How does the damage of Zarya's weapon work?

Question

Zarya's weapon causes more damage the more damage you absorb with her abilities. However, the damage slowly goes down over time.

Lets say you fire a grenade when your energy is at 50, but when the projectile actually hits, your energy is at 45. How much damage does this projectile actually cause? Will it cause the damage of the energy it was at when it was shot (50) or the damage of the energy you have when it hits (45)?

I mainly ask this because of Mercy's damage beam, which is only active when the shooter is damage boosted when the projectile hits, not when it's shot (so you'd have to keep your damage beam on the Pharah when the rocket hits).

Does it work the same for Zarya? If it does, how does it work when it's deflected by Genji?

Answer 1

Hopping into a quickplay game (with custom settings) showed that on average, when firing at 0 charge, and then not increasing my charge - resulted in an average damage delt per ball of 24 (I got 24 3 times, and 23 once, so I probably goofed up that one shot).

Now firing a ball then taking damage to my barrier (to increase the damage a ball did), resulted in an average of 33 damage delt per ball (with 3 balls delivering 33 damage, and one dealing 32).

So, yes, the charge actually does change as the ball flies.

Answer 2

I would assume that the damage it caused would be from when the grenade (bomb) was fired. Applies with Genji: Genji's deflect will cause the same exact damage as the grenade when it was fired.

Edit:

Reasoning: A projectile should retain its damage as long as it doesn't suffer from damage falloff. After checking the wiki, Zarya has been confirmed to not suffer from falloff damage. Even if your energy goes down after firing, a projectile already fired should keep its damage.