When you are an actual noob, lower-ranked player… like me… and I’ve been gaming for 2 years and have only played OW… but still a “noob” compared to the majority of the playerbase… It’s SO hard to learn Genji.
The reasons:
A) Quickplay is now a huge mix of eloes. I’m Silver. So for me, my matches are always a mix of Silver-Diamond, with an occasional Master and GM mixed in.
B) Usually, 3 to 5 of the other team players specifically counter me, Genji, no matter how bad I am.
C) Genji is the hero that smurfs use. The hero that is used to humiliate lower ranked players, which everyone has been through at one point or another. So if you play genji, people just assume you are toxic and all they want to do is bury you… which is fine, but trying to learn him, lol, man.
Anyone have any tips on how to find matches where I won’t get treated like some actual huge threat every single match?
This advice does not exist. Only way to learn him is to just grind it out. You’ll have bad games along the way but just review them and learn from your mistakes.
People don’t focus Genji because Genji has a bad reputation. People focus Genji because he’s actually a strong hero who poses a significant threat to your backline.
take flank routes find enemies who are alone which they probably will be dash them and try to kill them. There teammates prolly won’t react quick enough
sadly none you just have to improve enough to skill diff your hard counters. i recommend ranked you will have closer ranks in your game and you can learn more
and don’t listen to people calling him strong they are just getting skill diffed if you pay attention to game most genji that suck team fight 1 or 2 swaps so your left with people trying to learn or the more likely good player who is climbing ranks
Well, one thing many Genji player’s do is that they go too hard on the flank aspect.
There is a difference between flanking and offangle. The generally agreed upon idea is offangle is being close proximity to your team while say not being directly behind them. In other words, you maintain healing LoS to your team or your team can keep LoS on the same target you might go after.
Flanking is when you generally lose LoS to your team (aka supports can’t assist you at all), but you might have the same LoS to the enemy your team is attacking. Unless you are amazing at killing people swiftly you are just feeding super hard if you get on the hard flank.
Spend more time in the poke and prod phase. Trying to let team’s close distance. Its really easy to get ahead of your team’s ability to get into Los of the enemy team and the last thing you want is a 1v5 against you for being hasty. Keep your flanks shorter rather than long. You want people to see you and offer a tantalizing target to fire upon, but you want to the proximity to your team to get heal off any chip damage. Draw fire away from your team puts less healing pressure on your supports letting them get extra damage in and let others make advancements without having to back to cover to heal up.
If you were on King’s Row, you could poke and prod through the hotel room. You don’t even have to leave the hotel room. Just scaring people into knowing the Genji is there possibly waiting is good enough value in most cases. The easiest thing Genji can do is going for a distraction play whittling people down. POssibly trying to get supports to use abilities like sleep dart, bionade, drawing discord on you, regen burst, etc. early, then after you see these abilities used you go in with swift strike for lower HP clean-up as alt fire + melee is jsut a super easy dmg ombo to spam on people in close range.
When possible hug terrain as closely as possible. You want to minimize your profile for people to shoot. If you double jump over a wall people have a huge amount of time to shoot you for exposing yourself compared to if you just barely peaked over the wall. Generally, against hitscan left and right strafing is more powerful than jumping as jumping makes it easy to predict where you are going. Against projectile, double jumping and wall climb really mess with aim into you.
That’s a good point. Once I practice a little more, hopefully I’ll feel more comfortable mixing him into comp and that’ll allow me to play w my own rank more.
Thanks, yeah, he’s a lot of fun! At least when I do ok with him. Def a high-skill ceiling, but that’s what I like about him.
Yeah, that fine line between feeding/over-extending and flanking… I’m so used to Ashe, that I’m pretty used to getting punished if I don’t have the resources needed for escape, so to me, Genji feels like he is easier in that way, but in general, I’m pretty cautious, yet still aggressive. I know what you mean though, I see Genji’s just dash right into the backline without any clue they are about to get obviated… like overconfident Genji’s.
Awesome, this is the style I like. I actually land a lot of poke shots, prob bc I main Ashe/Hanzo and Genji’s poke feels sort of similar. I love Kiriko’s primary also.
Great advice, much appreciated. Shorter flanks, I hadn’t really thought of that concept, good stuff.
Yeah, I’ve been in an OW coaching discord this last month “Akward’s Rank Up Academy” and he’s been teaching the class the same type of stuff you are saying. Off-angles, distraction, rotating a lot but constant damage.
This I really need to improve on, I die so many times and think “why tf was I that out in the open when I could have been hugging a wall and less exposed”. It’s like a lazy and totally avoidable death just bc I wasn’t paying attention. Dumb. Def good advice to focus on this.
TY
Yeah, I used to consider Genji my biggest nightmare my first year (last year), but now I don’t fear him nearly as much and can punish most of them in my low ranks… Still get owned by good Genji’s of course, but still not like last year as a total noob.
But it’s not that I feel like they are focusing me, as much as they are just swapping to the counter heroes as soon as they see a Genji. Like it’ll start out with whatever heroes they have and then they swap to like a combination of Moira and Sym and/or Torb and/or Mei, sometimes Echo, Zarya or Monkey. Beam heroes, freeze hero. And then yeah, I mean, the Sym or Mei or Moira will focus me, but esp Sym’s and Zarya’s.
I see the pattern, too. I like higher-skill heroes and am not a fan of lower-skill heroes. But if you mean that my previous post was bc I play Genji, no, I am literally just starting to play Genji… Like 8th hour of playtime total in 2 years. I’ve mostly played Ashe/Hanzo.
He’s honestly also just not that good. The 30 damage they gave him this season is great, it’s exactly what he needed because his biggest issue was how often he had to reload, but there are still just way better picks like cassidy or ashe that don’t have to be as close to you as genji does
Only A applies to me. But also another reason is because it takes time to start getting value from genji unlike other easy to play DPS heroes such as torb (turret does half of the work for you).
So if you’ve been mostly climbing and increasing your MMR by playing hitscan heroes, swapping to genji all of a sudden is going to get you rolled even in Quickplay. Since QP also uses your MMR to form matches.
I think it’s possible to smurf even in QP. All you have to do is make a new account as a high ranked player and queue for QP. If your MMR hasn’t formed yet, you’re going to get put in a low to average ranked match in the beginning.