In the past, I have held back on asking for Genji buffs, because most of the dps heroes were worse off than him. Symmetra, Mccree, Bastion, Mei, Reaper, S76, Junkrat were in a worse spot than him and heroes like Tracer were equal to him.
But now that’s changed.
Heroes like Symmetra, Mei and Mccree received buffs to make them more viable. Other heroes like Reaper benefited greatly from 2/2/2 role lock. Heroes like Bastion received massive indirect buffs (and direct ones) due to new hero synergies like Baptist and Sigma. Doomfist received a direct buff, many bug fixes, benefited from the meta AND become a great counter for many new heroes like Sigma and Baptist. All the dive heroes (Tracer, Winston and D.Va) are getting buffed in the next PTR patch… except for Genji.
Meanwhile, Genji just gets weaker and weaker by the patch.
For the record, I think that it’s okay for Genji to be weak when the meta doesn’t suit him. But it’s not just the meta, Genji’s problems extend far beyond just one meta.
Before we get into his problems, let’s understand who Genji is.
Obviously, Genji is a flanker. But he’s not a flanker like Doomfist/Tracer - and he’s certainly no Sombra. Fundamentally, Genji is a 2-sided hero. On one side, Genji is practically harmless. He moves behind enemy lines, pokes them with shurikans, tries to draw enemies away from their team, make them reposition and build ult charge. He does this until he builds dragonblade or finds a golden opportunity. Maybe a Zenyatta wonders away from his team. Maybe a Mccree gets tagged by a Hanzo arrow. Maybe Ana wastes both her cooldowns and her teammates become distracted. At this point, Genji flips to his other side - the assassin. Genji dashes into the enemy team, wasting his only reliable escape ability. His goal is to kill an enemy before they and their team can react and focus down Genji/help their teammate, and use the swift strike reset to escape. But Genji only has one chance…
He can only do burst damage ONCE. Dash does 50 damage, and melee locks his abilities in place. He also doesn’t have ANY useful mobility in combat (aside from his initial dash). His chance of escape is also slim without a dash reset, as deflect isn’t that useful (we’ll get into that later) and double jump/wall-climb are slow and linear. Aside from a few exceptions, he can’t just wall climb out. You could say that once Genji changes from passive to active, he completely committed to getting the kill. He also needs to do this fast, because swift-strike acts like a teleport with a 0.4 sec cast time (unlike rocket punch/blink/rewind/translocator) where he can be sigma ulted, hooked, halted, stunned or otherwise screwed. In short, he’s high risk because simply disrupting Genji during his combo will completely screw him over, and he has a narrow time-constraint.
In other words, Genji is low risk, low reward for most of the game. But he can become very high risk, high reward for a few seconds.
Though Genji’s base kit is quite mediocre, his ult is quite good. He gets ult resets during blade, which lets him bounce from target to target. With nanoblade, he can kill people with just a slash + dash. it’s the one part of his kit that makes him viable… Well, made him viable.
Ask youself this: “What does Genji do better than any other hero in the game?”
Is he the best at getting picks like Widowmaker? Is he the best brawler like Doomfist? Does he do the most damage like Bastion? Does he dominate when there’s no hitscan like Pharah? Can he protect the backline like Mccree? Does he counter the snipers like he’s suppose to? (Please, don’t make me laugh).
No. Even his trademark mobility can now be matched by Doomfist or Hammond.
In this sense, he’s just like S76. He simply doesn’t do anything better than the rest of the cast… and this is a problem in a game that’s becoming increasingly specialized with every hero release.
But wait, but you said that Genji’s ult made him viable… So, at least Genji’s useful as an ult bot… Right?
The ult nerf hurt everyone… but nobody was more affected than Genji (well, except maybe Sombra).
And it’s not “just” 12%… that a fight where your team gets steamrolled because you have a floppy ninja that does 84 dps, a lost objective where you NEEDED that blade to turn the fight and a rare opportunity to blade without being CCed into oblivion.
Genji was barely getting his blade fast enough before… that 12% drove him over the edge.
But it’s not just ult charge that’s messing with dragonblade - it’s impact has also diminished over time.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first - there are so many ways to counter dragonblade.
First of all, he can’t even target a lot of heroes. Dragonblade a tank and he’ll just laugh it off. Dragonblade any hero with a invulnerability ability or escape (Reaper, Mei, Moira) and they’ll just run away. Dragonblade anywhere near CC (mccree, sigma, doomfist, ana, brigitte, roadhog etc.) and you’ll be dead before you finish your ult line. Dragonblading into symm or torb turrents are a recipe for disaster. Dragonblading near their healers, will mean they’ll probably outheal your damage (esp. with coalescence/ana nade/etc). Dragonblade when they have immortality and you’ll just be a useless 200hp hero for 4 seconds. Dragonblade when they have shatter, grav, transcendence, sound barrier, sigma ult, coalescence, nanoboost and you’ll trade ult for ult… if you don’t get killed in the process.
ONE of these things aren’t a problem, but Blizzard has added so many counters to dragonblade that you’ll ALWAYS be bound to find 3 - 4 of these things at any one time.
How many opportunities are there to blade, when you have to wait for 2 - 3 CD abilities and 1 - 2 ults to be off cooldown at the same time?
Look at the last couple of hero releases… Moira, Brigitte, Ashe, Wrecking Ball, Baptist, Sigma. 4/6 of them mess Genji up. Moira and Brigitte for obvious reasons. Baptist adds more AOE healing that Genji can’t outdamage, as well as his immortality field which Genji needs 5 (now 4 on the PTR) swings to kill through. Remember, without a kill, Genji has no dash reset. 4 - 5 seconds to get a kill - especially when Genji’s ult only lasts 6 seconds. Sigma can now throw a rock the size of a small car that will kill Genji with another LMB, which btw… can’t be deflected. And no, it’s not actually that hard to stun Genji when he’s only 5 - 10m away from you.
The other 2/6 are neutral at best… Despite being a dive hero, Wrecking ball doesn’t pair extremely well with Genji in competitive, because he displaces enemies which messes up Genji’s comboes. Wrecking doesn’t counter Genji, but he doesn’t help Genji either. Ashe also doesn’t counter Genji per se, but Genji also doesn’t counter Ashe.
Hell, even discounting these past releases, Genji has way more counters than heroes he counters.
Mccree, Sombra (assuming she’s viable), Symmetra, Torbjorn, Pharah, Sigma, Winston, Zarya, Baptiste, Moira, Bridgette… All either soft or hard counters.
Who does Genji counter?.. He hard counters nobody. And I guess he soft counters Widow, Hanzo and Zenyatta? Some people say he counters Mercy… but really? Every time you dive her, she can escape with her superjump or just GA into a teammate. When you try to ult her, she’ll pop valk and avoid you (unless she messes up her positioning). I have better luck killing mercy as Widow, Doomfist or even Mccree tbh.
Let’s assume Symmetra/Torb aren’t soft counters (since it’s a bit debatable), that still means Genji has 3x more counters than heroes he counters.
Everything counters deflect now.
Who DOESN’T have an ability to go straight through deflect nowadays?
Orisa, Reaper, Mercy, Baptiste, Hanzo, Widowmaker, Zenyatta, Bastion, Roadhog, Reinhardt, Tracer, Zenyatta, Torbjorn, D.Va.
Alright 14/31 heroes have no abilities that goes through deflect. More than half the heroes in the game have abilities that go through deflect.
Keep in mind that these 14/31 heroes aren’t exactly stuck when Genji deflects. Widow/Mercy/Hanzo can escape, Bastion can self-heal, Tracer, Reinhardt shouldn’t be fighting Genji in the first place, Roadhog can hook Genji through deflect if he gets close enough, Baptist can use immortality field and Zen can discord and charge a right click to kill Genji as soon as he comes out of deflect. Orisa can halt Genji through deflect, so he can’t escape.
There are way too many counters for deflect to be a reliable escape tool. Hell, using deflect can be harmful, since it gives your enemies 1.5 seconds to react and heal your target… Which means that you’re fighting a full health enemy… without 50 damage from dash… and without the element of surprise… with their entire team ready to roll you… in the enemy’s backline… and without your swift strike to escape… Good luck with that.
- A small buff. Increase his projectile speed by 10 - 20 m/s. Even increasing his projectile speed to 80m/s, would mean it’s slower than Zen orbs at 90m/s or Mei at 120m/s.
OR - A rework that nerfs dragonblade and buffs his kit.
Personally, I think a small buff is better - better to have a moderately dangerous flanker that can occasionally become dangerous for 6 seconds… than a flanker that is constantly dangerous… We don’t want Doomfist pt. 2.