Soldier is the weakest of the 3 mid-long range hitscan Pharah counters (Widowmaker, McCree, and Soldier 76). He relies on sustained DPS, rather than quick burst, which gives Pharah time to evade. With Concussive Blast and Jump Jet (and gravity I guess), she is surprisingly fast over short distances. As soon as the first few hits peg her, she's getting out of there as fast as possible. McCree and Widowmaker have the potential to quickly deal a burst of damage that keeps Pharah down and/or out of the fight with just the first shot.
Sure, Soldier does comparable damage and theoretically he can get 3-4 headshots to do comparable damage as a McCree headshot, but it's easier to land a single headshot then track a head on a moving target for a whole burst against an enemy with quick bursts of movement.
There is a reason why the Pharah meta happened after Widowmaker and McCree went extinct in the meta, despite Soldier 76 having perfect accuracy.
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Ever since her buffs, I've never seen her lose a game.
It's just ridiculous how well she performs, and picking her on Lijiang, like picking Mei on Hanamura, might as well be considered straight up cheating.
If you don't counter her, you lose. Period. End of story.
Well, unless you have an even better Pharah that shreds their team harder than the enemy Pharah shreds your team.
Soldier can't deal with her, nor can Mccree, plus the latter isn't such a good idea.
Is the solution to seriously run multiple counters at once, such as a Zen + Soldier, or to be pidgeonholed into playing Widow?
Because that seems just absolutely awful, and you have to do it, or you lose.
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Soldier used to do 5 damage at long range, so at best it would be 8 per shot now with 10 rounds per second. You CANNOT go full auto on a pharah at long range, but maybe hit some head shots to balance that out. (Would love confirmation of 8 damage per shot at long range)
8x10=80 dps vs 200 health target = 2.5 seconds, which is exactly how long it takes for a full clip if it were full auto. That's 2.5 seconds for pharah to move to safety or a healer to see. A good Ana heals 75*1.25=93.75 per second, so needs 85% accuracy to completely negate the soldier 100% accuracy damage. A zen orb will negate half the damage, which also forces soldier to reload at some point, causing it to be more like 2.5x2+1=6 seconds to kill.
I get it, soldier can be slightly better than mccree at killing her, but neither of them do it alone!! Ana is actually a BETTER counter to pharah, at 80x1.25=100 dps. But the Ana focuses on healing instead of assisting to stop the incoming damage, yet most don't get angry there.
bit će da vaš 76 nije bio parkinsonovac sa pepeljarkama 
Trava raste tamo gdje je posadiš.
igraj, vježbaj, uživaj, napreduj..
