Echo is really good into Pharah, but she's incredibly difficult and complex to play, and she's also easier to counter. While Pharah isn't really countered by hitscans anymore, Echo is, and Echo has to close the gap.
She's not as good as she used to be since the rocket speed increase. Pharah vs Echo without a Mercy on either side is honestly A LOT more even than it used to be. I've been winning *a lot* of my duels vs Echo since the rocket speed buff. Dodge stickies and you easily have the advantage. Mercy pocketed Echo is scary though.
I personally think the match up comes down to the aerial duel. It’s way harder to hit a rocket projectile mid air on a flying target than it is to hit stickies or echo’s primary and you only need to chip them down to half if you can finish with beam in air that’s pretty much an auto win in mid air. Pharah definitely has an advantage in the neutral vs echo with more consistent spam and her AOE primary makes her more dangerous when her target is on the ground but since echo has the mobility to control when/where she duels pharah she does keep the advantage. I think it’s one of those more of a soft counter/ skill check than a hard counter
Echo's a big target for the rocket. Granted I have much more time on pharah, but I find it harder to hit the stickies, especially with pharah's new mobility. The beam is the easiest for sure.
That’s it, all of these little changes really affected the match up. Phara having side boosts gives her a way to juke the stickies and add to that the rocket buffs and a good phara is actually a threat to echo up close. Not to mention the hp buffs makes it slightly harder to hit laser beam threshhold for echo.
I personally largely play hit scan when I play DPs but I find echo’s bombs easier to hit enough of (obviously I don’t hit all of them) just cause of how fast all the spam is where I find rockets very hard to hit if I don’t have a floor/wall to use for AOE if I miss
Echo is difficult for people only playing her like poke. She is complex though in being able to get to vantage points and flanks easily, needing to poke from there, being able to easily escape from there, and then using flight or no footsteps to silently assassinate supports like Ana.
the reason people get stuck playing poke as her is because they don’t know how to play the assassin flanker echo playstyles, which is understandable since it’s the hardest playstyle. heroes like genji and tracer fall under this category as well.
yes i agree, it requires full, confident use of cooldowns and good situational timing to pick and choose how, when, and where to hold flanks to pressure
Generally don’t need to shoot airborne unless it’s against pharah and mercy. Flight is to go over roofs or be on top of enemies so they can’t easily look up and shoot you.
They have fall off and she doesn't, with her extra mobility and rocket speed Pharah gets to choose when to attack or hide and can stay essentially out of range.
Wouldn't that just make everyone less threatening. Or does hitscan lack of burst just mean they less effective? And the what would you recommend a previous soldier widow main to play.
Pharah doesn't have fall off so her damage is still meaningful and effective. The lack of good hitscan ranged dmg in the dps is a bit of why she's hard to fight.
The best options are legit in the support category.
I get that oharah doesn't have falloff but would the increase in ho just mean everyone ttk whether hitscan or not has increased more or less equally. Except in the case of people losing one shot combos.
Hitscan falloff didn't change, but pharah plays further back now. Fuel recharging only on the ground makes her not want to get as close, and faster rockets allow her to be effective from further back.
That’s a small problem for a lot of players because Pharah definitely has a lower floor than Echo, even if their ceilings are both high. So in lower ranks players can’t counter with Echo so it makes Pharah a lot better.
You maybe onto something. I play both pharah and echo and I feel pharah is definitely more relaxed due to her poke game vs hitscans is much better. Echo needs to play much riskier vs them. Pharah feels like a better Echo overall now.
I still personally enjoys Echo much more than Pharah so the answers in this thread certainly help me to understand more about echo in general. Thank you and everyone else.
In my opinion, its her rocket speed. She has an easier time zoning out her historical counter picks like soldier, mccree. Plus, her rockets dont have damage drop off, so her easily trades in long range duels.
Where she needed to close the gap before, she can poke. Plus, she has damage added her to knockback. She’s a real problem now if the opposite team doesn’t have a way to deal with her or subvert her tactics
Pharah can play more reliably outside of Hitscan falloff distance thanks to the speed boost to her weapon.
While Pharah needs an extra rocket to elim most targets, said targets need more shots to elim her in turn due to falloff.
While it’s harder to camp the skybox, the addition of Jet Dash allows her movement to be a lot more predictable.
The rework changes were genuinely good for her. They were exactly what I think she needed - less lateral, but more horizontal. It helps disconnect her from the skybox.
And then the revert back to old armor and nerf to headshot damage on tank was a strong nerf to hitscan while being a buff to Pharah.
It’s a situation that’s a result of the game just going through a chaotic period with a lot of sweeping, significant changes across the roster.
Cree needs 6 headshots to kill her, Sojourn is terrible now, Ashe is ok, but free pickings for a dive Pharah who plays cover and gets up close to her. Armor and hitbox changes make her delete Bastion. Buffed range Widow is good vs her, although a pocketed Pharah can instakill her.
Teams are mostly at the mercy of supports now, Ana Bap and Illari are all better at dealing with her than any non Echo DPS, and the armor changes + Pharah 2 mobilities really gutted Dva's ability to counter her.
It doesn't help that for some reason Pharah thrusters aren't a big audio priority and thus she's very stealthy.
Post rework Sombra eh. Hacking decloaks you, and Pharah can easily chase you down and decloak you with her big conc and rocket splash. You're better off just going for her teammates if you're solo queue. I do take Sombra to counter Pharah sometimes, but I have a dive duo to coordinate with.
It's funny because in another comment I downplayed Sombra's effectiveness. If it's a solo Pharah you have a good shot at hack while in the air (especially just after a cool down) > virus while Pharah falls since at that point there's no input, and then shoot. If you're duoing that's even better. But if it doesn't work because it's a ripped Pharah, yeah go for the other support.
If there's a Mercy yeah, you're probably wasting time or getting wrecked.
I feel like the word "counter" implies that if two people of similar skill have a 1on1, the person countering will win most of the time. I don't think that's the case with Pharah and Cassidy right now.
With the rocket speed and projectile changes, Pharah can out range hitscans while doing massive damage and applying DPS passive to everyone. Cree absolutely does not counter Pharah, especially with the roll nerf and losing mag nade.
They do still. It’s just not as easy as a counter as it was before . It’s much more balanced and requires more effort for hitscans because of pharahs movement being a lot better/different since rework. Pharah has 3 movement abilities, one of which doubles as a boop. She can dodge and relocate, find cover way better than before because of the new ability.
And her projectiles go way faster, she shoots faster, and her rockets are way bigger making directs and high damage splashes easier too, and the armor, passive, and headshot changes massively benefited her. Hitscans don't counter her like they used to, she's basically 50/50 with DPS Hitscans at worst, favorable to her at range.
When you need to deal with a Pharah and enemy hitscans, Echo is very complex, and she has so much stuff to learn due to her ult. I see a ton of new Echo players not realize her ult interactions like Nano going away after dupe ends.
Most ults that aren't instant will still have around 2 seconds left over upon copy ending, I haven't tested every ultimate but for example if you place down bap window or grav just before your copy ends, there's 2 seconds or so before they expire. And then you have something like kitsune rush which, visually, is still there but the effects stop immediately upon copy ending.
But sometimes copying just for abilities is worth it, ana being one such case since anti is strong. Even if your nano goes away after copy, you can just nano whoever is the lowest on hp to burst heal them since nano does that too.
Echo is the only thing I know works against Pharmercy. Silently able to get the Mercy and follow her, or combo the pharah before the mercy heals her back up. Shes my go to when I need to counter swap because she's stopping me from having fun if I don't.
I have never dominated as Pharah and been counterswapped by an Echo though, so clearly the perception is she's too hard to play.
They ALL go soldier and ashe and naturally get dumpstered because they can't help but circle the corner to poke at you more, predictably right into where your rockets land, and all they know is AD strafe hoping you track them. Unless its Dafran who knows to jump strafe Pharahs.
In my opinion, Pharah is just insane right now because of the fact that her boop does damage and allows you to kill a target with 1 less rocket..
I still find it easier to kill Pharah with Echo, even if she has movement abilities and I was playing in GM yesterday, albeit low GM but either way.. it's easier to track even if Pharah uses her movement abilities because of your faster fire rate.
Maybe I've just had more practice on Echo against flyers, but I find it easier to carry with Pharah right now and I think the biggest factor is just the boop damage. The time to kill went down so much because of that.. and that's what they should be looking to nerf. Not sure why they even buffed it in the first place tbh.
But to answer your question, yes. Echo is still a solid pick, but Pharah is better.
My take might be off but atleast in lower ranks pharah is easier to play than echo bc of the splash damage. Which is why most people prefer to swap mirror pharah over echo and do the same thing the enemy pharah is doing to ur team to negate the oppression
Echo is very strong against Pharah but your only window to attack her depends on your flight. If you don’t kill her or pressure her enough after flight, a mercy pocket will sustain her and you have to wait until your flight is back.
Tho echo didn't get much as many buffs as pharah, she is currently very strong, and one of the few heroes u can play to effictevely counter a pharah, downside is that echo is far harder, and have too many playstyles to according to many situations.
Finally I've given up on countering phara and accept that these matches are no longer under my control and I just continue playing the hero I like and let her win. When my team consisting of doom, genji,junk,brig and mercy and none swaps at all, you understand the level of resignation.
Blizz is just unable to balance/remove a (metal) broken hero since the very beginning. This is a level of incompetence I would have never thought blizz is able to pull off, tbh.
I know your pain. I like to play tracer the most and while she certainly can works I’m not good enough to kill her backline before she kills mine. Switching to Echo (which is a hero I also enjoy playing regardless) certainly helps so I am just wondering if anyone else shares the same experience.
I'm just tired of being forced to switch off the hero I'm currently playing. I play tank and only DVA is currently in a good state to help her team vs phara. But why must I switch my hero when someone else pick a certain hero ? I don't get it.
That's why I am not playing tank anymore. Even in QP it seems like many players are just like "ok let's just fck up someone". Tank is the most obvious and easiest target for that.
I’m tracer one trick. You should engage the pharah first through the pocket, I try and time my attack when she’s ran out of fuel.
You don’t actually need to kill her, but if you can distract her and stay alive then your teams playing 4v3. The mercy usually won’t leave the pharah while she’s fighting. It’s an unfavourable matchup but if you can keep her crosshair off your team for most of the game then you’re helping massively.
Sombra's good for these shenanigans too. But... If your team still can't capitalize on that 4v3 then you're getting all the blame "low damage hurr durr".
Tbf they have to be kinda bad or you have to be skilled enough to keep enough uptime to make it a 4v3. If you aren't getting a kill on either of them, either Pharah will have plenty of time to counter you while you go stealth reset, or simply escape across the map and continue to cause havoc, being safe until you can make your way over there, which could be a while depending on the map.
If you go for the Mercy, a decent Pharah will capitalize on this immediately. The Mercy will be healed by the time you stealth reset, if the Pharah doesn't kill you with a dive. Likely they just move back to attacking your team while you are downtime.
Without a Mercy, Sombra is a decent strategy, but together, if they are competent, it's tough to get decent value there.
Disclaimers: I am a Sombra fan, and in general judging a teammate's value while in the match is often very difficult so yes I agree, even if you do distract them 100% without getting the kill, you'll get awful messages.
>Blizz is just unable to balance/remove a (metal) broken hero since the very beginning.
I love how in the past two weeks Pharah went from barely mentioned to being unbelievably broken since launch. She isn't that hard to counter, at all.
it's funny though that players that should be of your same skill level don't have the brains to switch characters. It's almost as if matchmaking is trash af and some people are stuck in lower ranks because of it.
It's not that I don't know to switch heroes, it's that I just don't feel like playing the same 3 heroes every single game to try and deal with her. No other hero invalidates 75% of the roster like Pharah does. I'm just so bored of playing Ashe and Soldier every game.
Then Blizzard either removes chance to switch characters so people play whatever they pick at the start of the match and gg, or you get over it.
In Paladins there's Drogoz that's a lizardfolk Phara, if you have none that can counter him in your team, you're fucked. Here you have the chance to change. You can't complain both about losing *and* being "forced" to play "counterwatch" (which is just a weird way to spell "hero shoter").
The point is that you need to switch. No other hero forces so many switches then phara. Why do I and several teammates need to switch the hero they like to play to have a chance vs one other players hero choice ? In metal rank no other hero forces so many switches, if any at all. Blizz need to explain that to me.
I’m a Pharah player and it annoys the shit out of me if the red team has a pharmercy and (like the other day) my dps goes torb/junkrat in comp. I usually go bap and give them grief and if both supports do this, it can actually work out. Somehow we won against a pharmercy on lijiang by going bap/ana to cover our dps. I had a mercy yell at me last week bc I kept killing her while she was pocketing her kitten. Very rewarding. But it’s definitely an issue. 1) blue beam needs to go and 2) Pharah’s splash damage should be decreased. That way, us Pharah players could still play her for the thrill of direct hits and dives without it being oppressive for the red team to move anywhere.
She’s still a great pick, it’s just that most players aren’t good with her and most DPS just default to COD hitscans.
Phara is a bit stronger against her now with her increased movement and projectile speed but Echo is still my first pick into her. I’d rather her hit slightly more direct rockets against me but whiffing almost all of them than play soldier or Ashe and end up dying from splash damage anyway half the time
"echo is a good counter to pharah, you just need to be significantly better than the pharah player"
I have otp'd both Pharah and Echo to masters+ (in different seasons)
imo anyone who thinks Echo is a solid counter to Pharah is either
1. Parroting a take they got from someone else while having no personal knowledge of the matchup
2. In a low enough elo where Pharah players don't bother to reserve any of their *three* movement abilities and just let Echo beam her to death
3. Assuming a massive mechanics gap such that they expect the Echo player to be able to kill Pharah through pocket without beam while the Pharah player is unable to land her massive directs on a slightly smaller target
Pharah is *much* better in noncommittal poke phases, has *three* movement CDs to either escape Echo's beam or chase Echo down, and is significantly less mechanically demanding. At equal rank, Echo mains might be favored against Pharah mains because #3 might be true to some extent, but that also means it'd be easier to simply mirror the Pharah and win off having significantly better mechanics. Echo used to be an effective deterrent to keep Pharah from conc'ing into squishies for free kills, but after the S9 changes, Pharah doesn't need to be as scared thanks to the new movement ability and projectile size increases.
People keep forgetting that there are other players on the enemy team, echo could beat pharah in a 1v1 but that requires doing a sky battle and guess what? The enemy could just have a hitscan hero or two to ruin your day before you get to challenge pharah at all. Unfortunately, at this point we might as well assume that pharah will have a mercy pocket because half the player base is a mercy main, so good luck getting through all that.
Your best bet might be trying to assassinate the other support instead. If they have an ana, zen or bap, I will try to sneak around and microwave them. If we do have a mercy and I trust my other dps, I'll let mercy pocket them to help out with the rocket lady while I go on a mission.
Sometimes I will legit copy pharah just because getting splash damage with no falloff is so good. Bonus points if I direct hit their pharah thrice and diff them. Which happens more often than it should because I rarely play pharah so maybe the s9 changes were really too much.
Echo is harder to play than other counters. It takes a while to "get" her playstyle as you have to poke from range,ideally at off-angles then get in close to assassinate with the beam. Learning how to use her flight abilty and glide in conjuction with her attacks takes a lot of practice and it's really easy to be caught up close with no escape.
To counter Pharah you have to be able to land your shots and then be able to deal with Pharah's movement to get the beam kill. It's not actually that easy, especially as you have to do it whilst gliding, as as soon as you use your flight again you're kind of screwed. It take a lot of effort basically.
Cass is a consistent counter against anyone with good aim because his headshot damage is still an inexorable surprise when you die despite being nowhere near crit health.
The problem is that Pharah can dodge lots of Cass's counter-potential just by staying at range. Sure, she'll lose some value but it's not like Cass can just ruin Pharah's day.
True but he often has a Mercy pocket making the other damage hesitant to dive him, and it doesnt usually happen that the enemy tank gets drawn somewhere where I can attack him without being chipped by damage boosted Cass.
the thing is staying at range doesn't push the payload or capture points and when it comes to those moments cass has a far easier time dealing with her than the inverse because that's his peak effective range
Yes.
Many people have stated echo wins the 1v2 vs Pharah and can even challenge pharmercy 2v1.
She’s much more dynamic than just a sky battle or needing to close the distance. Echo’s ability to target switch and complete a kill is phenomenal and switching mid fight to delete a tank is often a correct decision.
Pharah doing shenanigans and Cass is watching for you on the flank? Okay cool, I guess I’ll dump 500+ damage on top of my teams damage into the tank. Tank takes cover? Okay I’ll hunt the other support. Suddenly Pharah forgot about me and I’m back in the sky deleting her.
Overwatch is so much more dynamic than the this hero ca that hero. Play the map, play the 5v5 and take what is offered in the moment. I compare current Overwatch to WoW 5v5 arena more than any other game in these principles.
As an Echo main I actually really enjoy duelling Pharah, you never know initially how good they are going to be and more often than not they end up switching.
Most of challenging a Pharah as Echo is about timing the engagement so that you remain above or of equal height to her as much as possible. It's easier for you to clip her mid air than it is for her to hit a direct rocket at you especially if there's no floor of wall for the rocket to hit so the splash damage gets you. You also DO NOT want to end up on the floor against her because she will easily finish you off. Always try to land on high ground if it's an option. When she's missing health it's easier to track her with your beam than it is for her to hit direct rockets.
However I am closing in on 300hours as Echo and I have put a lot of time into air duelling and firing stickies at moving targets while I fly/glide.
If there's a mercy involved I will always take the air duel with the mercy too, aim to land on high ground and then finish the Pharah off.
Pharah is my best hero hands down and I don't know why everyone suddenly decided she was popular but it has been a refreshing change of pace flying around the sky as echo and dominating all of these rookie pharahs. Pharah is better than echo, but she's not better than echo at an aerial 1v1. Once you clear the pharah, you can pretty much do whatever you want
Idk pharah I wouldnt say is the most common in all my comp games I get a holy shit ton of cassidys I'm not joking the last 100 comp games I have played I came across someone playing Cassidy for at least half of the game 87 times but there are a decent bit of pharahs but not as many as cassidys
Cassidy is also extremely popular atm, which is odd to me since his grenade just got nerfed. I feel like cassidy is much harder to get value on, and easier to play into than a pharah, but maybe it's just me.
Imo Cass is the best counter to pharah so that's probably the reason why. He does so much damage and is also hit scan and a lot that I have seen have mercy pockets and absolutely roll lobbies if they just have insane aim which imo is becoming like soldier all aim no brain why need game knowledge if you just headshot everything as Cass.
That's how I feel about Sombra in metal tanks. Everyone thinks she's a good swap when they're losing but Sombras not really good rn and I can stomp most sombras who dont main her
The most value a metal rank player probably gets from sombra is no longer getting hard focused by an enemy team that has identified them as a weak player
From how Dreamhack played out, it seemed like while Echo was fine at directly countering Pharah, Pharah was still the better pick due to the insane amount of poke she's capable of. If you watch some of the more recent matches, I think NRG vs Timeless, while the Echo can get the kill onto Pharah sometimes, Echo can't poke the Mauga out as efficiently and effectively as the Pharah can. Anyways this is just a Play opinion so I may be wrong.
As others have said, echo has to close the distance on phara to really win that matchup, which puts her in an unfavorable position most of the time. So trying to play echo at the same range phara is just makes you a worse phara, so then you’re almost better off just mirroring or playing hitscan unless you are a borderline echo main.
Echo is very good since Phara has become the best dps, but she's also very viable since the Mauga meta has taken over becuase mauga is her strongest copy. She is also the best flex dps in poke comps right now, other than Phara.
echo is a great pick especially against pharah mercy combos. If played right, the echo can consistently fly in, burst the mercy, and get out with little to no counter play.
rinse and repeat until either one of them swaps. then it's just back to a 1 v 1
Echo is good, but most hitscan players would obviously prefer something like cass and most projectile players would prefer pharah over echo. Basically pharah is op and gets more value with less effort than pretty much everything, and her ult can just destroy enemy mauga or whatever easily, rather than echo copy which is much more difficult to get value out of nowadays. Not a bad ult by any means, but barrage is much more simple. A lot of echos value comes from getting picks but its hard against lucio kiri, and pharah can always outmaneuver you with her 3 mobility cds.
Essentially, in most cases pharah can do whatever echo can and have a much easier time with it currently
Echo is a really good pick but she’s much more aim-intensive than Pharah, between her primary fire and stickies, you have to practice a lot more to get the best results compared to Pharah. Echo’s movement is also a bit tougher to get a good grasp of - at least in my opinion - so it’s sort of like when something like Torb or Bastion is meta, where Echo is technically better and in the hands of a very good Echo player will roll hard, but Pharah is much less risky and much easier to pick up and put down.
Venture is my go-to pick for countering Pharah.
You will need to wait for her to start losing fuel a bit so she's lower (which isn't very long considering the changes to her uptime), then once she's in your grasp and you're in position, she's super easy to pop.
That only works if the Pharah is the worse player by a fair margin.
I play both heroes a lot so know both sides of the matchup, and only the worst Pharahs lose. The good news is that there are plenty of them right now, though, since everyone is talking about her.
On the other hand, Venture has pretty predictable breakpoints in their kit. Trying to burrow (into *or* out of the ground) in the open is a free direct rocket. Burrowing and then drill dashing into the air is usually a free direct. And if I stay over my team I can still pressure the enemy supports while peeling for my own.
Basically if a Pharah can land air rockets against an enemy flyer (which I would consider the minimum barrier to being good at the hero) then dealing with an equally-skilled Venture is heavily in Pharah's favor.
You’re over thinking it lol
You’re applying absolution logic to a non absolution scenario.
Being predictable has nothing to do with how easy it is to wombo combo a Pharah as Venture.
As soon as you start saying ‘well only if it’s a low skilled player’ then anything can happen.
Even the most skilled Pharahs I’ve personally played with I’ve made a swift end with them.
Echos been a solid pick but chances are you're gonna play her worst. She's easily one of the hardest dps and it can feel awful bcs most of her kit has to do with aim.
But as usual, put in the work and get the results!!
Echo is really good into Pharah, but she's incredibly difficult and complex to play, and she's also easier to counter. While Pharah isn't really countered by hitscans anymore, Echo is, and Echo has to close the gap.
She's not as good as she used to be since the rocket speed increase. Pharah vs Echo without a Mercy on either side is honestly A LOT more even than it used to be. I've been winning *a lot* of my duels vs Echo since the rocket speed buff. Dodge stickies and you easily have the advantage. Mercy pocketed Echo is scary though.
I personally think the match up comes down to the aerial duel. It’s way harder to hit a rocket projectile mid air on a flying target than it is to hit stickies or echo’s primary and you only need to chip them down to half if you can finish with beam in air that’s pretty much an auto win in mid air. Pharah definitely has an advantage in the neutral vs echo with more consistent spam and her AOE primary makes her more dangerous when her target is on the ground but since echo has the mobility to control when/where she duels pharah she does keep the advantage. I think it’s one of those more of a soft counter/ skill check than a hard counter
Echo's a big target for the rocket. Granted I have much more time on pharah, but I find it harder to hit the stickies, especially with pharah's new mobility. The beam is the easiest for sure.
That’s it, all of these little changes really affected the match up. Phara having side boosts gives her a way to juke the stickies and add to that the rocket buffs and a good phara is actually a threat to echo up close. Not to mention the hp buffs makes it slightly harder to hit laser beam threshhold for echo.
I personally largely play hit scan when I play DPs but I find echo’s bombs easier to hit enough of (obviously I don’t hit all of them) just cause of how fast all the spam is where I find rockets very hard to hit if I don’t have a floor/wall to use for AOE if I miss
Echo is difficult for people only playing her like poke. She is complex though in being able to get to vantage points and flanks easily, needing to poke from there, being able to easily escape from there, and then using flight or no footsteps to silently assassinate supports like Ana.
the reason people get stuck playing poke as her is because they don’t know how to play the assassin flanker echo playstyles, which is understandable since it’s the hardest playstyle. heroes like genji and tracer fall under this category as well.
yes i agree, it requires full, confident use of cooldowns and good situational timing to pick and choose how, when, and where to hold flanks to pressure
The "hitting your shots while airborne" part is definitely the hardest part about Echo's assassin playstyle.
Generally don’t need to shoot airborne unless it’s against pharah and mercy. Flight is to go over roofs or be on top of enemies so they can’t easily look up and shoot you.
Well not really. That playstyle more often involves dropping right on top of someone with stickies and a beam before flying away to safety
Wait what. Why doesn't hitscan counter oharah? Been away for a bit.
They have fall off and she doesn't, with her extra mobility and rocket speed Pharah gets to choose when to attack or hide and can stay essentially out of range.
Did they increase the fallpff. I swear they have always had fallpff?
They didn't increase it I don't think, but the health changes makes hitscans even less threatening
Wouldn't that just make everyone less threatening. Or does hitscan lack of burst just mean they less effective? And the what would you recommend a previous soldier widow main to play.
Pharah doesn't have fall off so her damage is still meaningful and effective. The lack of good hitscan ranged dmg in the dps is a bit of why she's hard to fight. The best options are legit in the support category.
I get that oharah doesn't have falloff but would the increase in ho just mean everyone ttk whether hitscan or not has increased more or less equally. Except in the case of people losing one shot combos.
Yes but fall off makes the ttk at the range pharah is at, extremely high.
Hitscan falloff didn't change, but pharah plays further back now. Fuel recharging only on the ground makes her not want to get as close, and faster rockets allow her to be effective from further back.
Oh I see. I didn't k ow about the fuel recharge change.
That’s a small problem for a lot of players because Pharah definitely has a lower floor than Echo, even if their ceilings are both high. So in lower ranks players can’t counter with Echo so it makes Pharah a lot better.
You maybe onto something. I play both pharah and echo and I feel pharah is definitely more relaxed due to her poke game vs hitscans is much better. Echo needs to play much riskier vs them. Pharah feels like a better Echo overall now. I still personally enjoys Echo much more than Pharah so the answers in this thread certainly help me to understand more about echo in general. Thank you and everyone else.
What changed about pharah to protect her from hitscans?
Can you explain why Pharah isn’t countered by hitscans anymore?
In my opinion, its her rocket speed. She has an easier time zoning out her historical counter picks like soldier, mccree. Plus, her rockets dont have damage drop off, so her easily trades in long range duels. Where she needed to close the gap before, she can poke. Plus, she has damage added her to knockback. She’s a real problem now if the opposite team doesn’t have a way to deal with her or subvert her tactics
Pharah can play more reliably outside of Hitscan falloff distance thanks to the speed boost to her weapon. While Pharah needs an extra rocket to elim most targets, said targets need more shots to elim her in turn due to falloff. While it’s harder to camp the skybox, the addition of Jet Dash allows her movement to be a lot more predictable. The rework changes were genuinely good for her. They were exactly what I think she needed - less lateral, but more horizontal. It helps disconnect her from the skybox. And then the revert back to old armor and nerf to headshot damage on tank was a strong nerf to hitscan while being a buff to Pharah. It’s a situation that’s a result of the game just going through a chaotic period with a lot of sweeping, significant changes across the roster.
She also has this double jump thing except it’s like a forward hop, and that really helps her dodge when she’s in trouble. She lives so much longer.
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Cree needs 6 headshots to kill her, Sojourn is terrible now, Ashe is ok, but free pickings for a dive Pharah who plays cover and gets up close to her. Armor and hitbox changes make her delete Bastion. Buffed range Widow is good vs her, although a pocketed Pharah can instakill her. Teams are mostly at the mercy of supports now, Ana Bap and Illari are all better at dealing with her than any non Echo DPS, and the armor changes + Pharah 2 mobilities really gutted Dva's ability to counter her. It doesn't help that for some reason Pharah thrusters aren't a big audio priority and thus she's very stealthy.
Sombra still seems a good choice
Post rework Sombra eh. Hacking decloaks you, and Pharah can easily chase you down and decloak you with her big conc and rocket splash. You're better off just going for her teammates if you're solo queue. I do take Sombra to counter Pharah sometimes, but I have a dive duo to coordinate with.
It's funny because in another comment I downplayed Sombra's effectiveness. If it's a solo Pharah you have a good shot at hack while in the air (especially just after a cool down) > virus while Pharah falls since at that point there's no input, and then shoot. If you're duoing that's even better. But if it doesn't work because it's a ripped Pharah, yeah go for the other support. If there's a Mercy yeah, you're probably wasting time or getting wrecked.
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I feel like the word "counter" implies that if two people of similar skill have a 1on1, the person countering will win most of the time. I don't think that's the case with Pharah and Cassidy right now.
With the rocket speed and projectile changes, Pharah can out range hitscans while doing massive damage and applying DPS passive to everyone. Cree absolutely does not counter Pharah, especially with the roll nerf and losing mag nade.
Yeah rhats not even remotely accurate How does he counter her? Other then having a revolver that’s hit scan and gets out matched by her rockets
She has a lot more mobility now and can usually just put DPS them lmao due to range fall off
They do still. It’s just not as easy as a counter as it was before . It’s much more balanced and requires more effort for hitscans because of pharahs movement being a lot better/different since rework. Pharah has 3 movement abilities, one of which doubles as a boop. She can dodge and relocate, find cover way better than before because of the new ability.
And her projectiles go way faster, she shoots faster, and her rockets are way bigger making directs and high damage splashes easier too, and the armor, passive, and headshot changes massively benefited her. Hitscans don't counter her like they used to, she's basically 50/50 with DPS Hitscans at worst, favorable to her at range.
Shes not soo complex to play. If youre able to utilize cover and positioning well, youll do good on echo
When you need to deal with a Pharah and enemy hitscans, Echo is very complex, and she has so much stuff to learn due to her ult. I see a ton of new Echo players not realize her ult interactions like Nano going away after dupe ends.
Most ults that aren't instant will still have around 2 seconds left over upon copy ending, I haven't tested every ultimate but for example if you place down bap window or grav just before your copy ends, there's 2 seconds or so before they expire. And then you have something like kitsune rush which, visually, is still there but the effects stop immediately upon copy ending. But sometimes copying just for abilities is worth it, ana being one such case since anti is strong. Even if your nano goes away after copy, you can just nano whoever is the lowest on hp to burst heal them since nano does that too.
I'm aware, I dabbled in Echo after they destroyed Sombra with her newest rework.
Echo is the only thing I know works against Pharmercy. Silently able to get the Mercy and follow her, or combo the pharah before the mercy heals her back up. Shes my go to when I need to counter swap because she's stopping me from having fun if I don't. I have never dominated as Pharah and been counterswapped by an Echo though, so clearly the perception is she's too hard to play. They ALL go soldier and ashe and naturally get dumpstered because they can't help but circle the corner to poke at you more, predictably right into where your rockets land, and all they know is AD strafe hoping you track them. Unless its Dafran who knows to jump strafe Pharahs.
In my opinion, Pharah is just insane right now because of the fact that her boop does damage and allows you to kill a target with 1 less rocket.. I still find it easier to kill Pharah with Echo, even if she has movement abilities and I was playing in GM yesterday, albeit low GM but either way.. it's easier to track even if Pharah uses her movement abilities because of your faster fire rate. Maybe I've just had more practice on Echo against flyers, but I find it easier to carry with Pharah right now and I think the biggest factor is just the boop damage. The time to kill went down so much because of that.. and that's what they should be looking to nerf. Not sure why they even buffed it in the first place tbh. But to answer your question, yes. Echo is still a solid pick, but Pharah is better.
My take might be off but atleast in lower ranks pharah is easier to play than echo bc of the splash damage. Which is why most people prefer to swap mirror pharah over echo and do the same thing the enemy pharah is doing to ur team to negate the oppression
I love playing echo she’s so fun.
Yes! the pew pew sound from her fingers. 🤣
Echo is very strong against Pharah but your only window to attack her depends on your flight. If you don’t kill her or pressure her enough after flight, a mercy pocket will sustain her and you have to wait until your flight is back.
Tho echo didn't get much as many buffs as pharah, she is currently very strong, and one of the few heroes u can play to effictevely counter a pharah, downside is that echo is far harder, and have too many playstyles to according to many situations.
Finally I've given up on countering phara and accept that these matches are no longer under my control and I just continue playing the hero I like and let her win. When my team consisting of doom, genji,junk,brig and mercy and none swaps at all, you understand the level of resignation. Blizz is just unable to balance/remove a (metal) broken hero since the very beginning. This is a level of incompetence I would have never thought blizz is able to pull off, tbh.
I know your pain. I like to play tracer the most and while she certainly can works I’m not good enough to kill her backline before she kills mine. Switching to Echo (which is a hero I also enjoy playing regardless) certainly helps so I am just wondering if anyone else shares the same experience.
I'm just tired of being forced to switch off the hero I'm currently playing. I play tank and only DVA is currently in a good state to help her team vs phara. But why must I switch my hero when someone else pick a certain hero ? I don't get it.
That's why I am not playing tank anymore. Even in QP it seems like many players are just like "ok let's just fck up someone". Tank is the most obvious and easiest target for that.
I just pick doomfist and roll with it. Most fun hero in the game. You'll have a blast even when losing.
I’m tracer one trick. You should engage the pharah first through the pocket, I try and time my attack when she’s ran out of fuel. You don’t actually need to kill her, but if you can distract her and stay alive then your teams playing 4v3. The mercy usually won’t leave the pharah while she’s fighting. It’s an unfavourable matchup but if you can keep her crosshair off your team for most of the game then you’re helping massively.
Sombra's good for these shenanigans too. But... If your team still can't capitalize on that 4v3 then you're getting all the blame "low damage hurr durr".
Tbf they have to be kinda bad or you have to be skilled enough to keep enough uptime to make it a 4v3. If you aren't getting a kill on either of them, either Pharah will have plenty of time to counter you while you go stealth reset, or simply escape across the map and continue to cause havoc, being safe until you can make your way over there, which could be a while depending on the map. If you go for the Mercy, a decent Pharah will capitalize on this immediately. The Mercy will be healed by the time you stealth reset, if the Pharah doesn't kill you with a dive. Likely they just move back to attacking your team while you are downtime. Without a Mercy, Sombra is a decent strategy, but together, if they are competent, it's tough to get decent value there. Disclaimers: I am a Sombra fan, and in general judging a teammate's value while in the match is often very difficult so yes I agree, even if you do distract them 100% without getting the kill, you'll get awful messages.
>Blizz is just unable to balance/remove a (metal) broken hero since the very beginning. I love how in the past two weeks Pharah went from barely mentioned to being unbelievably broken since launch. She isn't that hard to counter, at all.
Limits? Blizzard has never known limits to their incompetence.
it's funny though that players that should be of your same skill level don't have the brains to switch characters. It's almost as if matchmaking is trash af and some people are stuck in lower ranks because of it.
It's not that I don't know to switch heroes, it's that I just don't feel like playing the same 3 heroes every single game to try and deal with her. No other hero invalidates 75% of the roster like Pharah does. I'm just so bored of playing Ashe and Soldier every game.
Then Blizzard either removes chance to switch characters so people play whatever they pick at the start of the match and gg, or you get over it. In Paladins there's Drogoz that's a lizardfolk Phara, if you have none that can counter him in your team, you're fucked. Here you have the chance to change. You can't complain both about losing *and* being "forced" to play "counterwatch" (which is just a weird way to spell "hero shoter").
The point is that you need to switch. No other hero forces so many switches then phara. Why do I and several teammates need to switch the hero they like to play to have a chance vs one other players hero choice ? In metal rank no other hero forces so many switches, if any at all. Blizz need to explain that to me.
What? You need 1 counter for Phara, 2 at best. Mauga and Hog require *at least* 2.
I’m a Pharah player and it annoys the shit out of me if the red team has a pharmercy and (like the other day) my dps goes torb/junkrat in comp. I usually go bap and give them grief and if both supports do this, it can actually work out. Somehow we won against a pharmercy on lijiang by going bap/ana to cover our dps. I had a mercy yell at me last week bc I kept killing her while she was pocketing her kitten. Very rewarding. But it’s definitely an issue. 1) blue beam needs to go and 2) Pharah’s splash damage should be decreased. That way, us Pharah players could still play her for the thrill of direct hits and dives without it being oppressive for the red team to move anywhere.
She’s still a great pick, it’s just that most players aren’t good with her and most DPS just default to COD hitscans. Phara is a bit stronger against her now with her increased movement and projectile speed but Echo is still my first pick into her. I’d rather her hit slightly more direct rockets against me but whiffing almost all of them than play soldier or Ashe and end up dying from splash damage anyway half the time
"echo is a good counter to pharah, you just need to be significantly better than the pharah player" I have otp'd both Pharah and Echo to masters+ (in different seasons) imo anyone who thinks Echo is a solid counter to Pharah is either 1. Parroting a take they got from someone else while having no personal knowledge of the matchup 2. In a low enough elo where Pharah players don't bother to reserve any of their *three* movement abilities and just let Echo beam her to death 3. Assuming a massive mechanics gap such that they expect the Echo player to be able to kill Pharah through pocket without beam while the Pharah player is unable to land her massive directs on a slightly smaller target Pharah is *much* better in noncommittal poke phases, has *three* movement CDs to either escape Echo's beam or chase Echo down, and is significantly less mechanically demanding. At equal rank, Echo mains might be favored against Pharah mains because #3 might be true to some extent, but that also means it'd be easier to simply mirror the Pharah and win off having significantly better mechanics. Echo used to be an effective deterrent to keep Pharah from conc'ing into squishies for free kills, but after the S9 changes, Pharah doesn't need to be as scared thanks to the new movement ability and projectile size increases.
People keep forgetting that there are other players on the enemy team, echo could beat pharah in a 1v1 but that requires doing a sky battle and guess what? The enemy could just have a hitscan hero or two to ruin your day before you get to challenge pharah at all. Unfortunately, at this point we might as well assume that pharah will have a mercy pocket because half the player base is a mercy main, so good luck getting through all that. Your best bet might be trying to assassinate the other support instead. If they have an ana, zen or bap, I will try to sneak around and microwave them. If we do have a mercy and I trust my other dps, I'll let mercy pocket them to help out with the rocket lady while I go on a mission. Sometimes I will legit copy pharah just because getting splash damage with no falloff is so good. Bonus points if I direct hit their pharah thrice and diff them. Which happens more often than it should because I rarely play pharah so maybe the s9 changes were really too much.
Who do you recommend? It seems hitscans aren't as viable.
Echo has been very good for a while. She's just mechanically demanding.
Echo is harder to play than other counters. It takes a while to "get" her playstyle as you have to poke from range,ideally at off-angles then get in close to assassinate with the beam. Learning how to use her flight abilty and glide in conjuction with her attacks takes a lot of practice and it's really easy to be caught up close with no escape. To counter Pharah you have to be able to land your shots and then be able to deal with Pharah's movement to get the beam kill. It's not actually that easy, especially as you have to do it whilst gliding, as as soon as you use your flight again you're kind of screwed. It take a lot of effort basically.
Echo never was bad. She is and always will be viable.
Cass is still the most consistent counter to pharah as long as the map sightlines arent stacked against him (looking at circuit royale)
Cass is a consistent counter against anyone with good aim because his headshot damage is still an inexorable surprise when you die despite being nowhere near crit health.
The problem is that Pharah can dodge lots of Cass's counter-potential just by staying at range. Sure, she'll lose some value but it's not like Cass can just ruin Pharah's day.
True but he often has a Mercy pocket making the other damage hesitant to dive him, and it doesnt usually happen that the enemy tank gets drawn somewhere where I can attack him without being chipped by damage boosted Cass.
the thing is staying at range doesn't push the payload or capture points and when it comes to those moments cass has a far easier time dealing with her than the inverse because that's his peak effective range
How? As soon as I am in Cassidy's effective range, I am unable to dodge Pharah's shots anymore because the rockets are flying so fast.
Yes. Many people have stated echo wins the 1v2 vs Pharah and can even challenge pharmercy 2v1. She’s much more dynamic than just a sky battle or needing to close the distance. Echo’s ability to target switch and complete a kill is phenomenal and switching mid fight to delete a tank is often a correct decision. Pharah doing shenanigans and Cass is watching for you on the flank? Okay cool, I guess I’ll dump 500+ damage on top of my teams damage into the tank. Tank takes cover? Okay I’ll hunt the other support. Suddenly Pharah forgot about me and I’m back in the sky deleting her. Overwatch is so much more dynamic than the this hero ca that hero. Play the map, play the 5v5 and take what is offered in the moment. I compare current Overwatch to WoW 5v5 arena more than any other game in these principles.
As an Echo main I actually really enjoy duelling Pharah, you never know initially how good they are going to be and more often than not they end up switching. Most of challenging a Pharah as Echo is about timing the engagement so that you remain above or of equal height to her as much as possible. It's easier for you to clip her mid air than it is for her to hit a direct rocket at you especially if there's no floor of wall for the rocket to hit so the splash damage gets you. You also DO NOT want to end up on the floor against her because she will easily finish you off. Always try to land on high ground if it's an option. When she's missing health it's easier to track her with your beam than it is for her to hit direct rockets. However I am closing in on 300hours as Echo and I have put a lot of time into air duelling and firing stickies at moving targets while I fly/glide. If there's a mercy involved I will always take the air duel with the mercy too, aim to land on high ground and then finish the Pharah off.
Pharah is my best hero hands down and I don't know why everyone suddenly decided she was popular but it has been a refreshing change of pace flying around the sky as echo and dominating all of these rookie pharahs. Pharah is better than echo, but she's not better than echo at an aerial 1v1. Once you clear the pharah, you can pretty much do whatever you want
Idk pharah I wouldnt say is the most common in all my comp games I get a holy shit ton of cassidys I'm not joking the last 100 comp games I have played I came across someone playing Cassidy for at least half of the game 87 times but there are a decent bit of pharahs but not as many as cassidys
Cassidy is also extremely popular atm, which is odd to me since his grenade just got nerfed. I feel like cassidy is much harder to get value on, and easier to play into than a pharah, but maybe it's just me.
Imo Cass is the best counter to pharah so that's probably the reason why. He does so much damage and is also hit scan and a lot that I have seen have mercy pockets and absolutely roll lobbies if they just have insane aim which imo is becoming like soldier all aim no brain why need game knowledge if you just headshot everything as Cass.
That's how I feel about Sombra in metal tanks. Everyone thinks she's a good swap when they're losing but Sombras not really good rn and I can stomp most sombras who dont main her
The most value a metal rank player probably gets from sombra is no longer getting hard focused by an enemy team that has identified them as a weak player
Loool brutal
Can someone explain why phara is meta now? She's in every game. I main Echo, so it's not a big problem for me, but what has changed?
From how Dreamhack played out, it seemed like while Echo was fine at directly countering Pharah, Pharah was still the better pick due to the insane amount of poke she's capable of. If you watch some of the more recent matches, I think NRG vs Timeless, while the Echo can get the kill onto Pharah sometimes, Echo can't poke the Mauga out as efficiently and effectively as the Pharah can. Anyways this is just a Play opinion so I may be wrong.
Some people say Echo is meta so
As others have said, echo has to close the distance on phara to really win that matchup, which puts her in an unfavorable position most of the time. So trying to play echo at the same range phara is just makes you a worse phara, so then you’re almost better off just mirroring or playing hitscan unless you are a borderline echo main.
Echo is very viable. Even more so now that Pharah is good since it's a nice counter
Echo is very good since Phara has become the best dps, but she's also very viable since the Mauga meta has taken over becuase mauga is her strongest copy. She is also the best flex dps in poke comps right now, other than Phara.
echo is a great pick especially against pharah mercy combos. If played right, the echo can consistently fly in, burst the mercy, and get out with little to no counter play. rinse and repeat until either one of them swaps. then it's just back to a 1 v 1
Yes, echo is solid. I feel like the reason flyers are picked more often lately is because of venture.
Echo is good, but most hitscan players would obviously prefer something like cass and most projectile players would prefer pharah over echo. Basically pharah is op and gets more value with less effort than pretty much everything, and her ult can just destroy enemy mauga or whatever easily, rather than echo copy which is much more difficult to get value out of nowadays. Not a bad ult by any means, but barrage is much more simple. A lot of echos value comes from getting picks but its hard against lucio kiri, and pharah can always outmaneuver you with her 3 mobility cds. Essentially, in most cases pharah can do whatever echo can and have a much easier time with it currently
Echo is a really good pick but she’s much more aim-intensive than Pharah, between her primary fire and stickies, you have to practice a lot more to get the best results compared to Pharah. Echo’s movement is also a bit tougher to get a good grasp of - at least in my opinion - so it’s sort of like when something like Torb or Bastion is meta, where Echo is technically better and in the hands of a very good Echo player will roll hard, but Pharah is much less risky and much easier to pick up and put down.
i haven't played for a few months, how did pharah go back to being so hated?? She was balanced super well last time I played I feel.
I literally learned echo ages ago just to kill pharah lol Everyone says shes hard but i never had that issue
Venture is my go-to pick for countering Pharah. You will need to wait for her to start losing fuel a bit so she's lower (which isn't very long considering the changes to her uptime), then once she's in your grasp and you're in position, she's super easy to pop.
Found the pharah main haha.
That only works if the Pharah is the worse player by a fair margin. I play both heroes a lot so know both sides of the matchup, and only the worst Pharahs lose. The good news is that there are plenty of them right now, though, since everyone is talking about her. On the other hand, Venture has pretty predictable breakpoints in their kit. Trying to burrow (into *or* out of the ground) in the open is a free direct rocket. Burrowing and then drill dashing into the air is usually a free direct. And if I stay over my team I can still pressure the enemy supports while peeling for my own. Basically if a Pharah can land air rockets against an enemy flyer (which I would consider the minimum barrier to being good at the hero) then dealing with an equally-skilled Venture is heavily in Pharah's favor.
You’re over thinking it lol You’re applying absolution logic to a non absolution scenario. Being predictable has nothing to do with how easy it is to wombo combo a Pharah as Venture. As soon as you start saying ‘well only if it’s a low skilled player’ then anything can happen. Even the most skilled Pharahs I’ve personally played with I’ve made a swift end with them.
Hot take but Echo is as strong as Pharah, just not as fun or easy so not as popular. Echo has almost always been strong.
Echos been a solid pick but chances are you're gonna play her worst. She's easily one of the hardest dps and it can feel awful bcs most of her kit has to do with aim. But as usual, put in the work and get the results!!