Pharah: Overwatch's Domino Effect

Pharah is one of the more polarising characters in Overwatch. She terrorises lower ranks where no one can aim at her, but she usually didn't perform at her best in higher ones, at least not without a Mercy. But over the last few months, her strength has slowly risen, to the point where she's the biggest roadblock in your games. Pharah is Overwatch's Domino Effect, so let's find out why.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:35 Brief History
4:52 Present Pharah Problems
9:56 July 9th 2024 19:00 GMT
14:15 Suggested Changes
17:18 Final Thoughts

[hitbyatank]

Lucio literally makes 3x the noise pharah does

[ink]

Pharah Nerf Idea: every melee and shotgun hero gets laser eyes that instantly vaporize her if shes too high in the air

[rottenstrawberries]

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

[nightshadowninja]

She was terrorizing lower ranks for years. I am just glad that everybody is talking about her now.

[johnwickfromfortnite]

"Just pick hitscan lol"

Meanwhile my dps has better odds at hitting their shot with a woman than hitting shots on pharah

[SearcherRyan]

Giving a flying character infinite AoE damage was a really smart idea. Bravo Vince!

[Vash-Venture]

My games have been nothing but Sombras and Pharahs and there's only so much we can all take lol

[grimsdol]

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

[LzzzR]

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.

[Kanuui-]

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.

[Lucigu_OW]

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)

[beywheelzhater]

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

[NickTheChicken_]

All of the issues with characters I see could be solved instantly if they just removed mercy

[marinary]

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

[luminous]

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

[theincompetent]

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.

[curlyboy]

I agree with the Pharah being too quiet I really wish they made her jets louder so its harder for her to flank you

[Gamin]

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

[haasithgarapati]

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!

[Youhadabadday]

Project Moon music heard, send in the sleeper agents.