With hitscan heroes being nerfed in a recent Overwatch patch, players are begging Blizzard to do something about Pharah terrorizing their games with her aerial supremacy.
Pharah is easily one of the most controversial Overwatch heroes in history. When she’s out of meta, she’s really out of meta, but when she’s strong, she can be an unstoppable force thanks to her explosive damage output and ability to stay in the air.
Thanks to a recent hitscan nerf that saw multiple heroes see their damage fallout adjusted, Pharah has become meta once again, soaring to new heights, especially when she has help from a Mercy pocket.
According to data collected from Redditor rd11490nba, hitscan heroes across the board have a significantly harder time dealing with the rocket queen.
Previously, for McCree, from a distance of 40 meters and a critical hit rate of 0.5, he could kill Pharah with a Mercy pocket in 6.51 seconds.
Now, with his nerfs, from 38 meters, it takes him a whopping 17.01 seconds to shoot her down. That’s also under the assumption that he doesn’t die to rockets during that time.
Elsewhere, Baptiste used to be able to down a Pharah in just 4 seconds from 45 meters away. That time has jumped all the way to 15.97 seconds at 43 meters.
Seeing these statistics, players actively called for the Blizzard devs to take action.
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“Pharah is too strong right now. Pharah has nearly a 60% win rate in GM over the past month. No one else comes close to her,” one remarked. “Playing against Pharmercy is f**king oppressive. You need to nerf her or buff hitscans. As it is, she’s nigh unkillable and doesn’t have damage falloff.”
“It really doesn’t make sense to me that hitscan isn’t a Pharmercy counter anymore,” another commented. “I really hope they try 40% or 35% falloff or something. Also, give Pharah a passive noise like Echo, I’m so f**king tired of barrages/Pharahs coming from nowhere.”
While the hitscan nerfs certainly make Pharah feel oppressive to some, others disagree and believe the buff to Pharah isn’t as big as some people make it to be.
“I walked away from the analysis thinking that this was a massive buff to Pharah, but then when I went into the workshop and measured these distances, it doesn’t seem completely broken, just harder to deal with,” the individual who did all the calculations said.
However, they added that for lower ranks, this would make Pharah more of a “noob stomper” than she already is.
We’ll have to wait and see if the devs take action. With the Overwatch League’s Countdown Cup beginning on Friday and the hitscan changes finally entering OWL, it will be interesting to see if Pharah, an already dominant hero during the Summer Showdown, becomes even more unstoppable or if teams can figure out a way to hold her at bay.
Whether or not we see Pharah nerfs in time for the Overwatch League playoffs could very well come down to how she performs in the next couple of weeks.
