Just QoL / Consistency Buffs
- Dragonblade attack rate improved from once per .9 seconds to per .8 seconds.
- This does not meaningfully improve his TTK against anything, nor increase maximum swing count. It merely offers a bit more leeway to getting his max swing count, from ~.15 seconds to ~.75 seconds. If necessary, we can have it sheath automatically after the 7th swing.
- Time to draw and resheath Dragonblade reduced from 1 second to .8 seconds each, mirroring that of a normal swing.
- Faintly more intuitive and less clunky.
- Dragonblade swings are no longer cancelled mid-animation by running out of duration.
- If you can begin a swing (literally any duration remains when you hit your Primary Fire key), you can complete the swing.
- If there is not enough time remaining on Dragonblade for another swing, it will instantly resheath. This will not prevent you from using Deflect. He will now simply resheath his blade with his right hand while deflecting with his left. (He has two hands.)
- It keeps his last .9 (now .8) seconds from being wasted, self-pacified duration.
- A new “Queue turning” setting has been added, allowing the player to turn how they will face when having completed Swift Strike (“Dash”).
- This does not again allow him to curve his Dash, but simply allows lower sensitivity players to continue turning in preparation for their landing, rather than locking in their angle over the Dash’s 0.4-second animation, which can feel awkward and may seem to obligate high sensitivity on a character that’s otherwise mostly fine even at lower sensitivities.
Mostly-QoL Buffs
- His reload now replenishes his ammo .6 seconds earlier, allowing for earlier animation cancels.
- Honestly, it’d make more sense for left-hand skills not to interrupt your entirely right-hand reload process at all, but /shrug.
True, but Faint, Buffs
- Primary Fire attack rate increased from once per .95 seconds to once per .85 seconds.
- This mirrors the recent .1-second rate of fire increase to his Secondary Fire, which left the Primary Fire feeling weirdly sluggish by comparison.
- Quick Melee no longer effectively afflicts Genji with a 0.5-second Hack. Instead, it continues to stack recovery times with his Primary and Secondary Fire, thus making it impossible to get free damage from, while leaving him fully able to use other abilities during Quick Melee’s recovery time. To compensate, Swift Strike now “Deals up to 30 less damage against targets who have just been struck by your Quick Melee.”
- So, the former Quick Melee nerf merely does no more and no less than what it previously intended to: it stops the Secondary-Melee-Dash combo.
Legit Buffs to Make Genji less of an “Ult-bot” (Tentative)
- Swift Strike damage increased to 60.
- Quick Melee no longer delays Reload, either, beyond Quick Melee’s minimum animation lock.
- Quick Melee will now delay Primary Fire and Secondary Fire by only .35 seconds, down from ~.7 seconds.
- This reduces the DPS penalty of using Melee from ~90 to ~45. Note that this does not buff any optimal behavior, only reduce the penalty of ill-calculated behavior from a minimum of ~70% of Genji’s nominal DPS over its recovery period to ~35%.
Highly Tentative
- Increase Quick Melee’s recovery time to ~.85 seconds, but have it no longer stack with Primary Fire or Secondary Fire recovery times, thus partly returning the “Free Melee”.
- This would return the ability to trim excess dagger-throws on his Primary Fire to conserve ammo at no uptime cost and give the point-blank Secondary-Melee option of dealing 114-198 damage per .85 seconds (134-232 dps) alongside his Secondary spam option of 84-162 damage per .65 seconds (129-249 dps).
- More importantly, this allows allows for a more easily guaranteed 228 damage in 1.7 seconds, to be compared to the normal 252-282 damage over 1.95 second of using QM only to finish the enemy. It’s scarcely a buff, but it does allow further consistency. One basically need be less afraid of using a QM when the enemy might be healed above 30 HP just before the strike lands; instead, they can freely choose between two damage patterns instead of trying to sneak a Quick Melee in only where its uptime cost won’t matter.
- This would return the ability to trim excess dagger-throws on his Primary Fire to conserve ammo at no uptime cost and give the point-blank Secondary-Melee option of dealing 114-198 damage per .85 seconds (134-232 dps) alongside his Secondary spam option of 84-162 damage per .65 seconds (129-249 dps).
- Quick Melee and Swift Strike no longer interrupt Reload, period. New animation flows have been added for visual fluidity between them, moving the reloading hand offscreen somewhat while showing that the reload is continuing without hindering or being hindered.
Compensation
- [Do regardless] Swift Strike no longer snapshots so far in advance, and acts much more as a (self-)projectile, rather than alike to a hitscan attack.
- [If needed, Option 1] Ammo capacity reverted from 30 to 24 to compensate.
- [If needed, Option 2] Could instead simply siphon .05 seconds of attack rate from left click to right click for purposes of fluidity, though that would be a net nerf.
Let me know if any of these seem overly powerful.
Notes:
Why not just buff his Shuriken damage?
Buffing his Shuriken damage by even a single point allows him to one-shot 200-HP targets even without Dash.
- 28x3x2+30 = 198 = Cannot one-shot the Soldier.
- 29x3x2+30 = 204 = You can one-shot the Soldier.
That seems a very risky threshold to push Genji over. At the very least we shouldn’t pretend it is a small or granular buff. It isn’t small, and nothing outside of beam damage is ever truly granular.
For point of comparison, let’s consider a 60-damage Dash.
- x3 Dash-Melee Combo — 3/3 Hit, 0/3 Headshot; 2/3 Hit, 1/3 Headshot, etc.
- 28*3 + 30 + 60 = 174, up from 164.
Boosted: 226, up from 213.
- 28*3 + 30 + 60 = 174, up from 164.
- x4 Dash-Melee Combo
- 28*4 + 30 + 60 = 202, up from 192.
Boosted: 262, up from 249.
- 28*4 + 30 + 60 = 202, up from 192.
While these would be almost equally important thresholds, those thresholds aren’t unique (a single headshot extra would already do that difference and 18 more damage besides), can be healed through to make a life-or-death difference, given that Dash take .4 seconds to deal its 50 (now 60 damage) — making it merely 125 DPS (now 150) — and require a crucial cooldown. That change would additionally increase Genji’s steamroll pressure, as with Nano it would only take two cleaving Dashes and a Quick Melee or single Shuriken (or Dash-melee and two Shuriken, etc.) to completely kill a 200-HP target, greatly improving his chain-kill TTK via Nano without using Dragonblade, but, again, in a way that is (1) not unique, (2) can be healed through, and (3) requires ability use (and thus can be denied by saving any ally that would otherwise afford Genji a Dash-cleave upon their death). It’s a more power in situationally significant ways, but almost completely leaves the enemy their ability to outplay it. (I say “almost completely” only because I hate using absolutes. In virtually every functional way, 100% of their outplay ability remains.)