First, a reminder: ever since Overwatch’s release, Genji’s shurikens speed has remained untouched, at 60 m/s. To put things in context, in that time span, Hanzo has seen his arrows speed buffed not once but TWICE, now reaching up to 100 m/s and as a result Hanzo has become a top tier projectile character. We now play in an era where there is an ever increasing amount of characters that can move at speeds where they become effectively unhittable by Genji projectiles:
- Lucio, his wall ride and his speed aura.
- Doomfist, who by the way benefits from insane momentum to extend the distance he can cover with his punch, and who arguably benefits from at least 2 abilities which make him realistically unhittable by Genji’s primary attack.
- WRECKING BALL (the elephant in the room).
- Sombra (while stealthed, technically).
- Soldier, while sprinting.
- Tracer of course.
- Mercy in Valk form.
Thinking of all these just brings the question: TO WHICH EXTENT is it acceptable to have line of sight with enemy characters and to realistically be unable to reach them with projectiles on time due to how slow Genji’s projectiles travel? Well let’s think of what was deemed acceptable at first, and what was later found out to be not so acceptable (or viable?): HANZO’s arrows speed case.
For the same reason that Hanzo’s projectiles speed was raised to increase his “effective range” CONSIDERABLY, Genji, as the game’s most difficult hero to play mechanically, should naturally deserve to be made more relevant with regards to his effective range, to a certain extent. I believe he deserves 33% faster projectiles.
Genji now unfortunately finds himself in a situation where there are many cases where he NO LONGER HAS THE OPTION to effectively poke from a distance due to either facing too many shields, or because the targets are simply moving at speeds that are disproportionately fast relatively to the speed of his projectiles. What is he supposed to do? just retire? Is that an acceptable way to respect the players who invested colossal amounts of energy in learning to play him?
Before going further, to put more relevant elements in perspective, let’s consider historic examples of hero countering:
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Winston is a soft but somewhat challenging counter to Genji when used correctly, seems fair.
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Winston is a soft but somewhat challenging counter to Hanzo when used correctly, seems fair.
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Reaper is a challenging counter to Winston. However, Reaper has a very short effective range so Winston can technically work around it to some degree, seems fair.
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Mei is a soft counter to Genji, but Genji can stay outside of the effective range of her freeze while being more or less in his own effective range, seems fair.
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Genji vs Hanzo vs Mccree vs Tracer are all what I consider to be skill matchups.
**Now, There is ONE example that completely clashes in intensity with all the examples I’ve given above: **
6. GENJI VS BRIGITTE.
As soon as Genji is in Brigitte’s range (argueably 6 meters but can be extended to 12 m or even 26 m by using her abilities), which corresponds precisely to Genji’s preferred combat range, Brigitte is in a position to effectively delete Genji by performing a sequence of abilities which is very simple to execute mechanically. He does NOT have the option of his deflect to mitigate the insane burst of damage attached to this sequence. Now the most obvious counter argument to this is:
“But Genji has verticality! he can either shoot her from high ground or double jump to dodge her shield bash! He also has his dash to dodge the stun! Her range is only 6 meters! He can safely dash through her shield if she only has 50 hp and she’ll die!”.
Actually her range can be extended to 26 meters technically if she combines her shield charge (6m range) and her whip shot (20m range) The reality is that as far as Genji’s double jump and dash are concerned, they have to be used by anticipation, BEFORE being able to react to the visual stimulus of Brigitte’s shield charge, because her ability’s animation is simply too fast to react to.
Her shield Charge CAN interrupt Genji mid dash and has to be anticipated while facing the constant threat of a guaranteed swift death at the slightest range mistake. Not only does the Genji player need to perform something close to a 90 degrees turn (or more) with his mouse to orient his dash properly, which takes time, but also if for some reason Genji’s hitbox DURING his dash even slightly overlaps with Brigitte’s huge shield charge hitbox, Genji’s dash will be interrupted and he will effectively be dead in a 1 vs 1 scenario as his movement ability will have been wasted. So, how does Genji hold his ground against Brigitte? The only linear choice is that he has to poke through 600hp of shield with his 84 damage per second primary fire from a range superior to 20 meters, which is more than 3 times the distance of his effective range. Assuming he hits her shield with 100% accuracy, it will take him 7.14 seconds to finish her shield off. There simply is no other character in the game that is unkillable by Genji to an extent as dramatic as the example of Brigitte. Everybody knows VERY WELL that Genji will NEVER hit her shield with 100% accuracy due to the distance at which he needs to be in order to be safe from the instant death threat that being in Brigitte’s range represents.
Honestly 7 or 8 seconds should be manageable to wear down Brigitte’s resources in a 1 vs 1 scenario, but the problem here is that Genji will absolutely not have 100% accuracy against her shield due to the fact that her shield is small, that she can move, and that he’s shooting from typically 20 m. Having to invest such a colossal amount of time during which genji does not build up ultimate charge just to remove Brigitte’s ability to stun for a very short amount of time is beyond ridiculous, and it should be blatantly obvious to everyone. There is simply no other hero in the game that ruins a character’s viability to such an extent, not even Doomfist/Sombra vs Reinhardt.
For the record, in comparison to Genji’s 84 dps:
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Hanzo’s primary fire sits at 125 dps. (with an effective range that is essentially 66% larger, with his 100 m/s arrows vs Genji’s 60 m/s shurikens)
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Mccree’s primary fire sits at 140 dps. (his damage falloff range starts at 18m)
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Reaper’s primary fire sits at 280 dps. (falloff range starts at 11 m)
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Tracer’s primary fire sits at 240 dps. (her damage falloff starts at 11 m, and she has literally 4 very respectable chances to bait Brigitte’s shield charge with her very reliable 3 blinks and rewind)
What’s OK:
It’s ok to reduce his Dragonblade sword swings from 9 to 7.
It’s ok to remove Genji’s free jump after a wall climb.
It’s ok to remove Genji’s momentum after dash after briefly colliding with a horizontal ledge.
It’s ok to tone down Genji’s deflect hitbox size for it to fit his animation more realistically and to give other heroes a chance to out play him.
What’s NOT OK:
It’s NOT ok to gimp Genji’s dash to make the distance covered during dash interruptible considering the fact that DEATH is the nearly guaranteed result, whether it’s by Doomfist’s punch, or by Brigitte’s shield bash. This is, by the way, also completely inconsistent with Roadhog’s hook invariably completing its task even if Roadhog gets stunned after his hook has been thrown out.
It’s NOT ok to keep removing Genji’s advantages which were arguably questionable by design WITHOUT ACTUALLY COMPENSATING by refocusing his lost leverage towards his essential attributes INTELLIGENTLY.
Now onto the relevance of the 125 dmg sword swings buff:
Putting things into perspective:
Pharah/Junkrat primary fire projectile direct hit 120 dmg, max splash 80 dmg. (can’t crit).
Reaper primary fire 140 dmg (can crit).
Hanzo primary fire 125 dmg. (can crit).
The implication is that if in a blade sequence you use your dash to cover a distance that puts your blade in range of a reaper, mei or a doomfist but your dash actually does not inflict damage on these targets, it will take you 3 out of your 7 sword swings to get one kill on these targets because you will be short 10 dmg point (2 x 120 = 240. 240 < 250)
I would very much like someone to explain to me why Genji’s ULTIMATE, which is very complex to build up, deserves to hit for LESS THAN HALF of a HANZO ARROW which can ONE SHOT 250 hp targets from ANY DISTANCE as a PRIMARY FIRE ABILITY.
Reaper has INVULNERABILITY AND LIFE LEECH.
Mei has INVULNERABILITY and a POCKET MEDIC PACK.
Doomfist can have an EXTENDED HEALTH POOL and has FOUR escape abilities.
HOW IS GENJI’S SWORD, HIS ULTIMATE, NOT WORTHY OF BEING POTENTIALLY ABLE TO 2 shot 250 hp targets?
HOW IS one of GENJI’S shuriken NOT WORTHY OF KILLING A SYMMETRA TURRET with 1 entire second of time investment as a DPS CHARACTER just because shurikens hit for 28 dmg and turrets have 30 hp?
Edit: just to clarify, when Genji uses his primary attack, this attack gets put on a 1 second cooldown before it can be triggered again. After his attack has been triggered, Genji is FORCED to look at the target, which is in this case Symmetra’s turret, for at LEAST 1/2 second in order to be able to land the TWO shurikens he needs to kill that turret. If Genji was to try his alternate fire instead, which has a 750ms cooldown attached to it, he would actually have to invest 1.5 seconds as a DPS character in order to destroy a 30 hp target unless he’s actually shooting the turret point blank. I don’t find this acceptable and I believe Symmetra’s turrets should have 28 hp.
THE NONSENSE NEEDS TO END! FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
/s