[jwplayer 91I9RIGm]
A simple change made by a player to Pharah in Overwatch’s Workshop could help her reclaim the skies from all of those Echo players that have been popping up lately.
For a long time, Pharah was the undisputed queen of the skybox in Overwatch – until the arrival of Echo seriously challenged her aerial supremacy, but one small adjustment could go a long way towards fixing that.
Reddit user ‘samasaurus6’ took to the Workshop mode and retooled Pharah’s jetpack to make it operate similar to Mercy’s Angelic Descent when low on fuel, which means she floats slowly down instead of her usual, jerky movement.
We have to say the final product does look quite clean, and it would make aiming much easier for Pharah players once they run out of fuel in the air – though it wouldn’t necessarily make her completely overpowered.
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“I don’t know if I like this idea or not, but I was thinking about other things I could change/do with the new PTR “ability resource” stuff, and Pharah’s Hover Jets immediately came to mind,” samasuarus said. “I used the Workshop to let Pharah glide/hover rather than her usual short bursts to descend. I accomplished this by never letting the fuel gauge start refilling if you are holding space and applying a slight downward impulse once the player has a positive Y velocity.”
Almost instantly, it’s clear from samasuarus’s clip how much smoother this would make playing Pharah, but before you go assuming she would be way too OP, it’s worth considering how much easier she would be to shoot down.
Any Mercy player worth their salt knows that simply holding down Angellic Descent and slowly floating is basically an open invitation for the enemy Widow to end your life, and Pharah players would have to quickly learn that they’re much more vulnerable if this change were to happen.
In fact, Pharah mains would probably adopt a similar method to Mercy players, who usually tap the Angelic Descent to make their path more unpredictable to enemies making it similar to Pharah’s current low-fuel movement pattern, ironically enough.
Like we mentioned, this isn’t an actual change, just one that a player came up with using the Workshop, but it is a great idea to level the playing field between Pharah and Echo, who definitely has an easier and smoother time flying around.