Overwatch released yesterday, and if you haven’t yet played the Beta or bought the game, you don’t know what your missing. The new stylized first-person shooter game is tons of fun to play, thanks in part to the fact that there are currently 21 different heroes/characters available to play with. Each hero has their own benefits, but we’re particularly partial to playing with Pharah–the attack character with rockets and ability to get high with her jet pack (or jump jets).
What we can appreciate about Pharah is that her character can spend almost the entire game on a completely different vertical level than the rest of the players in the game. When you’re playing a FPS where people are constantly worrying opponents on the ground or in windows, having a player flying in the sky gives you an enormous advantage. She’s just like the Spanish Inquisition; no one expects her.
Strengths: Aggressive attacker, can soften up large numbers of enemies easily, able to distract multiple enemies.
Weaknesses: Low health, slow while in the air, rockets are slow
Perfect to use against: Reinhardt, Reaper, Winston, turrets
Weak against: Agent 76, Hanzo, Widowmaker, turrets
So without further ado, let’s get into the best ways to use Pharah:
Primary Fire: Rockets
Damage: 120 per shot
Ammo: 6 rockets
At first glance, Pharah’s rockets don’t seem like the best primary fire in the game. Her rockets are slower than bullets, they don’t do an insanely high amount of damage, and they can actually hurt Pharah if she winds up in the explosion.
That being said, her rockets actually work out perfectly with her jump jet abilities–if you’re using her right.
• We prefer to use Pharah to ambush opponents who might not be ready for an attack from the air. In both Escort and Assault, often times the defense will set up, ready to attack at a couple of entrances or gates. As Pharah, you don’t need doors or gates. You can simply fly over the walls and attack the snipers from the side or behind.
• Pro tip: shoot the snipers and turrets (especially Bastion) first, they pose the biggest threat to you. Often times, enemy heroes playing closer to the ground won’t even know you’re there until it’s too late.
• If you get the drop on an opponent (which should happen more often than not), remember two things. First, that you should be shooting where you think they’ll be, not where they are. And second, that often you’ll be able to fire off two or three rockets before the first one even hits, giving you a serious element of surprise.
• As lame as it sounds, it’s smarter to aim for the ground or nearby walls to ensure splash damage from the rockets rather than a direct hit.
Secondary Fire: Concussive Blast
• You won’t be using her secondary fire all that often, but don’t forget it’s there!
• The best time to use a concussive blast is when you have opponents with shields or barriers up. The concussive blast does a considerable amount of damage to energy shields.
• The second best time to use a concussive blast is when your opponent is near a cliff or hole. Although it doesn’t do a ton of damage, the blast does send the opponent a significant distance. A kill is a kill, is a kill, is a kill.
• If you’ve exhausted all of your rockets and have seriously damaged the opponent, you can try getting that list bit of hurt with the concussive blast. You never know!
Update: It’s recently come to our attention that Pharah can use the concussion blast to actually move her around the map very quickly. Check out the video below:
Jump Jets / Hover Jets
These two abilities are what makes Pharah so special. She’s the only character in the game who can fly, and although she doesn’t move with amazing horizontal speed while she’s in the air, most of the time the enemies won’t be expecting you to be hovering above them.
• Save your jump jets until you really them. You won’t travel very quickly while flying, but getting into the air at the right time is the difference between death and a kill streak. For example…
• …if you get pulled by Roadhog’s chain, wait until the “get over here” animation is complete and immediately jet out of there for an easy escape. Then go and find yourself some health and get back into the fight.
• If you hear Hanzo’s special, it’s usually a good idea activate your jump jets to avoid getting killed.
• Once the firefight starts, get to high ground immediately. Once you activate the jump jets, try and land on a balcony or ledge. Pharah is not well suited to fighting it out on the ground.
• By simply tapping the hover jets (and not holding them down) you can really maintain your vertical height while waiting for the jump jets to cool down.
• One strategy we’ve started to like using is the concept of roof surfing. You might have noticed that Overwatch doesn’t let you run around rooftops, so instead if you tap on hover and move around the rooftops you’ll be able to skirt that restriction.
Ultimate: Barrage
In our opinion, Barrage is one of the most devastating ultimates (next to Reaper and D.Va). She unleashes 30 rockets (each of which have about 30 damage each) over a period of three seconds. Of course, during those three seconds she’s unable to move–rendering her completely vulnerable.
Obviously you’ll have to figure out when a gamble is worthwhile or not, but we highly recommend waiting until any snipers or turrets are down before you activate Barrage.
It also goes without saying that you should only activate Barrage once you’re high in the sky. What’s the point of using all that gorgeous splash damage if you’re not going to hit something?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw0Uvpr3kFw&w=750]
