So, alot of people on the forums, as well as Blizzard themselves, believe that Genji is in a poor spot at the moment, as he competes for the same role that is filled by overall better heroes, namely, Tracer (who has a smaller hitbox, higher burst and self-sustain, and better horizontal mobility), Doomfist (who has higher burst and mobility, combo potential, and, despite having a bigger hitbox, has more self-sustain through his passive shield generation, topped off with loads of cc disruption), and Echo (who has higher vertical mobility and again burst). So I began thinking: what could help Genji find a more clearly defined flanker niche, while not overtuning him, and removing his current “ult bot” status.
What I came up with is a new ability, based around the fact that he is a ninja. I’m sure many here have seen shows like Naruto, where ninjas can make clones of themselves, who usually have much less durability than the original user. So, I propose a new ability for Genji that does just that. This ability would be on a 10 second cooldown, and would allow Genji to make a clone of himself, with only 100 hp, and only dealing half of the damage that Genji does normally. This allows Genji to have some more survivability, while not allowing him to stick around forever. The clone would also expire after 5 seconds if not killed before then. Additionally, if Genji uses this ability, then activates Dragonblade, the clone would also activate blade. In order to mitigate this, I propose a nerf to Dragonblade, from 120 dmg per swing, to 100 damage per swing. This nerfs nanoblade itself, while avoiding a flat nerf to nano. Again, this is just an idea I had, feel free to come up with some alternate numbers to what the clone would have, but please don’t flame the idea. I thought it was thematic, while also not too broken or bad. Additionally, if this were to go through, I wouldn’t want the previous experimental Genji changes to go through.
So, you disregarded the entire point of the thread, and missed the rework entirely. This new ability is only a nerf to NANOBLADE. Dragonblade would be getting buffed, so long as you always used it with the clone, and made sure not to waste your cooldowns, as, with the clone using Dragonblade at the same time as the original Genji using Dragonblade, he would be doing 150 damage per swing, rather than 120. However, having said that, perhaps the blade should do 90 dmg per swing, as 150 damage per swing plus 50 and 25 dmg (from the combined Genji and clone swift strikes) might still be too powerful.
This forum is kinda spammy. So many people advocating for “buff Dva” without attempting to explain why she’s a “bad pick” or even attempting to articulate what to change or buff.
I have personally put a lot and I mean a lot of time into thinking about cloning abilities… and sadly I have to say, it would probably be a coding mess… especially with ideas such as “How is the clone controlled? Is it controlled? Is it AI?”
And so on and so forth.
So I can’t say I’m personally enthusiastic about the proposal, but I do see the effort you put into it.
To be honest, I got the idea from a workshop gamemode, where you chose one hero, but had a clone of the hero that stood a meter from you, and mimicked your exact movements, and it work extremely well and wasn’t buggy at all. I can’t remember for the life of me what it was called, but if blizzard just looked at that gamemode they’d have the foundation already for this buff. Just change the total health of the clone and the damage it can do, and boom. If the workshop can do it, I’m sure blizzard can do it as well.
Not to say you aren’t right, because… you are in theory, but that is a LOT of faith to put into blizzard. We’ve been fighting for changes to Bastion for a few years now, and they wont even respond… the last couple of changes that were made, negatively effected the hero as a whole and the feedback fell on deaf ears.