Pharah’s Overwatch 2 Season 9 rework intended to make her “less reliant” on Mercy

The Overwatch 2 devs have revealed the full scope of Pharah’s Season 9 rework releasing on February 13 along with a brand new ability.

Pharah has been one of Overwatch’s most controversial heroes since the game’s release with the aerial character dominating on console while struggling to get results on PC.

For quite some time, Pharah has been lined up for a rework and finally, the developers are giving it to us in Season 9 with a series of big changes to the Egyptian rocket queen.

One big goal the developers had when designing this revamped version of Pharah was to “lessen her reliance on heroes like Mercy” and did so by changing up where some power in her kit lies.

Overwatch 2 Pharah rework revealed with new ‘Jet Dash’ ability

According to the devs, in addition to the aforementioned Merct reliance issue, the team also wanted to shift her movement so she can cover more horizontal distance quickly while adding more “downtime” to her flight.

Her new ability, Jet Dash, functions like Lifeweaver’s dash, but has an eight-second cooldown and allows Pharah to quickly move ahead horizontally with an added boost.

Like every other hero in the Season 9 patch, Pharah’s HP is changing a lot, going from 200 to 250. Additionally, her Rocket Launcher will be a bit faster, firing projectiles that travel 40 meters per second every .80 seconds.

Pharah will also now deal less damage to herself with rockets as their explosions will now only deal 25% damage to her as opposed to 50%.

Concussive Blast’s cooldown is being changed to 9 seconds with its knockback being reduced, but it’ll now deal 30 damage on impact.

Her Hover Jets have also been changed up to give her more speed, but on the flip side, she will need to land to recharge fuel. To compensate, she can slow her decent by using the ability without consuming fuel and she can regain 50% of her fuel by using Jump Jet, albeit its cooldown is increasing to 14 seconds and will provide less vertical height.

Finally, Rocket Barrage will now instantly refill her Hover Jets. Hopefully, her health buffs will actually mean players can finish the ultimate and take advantage of the refill.

According to Blizzard, the changes are intended to make Pharah more effective at higher ranks and make her less frustrating to play against by limiting the hero pool that’s weak against her.

“This more active Pharah means a healthier game and offers new levels of skill expression,” Blizzard said.

Be sure to try out this and many other Overwatch 2 changes once Season 9 goes live on February 13.