Thought Pharah was useless before?

General Discussion
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With the advent of these new changes in damage fall off, including the
no damage fall off to Mei’s secondary fire, it’s come to my attention that if Overwatch had no place for Pharah before, it definitely doesn’t now.

If people thought Pharah was useless without a Mercy before, imagine it now, with all these new changes.
Not only this newer patch, but also the Sombra patch, as well as buffs to Ana, and the like.

I know I’m preaching to the choir for most people out of diamond, but I understand why devs aren’t addressing her obvious uselessness.
And it’s because at lower levels, she tends to dominate because most people haven’t learned yet to look up and shoot.

I’ve played Pharah almost since launch, and it’s always been a struggle to deal with “meta” picks, and with people that assume you’re throwing because of the Pharah pick with no Mercy, and this is nothing new to off-meta picks to hear about.

I don’t necessarily know what I’m asking of the devs here, because I know how dangerous a buff can be, but at Pharah’s current state in the meta:
she doesn’t come close to touching it.

TL;DR: Make Pharah great again (meaning make her viable in anything, she’s literally trash tier)

Sincerely, a Pharah main that managed to get to GM
then shortly-after quit because they didn’t realize that Moira was also a counter to her

P.S. Saying that she’s fine because Mercy exists isn’t a good answer

P.S.S. I don’t care about console balance, PC is where it’s at, ask Blizzard to make patch changes different for console or something idk

10 Likes
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World Cup scrims show that Pharmercy is perfectly fine at the moment, even in a double sniper meta and is actually fairly meta.

You did, however, say to ignore Mercy in my post. Pharah on her own isn’t strong, but how would you buff her with the combo in mind? how would you buff her on her own in a way that wouldn’t make the combo overpowered? It’s fairly hard to buff her when Mercy is overpowered and Pharah is tied to her strength.

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Slight increase to the momentum of her jump jet and jet pack.

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That was exactly my point before. I know how dangerous a buff can be to Pharah because of Pharmercy, which was why I wouldn’t know how to even begin touching her.
I just think it’s unfun to have to depend on a Mercy.
This could be just a moot point to bring up, and the devs don’t mind it because it goes into the spirit of the game being a team-based game and all.

Pharah feels like a sitting duck in a game where almost all heroes have movement options.
[EDIT:] Better movement options

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You think Pharah would be better with an air dodge perhaps?

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Sad truth. Its a really hard life for us Pharah players when everyone is getting buffed around us, especially hitscan and snipers now, and a new hitscan coming out, when the last buff Pharah got was November of 2016 to her hovering, that’s the last buff she literally got…a quality of life change over 1 and a half years ago to get around the map slightly better…

Every match nowadays has double hitscan or double sniper, half the healers can’t reach you in the air, and none of the shields/barriers do. I don’t know why I still put up with playing her, it’s borderline masochistic at this point

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Pharah will Always be limited to PharMercy it seems.
Can we finally agree that this is bad game design? A hero’s viability completely relying on one single hero.
Look what it did to Bastion. They want this to be the case with a lot of heroes.

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Part of me kept playing her cause I liked the challenge of besting the 2 hitscans on the other team without a Mercy plugged into me, but yes, I have to agree.
The meta is not nice, and playing Pharah is just asking for someone to shut off your fun.

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Good.
Maybe they will fix Pharah then. She is broken and they refuse to rework her.

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I was gonna make a nice post about how these falloff changes open up possibilities to buff her but nvm since you don’t care about me I don’t care about you

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As long as were spitballing ideas. Would converting Phara’s health from 200 health to 100 health and 100 shields be a good idea. That way if she was caught without a Mercy and was almost dead she could duck into cover for a bit and be able to come back in a little bit? “The new Symmetra is very close to her in playstyle now except for firing from rooftops as opposed to just being limited by jump jet and hover cooldowns”. Too much of a change or the right direction? Thoughts?

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The reason I say this is because console is vastly different from PC.
Console has problems PC doesn’t.

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Some heroes have niches and other heroes complement each other. It works well because the game allows the player to switch. If they made every hero viable in every situation and in every map regardless of composition they’d have to homogenize the characters.

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Would help, and would make sense (she’s the most physically armored squishy in the game just going by her skins!!!), the vast majority of her issues is survivability. Half the healers don’t reach her (lucio aura/lucio ult/zen ult/ana grenade/brigitte passive/moira in general) and none of the shields/barriers of her team’s tanks, but the biggest problem of all is her ult. Just let her cancel it early or move during it, something, I’m so tired of saying 'JUSTI-HEUGHH"

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I know it does but seriously this change is a blessing the reason they were hesitant to buff pharah was definitely due to how hard it can be to kill a hero up high in the sky I can see them adding armor to her base kit mayby a new ability or something like that since now people are able to take care of her better than before

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Yea it is definitely a chore trying to heal her. Personally the only healer i’m really effective with for that is Mercy.

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I totally forgot about how armor actually has that regenerating property. Wouldn’t be a bad idea to consider it.

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Oh armor doesn’t regenerate, just shields. Though either one would be helpful.

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Blizzard would look at all these suggestions and decide that what Pharah needs is for concussion blast to be her ult and for Rocket Barrage to be made an ability

Fixt.

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I think Pharah has always been a difficult subject. On the one hand, I see a lot of people that just rail on her, and that is usually because of Pharmercy, and I understand that. It’s honestly part of the reason I dislike the combo. It’s really annoying, and (tbh there’s some sense of pride in this) I really don’t like the feeling that I’m dependent on Mercy to be good.
Either way, I’m on board with a health buff, but I don’t think it’s gonna help.

1 Like