I suggest other change, instead of fall of range her rockets would also use fuel system, they start at current speed and start drain fuel every meter slowing down by 1% to a cap of 60% speed at 40+ meters
Technically reaper has a death stare ability in my custom game that instantly kills anybody in front of him but unfortunately it has a range of 8 meters here's the code btw JZ7VO
His skates when wallriding are one of the loudest steps in the game, but ofc the jetpack armorsuit with a rocket launcher is clearly quieter than skates.
I mean, he IS a sound based character lol. But in all seriousness, yeah, Pharah has a jetpack and rockets, yet I'm only aware of her when I'm getting shit on from above.
my proposed pharah change is to make her rocket launcher do 90 damage base 112 with ramp up and 48 with fallof, make the rocket launcher have 4 rockets that you have to reload individualy, remove all of her abilities but make rocket jumping more useful, also give her a shovel that deals critical damage if you hit someone while rocket jumping
Hey, wait a minute. That sounds familiar. Does this also include her becoming American, Overwhelmingly Patriotic, Insane, Male, and Fighting Alongside 8 other Insane (Varying Levels of Insanity) People over a bunch of Gravel in New Mexico circa the 1960's? Oh, and being voiced by the late Rick May (Rest in Peace, you Magnificent Bastard)
oh wow that actually sounds pretty fun- wait a minute why does it sound so familiar... But they also need to put some of that knockback from her concusive blast into her main weapon, but only if she shoots at the right angle on the feet to launch them up in the air. anyway, they should also add some kind of loadout system for pharah. Maybe give her the option of replacing her primary weapon with a rocket launcher that does way more direct hit damage, moves faster, but has almost no splash radius. Or maybe one where you can "charge" up to 4 rockets and release them all at once with low accuracy, but if you overcharge it, the rocket launcher explodes. But you can use that explosion to "blast jump".
@@aldiyaralmassov3378THIS is what I've been trying to put into words. I started maining Illari because I can hit Pharah in silver/gold while many DPS cannot. So if I wanna play support, I basically have to play Bap/Illari or be subject to Pharah's flanking tf outta me. While playing DPS, I almost always end up having to swap to Cassidy/Soldier to deal with a Pharah, I can't just play a game with other fun heros.
I agree with the sound issue so much. Overwatch has amazing sound design, but Pharah stands out. Typically the most dangerous characters are the loudest. You can hear Widows heels clicking from across the map, but Phara is hard to hear. Increasing her sound would also make people spend less time looking up to see where she is which is one of her biggest strengths as she can create powerful offangles from anywhere. I would make her rockets explode at 30-40 range just like venture shots instead of falloff. A big factor in Phara being so frustrating is that you required great mechanics to even have a fighting chance while she is lobbing powerful rockets in your general direction while having 4 different abilities for mobility. It makes fighting her even as a hitscan were frustrating. Nerfing the splash and adding power to directs is the way to go.
Pharah always had a big design flaw, her best counter. Good Aim and if people on your team doesn't have good aim, you just loose because nothing else is even to close in terms of effectiveness
And even good aim isn't that good of a counter, because smart Pharahs, as all good dps players do, just play around terrain and corners, and so will their Mercy pocket. They can just play out of hitscan line of sight if they need to and peek to shoot, then go back to cover.
This doesn’t work anymore with the health pool changes and the nerfs to hitscan range. Pharah can easily stay out of range and spam all day long. And any decent pharah that plays cover is basically unkillable.
yea cover is insane with a mercy pocket as shes behind a building and when she goes to cover, she just reloads and mercy gives her full hp. its what people should do with burst damage characters but her infinite range and no fall off negates the good aim entirely.
This is probably the first time I have seen a pharah main not being completely delusional. The amount of times I have seen dipshits that say "just pick hitscan lol, she is so easy to counter" is baffling. No, picking heroes that require astronomical amounts of skill that I also *never* play is not "easy". Compare that to pharah when even if you are dogshit at the game, you can still pick her up and steamroll the enemy team. Edit: Forgot to say something that wouldn't be seen as a backhanded compliment at best. Your video and your nerf ideas were very excellent, very well done PixelRory.
And it sucks because my 2 most played hitscans got nerfed in the Pharah matchup Bastion: Mid season 10 changed armour, making it much weaker against burst damage, which is what Pharah does. Cassidy: Season 11 nerfed his range.
complaining about how pharah mains give annoying feedback on countering with hit-scans ("that require astronomical amounts of skill") while saying pharah can be played without skill seems kind of weird
@@comfysage it's true though, there's MANY clips of streamers who don't even play dps, go pharah, and dominate (emongg, metro and many others). It's such a low skill floor character that requires really specific and skilled gameplay to counter else it just dominates
Hitscans do not require such astronomical skill as you say. Its a point and click thing that you just have to play positioning on, and you really cant just pick her up and steam roll, picking her up the first time you are going to get your shit ran because you dont know how to play cover
From a junkrat player, I love how they just proceeded to make pharah a better junkrat in every single way possible. Better poke, they gave her more mobility than him, almost double proj speed, more mag size, faster reload on empty mag, much faster proj speed, better utility, she has it all over him. The only thing junkrat has over her is the ricochet, but with how painfuly slow they are, it is not even enough to be truly useful outside of spam And also, I love how in s9 they pre-nerfed junkrats proj size before the size increase, but they thought pharah would be ok with having the same projectile size as junkrat (and I already think junks proj are a lil too big)
I always find people saying "hitscan counters pharah" to be ridiculous No, hitscan can DEAL with Pharah, there is a difference. Pharah, at all times, can move in any direction. Left. Right. Up. Down. Forward. Backward. She is not an easy target even with hitscan because she has omnidirectional movement so, a lot of the time, it is inherently easier as a pharah to evade and play around cover than it is for a hitscan to land a shot on an evasive Pharah. Sure, as a Pharah you only die to hitscan, but that isnt because the simple presence of a hitscan shuts you down, its because nothing else can HIT you. Projectiles are too easy to evade. Beams cant usually reach you. Shotguns, a form of hitscan requiring close quarters, are basically useless when you are 50 feet in the air. Sure there are top 500 junkrats that can perfectly time a mine jump to get up to and erase a Pharah, but the skill that takes isnt realistic enough to say Junkrat can usually DO anything against a good Pharah This is Pharah's biggest issue. The counterplay to her is just playing her quote unquote "counters" because anyone else just isnt an option. No other character in the game invalidates as much as the roster as Pharah does and thats the worst part about playing against Pharah. I don’t play any character that can deal eith Pharah. I simply dont find most hitscan heroes satisfying enough to get really good at them which means, effectively, I cannot do anything against Pharah and have to hope that my other teammates can
I've always thought that instead of falloff damage being introduced (since they removed it from orisa and are probably going to plant their foot down and say no falloff damage for any projectiles) the rockets should just have a maximum range before they automatically explode. This way she can't poke you from across the entire map while also having the movement of the gods.
8:29 WAIT WAIT WAIT the fact that her being a flyer puts her at a further distance away because of oh trigonometry works is crazy in the context of fall off damage. If she plays at a good distance, she essentially can always fight hitscans at their weakest range. I’m really surprised that I’m only now learning of this subtle but ever present interaction. That’s some good thinking you did pixel!
Or just make her rockets have only like 15 meters range before their damage falls off This way, she has to ACTUALLY put herself in danger and to also make her less of a pub stomper. Maybe, to compensate, they give her more base damage and shorter dash cooldowns
It's not that she is too quiet, it's that she is always far away and when you can hear her, it's already too late for you because she is on top of you.
Good Pharahs are ridiculous right now. I usually either play Ball or off-role to Support and I can’t play hitscan to any meaningful degree myself, so when a good Pharah decides me and my stack have to go, either somebody else has to pick up that slack or we just lose and it feels like there’s nothing we can do about it
Exactly, in almost every game im forced to play against a pharah. I am masters in dps and support but the amount of times i have to play against pharah actually annoys me
Pharah nerf idea: every time someone picks her I steal their controls, seriously every time I have tried her I miss every rocket by fifty miles and the enemy team gets an aim buff
with the new change to the her boop, I am loving it because it gives me more freedom to play like an absolute maniac (boop myself, shoot, jump jets, shoot, and a jet dash at some point as a mix up in the movement) It's so fun to play as but the dive style has never been encouraged so it's always left as a "meh" option
Every time I discuss this with a pharah main they always say “oh man you just have to play hit scan”. but that’s really not the solution to the pharah problem and I was thinking about it and I would believe it’s the simple fact that counter is harder than her. Farah doesn’t have to do a lot to receive a lot of value , instead she can shoot and she’ll get value as long as she’s hitting near the enemy team meanwhile, if you see the far, but you are too far away from her you have to lead your shots differently and you’ll have to see if she has use her dash recently while she only has to see if you are in her FOV. And when there’s a Farah on the enemy team, you have to immediately change everything just to account for her, which is awful character design. I lot of people don’t like hearing this, but playing Farah doesn’t take a lot of thought while countering her takes at least three people coordinating to kill her and that is a failure of design .
Its so fun to play comp in silvers and gold when a smerfing phara is pocketed by a mercy and says they're not smerfing when they say they're not smerfing. They only have 9 hours in the game and know flank and ramp positions to juke and damage peak people.
If you know they are using flank and ramp positions, it means you know you can also use flank and ramp positions to get out of silver/gold too. You’re halfway there
Good video, one suggestion I have is that in the section where you talk about how silent she is, I think the video would benefit from sound clips comparing her ability sounds to other dps
hey man, just binged all of your videos and WOW your work on overwatch is just phenomenal. very excited to see you continue to grow, thank you for all your hard work
As a soldier one trick who hits aim training a lot and is master to grandmaster on kovaaks ranking system, I think it's pointless to play him against phara, especially after everyone got 25% health buff and phara's rework. before that, when i shat on phara's once or twice they would almost always switch, but nowadays pharas are still valuable and never switch.
TF2 is a completely different game though. Soldier has 400 health (in overwatch terms) since there is no real tank in TF2 and he has to lose health to rocket jump. Moreover pharah can glide in the air for much longer than a regular TF2 soldier and taking away her fuel would make pharah players not like the movement change.
His rockets launch people into the air, and everyone has momentum so following up with airshots is possible. Overwatch isn't designed in the same way - everyone is significantly more mobile. Also soldier is effectively the default dps, and the concept of tanks isn't really a thing because heavy only really gets played in highlander. And you don't have hitscans in the same sense - sniper aside, everyone is close-mid range only.
@@korol5639 Moreover, there is alot more air-control in TF2. If Pharah's Rockets launched people in the Air she would be extremely annoying to play against. Heavy and Sniper are the only really classes that can significantly damage soldier while he is in the air eventhough, chip damage from other classes reduces his momentum though.
1. Impact damage 90 Splash Damage 30 2. Shirnk the Proj Size 3. Have Splash Damage not apply the Dps passive, and is no longer effected by Damage boosts (a boosted Direct now Does 147 rather than 156 currently) 4. Give Armor a higher reduction rate to Splash damage (maybe a tank only change) 5. take away the Bonus Fuel from JumpJet and Lower the Cooldown from 14-12 6. Conc Blast should deal 45 Damage on a direct hit only (with Severe fall off like 10-15 meters)
1. I won't make a video on it because there's been so much talk about it most (and myself tbh) are sick of it, we also have the dev blog coming to hopefully put an end to it. I've answered the question a couple times on stream, but the short version is I prefer 6v6 2. While I can't wait for space ranger, I'm also incredibly nervous. Blizzard doesn't have the best track record with new support releases (aside from Ana in 2016). The most recent success would be Illari, as it just took an adjustment on pylon to get her to a respectable state. But looking at the others in ow2? Kiriko? Formed the game around herself for 2 years. Lifeweaver? Has been a mess since release (love him tho). I'm just praying for a stable release
Orisa had Damage Fall off (they got rid of it right before the Era of the Horse) and she’s a Projectile character I’d be happy if Pharah had fall off on direct hits, but keep the explosion damage (albeit toned down so she can’t kill a Tracer or Baby D.Va in 3 splashes) so that she isn’t near useless like how Reaper felt during the Armor/Tank passive changes where a headshot on a Rein from point blank range did as much damage as Sniper Reaper She needs some sort of counterplay regardless of that fact, *especially* when Pharmercy is in full swing
Grats on the sponsor! And I think you made a great point that no one really thinks about, how is pharah so quiet? Like, you can hear her jetting when she goes high but barely anything. Maybe make her hovering play some sound that's realistic!
watching this video feels so wild because i started playing about two months ago and i only now started learning pharah ... .... i don't know if i'll survive her rework bc i'm still learning her current mechanics lol
10:44 small correction here, the damage from the AOE and direct would stack, leading to a 60 damage projectile, this patch took away that stack making it 30 on impact as it should be
Maybe she should have a massive heal reduction while airborne? She receives 75% less healing while airborne, and can receive full healing until 2 seconds being grounded. This would keep her kit intact, while requiring her to be grounded more often so should would potentially be out of the fight a little more, or at least not creating off angles as much, and not as difficult to take down even with a pocket, making her a high risk, high reward character.
@@RavenGG.yeah definitely when I play without a mercy I play really scared mostly sneaking around but when I have a mercy on me I can just play regularly and win
Talking about sound design is such a great touch. Was always the element of OW1 Doomfist I hated most. It's not that characters abilities are always too good, but they don't give nearly enough warning relative to how threatening they are.
i have never actually had issues hearing pharas hoverjets, even in the midst of chaotic fights. honestly i think she feels overall quieter now bc shes no longer punished for roof stalling, which well practiced pharas would typically avoid bc it stopped hover regen. it makes a sound in the 1st person, but i have never noticed it in the 3rd.
Glad you mentioned the problem with audio queues. I noticed the engine change to OW2 messed a lot of them up. Widow is too loud while reaper lost his audio footsteps entirely.
How about blast radius falloff with distance for her? If you're far, you won't hit anyone, you have to make yourself vulnerable to make others vulerable. A fun tradeoff for that would be to make her default blast radius bigger so she hurts herself more readily if she's too close, forcing her out of any indoor areas. It won't hurt other projectile characters besides Junkrat, and for him you can say that his projectiles are different since they are launched grenades instead of rockets and don't use fuel that adds to the exposion.
So! I was a little silly and for some reason didn't demonstrate Pharah's sound cues in this video. So I'll give ye two options. You can watch the (tolerable) twitter version, OR you can watch the youtube shorts version, which I had to separate into 2 parts. Up to you! Twitter: x.com/PixeIRory/status/1813629425851777328 Shorts Part 1: ua-cam.com/users/shortsqOEwR6vG-K4 Shorts Part 2: ua-cam.com/users/shortsm2iq44Dur6Y
I think swapping her splash and direct dmg is definitely necessary at this point, it would make her more skill dependent and harder to dominate at lower ranks where players aren't hitting directs as often. I'd potentially revert the hp nerf as it just encourages pharah to play poke and rely on a mercy pocket, plus with louder sound cues it would (hopefully) make people look up more and hit more shots on her, so she needs the extra 25hp again to avoid certain breakpoints I think, which is especially important to consider if we want to promote the dive pharah playstyle more where she'll be playing closer and thus within her counters' range. This would make her more of a high risk high reward character also. Making her fall off a bit longer than hitscan seems fair, since her rockets ofc have projectile travel, not to mention that I feel like it would gut her flying character identity if she couldnt do a fair amount of damage while actually in the sky. I think maybe 30-45m could be good, that way she isnt as deadly for her poke playstyle and also isnt just tracer with a much wider hitbox and less survivability. Without some sort of fall off range similar to that, her poke playstyle will still be an issue albeit a lesser one if her splash and direct dmg are swapped. Overall I think all the changes you proposed would be so much healthier for the game, and it's refreshing to hear suggestions that wouldn't absolutely gut her and make her awful to play as. She'd just generally be a lot fairer, balanced, and rewarding when you manage to hit directs.
My biggest problem with pharah has always been how she, by design, limits what characters the other team can play. In OW1 i was a reaper main but also played a ton of projectile dps heroes, so its not like i was a one trick or anything. Still, when the enemy team swapped pharah it was up to me to swap and counter her despite me being terrible at hitscan. Ended up going echo bc shes the only char im good at that can handle pharah I play mostly support in OW2 (weaver main), so ill swap to illari if the enemy phara is dominating but still it just feels really shitty how 80% of the roater just cannot touch pharah, and no amount of balance patches or tweaks can fix it
At some level, pharah also limits what her own team can play, too. At least one of the supports needs to be able to heal her, so both supports can't be Lucio, bap, Moira or illari. And if one support is mercy, the other has to be able to take care of the tank and the other dps on their own, so no Lucio, zen, etc Additionally, pharah almost never plays with the team so playing characters like zen, widow, etc can be risky bc there's less of a team to protect/peel for you Literally just by picking pharah it dictates what half the players in that game are allowed to do
I totally agree, and you have to be the only pharah main who I actually respect considering that you’re admitting that you can be half asleep and still kill 5 players. She needs way less damage on splash, a little less on directs (or at least significant falloff), and a much, much smaller hit box on the rockets. I have literally seen kill cams where her rockets explode mid-air like 7m away from me because for some reason that was considered a direct hit. With a hit-box and damage like that, she has become a braid dead hero in the metal ranks. Like Moria, when within 20m there is no need to aim. But she kills you way faster than a Moria.
I've been suggesting rocket fall off for a while now but I also think she seriously needs to be able to two shot squishies again. Right now she lacks a proper risk reward dynamic and a combination of fall off, reverting the health change and giving her two shot back would do that. The risk is she has to get into the effective range of her enemies to be effective and the reward is quick kills when landing directs. Honestly rather than her being broken I think the larger issue is she's just lame to fight due to the range she fights at and the frequency of being pocketed, and having fall off basically solves everything people complain about because she has to take riskier fights and supports are gonna be less willing to follow her into the enemies backline to pocket her.
I don’t know if this is already a thing in the game but it could be an interesting angle to give her more damage on things like airshots on phara. (Hitting people in the air) Along with maybe buffing the vertical knock back on her basic rockets. Meanwhile nerfing her damage against grounded targets overall. This is probably just a crackhead change but like, idk making the areal character an anti-air character that also works with knockback abilities sounds neat.
Not having to deal with the tank headshot reduction passive, doing 120 damage each direct rocket hit while giving the dps passive, having great movement all the while her boop still effective 7-8 metres away from the enemy
Seems like a cool idea, but probably a bad change as it wont feel good for pharah losing that skill expression and will feel even worse on the other end knowing that getting hit was basically rng Any change for projectile characters that leans into randomness/spam is probably not a good one imo
I've always found the problem with pharah to be that it feels like its only ever roll or be rolled. Like she classically just kinda always melted to hitscan, and she completely *dominates* certain heroes who don't have the mobility or range to catch her. And I think this is why she's so frustrating. Like sure, go hitscan, but... not everyone _wants_ to play hitscan all the time. I think the rework was at least in the right direction, the new ability gave her an extra horizontal mobility option to use to weave around hitscan, while the finite fuel forced her to be grounded some of the time... at least in theory. In practice, she's just still incredibly strong Honestly, I'm with you on the sound cues, hadn't thought of that, but it kinda makes a lot of sense. Also, adding falloff to her projectiles. Would help balance the playing field at least a little bit against shorter range heroes who have practically no answer to her still
As Support, since I cant twitchy aim, if you go Pharah I will go Moira and if Moira is picked... then i'll just choose the next best support like Kiriko and just abandon the place if I get targeted by a Pharah. Ive played games where we just dont have players with skills to hit a mosquito(Pharah), so everyone else just "tries" to ignore the Pharah. Her and other heroes are just that polarizing in hands of top players when they hit your matches.
What I hate the most about the recent Pharah "nerfs" is that they just make playing her without a Mercy worse without fixing any real issues, while phar-mercy is mostly unaffected by them. Mercy is also the most popular hero in the game, so really it just makes her less fun for that one game where her girlfriend isn't there.
Yeah why the hell doesn’t ravenous vortex extend way higher? Like during its reveal it looked like it was framed as a way of restricting movement and yet in game it’s pretty ignorable
The concussive aoe enabled a solo flanker style that was really fun. Now you have to hit 3 rockets and pray they don’t have their get out of jail free card that so many of them do. Now all it feels like I can do is play range and spam, which is the playstyle nobody likes. Having damage on the aoe also added decision making with the ability that just isn’t there anymore. Maybe I just need to get better, I started maining her a couple months before her rework. Feels like if I even attempt to play without a mercy or a pocket, I literally can’t kill anything before they kill me first. Really sucks when part of the idea of her rework was to make her less reliant on mercy as well. Maybe she was a little strong before, but really they should’ve just toned down her projectile size or ammo count. I’d even be ok with the health change if they give me the flanking playstyle back. I really miss the rocket conc rocket combo.
I think tanks are way more of domino effect inducing heroes currently but I 100% agree pharah sort of necessitates certain heroes in a way that I never quite enjoyed (even considering I play several heroes good against her)!
As some one said in comments here give Phara's rockets range limits, but instead of damage falloff her rockets have hard 30m limit. When rockets reaches end of 30m range they just detonate in the air.
As a junk onetrick, pharah has always been a bit annoying to me, but the 225 hp change has completely turned that around. Now it's a really fun matchup imo cause she can be punished again for getting too close.
..I did not? LMAO. I want her to have movement, I play dive pharah as much as I can, it's the most fun version to me. The only mobility change I suggest is jet dash, where you just need to pay attention to your resource. It's still the same in function, just requiring you to think about 1 additional thing
@@PixelRory Keeping track of her fuel for the dash on top of her jets would be incredibly annoying and would limit her movement way too much, unless the dash weren't tied to a cooldown at least. if anything close to that would be implemented I'd much rather them take health instead.
I think they should actually go the tf2 soldier route. Maybe reduce the vertical boost cooldown by half and remove the health penalty on rocket jumps, but get rid of the boosters, so she cant fly anymore (maybe you could give her an echo hover to compensate)
@@Doggo2-fn8hu I'm shocked that the sponsor has gotten positive attention I was *genuinely* expecting people to hate on me for it. Thanks for the kind words!
Instead of not moving when low on boost it should be like Winston's zap, so that even with 1% it does a full dash, its better for the Phara, yet still a nerf and somewhat more predictable, phenomenal vid tho.
I like how they made my boy Hanzo beyond dogshit because their projetiles something that didn't affect pro play got big and skill issues ppl have with him since forever and then nuked his projectile size anyways just to call it a day like they did with Genji and the DPS passive but Phara still has the intercontinental balistic missiles and its fine Dx
Pharah might just be the worst designed character in any shooter (even you Sniper TF2), a good pharahmercy on the enemy team is almost always an instant loss condition. She has NO COUNTER!
Funnily enough, my ideas for Pharah nerfs were the same as yours, except you went further with the splash shift (I was thinking 40 splash, since imo there really shouldn't be a projectile with directs where the direct damage is lower than the splash) and I didn't really think about the Jet Dash thing because I don't play her and honestly I barely notice it in-game visually or audibly. But yeah, it's nice to hear a pharah player who is actually reasonable. For the record, I'm a high gold sombra/sym main (who occasionally plays bastion and mei), and I fucking despise Pharah since forever: - Even if Sombra is good at dealing with a lone pharah/pharamercy. A good pharah will play with her team, meaning I can't really deal with her as easily. And peeking around corners against her is just not an option with her massive splash damage. - Sometimes I just wanna play qp and have fun on Sym (or other projectiles heroes), and I can deal with her not being the best against a bunch of heroes or teams, I can still win by playing smarter. When they swap Pharah all I can do is audibly groan as I am forced to play a character I wasn't feeling like playing for the day, otherwise I just have to pray my team can deal with her or that she's stupid and gets easily killed because of it. She kinda warps the game around her and makes it so boring with little effort (at least in my elo). - Also, idk, trying to shoot right above you while you're booped all over while taking massive damage from said boops is really fucking annoying to deal with. And yeah why is it so hard to hear her flying through the sky? Most characters make more sound WALKING than she is when flying with her rocket-powered jetpack. In anycase, good video! I've been really enjoying this series of videos you make!
Tying pharah's jet dash would make it similar to Mercy's guardian angel. Which I think would make it feel very smooth and still accessible to lower ranks.
i never thought there would be a hero I hated playing against more than hog but damn pharah is a strong contender. at least I see her less than hog during prime hog meta
Low-key I think they don't wanna nerf her too hard is becuase space ranger is gonna be a flying support, and they want the flyers to be decent to promote the new hero We will see however this is just my crackpot theory
Remove the jump jets, give her the ability to properly rocket jump, make the rockets do more damage but u only get 4 of them, and give her an emote where she can explode herself and everyone around her Instantly goated hero, trust me bro
The moneky part of my brain likes the dash taking fuel, this way we can make her whole kit fuel based. Have the rockets start with 120 fuel and consume it over distance eventsully direct hitting for 40
honestly i think they need 2 rework mercys damage beam, as any time they nerf a characters oneshot/instacombo, the result is just that hero now requiring mercy support. maybe it could increase firerate instead?
Blizzard casually gives these heroes all the mobility in the WORLD to be insanely wacky with. and meanwhile I just sit here as a Zenyatta main, quietly crying in anguish, while i spend 100% of my existence trying to position carefully just so I don't have to waste transcendence as a "get out of jail free" card whenever I'm suddenly a target
as a reaper main and rat enjoyer, not a big a fan of pharah. Makes me wonder if that's what tank players feel like on counterwatch I enjoy the hero I'm playing but I'm punished for it if I'm doing too good because there comes the pharah flying in the skies where there's basically nothing I can do about unless I swap to a hero that can do something about it (and even that is limited for reasons you've already mentioned in the video) even if I don't have fun on that hero worst of all, I can't even ignore the pharah and pay attention to the rest of the enemy because of multiple reasons "he's not paying attention to me, easy target" "he can barely do anything to me, easy target" "he annoyed me before on junkrat, i'll target him" and then again, I can't focus in on the pharah either because she got an entire team that will look at me because I'm being forced to look up so I just become an easy target I'm no character designer, I'm no game dev, but if you're gonna give heroes with similar properties so called "intended drawbacks" you gotta give drawbacks to pharah too. example: junkrat has slow moving, arching projectiles that explode on a small radius once it hits the enemy or after it hits the floor a third time (pharah can trigger the explosion by just hitting the floor with a much bigger splash radius and dealing a total damage of 5 less than junkrat on a direct) another example: venture, way less damage compared to pharah with WAAAY less range so.... what's pharah's drawback? also, looking at another perspective who are the heroes with lower HP? the highly mobile tracer and the deadly widow with her massive burst damage and their smaller hitboxes. Pharah as mobile and deadly as she was since s9 and as she is right now only got a nerf of 25hp, I say give her 150 health and either 50 shield or 50 armor if she's to keep her current mobility and damage it feels like a fair exchange, maybe increase her downtime from flight and not touch the hp so she can be punished by closer range heroes and not be nearly unplayable against back to comparisons, echo is a strong hero, has been for a good time, but I personally wouldn't call her oppressive as pharah is/can be she doesn't stay too long in the air nor too far up deals decent damage even when not using cooldowns AND it's possible to avoid her more consistently she is also easy to punish when she's on the floor one other but crazier change i had thought up was to take out her flight, keep her kit as is, and her ult instead of barrage is just a way better flight compared to what she currently has, with maybe like 30% reduced cooldown, you still have her hero fantasy but this time as a reward that feels good but at the same time not constantly opressive for the enemy, butr then again, what do i know, I'm not a game dev, maybe they already thought/tested that and didn't quite feel right/work out
6:31 The season 9 patch was one of the worst patches in the history of the game, and is a big part of the problems we see in the game today. Pharah is a great example of why. Increasing health across the board without changing damage numbers much, was a huge buff to some heroes that damage in large bursts (crossing over the 200HP and 250HP threshold in the same or similar number of hits) and a nerf to heroes that do continuous, sustained damage over time. This also kind of applies to supports as well; consistent healbotting was nerfed, heal burst was buffed. They wanted to nerf the healing numbers by buffing HP, but they screwed years of balance by changing what percentage of health bar every weapon in the game does (I think a key part of why 'tankiness' went down after season 9). It taking 4 shots to elim Pharah (plus her crazy horizontal movement, crossing most hitscan heroes' effective range in a couple seconds, like 50-60m horizontally) essentially flips Ana from countering her (which I used to be able to do easily) to being countered by her. Every time a pixel of her is on your screen, you can hit the shot, and she always has more than enough time to drop behind cover from the sky or for her supports to heal her (used to just barely be able to hit the third shot as she dropped). I think they should buff Ana's damage to 75 instead of 70, as that would just barely make her a true 3-shot again on solo Pharah at exactly 225HP, would make the matchup much fairer, and would have little effect on other matchups since she's the only 225HP hero (maybe slight nerf to Torb turret vs solo Ana...).
I like the changes you would make, especially making sound cue louder. Have you considered rockets having max range, like with venture, but more distance? Because I agree that fall-off on projectiles is weird. Also next part comments on being mercy pocketed but also has implications for hitscan falloff. The video was maybe weirdly structured as you talk about pharah's play style still revolving around mercy pocket, but not suggesting changes to that, as I personally don't think it's only a mercy problem. Making pharah harder to pocket could be done with making flying very high harder. When pharah is close to ground you end up breaking LOS from mercy more often, because of structures making it harder to be pocketed. Also giving more horizontal movement would change it as mercy has less time to keep up. You don't see tracer, sombra or genji to get pocketed that often because of those reasons.
Honestly for me, i just need 2 things to happen to pharah, 1 have actual mindless spam less effective, in qp i have found pharahs dominate a lobby by just shooting spawn, not even looking, just actual spam, 2 add skill expresion that doesnt make her strong, right now her highest skill expression is how long you can stay in the sky so :/ give her something to give her some skill
Making her direct hit stronger is not the way to go, you'll just be stronger with lucky shots than trying to hit people who are grouped up. Maybe making her splash stronger with a smaller range is better.
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I suggest other change, instead of fall of range her rockets would also use fuel system, they start at current speed and start drain fuel every meter slowing down by 1% to a cap of 60% speed at 40+ meters
@PixelRory
My ears aren't the best but is that library of Ruina background music around 5:49?
@@odbp1112 the fact both of your replies are within minutes of eachother is making this so funny to me LMFAO. Yes. Yes it is.
@@PixelRorygood taste, have a fun day
Pharah Nerf Idea: every melee and shotgun hero gets laser eyes that instantly vaporize her if shes too high in the air
I support this
I dps this
I tank this
Technically reaper has a death stare ability in my custom game that instantly kills anybody in front of him but unfortunately it has a range of 8 meters here's the code btw JZ7VO
I ana this
Lucio literally makes 3x the noise pharah does
His skates when wallriding are one of the loudest steps in the game, but ofc the jetpack armorsuit with a rocket launcher is clearly quieter than skates.
And somehow not from the boomboxes covering half his body
I mean, he IS a sound based character lol. But in all seriousness, yeah, Pharah has a jetpack and rockets, yet I'm only aware of her when I'm getting shit on from above.
widows footsteps make more noise than pharahs entire kit(widow hater)
@@dodonpa-1 no no, you have a point, widow sounds like a horse in stilletos in comparison to pharah sounding like a fly lol
my proposed pharah change is to make her rocket launcher do 90 damage base 112 with ramp up and 48 with fallof, make the rocket launcher have 4 rockets that you have to reload individualy, remove all of her abilities but make rocket jumping more useful, also give her a shovel that deals critical damage if you hit someone while rocket jumping
Hey, wait a minute. That sounds familiar.
Does this also include her becoming American, Overwhelmingly Patriotic, Insane, Male, and Fighting Alongside 8 other Insane (Varying Levels of Insanity) People over a bunch of Gravel in New Mexico circa the 1960's?
Oh, and being voiced by the late Rick May (Rest in Peace, you Magnificent Bastard)
yes
oh wow that actually sounds pretty fun- wait a minute why does it sound so familiar... But they also need to put some of that knockback from her concusive blast into her main weapon, but only if she shoots at the right angle on the feet to launch them up in the air.
anyway, they should also add some kind of loadout system for pharah. Maybe give her the option of replacing her primary weapon with a rocket launcher that does way more direct hit damage, moves faster, but has almost no splash radius. Or maybe one where you can "charge" up to 4 rockets and release them all at once with low accuracy, but if you overcharge it, the rocket launcher explodes. But you can use that explosion to "blast jump".
That will never happen, she have voice line specifically said "rocket jump? that sounds dangerous"
I was about to say this is soldier
She was terrorizing lower ranks for years. I am just glad that everybody is talking about her now.
Exactly, I just despise her because she forces your team to pick her hard-counters, she’s by design an incredibly obnoxious character to play against!
@@aldiyaralmassov3378THIS is what I've been trying to put into words. I started maining Illari because I can hit Pharah in silver/gold while many DPS cannot. So if I wanna play support, I basically have to play Bap/Illari or be subject to Pharah's flanking tf outta me.
While playing DPS, I almost always end up having to swap to Cassidy/Soldier to deal with a Pharah, I can't just play a game with other fun heros.
Giving a flying character infinite AoE damage was a really smart idea. Bravo Vince!
What, would you prefer a flying hitscan, im sure that wouldn't be crazy.
@@talonflame_brawlstars.7208 limit the range at which she does damage? Like Sigma. It would also work into her increased movement now.
@@mazerjax Sounds reasonable. You most likely aren't going to hit shots beyond the 25 meter mark Anyway.
I cant believe walter whites death was actually a reference to the death of blizzard and overwatch 2. Bravo vince.
A flying hitscan would be awful to play as lol@@talonflame_brawlstars.7208
"Just pick hitscan lol"
Meanwhile my dps has better odds at hitting their shot with a woman than hitting shots on pharah
Hitscan works....until the pharah is directly above you. Then she kills faster somehow
My games have been nothing but Sombras and Pharahs and there's only so much we can all take lol
Same here a ton of pharmercy & sombra
I agree with the sound issue so much. Overwatch has amazing sound design, but Pharah stands out. Typically the most dangerous characters are the loudest. You can hear Widows heels clicking from across the map, but Phara is hard to hear. Increasing her sound would also make people spend less time looking up to see where she is which is one of her biggest strengths as she can create powerful offangles from anywhere.
I would make her rockets explode at 30-40 range just like venture shots instead of falloff. A big factor in Phara being so frustrating is that you required great mechanics to even have a fighting chance while she is lobbing powerful rockets in your general direction while having 4 different abilities for mobility. It makes fighting her even as a hitscan were frustrating. Nerfing the splash and adding power to directs is the way to go.
You could hear Genji's fat ass flip flop footsteps when hes designed to be a flanker/assassin over Pharah quietest jets of all time.
Pharah always had a big design flaw, her best counter. Good Aim
and if people on your team doesn't have good aim, you just loose because nothing else is even to close in terms of effectiveness
And even good aim isn't that good of a counter, because smart Pharahs, as all good dps players do, just play around terrain and corners, and so will their Mercy pocket. They can just play out of hitscan line of sight if they need to and peek to shoot, then go back to cover.
This doesn’t work anymore with the health pool changes and the nerfs to hitscan range. Pharah can easily stay out of range and spam all day long. And any decent pharah that plays cover is basically unkillable.
yea cover is insane with a mercy pocket as shes behind a building and when she goes to cover, she just reloads and mercy gives her full hp. its what people should do with burst damage characters but her infinite range and no fall off negates the good aim entirely.
This is probably the first time I have seen a pharah main not being completely delusional. The amount of times I have seen dipshits that say "just pick hitscan lol, she is so easy to counter" is baffling. No, picking heroes that require astronomical amounts of skill that I also *never* play is not "easy". Compare that to pharah when even if you are dogshit at the game, you can still pick her up and steamroll the enemy team.
Edit: Forgot to say something that wouldn't be seen as a backhanded compliment at best. Your video and your nerf ideas were very excellent, very well done PixelRory.
And it sucks because my 2 most played hitscans got nerfed in the Pharah matchup
Bastion: Mid season 10 changed armour, making it much weaker against burst damage, which is what Pharah does.
Cassidy: Season 11 nerfed his range.
complaining about how pharah mains give annoying feedback on countering with hit-scans ("that require astronomical amounts of skill") while saying pharah can be played without skill seems kind of weird
@@comfysage it's true though, there's MANY clips of streamers who don't even play dps, go pharah, and dominate (emongg, metro and many others). It's such a low skill floor character that requires really specific and skilled gameplay to counter else it just dominates
Hitscans do not require such astronomical skill as you say. Its a point and click thing that you just have to play positioning on, and you really cant just pick her up and steam roll, picking her up the first time you are going to get your shit ran because you dont know how to play cover
@@crazy5948 😭 pharah player moment playing corner is hard apparently
From a junkrat player, I love how they just proceeded to make pharah a better junkrat in every single way possible. Better poke, they gave her more mobility than him, almost double proj speed, more mag size, faster reload on empty mag, much faster proj speed, better utility, she has it all over him. The only thing junkrat has over her is the ricochet, but with how painfuly slow they are, it is not even enough to be truly useful outside of spam
And also, I love how in s9 they pre-nerfed junkrats proj size before the size increase, but they thought pharah would be ok with having the same projectile size as junkrat (and I already think junks proj are a lil too big)
yea ive thought this for a while not sure why they made her better AND easier junk
Even worse that she’s a better Junk but requires half the skill.
I always find people saying "hitscan counters pharah" to be ridiculous
No, hitscan can DEAL with Pharah, there is a difference.
Pharah, at all times, can move in any direction. Left. Right. Up. Down. Forward. Backward. She is not an easy target even with hitscan because she has omnidirectional movement so, a lot of the time, it is inherently easier as a pharah to evade and play around cover than it is for a hitscan to land a shot on an evasive Pharah.
Sure, as a Pharah you only die to hitscan, but that isnt because the simple presence of a hitscan shuts you down, its because nothing else can HIT you.
Projectiles are too easy to evade. Beams cant usually reach you. Shotguns, a form of hitscan requiring close quarters, are basically useless when you are 50 feet in the air. Sure there are top 500 junkrats that can perfectly time a mine jump to get up to and erase a Pharah, but the skill that takes isnt realistic enough to say Junkrat can usually DO anything against a good Pharah
This is Pharah's biggest issue. The counterplay to her is just playing her quote unquote "counters" because anyone else just isnt an option. No other character in the game invalidates as much as the roster as Pharah does and thats the worst part about playing against Pharah.
I don’t play any character that can deal eith Pharah. I simply dont find most hitscan heroes satisfying enough to get really good at them which means, effectively, I cannot do anything against Pharah and have to hope that my other teammates can
Project Moon music heard, send in the sleeper agents.
I love hearing PM music in random vids like this, Especially Ruina!!!
Sleeper agent, reporting in! o7
I've always thought that instead of falloff damage being introduced (since they removed it from orisa and are probably going to plant their foot down and say no falloff damage for any projectiles) the rockets should just have a maximum range before they automatically explode. This way she can't poke you from across the entire map while also having the movement of the gods.
This is so much better.
I guess I'm the 3rd person to make this same comment lol.
8:29 WAIT WAIT WAIT the fact that her being a flyer puts her at a further distance away because of oh trigonometry works is crazy in the context of fall off damage. If she plays at a good distance, she essentially can always fight hitscans at their weakest range. I’m really surprised that I’m only now learning of this subtle but ever present interaction. That’s some good thinking you did pixel!
Dude what
also applies to any hitscan playing on high ground. you might have better positioning, but can you potentially be doing less damage.
Or just make her rockets have only like 15 meters range before their damage falls off
This way, she has to ACTUALLY put herself in danger and to also make her less of a pub stomper.
Maybe, to compensate, they give her more base damage and shorter dash cooldowns
Yeah she would be way less annoying if she couldn’t poke from across the map.
Now we're talking
Or make them like Venture’s weapon
@@SSADO- God no
@@babulbi
Why? Are you a Pharah main?
I agree with the Pharah being too quiet I really wish they made her jets louder so its harder for her to flank you
Had this earlier, I could hear Pharah using her jets but didn't realize how close/where she was
It's not that she is too quiet, it's that she is always far away and when you can hear her, it's already too late for you because she is on top of you.
The sneaking + ult feels bullshit to die to
whats funnier is that (in my opinion) shes loud af in first person
@@moscardonexe2783 yea. The loudest is definitely Illari though I hate her gun sounds so much. Never play her.
Good Pharahs are ridiculous right now. I usually either play Ball or off-role to Support and I can’t play hitscan to any meaningful degree myself, so when a good Pharah decides me and my stack have to go, either somebody else has to pick up that slack or we just lose and it feels like there’s nothing we can do about it
Exactly, in almost every game im forced to play against a pharah. I am masters in dps and support but the amount of times i have to play against pharah actually annoys me
Pharah nerf idea: every time someone picks her I steal their controls, seriously every time I have tried her I miss every rocket by fifty miles and the enemy team gets an aim buff
All of the issues with characters I see could be solved instantly if they just removed mercy
LIBRARY OF RUINA MUSIC AAAA
Project moon sleeper agent activated.
Pm fans rise up
PROJECT MOON MENTIONED
I main Pharah and i always thought her rework was boring, i was hoping they'd make her more risky to play but they made her more passive
with the new change to the her boop, I am loving it because it gives me more freedom to play like an absolute maniac (boop myself, shoot, jump jets, shoot, and a jet dash at some point as a mix up in the movement) It's so fun to play as but the dive style has never been encouraged so it's always left as a "meh" option
Every time I discuss this with a pharah main they always say “oh man you just have to play hit scan”. but that’s really not the solution to the pharah problem and I was thinking about it and I would believe it’s the simple fact that counter is harder than her.
Farah doesn’t have to do a lot to receive a lot of value , instead she can shoot and she’ll get value as long as she’s hitting near the enemy team meanwhile, if you see the far, but you are too far away from her you have to lead your shots differently and you’ll have to see if she has use her dash recently while she only has to see if you are in her FOV.
And when there’s a Farah on the enemy team, you have to immediately change everything just to account for her, which is awful character design.
I lot of people don’t like hearing this, but playing Farah doesn’t take a lot of thought while countering her takes at least three people coordinating to kill her and that is a failure of design .
Its so fun to play comp in silvers and gold when a smerfing phara is pocketed by a mercy and says they're not smerfing when they say they're not smerfing. They only have 9 hours in the game and know flank and ramp positions to juke and damage peak people.
If you know they are using flank and ramp positions, it means you know you can also use flank and ramp positions to get out of silver/gold too. You’re halfway there
Good video, one suggestion I have is that in the section where you talk about how silent she is, I think the video would benefit from sound clips comparing her ability sounds to other dps
hey man, just binged all of your videos and WOW your work on overwatch is just phenomenal. very excited to see you continue to grow, thank you for all your hard work
First sponsor, congratulations🎉🎉
I just want 6v6 at this point man.
As a soldier one trick who hits aim training a lot and is master to grandmaster on kovaaks ranking system, I think it's pointless to play him against phara, especially after everyone got 25% health buff and phara's rework. before that, when i shat on phara's once or twice they would almost always switch, but nowadays pharas are still valuable and never switch.
It's pretty crazy how they haven't been able to get Pharah right since launch while TF2 Soldier is still perfectly balanced 17 years later.
TF2 is a completely different game though.
Soldier has 400 health (in overwatch terms) since there is no real tank in TF2 and he has to lose health to rocket jump.
Moreover pharah can glide in the air for much longer than a regular TF2 soldier and taking away her fuel would make pharah players not like the movement change.
His rockets launch people into the air, and everyone has momentum so following up with airshots is possible. Overwatch isn't designed in the same way - everyone is significantly more mobile. Also soldier is effectively the default dps, and the concept of tanks isn't really a thing because heavy only really gets played in highlander. And you don't have hitscans in the same sense - sniper aside, everyone is close-mid range only.
@@korol5639 Moreover, there is alot more air-control in TF2.
If Pharah's Rockets launched people in the Air she would be extremely annoying to play against.
Heavy and Sniper are the only really classes that can significantly damage soldier while he is in the air eventhough, chip damage from other classes reduces his momentum though.
1. Impact damage 90 Splash Damage 30
2. Shirnk the Proj Size
3. Have Splash Damage not apply the Dps passive, and is no longer effected by Damage boosts (a boosted Direct now Does 147 rather than 156 currently)
4. Give Armor a higher reduction rate to Splash damage (maybe a tank only change)
5. take away the Bonus Fuel from JumpJet and Lower the Cooldown from 14-12
6. Conc Blast should deal 45 Damage on a direct hit only (with Severe fall off like 10-15 meters)
Bro I love how the video looks, it looks like the actual game in video
I think they should add a setting where you can change all sounds of each hero however you want
Are you gonna do a vid on whether you prefer 5v5 or 6v6?? Also are you excited for the next hero coming next season?
1. I won't make a video on it because there's been so much talk about it most (and myself tbh) are sick of it, we also have the dev blog coming to hopefully put an end to it. I've answered the question a couple times on stream, but the short version is I prefer 6v6
2. While I can't wait for space ranger, I'm also incredibly nervous. Blizzard doesn't have the best track record with new support releases (aside from Ana in 2016). The most recent success would be Illari, as it just took an adjustment on pylon to get her to a respectable state. But looking at the others in ow2? Kiriko? Formed the game around herself for 2 years. Lifeweaver? Has been a mess since release (love him tho). I'm just praying for a stable release
Orisa had Damage Fall off (they got rid of it right before the Era of the Horse) and she’s a Projectile character
I’d be happy if Pharah had fall off on direct hits, but keep the explosion damage (albeit toned down so she can’t kill a Tracer or Baby D.Va in 3 splashes) so that she isn’t near useless like how Reaper felt during the Armor/Tank passive changes where a headshot on a Rein from point blank range did as much damage as Sniper Reaper
She needs some sort of counterplay regardless of that fact, *especially* when Pharmercy is in full swing
Grats on the sponsor! And I think you made a great point that no one really thinks about, how is pharah so quiet? Like, you can hear her jetting when she goes high but barely anything. Maybe make her hovering play some sound that's realistic!
watching this video feels so wild because i started playing about two months ago and i only now started learning pharah ... .... i don't know if i'll survive her rework bc i'm still learning her current mechanics lol
Same lol
10:44 small correction here, the damage from the AOE and direct would stack, leading to a 60 damage projectile, this patch took away that stack making it 30 on impact as it should be
Maybe she should have a massive heal reduction while airborne?
She receives 75% less healing while airborne, and can receive full healing until 2 seconds being grounded. This would keep her kit intact, while requiring her to be grounded more often so should would potentially be out of the fight a little more, or at least not creating off angles as much, and not as difficult to take down even with a pocket, making her a high risk, high reward character.
I'd argue Pharmercy is much more of an issue than pharah herself so something like this would be nice. (75% less seems too high though)
@@RavenGG.yeah definitely when I play without a mercy I play really scared mostly sneaking around but when I have a mercy on me I can just play regularly and win
Talking about sound design is such a great touch. Was always the element of OW1 Doomfist I hated most. It's not that characters abilities are always too good, but they don't give nearly enough warning relative to how threatening they are.
The beautiful LoR music makes me want to replay that game again. What a great choice for music!
My problem with pharah is the damage and the no audio, I don't really care about the rest, she is pretty easy to kill with hitscan or sombra
the new blizzard balance team is falling under the classic balance trap of looking ONLY at damage numbers and not the utility of things...
We need phara rockets to have a range limit like Sigma or Venture😭
YES! I never understand why characters like Sigma and Venture have a range limit, but the one that's in the sky 99% of the time doesn't 😭
i have never actually had issues hearing pharas hoverjets, even in the midst of chaotic fights. honestly i think she feels overall quieter now bc shes no longer punished for roof stalling, which well practiced pharas would typically avoid bc it stopped hover regen. it makes a sound in the 1st person, but i have never noticed it in the 3rd.
Glad you mentioned the problem with audio queues. I noticed the engine change to OW2 messed a lot of them up. Widow is too loud while reaper lost his audio footsteps entirely.
How about blast radius falloff with distance for her? If you're far, you won't hit anyone, you have to make yourself vulnerable to make others vulerable. A fun tradeoff for that would be to make her default blast radius bigger so she hurts herself more readily if she's too close, forcing her out of any indoor areas. It won't hurt other projectile characters besides Junkrat, and for him you can say that his projectiles are different since they are launched grenades instead of rockets and don't use fuel that adds to the exposion.
So! I was a little silly and for some reason didn't demonstrate Pharah's sound cues in this video. So I'll give ye two options. You can watch the (tolerable) twitter version, OR you can watch the youtube shorts version, which I had to separate into 2 parts. Up to you!
Twitter: x.com/PixeIRory/status/1813629425851777328
Shorts Part 1: ua-cam.com/users/shortsqOEwR6vG-K4
Shorts Part 2: ua-cam.com/users/shortsm2iq44Dur6Y
Ive moved on from qp and comp to just play 6v6 pugs bc of a lot of season 9 reversions, and ofc 2 tanks. Highly recommend.
I think swapping her splash and direct dmg is definitely necessary at this point, it would make her more skill dependent and harder to dominate at lower ranks where players aren't hitting directs as often. I'd potentially revert the hp nerf as it just encourages pharah to play poke and rely on a mercy pocket, plus with louder sound cues it would (hopefully) make people look up more and hit more shots on her, so she needs the extra 25hp again to avoid certain breakpoints I think, which is especially important to consider if we want to promote the dive pharah playstyle more where she'll be playing closer and thus within her counters' range. This would make her more of a high risk high reward character also.
Making her fall off a bit longer than hitscan seems fair, since her rockets ofc have projectile travel, not to mention that I feel like it would gut her flying character identity if she couldnt do a fair amount of damage while actually in the sky. I think maybe 30-45m could be good, that way she isnt as deadly for her poke playstyle and also isnt just tracer with a much wider hitbox and less survivability. Without some sort of fall off range similar to that, her poke playstyle will still be an issue albeit a lesser one if her splash and direct dmg are swapped.
Overall I think all the changes you proposed would be so much healthier for the game, and it's refreshing to hear suggestions that wouldn't absolutely gut her and make her awful to play as. She'd just generally be a lot fairer, balanced, and rewarding when you manage to hit directs.
My biggest problem with pharah has always been how she, by design, limits what characters the other team can play. In OW1 i was a reaper main but also played a ton of projectile dps heroes, so its not like i was a one trick or anything. Still, when the enemy team swapped pharah it was up to me to swap and counter her despite me being terrible at hitscan. Ended up going echo bc shes the only char im good at that can handle pharah
I play mostly support in OW2 (weaver main), so ill swap to illari if the enemy phara is dominating but still it just feels really shitty how 80% of the roater just cannot touch pharah, and no amount of balance patches or tweaks can fix it
At some level, pharah also limits what her own team can play, too. At least one of the supports needs to be able to heal her, so both supports can't be Lucio, bap, Moira or illari. And if one support is mercy, the other has to be able to take care of the tank and the other dps on their own, so no Lucio, zen, etc
Additionally, pharah almost never plays with the team so playing characters like zen, widow, etc can be risky bc there's less of a team to protect/peel for you
Literally just by picking pharah it dictates what half the players in that game are allowed to do
I totally agree, and you have to be the only pharah main who I actually respect considering that you’re admitting that you can be half asleep and still kill 5 players.
She needs way less damage on splash, a little less on directs (or at least significant falloff), and a much, much smaller hit box on the rockets. I have literally seen kill cams where her rockets explode mid-air like 7m away from me because for some reason that was considered a direct hit.
With a hit-box and damage like that, she has become a braid dead hero in the metal ranks. Like Moria, when within 20m there is no need to aim. But she kills you way faster than a Moria.
I've been suggesting rocket fall off for a while now but I also think she seriously needs to be able to two shot squishies again. Right now she lacks a proper risk reward dynamic and a combination of fall off, reverting the health change and giving her two shot back would do that. The risk is she has to get into the effective range of her enemies to be effective and the reward is quick kills when landing directs. Honestly rather than her being broken I think the larger issue is she's just lame to fight due to the range she fights at and the frequency of being pocketed, and having fall off basically solves everything people complain about because she has to take riskier fights and supports are gonna be less willing to follow her into the enemies backline to pocket her.
I don’t know if this is already a thing in the game but it could be an interesting angle to give her more damage on things like airshots on phara. (Hitting people in the air) Along with maybe buffing the vertical knock back on her basic rockets. Meanwhile nerfing her damage against grounded targets overall. This is probably just a crackhead change but like, idk making the areal character an anti-air character that also works with knockback abilities sounds neat.
Haven't seen someone cook this hard in a while.
PIXELRORY UPLOAD WAHOOO
Not having to deal with the tank headshot reduction passive, doing 120 damage each direct rocket hit while giving the dps passive, having great movement all the while her boop still effective 7-8 metres away from the enemy
here's an idea: make her rockets lose accuracy the further they travel.
Seems like a cool idea, but probably a bad change as it wont feel good for pharah losing that skill expression and will feel even worse on the other end knowing that getting hit was basically rng
Any change for projectile characters that leans into randomness/spam is probably not a good one imo
I like the idea that instead of fall off her rockets have an arc to them like Hanzo's arrows
I would rather they just work like sigma projectile and just explode at a certain distance (35m maybe)
Or, limited rocket fuel. At a certain distance, the rockets just drop out the sky!
@@dezrettel407 Then she would feel too much like junkrat
ngl that was a good ass add...imma get that
I've always found the problem with pharah to be that it feels like its only ever roll or be rolled. Like she classically just kinda always melted to hitscan, and she completely *dominates* certain heroes who don't have the mobility or range to catch her. And I think this is why she's so frustrating. Like sure, go hitscan, but... not everyone _wants_ to play hitscan all the time.
I think the rework was at least in the right direction, the new ability gave her an extra horizontal mobility option to use to weave around hitscan, while the finite fuel forced her to be grounded some of the time... at least in theory. In practice, she's just still incredibly strong
Honestly, I'm with you on the sound cues, hadn't thought of that, but it kinda makes a lot of sense. Also, adding falloff to her projectiles. Would help balance the playing field at least a little bit against shorter range heroes who have practically no answer to her still
As Support, since I cant twitchy aim, if you go Pharah I will go Moira and if Moira is picked... then i'll just choose the next best support like Kiriko and just abandon the place if I get targeted by a Pharah.
Ive played games where we just dont have players with skills to hit a mosquito(Pharah), so everyone else just "tries" to ignore the Pharah.
Her and other heroes are just that polarizing in hands of top players when they hit your matches.
I'm not sure why pharah doesn't have falloff. Especially since she's deadly when spamming a choke from far away.
What I hate the most about the recent Pharah "nerfs" is that they just make playing her without a Mercy worse without fixing any real issues, while phar-mercy is mostly unaffected by them. Mercy is also the most popular hero in the game, so really it just makes her less fun for that one game where her girlfriend isn't there.
Yeah why the hell doesn’t ravenous vortex extend way higher? Like during its reveal it looked like it was framed as a way of restricting movement and yet in game it’s pretty ignorable
Love a fellow Irish man making OW content 🇨🇮
I'll download outplayed just to support your channel, big man
The concussive aoe enabled a solo flanker style that was really fun. Now you have to hit 3 rockets and pray they don’t have their get out of jail free card that so many of them do. Now all it feels like I can do is play range and spam, which is the playstyle nobody likes. Having damage on the aoe also added decision making with the ability that just isn’t there anymore. Maybe I just need to get better, I started maining her a couple months before her rework.
Feels like if I even attempt to play without a mercy or a pocket, I literally can’t kill anything before they kill me first. Really sucks when part of the idea of her rework was to make her less reliant on mercy as well.
Maybe she was a little strong before, but really they should’ve just toned down her projectile size or ammo count. I’d even be ok with the health change if they give me the flanking playstyle back. I really miss the rocket conc rocket combo.
I think tanks are way more of domino effect inducing heroes currently but I 100% agree pharah sort of necessitates certain heroes in a way that I never quite enjoyed (even considering I play several heroes good against her)!
6:07 BRO IS THAT MALKUTH BALTLE THEME 1???????
As a Phara player myself I concur the directs should have more impact, and the splash be lowered. I've also, been saying this for a while.
As some one said in comments here give Phara's rockets range limits, but instead of damage falloff her rockets have hard 30m limit. When rockets reaches end of 30m range they just detonate in the air.
As a junk onetrick, pharah has always been a bit annoying to me, but the 225 hp change has completely turned that around.
Now it's a really fun matchup imo cause she can be punished again for getting too close.
Agree on the fall off, definitely disagree on the mobility. She's finally fun to play, mate. Don't take her fun movement away from her.
..I did not? LMAO. I want her to have movement, I play dive pharah as much as I can, it's the most fun version to me. The only mobility change I suggest is jet dash, where you just need to pay attention to your resource. It's still the same in function, just requiring you to think about 1 additional thing
@@PixelRory Keeping track of her fuel for the dash on top of her jets would be incredibly annoying and would limit her movement way too much, unless the dash weren't tied to a cooldown at least. if anything close to that would be implemented I'd much rather them take health instead.
L agree,increase cool down by 1 or 2 seconds achieves similar results without being annoying@@babulbi
SMT music heard, instant like. That Shinagawa theme is peak
I adore konan third block sm
I think they should actually go the tf2 soldier route.
Maybe reduce the vertical boost cooldown by half and remove the health penalty on rocket jumps, but get rid of the boosters, so she cant fly anymore (maybe you could give her an echo hover to compensate)
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@@Doggo2-fn8hu I'm shocked that the sponsor has gotten positive attention I was *genuinely* expecting people to hate on me for it. Thanks for the kind words!
I think making the fall off damage kick in 20% (cassidy) later or so and return the mid air rocket refuel
Instead of not moving when low on boost it should be like Winston's zap, so that even with 1% it does a full dash, its better for the Phara, yet still a nerf and somewhat more predictable, phenomenal vid tho.
I like how they made my boy Hanzo beyond dogshit because their projetiles something that didn't affect pro play got big and skill issues ppl have with him since forever and then nuked his projectile size anyways just to call it a day like they did with Genji and the DPS passive but Phara still has the intercontinental balistic missiles and its fine Dx
Pharah might just be the worst designed character in any shooter (even you Sniper TF2), a good pharahmercy on the enemy team is almost always an instant loss condition. She has NO COUNTER!
Funnily enough, my ideas for Pharah nerfs were the same as yours, except you went further with the splash shift (I was thinking 40 splash, since imo there really shouldn't be a projectile with directs where the direct damage is lower than the splash) and I didn't really think about the Jet Dash thing because I don't play her and honestly I barely notice it in-game visually or audibly.
But yeah, it's nice to hear a pharah player who is actually reasonable.
For the record, I'm a high gold sombra/sym main (who occasionally plays bastion and mei), and I fucking despise Pharah since forever:
- Even if Sombra is good at dealing with a lone pharah/pharamercy. A good pharah will play with her team, meaning I can't really deal with her as easily. And peeking around corners against her is just not an option with her massive splash damage.
- Sometimes I just wanna play qp and have fun on Sym (or other projectiles heroes), and I can deal with her not being the best against a bunch of heroes or teams, I can still win by playing smarter. When they swap Pharah all I can do is audibly groan as I am forced to play a character I wasn't feeling like playing for the day, otherwise I just have to pray my team can deal with her or that she's stupid and gets easily killed because of it. She kinda warps the game around her and makes it so boring with little effort (at least in my elo).
- Also, idk, trying to shoot right above you while you're booped all over while taking massive damage from said boops is really fucking annoying to deal with. And yeah why is it so hard to hear her flying through the sky? Most characters make more sound WALKING than she is when flying with her rocket-powered jetpack.
In anycase, good video! I've been really enjoying this series of videos you make!
Maybe just make her projectile work like Sigma, so the rockets explode after a certain distance (30-35m)
Tying pharah's jet dash would make it similar to Mercy's guardian angel. Which I think would make it feel very smooth and still accessible to lower ranks.
i never thought there would be a hero I hated playing against more than hog but damn pharah is a strong contender. at least I see her less than hog during prime hog meta
LIBRARY OF RUINA OST RAAAAAH
Low-key I think they don't wanna nerf her too hard is becuase space ranger is gonna be a flying support, and they want the flyers to be decent to promote the new hero
We will see however this is just my crackpot theory
Bro the Library of Runia OST, you get my sub.
I remember one time I copied a pharah and I tried to fly up a bit but I didn't know she got a rework and I just jumped and lost my duplicate 😭
Remove the jump jets, give her the ability to properly rocket jump, make the rockets do more damage but u only get 4 of them, and give her an emote where she can explode herself and everyone around her
Instantly goated hero, trust me bro
The moneky part of my brain likes the dash taking fuel, this way we can make her whole kit fuel based. Have the rockets start with 120 fuel and consume it over distance eventsully direct hitting for 40
honestly i think they need 2 rework mercys damage beam, as any time they nerf a characters oneshot/instacombo, the result is just that hero now requiring mercy support. maybe it could increase firerate instead?
Blizzard casually gives these heroes all the mobility in the WORLD to be insanely wacky with.
and meanwhile I just sit here as a Zenyatta main, quietly crying in anguish, while i spend 100% of my existence trying to position carefully just so I don't have to waste transcendence as a "get out of jail free" card whenever I'm suddenly a target
as a reaper main and rat enjoyer, not a big a fan of pharah. Makes me wonder if that's what tank players feel like on counterwatch
I enjoy the hero I'm playing but I'm punished for it if I'm doing too good because there comes the pharah flying in the skies where there's basically nothing I can do about unless I swap to a hero that can do something about it (and even that is limited for reasons you've already mentioned in the video) even if I don't have fun on that hero
worst of all, I can't even ignore the pharah and pay attention to the rest of the enemy because of multiple reasons "he's not paying attention to me, easy target" "he can barely do anything to me, easy target" "he annoyed me before on junkrat, i'll target him"
and then again, I can't focus in on the pharah either because she got an entire team that will look at me because I'm being forced to look up so I just become an easy target
I'm no character designer, I'm no game dev, but if you're gonna give heroes with similar properties so called "intended drawbacks" you gotta give drawbacks to pharah too.
example: junkrat has slow moving, arching projectiles that explode on a small radius once it hits the enemy or after it hits the floor a third time (pharah can trigger the explosion by just hitting the floor with a much bigger splash radius and dealing a total damage of 5 less than junkrat on a direct)
another example: venture, way less damage compared to pharah with WAAAY less range
so.... what's pharah's drawback?
also, looking at another perspective who are the heroes with lower HP? the highly mobile tracer and the deadly widow with her massive burst damage and their smaller hitboxes. Pharah as mobile and deadly as she was since s9 and as she is right now only got a nerf of 25hp, I say give her 150 health and either 50 shield or 50 armor if she's to keep her current mobility and damage it feels like a fair exchange, maybe increase her downtime from flight and not touch the hp so she can be punished by closer range heroes and not be nearly unplayable against
back to comparisons, echo is a strong hero, has been for a good time, but I personally wouldn't call her oppressive as pharah is/can be she doesn't stay too long in the air nor too far up deals decent damage even when not using cooldowns AND it's possible to avoid her more consistently she is also easy to punish when she's on the floor
one other but crazier change i had thought up was to take out her flight, keep her kit as is, and her ult instead of barrage is just a way better flight compared to what she currently has, with maybe like 30% reduced cooldown, you still have her hero fantasy but this time as a reward that feels good but at the same time not constantly opressive for the enemy, butr then again, what do i know, I'm not a game dev, maybe they already thought/tested that and didn't quite feel right/work out
I would love to have a big boost to direct hits and lower splash damage.
6:31 The season 9 patch was one of the worst patches in the history of the game, and is a big part of the problems we see in the game today. Pharah is a great example of why. Increasing health across the board without changing damage numbers much, was a huge buff to some heroes that damage in large bursts (crossing over the 200HP and 250HP threshold in the same or similar number of hits) and a nerf to heroes that do continuous, sustained damage over time. This also kind of applies to supports as well; consistent healbotting was nerfed, heal burst was buffed. They wanted to nerf the healing numbers by buffing HP, but they screwed years of balance by changing what percentage of health bar every weapon in the game does (I think a key part of why 'tankiness' went down after season 9).
It taking 4 shots to elim Pharah (plus her crazy horizontal movement, crossing most hitscan heroes' effective range in a couple seconds, like 50-60m horizontally) essentially flips Ana from countering her (which I used to be able to do easily) to being countered by her. Every time a pixel of her is on your screen, you can hit the shot, and she always has more than enough time to drop behind cover from the sky or for her supports to heal her (used to just barely be able to hit the third shot as she dropped). I think they should buff Ana's damage to 75 instead of 70, as that would just barely make her a true 3-shot again on solo Pharah at exactly 225HP, would make the matchup much fairer, and would have little effect on other matchups since she's the only 225HP hero (maybe slight nerf to Torb turret vs solo Ana...).
Finally someone talks about this. I've said it for years.
I like the changes you would make, especially making sound cue louder. Have you considered rockets having max range, like with venture, but more distance? Because I agree that fall-off on projectiles is weird. Also next part comments on being mercy pocketed but also has implications for hitscan falloff.
The video was maybe weirdly structured as you talk about pharah's play style still revolving around mercy pocket, but not suggesting changes to that, as I personally don't think it's only a mercy problem. Making pharah harder to pocket could be done with making flying very high harder. When pharah is close to ground you end up breaking LOS from mercy more often, because of structures making it harder to be pocketed. Also giving more horizontal movement would change it as mercy has less time to keep up. You don't see tracer, sombra or genji to get pocketed that often because of those reasons.
Honestly for me, i just need 2 things to happen to pharah, 1 have actual mindless spam less effective, in qp i have found pharahs dominate a lobby by just shooting spawn, not even looking, just actual spam, 2 add skill expresion that doesnt make her strong, right now her highest skill expression is how long you can stay in the sky so :/ give her something to give her some skill
Pharah nerf idea: pharah gets shot down because she counts as an unidentified flying object
Making her direct hit stronger is not the way to go, you'll just be stronger with lucky shots than trying to hit people who are grouped up. Maybe making her splash stronger with a smaller range is better.