I’m not looking for anything specific. I just want to know how good Genji players make an impact in games. What are tips/advice/tactics I should keep in mind when playing Genji. Genji is my lowest win rate hero and I want to change that.
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You’re not alone with your winrate, he is dead last even in top MMR going by the last five patches.
From what higher rated Genji players like Darak said he is also not worth picking in his current state unless he gets considerable buffs.
I have no gameplay advice as I’ve completely stopped playing him after the last couple rounds of nerfs. They’ve gone overboard with weakening him.
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I mean, I’m not looking to take him into ranked right now because if his winrate is average at best, kinda risky a lower ranked player taking him and expecting to have a green match history.
I’m just trying to get him to level 15 while not having a red match history with him. Also, I’ve always kind of wanted to learn him so I came to the forums for help.
Nice to know I’m not alone though.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y0NU0QBgGJ9yi1_x9S6TrFRCNY2Ae97V/view?usp=sharing
If anyone wants to see how I play him here you go. I think that will help anyone give me advice so they can tell me what I am doing wrong.
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Ive run into multiple 50%+ genji mains in diamond-masters. Its definitely doable. Especially in lower ranks. It is important to note that right now there are other heroes that can do everything he can but better. He’s still a fun hero to play though and if you sink time into him it’s obviously better to play him than a tracer if you haven’t learned her. He’s also got a pretty strong early game unlike other divers.
When to pick:
1 With divers/in a dive comp. tyrael, mephisto, illy, abathur, ect
2 With strong sustained artillary mages like guldan or chromie who struggle to finish off kills. He compensates for that weakness
3 on braxis holdout you can be a little more generous with definition of artillary mage. I tend to do well with him there since i can quickly rotate top to gank. Though if you dont have a high damage mage you’ll struggle to do well.
Build:
I always go full e build and w shield at 7. Some go for perfect defense, i prefer more survivability. Dragonblade is imo a mustpick unless you get hard countered with stun chains/point and click stuns. Dragonblade genji feels like a strong hero where as x strike just doesn’t hit as hard as i think it should. Some may vouch for q build but w is a trap imo. Learn shingen. Its his most important talent.
How to play:
You should always be autoattacking. Play him like raynor where you stick on tank/any overextended backline. If enemies try to move towards your trait can disengage. E can be used to secure kills but a well timed shingen can often get the kill before window expires. If you think fight is going to last a long time dont be afraid to use your e early to deal damage. The movement speed + trait + shield will get you out of fights and you can often have your e back in time to finish. Just be careful with this bc in higher ranks they will try to collapse on you.
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Im watching your replay rn but its hard to judge a qm. This is a bad comp for genji and auriel wont give him much healing…
saw the replay, overall you played really well which was why you won despite the lost vikings.
- your build wasn’t great. its a bit funny that you complained about w’s cooldown at 20 and said that you would have won the fight if it was lower. I agree you would have and theres a wonderful talent at 7 which does this. I understand why you went spell armor vs 3 mages, but PD is manditory if youre going for w build (which i wouldn’t really recommend doing).
- dragonblade would have been better in that comp. there were multiple cases where you could have taken a 3v2 or a 3v1 and wiped them with it. It gives you mobility + massive damage. x strike is what you take if they have cc which enemies did not have
- youre not stutterstep enough. you weren’t awful at it and you were auto attacking enough, but if you stutterstepped youd be taking less damage and be able to dish out more aa. just go to try mode and dance around the dummies until you get muscle memory with it.
- you were using your w far too liberally. save it for preventing burst. this is just a thing you need more genji practice with. It’ll come with time there are not tricks to help get better at it.
as far as macro goes you guys could have won earlier if you pushed with boss at level 20 with 2 nukes, but you won anyways so it doesn’t matter. you had some pretty impressive kills btw. Not a bad genji.
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I appreciate your analysis because now I know what to focus on doing/not doing. And I was kinda joking about the cd of W just to throw some humor in a match where our Illidan and TLV were kinda getting annoyed with each other. For what it can do, the cd is fine in my opinion.
Yeah to be honest I have no clue what talents to pick because I don’t understand the synergy yet, I tried picking E talents so I can make that stronger and hopefully use it to secure a kill more often. I know that the Deflect is good against Tracer so I wanted to buff that as much as possible and in the end, it paid off using that with Li Ming’s R. And to be honest other than that I’m not too sure how to make sure I use the talents effectively. I suck at hitting Q’s so I never pick those talents because they’ll go to waste. I think over time I’ll get a feel for what talents are good in certain matches and how to utilize them.
I agree that I need to use W a little less often (but in my defense I was trying to use it offensively so I can trigger my 2 ability, which I forgot about at times, and also because Li Min’s R, Tassadar’s circle and AA, and then Tracer would allow me to deflect a lot of damage) and I also need to work on judging exactly when to do it. I’m level 12 with Genji right now so I have a lot of learning to do, which is why I’m asking for advice.
I didn’t take Dragonblade because I am not super good at using it. I’m a little more comfortable with X strike because it gives me an extra method of escape as well as a little more mobility. I should probably learn how to use it more so I can deal with different comps.
I have to say that as a Valla and Sylvanas player I should be good at stutter stepping, but Genji’s AA’s are a little tricky for me, but I do need practice with that.
Very thorough advice. I appreciate how you told me what I did wrong without making me feel stupid. Thanks. 
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Genji needs a huge buff.
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Ok where do I even start.
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Perfect Defence would have been perfect candidate for this game, you are against, Guldan, Tassadar, Tracer and Laser Liming, you would have ended up spamming deflect pretty much most of the time in the process and still shred the team, and maybe the frame rate…
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You should more aggressive and try not miss the dash, it feels like you would have done much better, at some situations you dive, don’t use deflect and just die.
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The 13:30 was really good in exploiting the kill on tass to secure more kills especially with tracer AA on you.
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14:35, you lost so much health for no reason
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Again as I am going deeper into this, perfect defense would have been just better and even more with how dumb this liming is going archon lol, she’s putting the whole team on large pressure from two abilities colliding together, cybe shield is really weird and cannot compete much with the comparison perfect defense grants, there’s a direct reason why this kept being a popular choice because it allows genji to spam it constantly, stay immune to a big chunk of damage and still deal damage at the same time, all he needs is 5 defelects to get its maximum efficiency which is very much generous.
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You are 3 levels in the level 20 quest and there’s a lot of ways to finish this, especially from tanking few tower shots here and there, also like it was before, perfect defense would finish this faster due the CDR, it has great synergy with Zanshin too, a AoE deflect on 6 seconds is lethal especially against a comp that seems to went for every single talent that increases the amount of attacks done in a second.
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21:16, tracer would have died if you reacted faster with the dash while (possibly) not tank a few shots here and there.
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gaming
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/326367027168280576/756785480527249438/gaming.mp4
just gaming
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This is my biggest take away from this thread. I played more today and I already see the value in that talent.
I think this is something I’ll get better at the more I play him. I just hesitate sometimes because I feel like if I do it too early I won’t secure the kill and end up feeding, which is what I don’t want.
Um… yeah. I don’t really know why I did that. Glad it didn’t result in a death though.
Yeah, like I said, I didn’t really think of that when playing. I thought 3 mages? I better take the spell armor, but that’s because I generally do that with other heroes.
Yeah now that I played it over I see it too. Hindsight sees 20/20. I guess, like I explained earlier I hesitated because I was scared I’d feed. I still feel like I haven’t figured out Genji’s limits.
Okay… let me explain this one. So at first I was like “okay let me destroy this thing so they lose a bit of vision”. Then I was like “wait, Illidan and I can use this, crap let me keep it alive”
Pro gamur thoughts.
way to make me feel stupid Sami geez. 
Thanks though.
Edit: Okay I lied, I just assumed the wall would die after the last AA so I left but was focused on other things that I didn’t even notice it was still standing.
…but my other explanation was funnier 
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Just know that Genji is the safest waveclear hero (besides aba) in the game
Not the best, but he can E out when ganked upon
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There’s no advice. You either get the grasp or no. I’ve maintained 56+% winrate since his release (and that’s both QM and SL combined). BUT I would rather not pick him in ranked anymore, cus there are better heroes now.
locks genji on a 3 lane map with xul, johanna, and guldan
wins first objective
asks if anyone wants to double soak while we push
ends up double soaking as genji
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Personally I always pick Agile Dismount at 1, offers a lot of mobility that grants positioning, that can result in securing a kill with E, or a lot of poke then dash out with E, depends on the situation. At 4 you picked Dragon Claw, good talent imo in this case, considering there are a lot of squishy heroes, but then you picked the Spell Shield, i think someone else mentioned it but cdr is always the safest option, it gives you the possibility to be much more annoying and to poke at your enemies, granted there’s a safe way to do it. As in ult both could have been good, but again, personally if I go with Dragon Claw, 99% of the times I pick Dragonblade, because it gives you the combo to burst down and get your reset, so it should be R,E,Dragon Claw, and ult swipe in case they’re not dead.
Tips for the replay: as a first, be aware of enemy minions, you should always use the Deflect dmg, it can deal a lot of dmg to heroes like tass or ming, usually i look at our minion wave and predict where the enemy’s is going to be, combined with cdr you can recharge your Dragon Claw in no time (with tower shots tho, minions usually fill it at 2\5 max); another big tip that a lot of people don’t abuse on this map and Braxis is the big camp, the shots from camp combined with minions when deflected will delete almost any squishy hero, so ya, use it more often!
basic tip, never try to kill someone without deflect up or any way of escaping.
the aa talent is meh here, you don’t have a lot of time to aa so the other 2 options would have been much better.
at 16 sure, more deflect dmg 
in this case it should be good, i almost never pick it and at 20 the deflect talent; It would have been good, if you picked cdr at 7
Back to the tips for dragonblade, make sure the enemy used their hard cc before going in, if you get feared, rooted, stunned or silenced, you’re gonna waste it or, most likely, end up dead.
X-Strike can be also used to escape, it’s not a big deal if it saves you, it’s cd is really low, so if it helps you get out, use it, do not hesitate
As for the rest of the talents, Q quest with 13 Q talent is good, but hard to master, i suggest mastering it against melee opponents, that way it should be easier to combo (or in Try Mode, just to see how it works)
As in E build, pick E for every talent that gives you the option, aim right and you’re good to go although with the recent nerf on trait, I personally always pick the trait talent at 1
as in soaking, if you’re stuck in a lane, just be agressive and force your opponent to back out by following the tips 
sorry if it’s kind of messy, hopefully it’s understandable enough
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I admit that i tried to switch over to trait at 1 after nerfs (agile dismount) but personally the e has always been much better for me. Improves your escape, chase, avoidence capabilities. Have still seen in picked up in pro play. But as you said its about style. I dont think either are bad talents at one but its very dependent on the player.
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I used to pick always the additional speed on E at 1, then i tried a few games with trait talent, fitted more my style, which is to annoy people and flank, but to each their own. Personally i feel that it gives you a more safe way to engage heroes without using E, which has a bigger range than trait to escape, but i’m not here to change anyone’s point of view or say how they should play so
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If you’re not going to positively contribute, don’t bother replying.
Sorry that I took so long to get back to you.
Yeah I now know that I chose the wrong talent, I should have chosen deflect. I find it interesting you like to take Agile Dismount at level 1, because I like the move speed after E so that I can chase, escape better.
I feel like this is something I need to work on. A lot of times I went in thinking I had everything off cooldown and ended up regretting it.
I also really like this piece of advice. A lot of time I’d feel stupid wasting an ult to escape, even if it saves my life, but now I don’t feel so bad.
Thanks for your tips. I really appreciate them. 
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Dragonblade is the better ult
X strike is situational when you need to escape or dodge
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