pharah.
1 Like
Yeah. Probably the biggest thing people forget about Pharah when talking about her is how reliant she is on jostling her enemies around to keep them from shooting back. It’s her survivability mechanism.
3 Likes
That’s a good point, maybe I should do a little competitive. I haven’t played that much and after a bad internet connection dropped me from two placement matches I didn’t play again. That’s sorted now, though, so maybe it’s time to give it another go.
Well now you know how Bastion, Reaper, and Roadhog mains have felt for over a year now.
1 Like
Dunno, I’m having fun with Pharah vs Pharah duels.
I get to go up in the air and two tap the other pharah.
Boom boom.
Playing more Pharah nowadays because I can kill the enemy Pharah easier, with Pharah, over Soldier.
It’s also nice knowing I’m putting Junkrat tier hurt on enemy shields.
Frequent concussion blast means I can mess with enemy positioning, like bouncing one enemy into our team.
Or use it to deny an escaping enemy from getting to cover.
It’s also pretty glorious to have a hero that kills Pharah, Brigitte, Symmetra and Hammond, with ease.
My second most played is Pharah. I think what the real problem is, is this:
It’s one thing to have to aim, but Pharah isn’t rewarded for aiming, now is she? Hit scan like 76 and McCree are rewarded for aiming. She’s rewarded for predicting where her target will be, and the splash damage accounted for judgement errors. She’s countered by a lot of heroes now - 76, McCree, Ana, Dva… arguably hanzo. Torb can just throw a turrent on the ground behind her and she’s countered just like that. Those heroes have a much easier time lining up their shots - even a McCree. You can also see Pharah rockets coming from a literal mile away. Also, Pharah’s job is made even harder when she’s in the air because of the way she decends - by bobbing up and down eradically making it harder to aim.
3 Likes
Then it should have been a console only change… no reason to bring it to PC as well.
2 Likes
I mean, I average high gold to low plat and I think I’m awful (but surprising number of people say I’m “good” so I must be doing something right?).
I do get where you’re coming from though, the forums aren’t the best place to be looking for information of skilled players. And as a former PS4 player, I could honestly see how this might be a buff to higher levels of play on console.
However, I honestly think that the changes were put in place to raise the skill floor and ceiling simultaneously for the hero in encouraging direct hits for more damage/reducing splash damage while also increasing the fire rate to make hitting shots while holding M1 significantly harder (and in turn requiring a faster repositioning of your mouse) so that the hero requires more skill to effective in higher levels of play consistently.
I feel you man. 
I feel you so hard you might want to file for a restraining order.
1 Like
Stealth, we can argue all day about whether or not the recent changes done directly to her were “nerfs” or “buffs”. But the big issues are the indirect nerfs she’s gotten from all these hitscan buffs and stuff. Even if you consider the patch to her a buff it’s hardly enough to compensate for how hard she’s been indirectly screwed over the last few months.
1 Like
She could use a new ability, a right click ability. Or move Concussive Blast to right click and give her an E ability. I can imagine a temporary forward facing Barrier as an E ability that looks somewhat like two folded wings, with an open space in front of her head allowing headshots to still get her but negating front facing body shots, or if a Right click then I can imagine her firing a miniature micromissile flurry of 2-4 micro missiles that lock on with a soft lock that can be avoided with cover or dashes (Genji, Tracer), while at the same time still helping her somewhat against mobile targets without curbstomping them.
The micromissiles wouldn’t be a huge buff so much as a sideways buff, because she wouldn’t be firing her normal rockets while using them. The E ability could make her stationary so she sacrifices mobility and being harder to hit (To compensate a little, when the barrier breaks it might give her a short dash in a direction she’s facing or where your movement keys are directing her).
I’m pretty fond of either idea. The barrier + the dash break could make for a much more engaging playstyle particularly syngergizing with her ultimate which is often regarded as “JUST-AUGH” (Imagine Concussive blasting out from behind a corner, shielding, pressing Q to rain missiles.
When your barrier breaks, it triggers a dash in a direction of your choice similar to another concussive blast, interrupting your ult to end it early and help get you out of the situation, basically you swoop in and dive like a raptor. However you’re still vulnerable to headshots, sides, back, and so on, and because it’s not a complete cover you could still be flashbanged for example. If that’s too strong you could make the dash not interrupt your ult (You wouldn’t move at all if your ult is still going), or the dash could be removed.)
Meanwhile the micromissile burst would be another thing to do besides M1 spam which would be nice.
1 Like
If you think it’s hard for a pharah to survive, imagine Ana who gets dove by literally everyone. I play Ana a lot and most of my games I get dove by upwards of three people at one time. I can only sleep dart one person. It’s also one of the hardest abilities to land and has a long cooldown.
2 Likes