Overwatch players detail best way to solve ‘Pharmercy’ issues
Pharmercy, the combination of Pharah with a Mercy pocketing her to heal, is one of the most powerful and common strategies in Overwatch, but some players think there could be a way to improve it.
Currently, for Mercy to effectively pocket a Pharah flying around, they have to leave their team and focus on keeping Pharah alive, which means less attention and healing for the rest of the team.
Without Mercy, Pharah is a sitting duck up by herself, with just 200 HP, she can be picked off pretty easily by an enemy hitscan.
EndlessArgument suggested swapping out 50-100 of Pharah’s health and replacing it with 50-100 shields.
Shield in Overwatch automatically regenerate over time, so Pharah players could rely less on a Mercy pocketing them, while Mercy would be free to heal the rest of the team more.
“This won’t make Pharmercy stronger at all,” EndlessArgument claimed. “The only point at which it accelerates Mercy’s healing is if Pharah has stopped taking damage for 3 seconds, at which point Mercy will have healed her 150 health, meaning that the maximum it could heal her while pocketed is about 0.25 seconds out of 4(3.75 seconds to full vs 4), and only if she takes 199 damage.”
While the change might not ‘fix’ Pharmercy entirely, EndlessArgument said it was still a good place to start.
With the current prevalence of GOATs, a stronger Pharah might be just the thing to shake up Overwatch’s meta.
But, there were plenty of people in the comments who thought that giving Pharah shields would instantly make hr OP in lower Competitive tiers, like Bronze and Silver.