'Overwatch:' Pharah Players Protest Character Changes

Blizzard recently revealed their plans to make some significant changes to one of the game's heroes and Pharah mains are not happy about the direction they took her in.

You can see the full breakdown of her changes below, but the developers behind the hit shooter had this to say about why they decided to rework her:

"We wanted to increase how responsive Pharah's Rocket Launcher felt. Having almost a full second of recovery between shots made it feel sluggish. To balance out the improved recovery time, we shifted some of the damage from the rocket's explosion to the direct impact damage. The overall damage potential is now increased when landing direct hits and decreased slightly when only dealing explosive damage. We reduced the amount of knockback each explosion causes, as they made it very difficult to aim at Pharah while rockets came in at a faster pace. The Concussive Blast cooldown reduction should allow the ability to sync up more closely with the Jump Jet cooldown when used for mobility."

Immediately fans took to the PTR to test the new changes and the overall reaction has been less than pleased. There is even a YouTube video pointing out everything "wrong" with her new improvements from a former Overwatch League professional gamer.

"I think it's a significant nerf," began Brandon Seagull" Larned in a recent stream. "Most of my rockets are still not direct, which means in a lot of situations, it's gonna take one or two more rockets to kill people—which is super obnoxious."

In addition, another top ranked player - Valkia - took it even further saying that the buffs applied weren't useful:

"There is a mental process for this, which means we're already starting to lose the advantage of the rate of fire," Valkia said. "If I was just to constantly shoot holding left click, I wouldn't be very accurate, and I'd be wasting rockets. At my level, this is something I can't afford to do."

They added, "Pharah players now have to get more direct hits, which takes way more time to plan and aim. But the rate of fire has increased, which you won't really take advantage of. It's almost as though they cancel each other out."

Overall, the player base seems divided. Where do you stand on her recent changes? Check them out below for yourself and sound off in the comment section!

Concussive Blast

• Cooldown reduced from 12 to 9 seconds

Rocket Launcher

• Attack speed increased
• Lowered recovery between shots from 0.9 to 0.75
• Damage redistributed between explosion and impact
• Explosion damage reduced from 80 to 65
• Impact damage increased from 40 to 55
• Explosion knockback reduced by 20%
• Self-knockback range increased by 25%