In-Depth Genji Guide

General Discussion
1

Hello. As someone with over 200+ hours (150 hours on my main and 100 hours on my alt) on Genji and is actually a Plat Genji main, I’m here to provide you some in depth guide to become one decent weeb lord.

YOUR KIT:

  • SHURIKENS
    This is is of course your primary and alternate fire. When at distance with your target, always use your primary fire and aim in the direction your target is walking to. You will have to always aim a few inches away from your target’s initial position because these shurikens are projectiles so they require some time to travel to your target. Use your secondary fire when your target is in close range since you throw three shurikens at the same time (instead of a quick succession), thus requiring less time to travel to hit 3 worth travelling shurikens of damage. Plus, you don’t need to aim your secondary fire to actually hit your target since you’re in close range.

  • SWIFT STRIKE
    Genji’s most powerful kit and basically what makes up his entire kit. Now there’s two condition where you can use this: to bring the fight to your target or as means of escape. As powerful as this skill is, you might end up swift striking into the face of Winston or other big tanks, so you need a game sense to know when and where to swift strike. Since this skill resets upon elimination, you might as well try to “steal” your teammate’s kill since this way you can gain another swift strike reset. I personally look would look for low health targets, even if they are positioning themselves in the middle of their allies, I’d dash to them knowing my dash would kill them and instantly get another dash reset so I could 180 and dash back into safety.

  • DEFLECT
    Use this as only means of defense, especially when your swift strike is on cooldown. Activate your deflect to protect yourself and aim toward the enemy crowd. Now, since you can cancel this skill by meleeing or shooting, you can “abuse” this skill because your opponent wouldn’t know if you’re going to deflect until the end of the animation or would cancel mid way and you could just finish them off. This way, your enemy wouldn’t be stupid enough to shoot at you, making you safe from damage while you wait for a few seconds for your dash cooldown to reset so you can dash back to safety or even finish the target off (and dash back to safety ofc)

  • DRAGONBLADE
    One of the most powerful offensive ultimate this game has to offer, even called broken by some less experienced players (no offense) if you know how to use this ultimate properly. You mess up one of your slice you’re basically going to mess up your whole blade. Know when to pull your blade out, NEVER EVER pull your blade when it’s just you against the six of them, they will basically spam all their cooldowns on you or even their ultimates. You need to keep track of skills like Brig’s skillbash, Lucio’s boop, Ana’s sleep dart, McCree’s flash etc so you don’t mess up your blade. ALWAYS, ALWAYS aim for their supports first because they’re low on health which means you’ll get your dash reset pretty quickly.

Now this is where it gets interesting, I’m going to tell you some tricks I learn on my own.

  • COMBOS YOU WANT TO TRY
  1. Arc shuriken (secondary fire) + melee. Once you’re in a melee-ranged distance with your opponent, you could throw your secondary fire and instantly melee afterwards. Since one of Genji’s shuriken hits 28 damage that means 84 damage + melee damage (30) = 114 damage. You can deal more damage if you manage to aim for your target’s health. You could follow up with another arc shuriken + melee to finish them off.
  2. Rapid succession shurikens (primary fire) + swift strike. Use this when you are flanking and want to surprise your target. It deals a total of 134 damage (84 damage from 3 shurikens + 50 from shurikens). Would deal more damage if you are able to aim for your opponent heads. You can follow up with no. 1 combo and finish most 200 HP heroes.
  3. Swift strike + 180 + melee. Use this when you want to bring the fight to your targets and you are sure you could finish your target off without dying. Basically what you want to do is you swift strike past them, turn 180 degrees and instantly melee them. This will do a total of 80 damage, not as much damage as the first two but still a decent amount of damage.
  4. Headshot arc shurikens + swift strike + melee. This is a much harder combo since it requires very rapid and fluent movement but will surely finish off any 200 HP target in one fluent movement. You need to do this in a close range since you are throwing your shurikens in an arc movement, then aim your swift strike at the target’s feet so you wouldn’t dash too far away so you could still melee the target.

  • GHOST DASH
    Now this is a pretty hard and advanced trick and I only suggest more skilled Genji players to try this out since it requires a precise flick. I myself haven’t even mastered this skill yet and could carry this trick out only a few times. You know how your dash skill resets upon elimination? Now this is what you want to do. Once you are sure your opponent is low on health and your dash skill is ready, you dash to them, get your dash skill reset instantly, then dash again at the same frame so you’d cancel the 2nd dash skill animation.

  • DRAGONBLADING TIPS

  • Remember, you may always want to target supports. I have no difficulties blading against most support except Mercy and Brigitte (because Brigitte, that’s why). A pretty experienced Mercy would know the basic of Dragonblades and this is how to deal with them. You’d want to dash to a Mercy and pull out your blade. When you pull out your blade you instantly get another dash reset. DO NOT DASH AGAIN IMMEDIATELY. YOU NEED TO WAIT. Once Mercy sees you come to them, they will use their guardian angel skill to fly away to safety. Now this is when your second dash reset comes in handy. Once Mercy flies away to safety, you aim towards their general movement and dash towards them. Had you use your dash too early, you wouldn’t be able to finish that Mercy off.

  • UNLIKE ZEN’S TRANSCENDENCE ABILITY, YOU ARE NOT INVULNERABLE TO DAMAGE DURING YOUR ULTIMATE. Move erratically, climb walls, double jump, basically move in a random movement to avoid taking damage. Do not be afraid to use your deflect skill if you are in danger. You might lose a few seconds on your blade, but it’s more worth it rather than dying during one of the most game-changing ultimate in the game.

  • Dragonblade combo: Do not immediately use your dash skill once it resets, use this skill to close your distance quickly or to finish off low targets so you could get another dash reset to reach another target. My favorite thing to do: Slice and dash afterwards. Since one slice deals 120 damage and dash deals 50 damage the combo will deal a total of 170 damage. What you want to do, is you slice your enemy and instantly dash afterwards. If you succeed in eliminating your target upon the dash, you’d get another dash reset which you could instantly use (opening a window for ghost dash to add more style to your ult!) to immediately reach another target or to hold on until you find another target.

  • DEFLECTING TIPS
    McCree’s deadeye: DO NOT INSTANTLY use your deflect once he pops his ult. You might want to wait until he says “it’s high n-”. Once he’s about to say “noon”, it’s the right time to deflect. Whenever you find a McCree popping his ult, you need to locate his current position (in lower ranks, they’re possibly on high ground or flanking from behind), harass them with a few primary fire shurikens before activating your deflect skill. Since he’ll be moving in a slow motion, aim for his head. If it’s taking too long to pull the trigger, make sure to cancel your deflect skill (to surprise him) by shooting another succession of primary fire shurikens.

  • Pharah’s Barrage
    One of the easiest ult to deflect. There’s no need for me to explain.

  • Soldier’s visor
    Tbh, since his buff I find his visor pretty hard to deflect and end up in killing him. Activate your deflect to keep yourself from safety while running toward a cover and hide.

  • Hanzo’s Dragonstrike
    A better Hanzo would Dragonstrike behind a wall so their arrows wouldn’t get deflected nor eaten by D.Va’s Matrix. But if you happen to find a Hanzo ulting into an open space, you’d want to look for his animation. There will be a delay and animation of him ulting which gives you the opportunity to deflect.

  • Tracer’s Pulse Bomb, Zarya’s Graviton Surge and Mei’s Blizzard
    These ults are harder to deflect since they do not have a casting time. You’d have to watch for their movements, Mei and Zarya inching forward despite your team is crowding at one spot, Tracer blinking consecutively, etc. You might want to keep track of ults as well.

Sorry for the long post, but this is my in-depth guide for Genji. Genji is a highly mobile DPS, you need to know when to flank and if you want to dash towards your enemy to bring the fight to your enemy or dash away to safety when enemy Winston try to dive you.

2

The real Genji Guide:
Rush 1v6.
Realize that you can’t do it anymore since there are heroes that counter you.
Go to the forums.
Start crying about how bad the game has become and how terrible the new heroes have been.

2 Likes
3

Your poor attempt to be humorous had no effect.

Please try again.

1 Like
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I laughed

5

Incorrect, Mei’s ult has a 1.5 sec cast time.

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I’m just trying to be helpful :frowning: I can take it down

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I think he was referring to the first reply you got rather than you - or hope.

Ignore the trolls, maybe a few of the genjis i keep getting on my team can learn a bit from this.

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My response was towards the comment of the “CoolGuy3”.

About your guide, nice write up, but as player that has 300+ hours on this hero i gotta say, most improvement comes from experience. Reading guides is helpful, but experience and playtime with the hero is a way better tutor.

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Exactly! I’ve managed to improve myself so much from playing a lot of games as him. These are just the basic guidelines on how to improve your basic mechanisms as Genji :smiley:

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You never could to begin with, he’s had counters since launch. Adding more is just pushing him from the balanced point he’s been at since Season 2 into the niche-UP hellhole that the majority of DPS heroes are left in to die.

It’s not even a matter of rushing 1v6, Genji barely gets value with an entire team supporting him now, because almost everything shuts him down.

Even nanoblade feels more like a chore to use that burdens you for the whole game than a win condition these days.

11

Genji is one reason why I am playing less and less OW. :joy: Idk I just find myself losing track of where he is and splat. It’s flipping frustrating.