Unlike a lot of the people I talk to on this matter, I think that the developers really did a wonderful job designing Genji and i dont think there is anything wrong with his base kit. He is very fun to play and his kit gives him natural strengths and weaknesses and counters. However I think that he has been balanced stats-wise for a bygone era. He was nerfed into the ground because he was being picked too often in HGC, an environment where all players were at the upper limits of skill and coordination. However these nerfs had the unintended consequence of making him inaccessible to most of the playerbase. He was already only a situational pick in storm league games due to the fact that your team needed to cover just about all wave and merc clear for you and already have adequate CC since Genji has none. The nerfs made him more or less a no-go for Gold and below, which is most of the playerbase, and situational at higher levels. I’m not advocating that the hero be buffed all the way back to his on-release state, but I do think that the hero could stand to receive a bit of love from the balance team. One change I have in mind is buffing the base damage on his Swift Strike slightly. I think this would make Genji more versatile by giving him just a bit more waveclear and it would have the happy side effect of indirectly buffing his weakest/lowest winrate build, which is E build, while still not making him significantly more oppressive at the upper levels of mastery. And if you don’t think the hero needs any buffs at all, well, that’s a valid standpoint, but to anyone who thinks this I would pose the question: do you think, if Genji was released today with the same kit as he had back when he was originally released in 2017, that the developers would nerf him as much as they did? Maybe they would remove the triple dodge at 7 just because it made Genji able t beat his counters (which are longer range basic attackers), but I doubt they would nerf him as much as they did. I think they would see that his pick/ban and win rates in storm league were fairly average, and they would probably conclude that the hero is fine based on the fact that he is not causing problems for the vast majority of the playerbase. What do you think?
Genji has too much escape … he should be a ninja and instead he s a damn tank with his shield blade… that s insane
He is fun, but his kit has very little weaknesses. He had very little counter-play until they nerfed him. During the era of HGC he was a priority ban/pick and this was because of just howoverloaded his kit is. Unlike what you believe in, the developers did not do a good job bringing Genji in to this game. If they did, he wouldn’t be in the situation that he is. He’s been tossed in the trash bin with Illidan and Stitches.
Mobility, especially on an ranged asn, is a powerful mechanic to give. They not only inflated Genji’s kit with mobility, but gave him a protect on top of it. There’s a reason he’s been dumpstered.
He probably wouldn’t have been release in the first place. Genji’s kit is just bad in general. It’s overloaded for a ranged asn. He’s got very little weaknesses. One could argue that Genji was released specifically for HGC; The flashy plays a Genji can pull off would’ve attracted players.
But for argument sake, let’s say he was released in 2021, would he get nerfed to the ground? Not at first, but eventually yes… Genji’s kit aggravated a lot of ppl, from bronze to masters. He was even more problematic in Masters than he was in any other league, which is where balance comes from.
For them to bring back Genji, they would have to rework his entire kit. He has more mobility than a Zeratul while being safer than Zeratul. Zeratul gets away with his mobility because he isn’t entirely free to use it the same way Genji gets to do so, and to top it off, Zeratul is melee while Genji is not. For now, Genji can stay where he’s at. We don’t need him back in the meta. When he was meta, it was a bad time for lots of ppl.
If they were to buff Genji back in to the meta, I guarantee you, it would be a horrible experience and a lot of players would quit, especially since Anduin is a healer who would be able to give him a Get-out-of-jail card on top of his already high mobility.
Too much escape and too much often, maybe a bigger cooldown or a reduction of range escape would fit him better.
My fixes would be:
- Make shurikens do more damage to non-heroic targets (or at least give him a level 1 “amateur opponent” talent option like Artanis, to replace one of the current useless level 1 talents).
- Reduce mana costs for all abilities.
Hummm No ! We are saying he have too much escape and you want to buff him ? Something wrong in your head, should go take an appointment to the doctor 
The natural counters to him are specifically longer-range auto attackers. There is nothing he can really do against poke from a Raynor or Greymane, these heroes just out trade him no matter what and he will eventually just have to leave the fight without being able to do much. A lot of people assume that the counter to Genji is point-and-click CC, and when this doesn’t work because he can simply wait for the CC to be down, they say “Oh no, Genji has no counters,” but they’re wrong. The reason he was so unbelievably broken on release was because of two things: 1) the dodge talent at lv 7 having 3 charges, which essentially just made him beat his counters since they could no longer poke him, and 2) his 5.5 base auto attack range, which is the nerf that finally killed him after the developers tried everything else under the sun. I do not think they should give him back either of these things, as they would make him extremely hard to deal with even if you had the aforementioned counters to him, but I think once the developers cracked the code and took away his auto attack range, they probably should have given him back at least some of the damage they had removed from things like his E and Dragon Blade in their earlier, quixotic attempts to break the hero’s dominance. These would be reasonable buffs that would make this very difficult hero more rewarding for the people that put in the hours to master him. And I’d like to reiterate the hypothetical of him being released today with the same kit he had on release back in 2017. Medivh is stronger now than Genji ever was. One of genji’s strengths at the pro level was his ability to get vision of the other team at little risk to himself. Medivh can get vision at 0 risk to himself. Genji has insane mobility, Medivh has insane mobility that he can give to his entire team. Genji has a protect, Medivh has a protect… that he can cast on anyone on his team. And on top of that, once you stack your baseline quest Medivh just does as much damage as a normal mage on top of all that. Maybe even more. The hero has upwards of a 70% pick/ban in CCL and upwards of a 70% win rate as well when he is let through, and the developers have not shown any signs that they plan to nerf him because he’s not really that much of a problem in storm league due to his difficulty. The pro scene is not what they balance around anymore. And that may well be a good thing. But at least the devs should acknowledge this and buff Genji.
the skill levels are soooo drastic now since the player base has shrunk right now. I think a buff that would give you boost if you accomplish something hard with the toon would be the savest to go. A reward from a quest or somthing that takes skill to do.
there are many more toons that need buffs than genji