OverwatchOverwatch Pharah Guide and Overview

The OG flying hero of Overwatch, Pharah, dominates the skies as she rains rockets down on her targets. More movement abilities than any other hero allow her to navigate map terrain in a completely unique way.

If you are just coming back to the game after a few seasons, you may have missed her rework. The rework has made her far more independent and has reduced Pharah's demand on the team's resources, whereas she previously required the near 100% focus of a Support hero like Mercy. The new Pharah has incredibly fast mobility, which allows her to dive enemy backlines, and use environmental cover to counter hitscans and snipers.

Against enemy comps with primarily short-range abilities, Pharah becomes one of the best poke heroes due to Rocket Launcher having zero falloff damage and good AoE splash damage.

TLDR

Playing As

• Use natural cover from vertical map geometry such as walls and buildings to avoid exposing yourself to hitscan pressure.
• Play around off-angles and on highground so you can spam choke points with crossfire from your team.
• Use Barrage from unexpected positions or when coordinated with protection from an ally, such as a Projected Barrier or Defense Matrix.

Playing Against

• The best way to deal with Pharah is to play a hitscan with range and burst damage like Ashe or Illari.
• Deny her safe air space by controlling high ground and forcing her to play predictable sightlines.
• Track her Barrage and hold defensive cooldowns or burst abilities to punish her immediately when she commits. A slight delay will make the difference between dying and taking her out.

Strengths

Vertical mobility

The ability to take to the sky, fly over buildings, and remain in the air puts Pharah in a league of her own in controlling the vertical plane. For enemies shooting at Pharah, adjusting their aim vertically is generally accepted as being more difficult than horizontal adjustments. Correct usage of Hover Jets and Jump Jets creates consistent pressure from angles that only Pharah can position herself in. Just the dividing of attention from the enemy team can be enough to make a team with a good Pharah playing feel unstoppable. Her vertical movement also allows her to create pathing options over environments that would typically not be possible for most of the cast.

Excellent at using cover

Rocket Launcher’s slow rate of fire makes Pharah excel at quickly peeking in and out of cover, only exposing herself while firing a rocket. When grounded, she can do this by strafing around a wall. In the air, Hover Jets allow Pharah to use the tops of buildings and structures to peek above, shoot, and dip below to safety.

Quickly engage and disengage

Combining Rocket jumps, Jet Dash, and Concussive Blast self-knockback give Pharah access to multiple instances of high bursts of speed. Depending on the map and situation, she can quickly engage or dive a target with one of her cooldowns, get an elimination, then use her remaining abilities to retreat to safety until all her resources are restored. Cycling Pharah’s movement cooldowns is extremely important for maximizing her impact and potential.

Weaknesses

Slow projectile speed

From medium to long range, Pharah can struggle to land direct impacts due to the slow projectile speed of Rocket Launcher. At very long ranges, enemies with movement abilities have plenty of time to reactively dodge incoming rockets. Pharah players need to become really good at predicting movement in order to maximize damage output. Damage mitigation abilities like Defense Matrix and barriers can also be used reactively to prevent any rocket damage from being dealt.

Often dies during her own Ultimate

“Justice Rains fro… uggghhhh!” Pharah makes herself into a stationary bullseye while she ults. Headshots, CC abilities, damage mitigation abilities and every attack can easily save enemies from death and eliminate Pharah before she has a chance to move again. Typically, players will need to coordinate with a teammate if they hope to survive using Barrage. Abilities like Protection Suzu and Projected Barrier can change Barrage from being deadly to herself to being deadly to the enemy team.

Hitscans

While the rework has given Pharah much more counterplay against hitscans, she still can be quickly eliminated by players with good aim mechanics on a hitscan hero. Pharah has the benefit of mobility and no falloff damage, but these struggle to make up for how reliably and quickly hitscan abilities deal damage to her. Pharah’s normal hover jet movement is rather slow and makes her an easy target for heroes like Ashe, Baptiste, and Mauga.

Positioning and Playstyle

While playstyle ultimately depends on the individual player, the optimal way to play Pharah should always adapt to the map and the enemy team composition.

On maps with strong vertical cover, such as Eichenwalde, you should spend most of your time in the air, abusing rooftops and structures to minimize exposure.

Against brawl, rush, and other close-range comps, maintain distance and continuously pressure grouped enemies, taking full advantage of Rocket Launcher’s AoE splash damage.

When playing into poke comps with multiple hitscan heroes, shift toward wider flank angles and spend more time closer to the ground. Open skies become too exposed, so using natural cover and off-angles is critical for survival.

Rocket Launcher

Tips for Rocket Launcher

Landing rockets consistently requires prediction.

• Anticipate where enemies want to move.
• Low-health targets will often retreat toward cover—fire at the cover entrance to force them into your rocket.
• Look for predictable movement patterns such as jumps, linear mobility abilities, or falling.

When an enemy is locked into a movement arc, fire where they will land. Once airborne or committed to an ability, they cannot alter their trajectory.

Rocket Jump

A Rocket Jump uses Rocket Launcher to give Pharah a small burst of movement in her current direction.

• Can be combined with Hover Jets, Jump Jet, Jet Dash, and Concussive Blast.
• Provides additional vertical mobility to access positions that would otherwise be unreachable.
• See Advanced Tech below for combination examples.

Concussive Blast

Tips for Concussive Blastthe

Concussive Jump

Use the self-knockback from Concussive Blast to launch yourself in a chosen direction.

• The most common use of the ability.
• Primarily horizontal movement, but can also redirect vertically.
• Excellent for repositioning quickly.

Environmental Boops

Near map edges, Concussive Blast is a powerful tool for securing eliminations and generating ultimate charge by knocking enemies off the map.

Forcing Vulnerable Positions

Use knockback to:

• Separate the enemies from each other
• Knock targets off high ground
• Push enemies into the open away from cover

Preventing Retreat

One of the most valuable uses of Concussive Blast is stopping a target from escaping.

If an enemy attempts to disengage by walking away or using a movement ability, use the knockback to keep them exposed. This is extremely effective mid-fight when cleaning up surviving enemies.

Hover Jets

Tips for Hover Jets

Roof Hovering

Use rooftops, walls, and map geometry to stall in the air without consuming fuel.

• Excellent for setting up flanks, rollouts, and dive angles.
• Roof peaks can often be balanced on and slid across.
• After using cooldowns to reach rooftops, you can “roof hover” while waiting for CDs to refresh.
• Roof hovering does not regenerate fuel.

Jet Dash

Tips for Jet Dash

• Pharah can chain her movement abilities in nearly any sequence. The key is deciding which abilities to use, in what order, and which to hold for disengage.

Dash → Concussive Jump

Use Jet Dash, then immediately Concussive Blast jump while within blast radius.

• Can stack both abilities in the same direction for long-distance travel.
• Can redirect mid-combo to launch around corners unexpectedly.

Rocket Jump + Dash + Concussive Jump

The fastest possible burst of movement.

• Requires near-simultaneous activation.
• Grants both horizontal and vertical distance.
• Often used to dive isolated sniper targets.
• Commonly used to create surprise-angle Barrage setups.

Stair Dash

Dash across a slanted surface such as stairs.

• Instead of lifting into the air, Pharah slides along the incline.
• Allows rapid ground-level repositioning.
• Can instantly corner by adjusting camera angle and directional input

Minor Perks

Drift Thrusters

• Pretty much the only way you can expect to survive using your own ult. While the movement may not look like much, this perk has proven very effective at making Barrage more successful.

Helix Shields

• Good self-sustain. Best when you are not able to get consistent healing from your Supports.

Major Perks

Fuel Stores

• Allows Pharah to stay in the sky for longer. Best on maps with lots of vertical cover like Watchpoint Gibraltar.

Rocket Salvo

• Considering Pharah has more than one movement ability, you get to activate the mini-rockets pretty often. Good for extra damage and better AoE.

Best Maps

Eichenwalde

The first two points of Eichenwalde give Pharah some of the best opportunities of any map to make massive solo plays. The various rooftops and tall walls can easily be used on both defense and offense to set up flanks and completely disrupt the enemy gameplan. Controlling the high ground on 2nd point is a crucial win condition. Pharah is one the few characters that quickly engage and retreat from the high ground in this area.

Lijiang Tower

Control Tower is the worst of the three map areas for Pharah but even it can be quite strong for her. Garden and Night Market are Pharah playgrounds. She can safely spam through windows and over walls where she is extremely difficult for enemies to deal with. With a Mercy pocket on either of these two points, you’d have no excuse if your team loses because Pharah is so dominant and perfectly suited to the environmental archetype of Lijiang Tower.

Shambhali Monastery

Shambhali Monastery is another great map for Pharah because its open spaces are all surrounded by the perfect structural cover for a flying hero. When attacking first point, flanking over the building on the left or on the right are both excellent choices for Pharah to fly over and force enemy attention off of her team to allow them to push the cart. The 2nd point also offers multiple flight paths for Pharah to choose from, making it difficult for the enemy team to predict and prepare for her attack.

Worst Maps

Samoa

None of the three map areas on Samoa provides Pharah with the vertical structures she would like to play around. The control points are also too tight, and are difficult for a flier to set up around without exposing themselves too much. You’ll likely find yourself endlessly poking into a brawl comp without ever getting an elim on this map.

Ilios

Although Well is a strong map for Pharah, Ruins and Lighthouse require her to completely outplay her counters in order to be effective. Ruins is overrun by snipers who have a huge advantage over Pharah here. She also struggles to provide point pressure on Lighthouse because of the edge of the map placement, and extreme amount of natural cover provided to heroes positioned directly in the objective area.

Havana

Havana has huge open skies, with either little to no cover in the main center areas. Snipers rule the skies on first and third point where Pharah struggles to find any angles to poke and approach from. While she can hug the walls, and play on the outskirts, the map geometry doesn’t play into any of Pharah’s strengths.

Pharah’s newfound independence and adaptability allow her to be an effective member of any type of team composition. The ability to stay with her team and poke, or keep up any team's speed and movement mean Pharah is more map dependent than team comp dependent. Dive comps suit her best, however, and enable Pharah to get optimal use of every aspect of her kit. She can support team dives from long range with her rockets, or with a deep off angle flank. In either scenario, Pharah can be used to deal damage that the rest of her team follows up on and confirms elims, or as the one who is following up and getting the final blows.

Ideal team comp built around Pharah:

D.Va, Pharah, Tracer, Mercy, Ana

Individual synergies with other heroes

D.Va

• D.Va pairs well with Pharah primarily because of their flying mobility. Regardless of where an enemy target is positioned, D.Va and Pharah can always find a way to close the gap and reach their mark. While other heroes struggle to keep up with both of these heroes' movements, pairing them together makes that mobility even more deadly. Moreover, D.Va’s Defense Matrix is one of, if not the absolute best way, to guarantee Pharah survives using Barrage. Defense Matrix can give Pharah time to reposition, go aggressive, or peel for her when being focused. The synergy between these two requires some coordination so it may be difficult to pull off effectively without team chat.

Sojourn

• Although Sojourn can’t fly and isn't a dive hero, her mid-range and long range pressure combined with her Power Slide mobility make Sojourn an excellent choice for the 2nd DPS slot. Rail Gun charges up quickly and outputs constant small pressure. Sojourn can use her mobility to set up angles where she can catch enemies looking up towards Pharah and line up some easy Alt-fire Rail Gun headshots. On just about every map, these two heroes can effectively divide the enemy team’s attention by attacking from opposing angles and both heroes can follow up on the other's aggression when cooldowns are available.

Mercy

• PharMercy. One of the most iconic duos in the entire lifespan of Overwatch. The new version of Pharmercy is quite different than the old. Previously, the duo would permanently fly, poke from long range and off angles, and go off on their own solo mission while the rest of the team worked separately. Currently, Pharah doesn’t need Mercy to work but she still gets massive benefits from having a pocket damage boost and healer that can follow her around. Mercy can often start fights with Pharah positioned low or grounded, and jiggle peeking corners to poke down enemy defenses. Once the opportunity arrives, Damage boosting Pharah’s aggression practically guarantees confirming quick elims before the enemy can react.

When you find yourself playing into a good Pharah player you primarily need to keep track of two things: where she can engage from, and what LoS she’s trying to use. If you can predict where Pharah might try to use her mobility to engage from, (over a particular wall, or around a certain corner, etc.) then you can catch her off guard and will have a good chance of eliminating her before her CDs refresh and she can escape. If you can keep a lock on the LoS she’s trying to use, you can catch her peeking and hit her while exposed, or position yourself where she is unable to attack you.

Specific Hero Counters

Mauga

• When playing Tank, Mauga is your best choice for dealing with Pharah. Not only does his hitscan primary fire track on a flying Pharah really well, but once ignited, the extra 2 seconds of damage over time further delays her universal self heal passive from kicking in, thus keeping Pharah out of the fight for longer.

All Hitscan DPS

• Which of the Hitscan DPS will be the best counter against Pharah depends on Map and player preference. Long sightline maps like Circuit Royal make Ashe and Widow the best choices. Closer range maps like Arctic Peninsula are better suited to Cassidy or Soldier: 76. The main thing is to understand your heroes' damage fall off ranges and where to position to maximize damage output on the enemy Pharah.

Baptiste

• Baptiste can burn down Pharah with a few quick bursts of his primary fire. His Exo Boots keep him off the ground and in the air where Pharah has a difficult time landing rockets. Immortality Field is also a strong tool for keeping himself and his teammates alive against Pharah’s rockets and can give extra survivability time to a Barrage for the team to react and shut down the ult.