Hi,
Im a Genji main with a lot of hours on him. So, I know what I am talking. When you spent so much hours into a character, you should be at one point, where you should be able to deal with every situation the game throws at you. Its basic game dev knowledge, that you want your player in control and avoid as much randomness as possible, so the players actually can play instead of being played. However Genji has some inconsistency flaws, I would like to address.
In general the problem is, that even if you mastered Genji, you will come into situations, where you get killed through the game design, which is not fun.
Swift Strike
Its mainly an offensive ability. Yes, you can use it defensively, but Genji is a DPS and so should his skills be used mainly as offensive skills. Especially Genji has the task to finish targets off by getting CLOSE. This is even encouraged by the fact, that you get skill reset on kill. However the big problem is that: you have no way of knowing, if your target will survive with 1 HP or not. And if he does, you often are f*cked up.
Ofc you can say: well, then only finish targets off, once its 100% secure. But this would mean do not do you job as Genji in almost all cases and just dont play your role.
Wall Climbs
No matter how good you are with Genji, there is no way to know when you will glitch a wall.
I think, Genji deserves some fixes, that make up for this inconsistency. Especially since DF is basically the season 1 Genji, while Genji got weaker with almost every patch. Something that increases his survival rate during his engage and those fail wall climbs. So, I guess it should be something passive.
And what are you going to do about the first “issue”? You can say the same about Mercy, you can never know if you are safe to res, you could always get randomly hit by a luck arrow, do we need to fix that? No, it’s simply bad luck or bad decision making, just as it is for a Genji who dashes into an enemy that, for whatever reason, does not die of his dash and therefore can’t escape anymore.
Sure, the wallclimb bugs should be fixed but the first thing isn’t even a consistency flaw, it’s purely based on decision making and a bit of luck.
Disagree. Mercys res is purely about position. Have awareness of your opponents and you are fine.
But the problem with Genji is, that even if you have perfect game sense, you just cannot see the absolute HP value and no game sense on earth can tell you if he will survive your perfect landed combo in some cases.
And those wall climbs glitches cannot fixed, because its way too complex. The whole maps would have to be redesigned just for Genji. Im a map designer myself and know what I am talking about. You would have to remove many aesthetics from the game, just to fix his few glitches. Not worth it. Thats why Im saying solve two problems at once and give him a survival buff.
Oh yeah and I wasnt sure if I should even mention it. His deflect is also inconsistent. I didnt want to complain, because I can deflect f*cking ultimates.
HOWEVER when I use an ability I want to at least depend on it. But there are some attacks you cannot deflect. Im not saying, that I want to deflect a dva bomb, which does not make sense. But the the many amounts of lasers and stuns etc, render his ability useless. Which means he is being hardcountered.
But deflect isnt my real concern. Usally as Genji you can play around your hardcounters with your mobility. Thats the fun of Genji. And killing a winston feels rewarding. However the reason why Im mentioning it is because, when you fail to finish off your target and you got a zarya running into you, its over. You simply watch a movie of you being slaughtered.
I am for fixing the wall glitch issue. That one is the most annoying to me. I killed a junkrat who was using tire and the wall he was right next to glitched on me. I couldn’t climb it so I was killed by mayhem bombs.
Only thing he needs is a nerf to his hit boxes. His DB range is way too far, his SS hits people off screen and his deflect bounces back shots from his sides.
What people don’t understand about Genji, is that he is one of the few characters who have abilities which you should never, ever try to look at in isolation.
None of the abilities in his primary kit are very powerful or deadly on their own, it is their combination which makes him such a powerful character.
For example, Swift Strike. You can’t rely on this ability 100% to confirm kills. It is very, very powerful, and ideally you should be using it to confirm picks. But this isn’t what always happens; in the few times Swift Strike doesn’t kill your target, you should make a 180 turn and use his fan/left click to finish the enemy off.
You shouldn’t rely on any of Genji’s abilities in isolation really. You should always be thinking in terms of combos with him.
I agree that the Wall Climb thing should be fixed, tho
Bro, I already considered his whole melee combo. Even with a perfect melee combo, he couldnt finish off some tanks.
Im not saying that Genji should become a tank buster. No. But finishing off tanks is indeed his job.
What I fortgot to mention earlier: even worse, when you engage a target and it gets healed. Well, Im not complaining about team players playing a team game. However I think its fair if I want the devs to ask themselves: is this risk reward formula for Genji really what you want? Genji HAS to engage in certain situations, its his job. But he does depend on this skill reset too much, that one second of a random lucio aura could make him get killed. And there is nothing you can do about it, except not play your role and just play as a range character.
OK, I got a nice solution. How about Genji gets a bonus swift strike, that however recharges very slow. Like maybe 1 minute? Like Junkrat got his 2nd bomb. This would solve all his problems at once. He would be able to escape all those situations, when his wall climb, double jump or his finishing off targets failed. Since its a very slow recharge, you wouldnt just spam it, but keep it for those situations, so it has mainly defensive impact and I doubt, that Genji would become too OP. Ofc it increases his win rate, but he is currently mid tier and he wouldnt become an OP game breaker. In the end its just a matter of tweaking the cooldown for his 2nd swift strike. Even 2 minutes would be fine by me, because those situations dont happen that often as a good Genji player. We just need a tool for here and there to compensate for this inconsistency. And I guess giving us a 2nd SS would fit most in the Genji play style.
Edit: Oh, I TOTALLY FORGOT THIS:
When you dash through a target, sometimes it will die right before you dash it. This means AGAIN you stand there without skill reset. And there is NO way to avoid that. It is indeed a design flaw and this calls for a fix.
And again the 2nd Swift Strike would solve this problem. There more I think about it, the more sense this makes.