Replace Genji's Deflect

General Discussion
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Deflect is what makes me hate Genji.

Deflect is the most powerful tanking ability in the game because not only does it block most incoming damage, it also returns that same damage toward the attacker. It instantly punishes the attacker and their teammates for trying to hit an incredibly hard to hit target.

Some people say that Deflect isn’t a “get out of jail free” card, but it sure gets used like one a lot. It can turn a duel where the Genji should be punished into a fight where Genji has the advantage. It can let Genji survive situations where any other hero would die.

Deflect is why Genji players have a bad time. Because the only way to deal with it is to swap to a hero with the ability to circumvent it. This means that Genji players are gonna end up against an disproportional amount of Winston, Zarya, Echo, Mei, Sombra, Symmetra, Brigitte and Moira. The Genji player is gonna have a bad time because Deflect is now a useless cooldown, and the other player is playing a hero they probably didn’t want to play. Playing hitscan-, or projectile heroes against Genji is a terrible experience just because he has Deflect.

But nerfing Deflect into the ground wouldn’t be good for Genji as a hero, and just removing it wouldn’t work. So I made this thread to brainstorm more ideas of what to replace Deflect with.

My current ideas:

Storm Slash: Genji slashes the air and creates wide projectiles that travel at a moderate speed. 3-5 charges.

Basically Hanzo’s Storm Arrow mixed with Reinhardt’s Fire Strike. Inspired by Excalibur’s Exalted Blade (Warframe) and Riven’s Wind Slash (League of Legends).
Projectile should act similarly to Symmetra’s secondary fire in that it doesn’t get destroyed by touching corners.

Smoke Bomb: Genji throws a smoke grenade that obscures enemy vision and makes Genji invisible while in the cloud (and a short while after).

Literally every ninja vanish smoke ever. For a good implementation, check out Skye’s Smoke Screen (Paladins). Detonating it on himself rather than throwing it has its own benefits/drawbacks.

Substitute: Genji instantly becomes invisible and is replaced by a hologram.

Hologram could either not respond to attacks or poof into smoke if it gets shot. Inspired by every “ninja substitute” ever, Yoru’s Fakeout (VALORANT), Ying’s Illusion (Paladins), Zer0’s Decepti0n (Borderlands 2). Would probably require some bot scripting to make anything remotely believable.

If you have any more ideas then please post them!

Note: other heroes have tanking abilities that might need a rework or a retune, these include: Mei’s Cryo-Freeze and Ice Wall; Reaper’s Wraith Form; Baptiste’s Immortality Field and the edge case of Torbjörn’s Overload.

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My idea is keeping it, because i usually don’t shoot into a deflecting one.

It takes as much prediction on Genji’s part as for the enemy team to take each other out.
Also the hitbox is so wonky, even if people are dumb enough to shoot into it, sometimes it’ll actally help them.

Plus nothing is wrong with flexing, playing a hero they didn’t want?
Sure it’s a game but sometimes it’s still a competitive setting, switching and flexing is what makes it a game where people need to play their part.

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Sounds like a you issue :grinning:

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Neither do I. I shoot the Genji, Genji deflects and my shots are returned. I can’t stop projectiles that are already shot from hitting a deflecting Genji.

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Usually a single or few shots aren’t enough to kill you.

Also predict a deflect or something, it isn’t that hard.

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It doesn’t need to kill you, it just needs to put you in range of a shuriken+melee+dash combo. And if you’re not dead after that, his time to kill you is probably shorter than your time to kill him.

What if i predict that the Genji predicts that I’m predicting his deflect so he predicts that I won’t predict him shooting me in the face so I predict that I can keep shooting but the Genji predicts that I’ll do that so he just Deflects anyway.

It’s just that easy.

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Yeah who would’ve thought 1v1’ing a hero in a team game would be that hard.
Yes he’s a flanker, just be ready with your team like damn, you’re making it sound like it’s impossible.

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deflect is fine lmao

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Most other heroes don’t need to be in melee range to do any consistent or reasonable damage. The ones that do have similar abilities. I guarantee Reaper would survive in the same situation by fading away, or Sombra could teleport out to the other side of the map. Mei has iceblock, etc.

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I don’t mind it being hard. I mind it feeling unfair.

I’m not complaining about Genji’s mobility or extremely high burst damage, I’m saying that deflect is incredibly unfun to play against.

I don’t mind fighting Tracer or Sombra because I know that I won’t get punished for shooting at them.

Here’s the thing: There will be less peeling and coherent less teamplay in 5v5, that’s when deflect needs to be replaced.

GGuppy:
Most other heroes don’t need to be in melee range to do any consistent or reasonable damage. The ones that do have similar abilities. I guarantee Reaper would survive in the same situation by fading away, or Sombra could teleport out to the other side of the map. Mei has iceblock, etc.

That’s why my suggestion focused on either giving Genji a ranged option or another escape.

I did bring up other abilities that need to be considered in the last lines of the post. You did read my post before answering, right?

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only deflect?
his entire kit is filled with get outta jail cards
look at wall climb, auto reset dash from assist kills and ultimate, double jump, his ult that has no counter outside of a whole hog or grav

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My ONLY issue with deflect now is that he can cancel it without using another cool down and without telegraphing he canceled it. Enabling him to take aggression far to easily.

Before he could cancel it WITHOUT a dash he could be punished for misuse of it. Especially if he was forced to use it during blade. Now? Cancel it and right click spam.

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Blade has a ton of counters, whatcha mean? Time your shatter/pin for when genji’s about to dash one of your supports, same with flux, if you time it just right the genji wont get a reset to escape it, Winston can primal to keep slapping him away, ball can put mines around his team, Cass can flash/fan to get the genji extremely weak, doom can displace him to deny value, riptire is a well known counter, Blizzard cuts down on how long he can stay in without getting frozen/killed, Hack/EMP denies dashes which is a big part of it, Symm turrets slow him down, torb turret keeps hitting him and molten core is great for zoning, Ana has sleep, bap lamp denies every ult (though genji can destroy it with 2 swings), brig can displace the genji denying him a dash, Lucio can boop, speed his team away, or beat to deny blade’s value, and Zen can trance it. Sure, a fast slash/dash with nano blade can kill squishies through trance, the genji will probably only get one kill. Also forgot to mention zarya bubbles, takes 2 slashes to break them. :man_shrugging:

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Play Genji instead then and stop complaining?

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I love headshot-deflect a Widow 50 meters away without needing a scope like her.

You’re not taking that away from me. Get good.

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My only issue with deflect is that he can cancel it when he wants, so there’s no timing to punish them. If they removed the manual cancelling and could be punished again, then it’d be fine

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Reaper can cancel Wraith
Dva can cancel and fire off damage during DM
Zarya can fire during Bubbles
Brig can shield, heal and deal damage while its up
Doomfist can cancel Power Block

Name me ONE hero that has a defensive ability that is not cancellable, that also doesn’t have a secondary ability that is also defensive. You can’t, because there aren’t any.

Like dude, its a you problem, stop complaining about ONLY Genji if cancels bother you. Stop standing there and letting him close the distance, use Deflects uptime to make distance between the two of you, or watch him carefully. Genji’s punishment for misusing Deflect is that Deflect is now on cooldown, but no, people like you want him lit on fire for making a single misplay. You punish Genji by actually watching him for when he cancels it and firing on him, not our fault you have the reaction time of a donut and choose not to then whine on a forum. Maybe actually WATCH the Genji instead of 4head ignoring him.

Deflect was a free reload for the enemy and forced Genji to waste all his CDs to get any meaningful use out of it where no other hero similar to him had to. I shouldn’t have to do olympic gymnastics or expend my entire cooldown set to get out of my own defensive ability.

Of course you people want to “punish” only Genji, its only ever Genji that actually “deserves” punishment on these forums right? Just stop. You look foolish.

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Ima be honest the dash resets make me hate genji lol

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Telegraphed and not instant. Has an animation connected with exiting wraith.

Dm is telegraphed via animation and sound. I where did I say I had issues with attacks happening during defensives?

Bubble is telegraphed. There is an animation tied with it beginning and ending.

Telegraphed. Every bit of it.

Super telegraphed.

Strawman. You read cancel and stopped reading. I said can cancel AND without telegraphing. Allow me to also add has no wind down. His transition from deflecting to fighting has little to no delay.

Nope. I’ll express my concerns all I want. Just like when I expressed that genji’s deflect hitbox was way to large and did not match the animation. You know what they fixed? The hitbox.

Strawman. I litterally said it was my only problem with him. I don’t struggle against Genji. I just believe a well balanced ability should have one or two things to make it consistent.

The solution could be a wind down connected with an animation that telegraph’s a manual cancel (notice I have no problem with dash cancel not having an animation since dash IS the animation?). The solution could also be he no longer has a manual cancel.

Every other defensive ability in the game has a telegraph of some kind to tell you when it is going up or down. Be it an animation or sound. There is no animation or sound to signify a manual cancel of deflect.

You need to stop projecting your overly defensive approach to feedback on genji as if I asked for a huge nerf. I didn’t. I simply stated it does not telegraph its end like other defensives do.

Calm down, sit back, eat a snickers.

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