Genji- Nerf/change damage; buff survivability

General Discussion
1

The hero is incredibly fun to play, and one-of-a-kind in FPS games. but you have to have… perfect aim, or something… to even have a chance to live when 25 or more heroes will hardstop-shut-genji-down. His crits wouldnt have to have the same modifier as everyone else. his melee wouldnt have to be as weak as it is- the only other hero performing melee’s with a ‘special blade’ is JQ, and JQ’s melee applies a bleed DoT.

So much could be done with this hero in more imaginative ways, besides only ever tweaking cooldown/effect lengths and clip size (there shouldn’t be a clip size, think d.va; rework how dash works). How about deflect working a bit more like defense matrix? (turn it on… turn it off, turn it on again, idk you imagine it).

changes to genji would bring more prolific ‘game-theory’ decision making, and allowing genji to stay in a fight would be incredibly challenging and rewarding to master, beyond the current situation where you either get reported for smurfing, or reported for throwing (sometimes both). every single game is complete ownage, or complete hopelessness.

Tell me your ideas revive this tragically ‘knife’s-edge-balanced’ hero.

2

I’m curious to see how he performs with no alt fire and only primary fire that is buffed.

Genji is a weak poke game despite having the option.

However, he’s an excellent close range specialist because jumping, deflect, swift strike, and alt fire let him operate in a person’s face far more reliably than another person can fight back.

Her is Genji spamming alt fire that has the potential to oneshot off triple shuriken or can still chunk with 1-2 shuriken headshot or even a 2 shuriken body shot when you have swiftstrike + melee finisher for the easiest 80 dmg output.

I’m curious to see if Genji could have more damage put into his primary fire. Remove alt fire. Make his close range fighting worse because it requires more accuracy on his part, but buff his range spam to be able to compete with those other heroes.

I just don’t know what those damage values should be at all. Right now, Alt fire is 120 DPS while his primary is 86 or something. I’m thinking like a 50% increase on his primary some how either to fire rate or base damage.

2 Likes
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it cannot oneshot anymore… if you didnt know they nerfed him again. short ult, weaker dmg breakpoints, killing most combo potential. and the way you say he operates strong up front- all those things have to have been held, many ppl can just disappear (or equivalent), and once they are used, are blown forever (feels like) if they ever get flushed out by… anyone doing anything… then he’s sitting duck to 5 million beams and lazers and area denial effects and far superior close range fire/combat abilities.

The game has changed, and swift strike and deflect need rework. he’s playable for 10% of existence, and in those 10%, will dominate the match with impunity.

I like your thought about a more viable primary fire, with trade-off. multiple charges of (a weaker?) swift strike could make him relevant. Or maybe dealing/taking damage could whittle down the cooldown rate of a single charge of dash. who knows, experiment.

He’s such a unique setup in the FPS world, and I’d like him to feel more like a ninja, and less of a coinflip glass cannon. so many heroes can foil his long-cooldown abilities, with such short cooldowns, it is a relatively lame game-theory situation as to whether genji can engage (and if he engages, will kill). Making him more of a scrappy ninja and less of a high lethality noob hoover would be healthy for gameplay.

Edit:
I just love the hero. But the game has changed since launch. I’m naively hopeful that some attention to the hero could elevate this unique FPS setup to something that is wildly enjoyable to play while functioning as a healthy bolster to the overwatch ecosystem.

Instead of now, where choosing Genji is obnoxious, one way or the other, in every match that he is chosen. It’s about waiting for the green light, but when it does, you’re unstoppable–> a rather dull ‘game,’ in the proper sense. Currently, that “green light” is remarkably rare while many short cooldowns completely nullify genji, but there’s simply no counter play possible when the green light rolls around. and they call that, “balance.” Knife’s-edge balance upsets teammates and creates a toxicity in the metagame and in the community. People get freakin mean to highly skilled ‘genji carrys’, very fast. #reworkGenji

1 Like
4

Why would you buff a mobility hero’s range game and gimp the close range game? That’s just dumb lol…

Mobile heroes are weaker at range and stronger close range, by design. They need to be disadvantaged at range and use mobility to get close.

Triple shuriken hs doesn’t one-shot but is also a high mechanical move so I don’t see the problem lol…

You don’t sound like you understand Genji and should not be suggesting changes to him until you do…

6 Likes
5

It would remove his main play style

6

The community consensus is 1shots refer to combos or literal ones. Genji’s literally has one with swift strike → alt fire. You can even include variations on it like primary fire → swift strike → alt fire.

Its not really that high of a mechanical move when if you miss as much as 9deg arc, you are still rewarded with partial damage. A reaper arc which is one of the wider ones in the game is 7deg too. Most of that damage is not concentrated at an easy head height. its concentrated into a cone with more dmg in the middle. Nor does Reaper even have the easiest of times closing distances as easily as Genji due to swift strike nor the reset to get him out for a successful kill.

The goal is to make Genji more generalist and less feast or famine. Weaken his close range ability by making him fight on more equal terms as other heroes with less mobility, but still have the range to challenge them even without closing distance.

Ana has no mobility, but you wouldn’t think it because she has no fall-off. Hanzo has no fall off either, but you wouldn’t see it either.

Genji’s mobility is slow enough where he cant’ gap close as far as Winston or Doomfist or Tracer could. So, he’s given longer range poke to compensate.

However, they have given him stronger close range play to try to compensate for poor poke. I’m looking to inverse that to make him more playable in more comps. Give him one of the slower mobility characters, but make him more mobile, but at a more even’d out DPS range. Bump his DPS higher. Projectile still wants to close distance, but his raw DPS to actually act as a DPS on the approach is more meaningful.

It changes nothing of the sort. Projectile still wants to play close range as its easier to hit shots closer up than hitscan. He loses the high burst potential possible out of spamming alt fire for the instant potential it could inflict, but he’s now on more even footing against other heroes at range or close range. He can still triple headshot or triple bodyshot, but its more precision focused.

If he tries to play in people’s faces, he’s more balanced against them as both heroes are fighting the same close range shenanigans, but Genji has more mix-ups. If they try to play the long range poke, Genji has the higher DPS to compensate to interact with those hitscan players, but has better mobility to do it from safer vantage points.

He is no longer as famine at range and less feast at close range.

1 Like
7

Yes it does genji is a shot gun assassin character and your removing his assassin and shot gun play style all at once.

Does soldier spam his primary? No. Weirld so dont call genjis spam ots makes you look dumb.

His alt is precision focused i see you dont actually play genji what so ever. His alt fire is insanly hard to hit all 3 head shots at once to get your combo off and if you say its not show clips if you doing it 5 times in a game with not messing it up.

Thats his whole play style hes insnaly hard to master the hardest in the dps role and if your good you get rewarded and if your bad you arnt stop trying to make every hero the same cod trash

8

:yawning_face: When I can miss my mark by as much as 9deg, its not precision focused. Primary fire is precision focused. Alt fire is his spam option as many heroes have.

2 Likes
9

Ya and you dont seem understand its still not spam its more his primary and most genjis switch it because it does more dps so again is soldier shooting spam if no then genji using his alt fire is not spam also would mei and sym be spam as well because i think not

Spam is just a word used by people who die to somthing they dont like thats why your calling it spam

Also please show your self playing a ranked game as genji because i would love to see this 9 degrees you can miss by and still hit all 3 shurikens

10

I don’t know about consensus but if you were referring to the combo then just say the combo, because triple hs cannot one shot lol….

When I said high mechanical move I was referring to triple hs. Now it’s true that you can whiff your alt fire a little bit but still land one shuriken for 27-52 dmg, but this is such trash damage lol….that’s comparable to kirko’s bodyshot. This is not something that should be consider a balance/design problem that should be addressed. The game is full of heroes who don’t need pinpoint aim for partial damage.

Why do I want this? What genji players want genji to fight on “equal terms” at range and have weaker close range? We would just play a hitscan if that’s what we want lol…

Or maybe the compensation is to give him vertical mobility with no cd which allows him to flank to positions where he can gap close, who knows except the devs.

But regardless of the reason, we don’t need homogenize mobility heroes kit. Genji’s entire design is part of his massive charm. I like switching fire mode based on spacing instead of just using one size fits all attack. I like dash the way it is, less gap closing range than multi-blink or jump pack or seismic slam, but omnidirectional with reset potential.

Yeah I don’t want an “inverse” version of genji. Again why would genji players want this? He’s disadvantaged at poke game, we’re fine with that, but we want him to stomp opposition at close range. We want to flank to the back side of enemy team and soak the streets with the blood of supports lol….

11

The problem is to keep Genji balanced, you need to either:

  1. Buff damage, reduce utility.
  2. Buff utility, reduce damage.

His gameplay core is that he has so many little hidden combos/abilities/little details you can combine while playing.

Not other character has that, a double jump, climbing walls, cancelling your deflect…

The thing is that Genji is an easier version of Tracer and the hard version of Reaper, he’s a hard character, but overbuff him too much and he becomes unbearable to play against because things like right click can become broken.

Take away things like cancelling deflect and he becomes BOOOOORING.

He’s hard to balance, because he can either become trash or an unstoppable force…

12

160 (3 shots to the head) + 50 (dash) + 30 damage melee…

That crosses the 200 barrier (even without the melee cancel), so he has the one shot. what he can’t do is one shot Reaper / Mei any more.

Basically a dash, which stops in front of them, going directly into a fan, cancelling into melee will still instantly drop pretty much everyone on the field.

13

Literally only sigma doesnt have this.

No hes not hes just more popular then tracer but weaker.

They removed his main combo his triple head shot melee which is a high part of what keeps genji viable at higher ranks with how often dash reset just randomly doesnt work because for some res6on the games on spaghetti code. Like right know genji has a dash bug Literally making his combo impossible if your used to doing it fast and efficiently you Literally cant because and old bug is back.

Also its 162 not 160

Ya and you cant do that right know it puts you above your target liek a good 5 to 9 meters above them making his combo impossible to do this way

14

Shouldn’t the ninja be feast up close and famine at range? You know, the type of fighter characterized by assassinations and other sneaky tricks?

2 Likes
15

this is what happens when you allow people to ‘think independently’…

16

That’s up to blizzard. The reality is that they made Tracer the more mobile flanker. A 3sec blink with a ~10m range. Rather severe DPS drop at +15m due to spread and fall off dmg. Absolutely NO ranged damage at all. They have intentionally made her unable to contest high ground easily nor be able to challenge heroes at range.

While they gave Genji’s primary fire the precision and no fall off with a projectile to do 27dmg per projectile. Genji excels in spots where Tracer is slower usually which is predominately vertical positions. He has less spammable horizontal mobility, but he traverse quickly due to wall climb + double jump to help him get over obstacles that would take longer with horizontal movement alone. He can provide consistent pressure with that ranged damage as he approaches.

Even his alt fire has no fall off and used to be much more situational due to its wider angle. Genji to me is the ranged flanker and veritcal one. Tracer is the horizontal and close range flanker. I’m quite happy with the idea to make him generalist and put more power into that primary fire.

17

Yet shes the counter to pharahmercy and an amazing counter to widow a hero whos usaly on high ground weird.

Ya because shes hit scan.

Ya because he shoots projectiles and guess what projectiles dont have fall off and suck at range because people cna side step them its why lucio is played more like a shot gun then a snipor even tho he has “unlimited” range.

Ya hes a ninja thoses are all things a ninja would do going over and up and attacking directly picking yhe fights he wants.

And your wrong genji is a close range dive hero hes not a poke hero he fits in brawl better then he does poke.

And no genji player would be happy eith that what so ever.

We play genji because 1 hes hard 2 hes cool and 3 he feels good to play.

Also what you want is kiriko you just want kiriko

18

I do not play a lot of Genji but from my understating his alt fire serves as a gap closer and finisher, like Echo’s beam or Torb’s alt fire.

I find that his primary fire is not ideal for close range engagements or for finishing off a target. If we remove it we would need to give him something else, maybe his alt fire could be his sword or knife.

19

Blizzard buffed his alt fire on both recovery and spread. Its just the most ideal move to use at close or even mid range boundaries. Its just safe to use for consistent damage and its his highest burst option.

Dafran was goin through a top 500 on every hero and even in this vid he’s pretty much trying to spam alt fire all the time and get in people’s faces for free because how do you stop swift strike?

Alt fire and swift strike are the two predominate reasons Genji has been such a troublesome hero because alt fire is so safe to use with little effort. Swift strike plants him exactly where he wants to be more with accuracy than you can get out of a tracer blink which is a fixed distance compared to the stopping swift strike short by aiming at a ground spot. You can’t really stop Genji from getting in really when he has both range AND a burst mobility too.

I’m just curious how Genji would be by removing that easy alt fire and bumping up his primary fire dmg by a hefty amount.

2 Likes
20

ya and you lost all credibility a while ago but this is just a cherry on top you saying the hardest combo in the game to pull off consistently takes little efforts.

it would make him trash they tried this years ago and it was trash because genji is a close range hero

and all im seeing from the video is okay genji game play why not look at a person whos mastered the hero plus getting to top 500 is all about game sense not mechanical skill