1) Streamers and high ranked players see Pharah more because the armor changes to tanks and complain a bit.
2) Metal ranks and general player base catch on and use this as an opportunity to express every grievance they’ve ever had about Pharah.
It drives me nuts that it's always the low ranks that get the most attention on r/overwatch.
Take Sombra for example, she's counterable if you know how to play as a team. My boyfriend is a support main in diamond 1 and never complained about her, he hates Genji more as an Ana main.
Low ranks don't know how to play so they cry for a nerf or rework.
For what its worth, lower ranks have always struggled against projectile heroes.
Projectiles reward prediction and metal ranks have worse movement/positioning making them highly punishable. Thats why you see complaints from the main sub talking about Pharah killing them "from across the map." Like what? How does that even happen?? Because they are standing still or walking into spam.
The real problem is that high rank DPS are now (supposedly) struggling against Pharah. The devs have historically favored hitscan at high ranks, which means you needed to be a specialist to play Pharah up there, but now that with all the recent changes she's holding her own without a pocket.
I really enjoy Pharah, but despite the downvotes I get on this sub, I still don't think the devs are going to let her exist like this at the top which translates to nerfs for all of us.
You are 100% correct. And through the years it seems that the devs love to nerf and make niche heroes unplayable. Look at Sym, she one of the nichest heroes in game and she struggled for a long time. And she's probably gonna get a nerf after the recent buffs.
Meanwhile, super popular heroes (Tracer, Sojourn) that are very powerful just get a slap on the hand.
Yeah Sojourn was nerfed many times since release, but she's still S tier.
I don't think sojourn is gonna be really good. After railgun nerf she can't even oneshot tracer anymore since rail headshot does up to 150 damage. Yes, she is gonna get more rails but they are not as lethal as it was before.
You have to consider lower ranks with balance to a degree but I think a lot of casual players can be bad at identifying what the problem they’re having stems from in the first place. And sometimes it seems like the devs take social media narratives too seriously when it comes to balancing.
You forgot to mention the hp changes made flyers able to have significantly more survivability when paired with a pocket along with blizzard buffing her fire rate
Idk her hitbox is kind of big and the hitscan projectile changes made it so much easier to hit her. I think the rocket projectile size increase made it too easy to hit directs tho.
All of pharah’s counters got larger projectiles and more health, making the breakpoints for killing them much harder to achieve. Pharah’s hitbox is bigger than nearly every dps and now she’s not in the skybox as much so even the heroes that didn’t counter her before have a better chance at it. I believe the reason her winrate is so high is because of the fact that the people who still play her are typically better than the average dps in their rank, because they HAVE to be.
I'm almost the opposite; I nearly always play pharah, and I almost dislike when my support goes Mercy because I just know, win or lose, I'm going to get flamed in a way I wouldn't if I hard-carried without a pocket
If they are gonna nerf Pharah just because of Pink Mercy release it's very dumb.
But we are used to very dumb decisions from the devs. They love nerfing already niche heroes and buffing popular and strong heroes.
I even saw one of those weekly "which hero do you hate playing against" threads on the main subreddit, and before 98% of answers were "Sombra". The other 2% were between Pharah and other heroes.
The recent one I saw today, 98% were Pharah.
This doesn't make any sense, she didn't get buffed since her rework, why didn't they mass complain during those 4 months but started doing it a few days ago?
Months ago I pointed out that the rework was a huge buff to pharah. But since she's one of the least played hero's and some pharah mains were complaining the general audience just assumed it was bad. But when pink mercy drops again and theres suddenly a mercy every single game on both teams, there's naturally more people playing the pharah rework. As they have gotten better at it the hitscan has now seen the real issue with the rework at 4 or 5 months.
That's actually a very possible explanation. Since Pink Mercy released I'm having a blast on Pharah because there is a Mercy in every game. I aknowledge that Paharh is still strong with a Mercy pocket..
Then again I wonder.. why do they keep nerfing heroes that are lethal when boosted (like Ashe 1 shot a few years back) instead of trying to solve the problem itself?
Idk, make it that her power beam loses effect after a few seconds, like it scales in percentage. Or just that after a few seconds it just disconnects from Pharah or something like that.
That is the explanation. Pharah is easy to get value out of for half the effort rn. And with hitscan dmg drop off, it's like shooting her with a pea shooter unless she's close to you, in which case she out damages you anyway. And that's without a mercy pocket. She's a metal rank buster and a crutch pick at this point. Can't do well on soj or cass? Just go pharah and you'll do a shit ton more dmg. Hence the hate. The bad players do good on her and the good players absolutely dominate
That would make Mercy more useless than she already is tho. I don’t think damage boost is worth a whole ass character anymore unless the DPS she’s boosting is the most skilled player in the lobby.
Which is funny to me as a hitscan main because it’s stupidly easy to shoot her down if the person playing her doesn’t know what they’re doing. I may have good aiming skill but it’s mostly muscle memory, it feels like a lot more skillful when I’m engaging all my neurons to make a projectile hero work.
Because people need their influencer to tell them what to think. Then once a narrative gains traction all the other content creators have to bandwagon it for the sake of their livelihood. Bonus points if its a negative narrative that drives engagement comments
It's just weird bc at the beginning of s9 with the release of her rework streamers unanimously ranked her as C-D tier and there were no major complaints from the community, but then they made the armor changes and she started getting played in owcs... and suddenly everyone's got something to say about how the game is unplayable bc she "destroys squishies" (even though the changes only affect armored heroes) and complaining about her being meta (even if she's only meta when played with mauga since she still lacks self sustain but meta doesn't affect 90% of the playerbase so...)
Just people parroting what their favorite streamers say without realizing most of the complaints from high ranks don't apply to silver and gold
It's got a lot to do with pros in OWCS from DreamHack in Dallas which was about a month ago where they showcased Pharah's power in her new rework. Naturally it generated some buzz amongst streamers & high-level players and has been growing ever since.
Because she's a very strong pick right now. The armor changes were extremely in favor for her and the changes to Soujorn and Cassidy make it a lot harder for them to contest her. I'd go so far as to say she's meta. Her WR is at an eye-watering 58% and she's just unfortunately one of those heroes that feel really bad to play against when in meta, like Mauga or Roadhog.
I have been noticing more Pharah’s in Diamond elo but I’m not going to complain about it since I am comfortable playing any number of hitscans + Echo. I really do not find her that big of a problem unless I am playing tank. Which in that case I have very little control over how good the enemy Pharah is going to play.
Also that Pharah's playstyle had to change with less fuel- she seems best more like a spamming junkrat since she has no damage falloff and if shes far away hitscans with major falloff like Cassidy cant kill her but still take full damage from choke spam. That combined with the armor change makes her more powerful at higher levels now that people are getting used to her new play style and low elo players always had a hard time anyways.
She has been strong/OP for a bit, its a combo of people finally respecting her, seeing her get pro play, the armor changes and nerfs to other dps that finally pushed her over the edge in people's eyes. Even before the armor changes her winrate was high if i remember correctly, the rework injected so much more speed and damage into the kit.
Pharah is definitely a meta dps, boasting one of the highest dps winrates. Nerfs are likely gonna come. One thing that really fuels her success in ranked is that she is a matchup problem for enemy teams. There is always a threat that an alert dps will see too many projectile/ melee heros on your comp and bring out pharah to force you to change your comp or auto lose. Pharah has been buffed enough now to where an entire team of hitscans is still a favorable matchup for you, but if they don't have hitscans you are easily the most oppressive hero in the entire game. SO she likely gets a boost to her win rate just off of the games she exploits comps that cant fight her in the air.
Also important to note that Sojourn is gone, so now you need someone to take her place in the dps meta. Pharah slotted right in.
as a gm1 pharah player she’s in a really good spot rn and can be very oppressive even at high ranks she also has a very low skill ceiling so that means just about anyone can access her tie it all together with her high damage and mobility with the new rework and she can be in killable in some situations plus the boop doing damage just also adds to her kill potential
Pharah has been quite strong since her rework but due to various little buffs and nerfs here and there people have realized she’s extremely effective and takes little effort to get a lot of value on
The armor changes benefitted her a good bit and now with cass’ mag nade not having the ability to reach halfway across space and time itself her only real counter is echo but echo has a pretty low pickrate and isn’t exactly easy to play
And also mercy is super popular this season due to pink mercy returning so there’s a lot of duos trying out pharah mercy so even more new pharah mains
Because mercy pocketing is unhealthy for the game but because they both fly it makes it so hard to kill pharah and going for mercy first is incredibly difficult. They really need to rework mercy.
I don't watch any streamer regularly and felt this way about Pharah before seeing it on Reddit. She gets a lot of value out of not needing to aim much and the safest boop in all of Overwatch.
1) Streamers and high ranked players see Pharah more because the armor changes to tanks and complain a bit. 2) Metal ranks and general player base catch on and use this as an opportunity to express every grievance they’ve ever had about Pharah.
It drives me nuts that it's always the low ranks that get the most attention on r/overwatch. Take Sombra for example, she's counterable if you know how to play as a team. My boyfriend is a support main in diamond 1 and never complained about her, he hates Genji more as an Ana main. Low ranks don't know how to play so they cry for a nerf or rework.
For what its worth, lower ranks have always struggled against projectile heroes. Projectiles reward prediction and metal ranks have worse movement/positioning making them highly punishable. Thats why you see complaints from the main sub talking about Pharah killing them "from across the map." Like what? How does that even happen?? Because they are standing still or walking into spam. The real problem is that high rank DPS are now (supposedly) struggling against Pharah. The devs have historically favored hitscan at high ranks, which means you needed to be a specialist to play Pharah up there, but now that with all the recent changes she's holding her own without a pocket. I really enjoy Pharah, but despite the downvotes I get on this sub, I still don't think the devs are going to let her exist like this at the top which translates to nerfs for all of us.
You are 100% correct. And through the years it seems that the devs love to nerf and make niche heroes unplayable. Look at Sym, she one of the nichest heroes in game and she struggled for a long time. And she's probably gonna get a nerf after the recent buffs. Meanwhile, super popular heroes (Tracer, Sojourn) that are very powerful just get a slap on the hand. Yeah Sojourn was nerfed many times since release, but she's still S tier.
I don't think sojourn is gonna be really good. After railgun nerf she can't even oneshot tracer anymore since rail headshot does up to 150 damage. Yes, she is gonna get more rails but they are not as lethal as it was before.
Im in diamond and i always shoot lanes from the edge of a corner into another and i still rack up kills doing that from the ground its hilarious
It’s the low ranks and the tippy top too. The 80% of us in the middle don’t count.
You have to consider lower ranks with balance to a degree but I think a lot of casual players can be bad at identifying what the problem they’re having stems from in the first place. And sometimes it seems like the devs take social media narratives too seriously when it comes to balancing.
You forgot to mention the hp changes made flyers able to have significantly more survivability when paired with a pocket along with blizzard buffing her fire rate
Idk her hitbox is kind of big and the hitscan projectile changes made it so much easier to hit her. I think the rocket projectile size increase made it too easy to hit directs tho.
That buff was the smallest buff out of all heroes projectile/bullet size buffs
They only buffed the speed the rocket travels the slightest amount ever they never buffed how quick she fires consecutive rockets
All of pharah’s counters got larger projectiles and more health, making the breakpoints for killing them much harder to achieve. Pharah’s hitbox is bigger than nearly every dps and now she’s not in the skybox as much so even the heroes that didn’t counter her before have a better chance at it. I believe the reason her winrate is so high is because of the fact that the people who still play her are typically better than the average dps in their rank, because they HAVE to be.
I think the pink/rose gold mercy skin promo is bringing out all the Mercy mains, and mercy mains bring out the pharahs 🤣
Especially because there aren't that many pharah mains in the first place. The general playerbase only plays pharah when they have a pocket
Im a pharah main on dps and ive been noticing a lot more pharahs since season 9. Before then i almost never saw any at all
I love seeing it, especially when they lose the dogfight then rageswitch
One day ima get good enough to win consistent. Shes the only dps character i ever play so i never swap
I just smoked someone yesterday in pharah battles that had a mercy pocket (i didnt)they got resurrected and I killed them again right after 😂
I'm almost the opposite; I nearly always play pharah, and I almost dislike when my support goes Mercy because I just know, win or lose, I'm going to get flamed in a way I wouldn't if I hard-carried without a pocket
If they are gonna nerf Pharah just because of Pink Mercy release it's very dumb. But we are used to very dumb decisions from the devs. They love nerfing already niche heroes and buffing popular and strong heroes.
I’m sure watching a shiny pink fairy fly away after they get rocketed combo’d doesn’t help lol.
I even saw one of those weekly "which hero do you hate playing against" threads on the main subreddit, and before 98% of answers were "Sombra". The other 2% were between Pharah and other heroes. The recent one I saw today, 98% were Pharah. This doesn't make any sense, she didn't get buffed since her rework, why didn't they mass complain during those 4 months but started doing it a few days ago?
Really the only change that "buffed" her was the change to tank armor making her better
Really shows how NPC people can be.
Can you give a link on one of these threads?
People say sye was sleeper OP and now they've just found out, which is also dumb.
Months ago I pointed out that the rework was a huge buff to pharah. But since she's one of the least played hero's and some pharah mains were complaining the general audience just assumed it was bad. But when pink mercy drops again and theres suddenly a mercy every single game on both teams, there's naturally more people playing the pharah rework. As they have gotten better at it the hitscan has now seen the real issue with the rework at 4 or 5 months.
That's actually a very possible explanation. Since Pink Mercy released I'm having a blast on Pharah because there is a Mercy in every game. I aknowledge that Paharh is still strong with a Mercy pocket.. Then again I wonder.. why do they keep nerfing heroes that are lethal when boosted (like Ashe 1 shot a few years back) instead of trying to solve the problem itself? Idk, make it that her power beam loses effect after a few seconds, like it scales in percentage. Or just that after a few seconds it just disconnects from Pharah or something like that.
That is the explanation. Pharah is easy to get value out of for half the effort rn. And with hitscan dmg drop off, it's like shooting her with a pea shooter unless she's close to you, in which case she out damages you anyway. And that's without a mercy pocket. She's a metal rank buster and a crutch pick at this point. Can't do well on soj or cass? Just go pharah and you'll do a shit ton more dmg. Hence the hate. The bad players do good on her and the good players absolutely dominate
Yup they need to take a look at blue beam and make some changes to that rather than fucking with the dps it enables.
That would make Mercy more useless than she already is tho. I don’t think damage boost is worth a whole ass character anymore unless the DPS she’s boosting is the most skilled player in the lobby.
people hate any non poke+hitscan character because "unskilled"
Which is funny to me as a hitscan main because it’s stupidly easy to shoot her down if the person playing her doesn’t know what they’re doing. I may have good aiming skill but it’s mostly muscle memory, it feels like a lot more skillful when I’m engaging all my neurons to make a projectile hero work.
Echo chamber effect.
Because people need their influencer to tell them what to think. Then once a narrative gains traction all the other content creators have to bandwagon it for the sake of their livelihood. Bonus points if its a negative narrative that drives engagement comments
It's just weird bc at the beginning of s9 with the release of her rework streamers unanimously ranked her as C-D tier and there were no major complaints from the community, but then they made the armor changes and she started getting played in owcs... and suddenly everyone's got something to say about how the game is unplayable bc she "destroys squishies" (even though the changes only affect armored heroes) and complaining about her being meta (even if she's only meta when played with mauga since she still lacks self sustain but meta doesn't affect 90% of the playerbase so...) Just people parroting what their favorite streamers say without realizing most of the complaints from high ranks don't apply to silver and gold
I’m just surprised people (possibly) think I’m op with Pharah. I wonder how much I’ve contributed to this lol
Same. Play of the game like 50% of all games, and i think that might be skewing perceptions
It's got a lot to do with pros in OWCS from DreamHack in Dallas which was about a month ago where they showcased Pharah's power in her new rework. Naturally it generated some buzz amongst streamers & high-level players and has been growing ever since.
She has a really high winrate atm, the dev update says she has 58% winrate since season 11
She is seeing a lot of play in OWCS because of Mauga. So people see her in OWCS and then replicate it in Comp. Happens all the time.
Because she's a very strong pick right now. The armor changes were extremely in favor for her and the changes to Soujorn and Cassidy make it a lot harder for them to contest her. I'd go so far as to say she's meta. Her WR is at an eye-watering 58% and she's just unfortunately one of those heroes that feel really bad to play against when in meta, like Mauga or Roadhog.
I have been noticing more Pharah’s in Diamond elo but I’m not going to complain about it since I am comfortable playing any number of hitscans + Echo. I really do not find her that big of a problem unless I am playing tank. Which in that case I have very little control over how good the enemy Pharah is going to play.
Also that Pharah's playstyle had to change with less fuel- she seems best more like a spamming junkrat since she has no damage falloff and if shes far away hitscans with major falloff like Cassidy cant kill her but still take full damage from choke spam. That combined with the armor change makes her more powerful at higher levels now that people are getting used to her new play style and low elo players always had a hard time anyways.
She has been strong/OP for a bit, its a combo of people finally respecting her, seeing her get pro play, the armor changes and nerfs to other dps that finally pushed her over the edge in people's eyes. Even before the armor changes her winrate was high if i remember correctly, the rework injected so much more speed and damage into the kit. Pharah is definitely a meta dps, boasting one of the highest dps winrates. Nerfs are likely gonna come. One thing that really fuels her success in ranked is that she is a matchup problem for enemy teams. There is always a threat that an alert dps will see too many projectile/ melee heros on your comp and bring out pharah to force you to change your comp or auto lose. Pharah has been buffed enough now to where an entire team of hitscans is still a favorable matchup for you, but if they don't have hitscans you are easily the most oppressive hero in the entire game. SO she likely gets a boost to her win rate just off of the games she exploits comps that cant fight her in the air. Also important to note that Sojourn is gone, so now you need someone to take her place in the dps meta. Pharah slotted right in.
as a gm1 pharah player she’s in a really good spot rn and can be very oppressive even at high ranks she also has a very low skill ceiling so that means just about anyone can access her tie it all together with her high damage and mobility with the new rework and she can be in killable in some situations plus the boop doing damage just also adds to her kill potential
Pharah has been quite strong since her rework but due to various little buffs and nerfs here and there people have realized she’s extremely effective and takes little effort to get a lot of value on The armor changes benefitted her a good bit and now with cass’ mag nade not having the ability to reach halfway across space and time itself her only real counter is echo but echo has a pretty low pickrate and isn’t exactly easy to play And also mercy is super popular this season due to pink mercy returning so there’s a lot of duos trying out pharah mercy so even more new pharah mains
Because mercy pocketing is unhealthy for the game but because they both fly it makes it so hard to kill pharah and going for mercy first is incredibly difficult. They really need to rework mercy.
I don't watch any streamer regularly and felt this way about Pharah before seeing it on Reddit. She gets a lot of value out of not needing to aim much and the safest boop in all of Overwatch.
"Not needing to sink aim much" Tell me you don't play Pharah without telling me you don't play pharah.