What are you thinking with buffing Pharah?

It’s a huge buff, she’s more mobile and she’s higher damage - it takes no skill to get direct rocket hits on tanks, so now that her DPS is +18% she’s just going to crap on GOATS comp like a diarrheatic pigeon.

So, that’s definitely an image I needed in my head right now.

6 Likes

Actually most Pharah mains are not ok with this. Its a net nerf. Even Seagull agrees it is not a buff, he even stated he may not play her after it goes live considering Mccree and Soldier are also getting buffed.

2 Likes

IMO she will be nerfed. Maybe if the rockets flew faster, yeah , it would be a buff…but no. Now she fires faster though,and she’s more mobile, we’ll see…

It’s a nerf on console because she doesn’t rely much on splash damage and needs to land more direct hits while also making her easier to hit, since her explosions don’t do as much knockback as before.

In PC it is a buff for those that are good with her. She relies more on direct hits so if the player is not skilled enough to land direct hits then she will suffer.

So it’s a bit more complex than just straight buff or straight nerf.

If you have top 500 levels of play and accuracy you see a 5.19% increase in damage overall if you NEVER not fire in order to maximize the rate of fire increase. Remember these projectiles are slow and good players will dodge and juke out even top players, so not every shot hits. That 18% increase is only visible if you have 100% direct hit accuracy.

Here’s some math:

3 Likes

Ok I see. So to sum it all up, if I got this correctly, a top 500 player accuracy with the new pharah would only be aprox. 5% more effective than live pharah. So the buff is very minimal to nonexistent. And considering the majority of pharah players don’t have that aim it could be argued that it is a nerf?

So do you feel this should be a change exclusive to console? Or could these changed be altered to bring pharah to a better spot without making her too oppressive?

I don’t play console. I hear that Pharmercy is OP on PSN (but not on Xbox live???) Im not sure how Pharah solo does on those but I really dislike the concept that one hero relies on another to be viable (like Orisa can be played solo but you can’t really play Bastion without an Orisa).

We needed a change that buffed Pharah at high ranks where they need it (on PC) but didn’r buff Pharah at low ranks. They needed to improve how well top Pharah’s could do. How might you do that? By improving projectile speed.
Good Pharah players will hit more reliably. Bad Pharah players who spam randomly will not hit more targets because random is random

I don’t care what some professional OW player has to say about a hero’s balance. They do not play the same game we do. They do not have the same issue with heroes that the rest of us do.

I know for fact, because of how I see every Pharah being played is that this is going to make her an absolute nightmare to play against. This is Blizzard creating or updating more heroes so that counter play becomes harder and harder. What they should be doing is making the game feel fun to play, no matter if you win or lose.
Nice nerf on Brig by the way… The problem was definitely that 100 extra shield points… / sarcasm

It buffs her for higher skilled players and nerfs her for lower skilled players. It’s a good change

so much for her getting anime mech flares that hitscans hit instead of her as a defensive ability :disappointed_relieved:

This is not what some professional player is saying this is straight up math based on statistics.

She will be buffed (at most) ~5% at high level play and likely see nerfs everywhere else. So the patch notes sound like a buff but if you do the math she will be doing less damage in “the same game we do” because other Pharahs have even worse accuracy.

Pharah has to be more accurate now just to have a similar damage output. This change lowers splash damage, so you’d think that it would reward direct hits, well it doesn’t. You do the same damage for a direct hit, sure you can fire faster but that doesn’t make a difference for good pharahs. The higher tier pharahs don’t spam rockets, they take their time predicting and lining up shots.

This change makes it to where if you have better aim and land more directs hits, you’ll output more damage, but that doesn’t line up with a higher rate of fire. If you spam rockets you lose accuracy. Top tier pharahs are already as accurate as they can be, encouraging spam and nerfing splash doesn’t help at all

Sure she’s more effective against tanks and barriers, but those aren’t her main targets

3 Likes

they are raising the skill floor but also making that skill floor more impactful. she has 1/2 the damage she does on live on ptr in her splash damage, but now if she hits directs its more rewarding.

They are widening the gap between good pharahs and people who just use her to abuse players with bad aim. Also, hitscans are getting buffed out of their minds as well. New 76 buff on PTR is amazing.

Direct hits aren’t more rewarding. They’re equally rewarding when compared to current Pharah.

4 Likes

ah, well, skill is more rewarding as you hit rockets faster so good pharahs do more dps.

Yes, but I think she needed a change that buffed her more than 5% at the very top levels of play. Missile speed or air movement speed are something good players can use but bad players will fumble with.

and thats the point, this change is supposed to be extremely good for lower ranks as well as console, this makes her way less upsetting unless that pharah is good, but its low ranks so thatll be rare.

Lots of good input. I will wait to see. I’m still thinking, based on the pharah play that I run into all the time, that this is going to make her even harder to kill, while making it easier for her to kill you.