Pharah saw a large rise in popularity recently, despite receiving a grand total of zero changes after the release of Overwatch. Clearly the hierarchy of heroes changed; McCree and Widowmaker saw substantial nerfs, while one-hero limit became the accepted format for tournament play. All of these changes served as a net positive for Pharah.
Shot Down
Widowmaker was an extreme pain for Pharah – especially without a hero limit. Professional Widowmakers have an incredibly easy time picking off targets, and with Pharah's lack of horizontal mobility once in the air (outside of Concussive Blast), snipers could line up easy headshots to pick off the security chief. Before her nerf, Widowmaker made a lot of appearances in professional play, and while she still receives usage, teams like Cloud9 can no longer stick both Reaver and Grego on her to completely annihilate Pharah usage.
McCree was effectively the primary hitscan hero before his nerfs. While in actuality, his effectiveness against Pharah in the air is unchanged, his loss of his old tank-shredding power was enough to shove the cowboy out of the metagame. Though he still does see some usage, particularly by renowned hitscan players such as Taimou and Surefour, he is far less common and does not fit on team compositions as easily as he once did.
Nowadays, teams tend to favor a singular Soldier: 76 to cover for both pre-patch McCree and Widowmaker's jobs. His rapid-fire hitscan can shred through tanks, lock on to targets with precision, and has immense range. Additionally, he's a jack of all trades and can open up compositions with only a single support, thanks to his Biotic Field. Soldier: 76 is incredibly good against Pharah, as he can lock on to her while she is in the air, and with his Helix Rockets he can burst her before she can do significant damage with her Ultimate.
But this is where 1-hero limit comes into play.
?Justice rains from above!
With teams beginning to favor compositions featuring a Soldier: 76 and Reaper, Pharah only has one real threat from the opposing team in terms of hitscan. Additionally, Mercy is almost always picked, and she can follow Pharah around in the skies to rapidly heal off any poke Pharah might take until she can duck behind terrain.
One of Pharah's oft-overlooked strengths is her disruptive ability. Especially when facing off in standoffs on payload maps with a Reinhardt vs. Reinhardt situation, Pharah can send in a Concussive Blast to separate the enemy team from behind the shield. If she has difficulty getting a good angle, Pharah can simply send out rocket after rocket by peeking corners to chip away at the shield's health until her team decides to make a move. Her constant fire creates a smaller zone for enemies to engage through choke points, which makes her incredibly strong on maps like Hollywood, King's Row, Dorado, and Lijiang's Park. The additional threat of Concussive Blast makes her a solid choice on any map with a large drop zone, as she completely zones enemies off specific paths.
Pharah's Ultimate is surely a great tool, though a bit hard to use. It needs to be used in close enough range to actually land enough rockets, but you cannot be too close to the enemy or you risk dying before doing any work. However, good Pharah players know where to flank and get their kills, and maps with multiple elevations can help set up the perfect Rocket Barrage to remove an enemy Mercy and follow with the rest of the team.
?Play nice; play Pharah
While she was intended to have low horizontal mobility in the air, advanced Pharah players can use her primary fire to rocket jump around the map. Her Concussive Blast also allows for rocket jumping, but Pharah will generally rather save a cooldown than one of her rockets, especially because she can provide peel for her team's backline with Concussive Blast. However, using Concussive Blast does provide a larger jump, so it's still a common technique.
A cool situation that arose from the rise in popularity of Pharah is the emergence of midair battles featuring a tag team of Mercy and Pharah pitted against their counterparts. Leading rockets into areas where you expect your enemies to move is a key skill, and doing so against aerial opponents is significantly harder due to the lack of splash damage from collisions. However, with proper practice and knowledge of timing, Pharah's and Mercy's movement in midair becomes readable.
EnVyUs's Talespin, arguably the best Pharah in the world, gained a lot of notoriety for his prowess in such fights, as well as his general accuracy on the hero. He has the timing of rockets down to a science; as you can see in the Dorado defense, Talespin starts out by landing shots on a wallriding Lucio, then creates a chokepoint at spawn with his rockets so that the attacking Code7 have a only a single path to the payload.
Reaver, another renowned DPS player, shows off the power of learning to lead your rockets while predicting your opponent's movement options. After dominating both AZK and DummyO by reading their movements, Reaver uses his Concussive Blast offensively and hits AZK again with a midair rocket, in perhaps one of the most impressive Pharah highlights yet.
?What the future holds
While some of the balance changes make the future seem bleak – as D.Va can block an entire Ultimate now, a new sniper is being introduced, and McCree is receiving buffs – Pharah likely will remain a staple pick for her unique ability to capture high ground and poke with reckless abandon. Not all is bad; Soldier: 76 has been toned down and Pharah will only have to deal with one hitscan threat on most teams. Ana might even be able to aid Pharah as an ally, as both Mercy and Ana can heal the aerial ace at the same time for huge tankyness, and Nano Boost's damage increase should not be taken lightly. Pharah likely carved enough of a niche to remain a worthwhile pick for some time in the future.
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