I don’t exactly play Genji but I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think those are very conventional ways to be allowed to cancel an ability like Deflect, especially in a world with heroes like Reaper or Mei who can pop in and out of their defenses at will. To me, having to wallclimb or burn Dash (assuming you even have it) seemed like a really awkward restriction that made Genji arbitrarily worse based on pretty random factors, like if he has a wall near him or not. I don’t think it’s very “skilled” for Genjis to have played around this weird restriction, it’s just something Genjis have learned to deal with. As Blizzard said, he’s competing with Doomfist and Echo as mobile damage heroes, and neither of them have wacky restrictions on how to control their abilities, nothing as unconventional as “be close to a wall” or “burn your most precious ability just so you can go back to shooting things.”
Yeah and I wouldn’t compare this to Rein’s Charge at all, that’s just weird to do. Rein’s Charge is a fully proactive move that Rein can aim and can lead into a pin/kill. Deflect’s lethality is directly tied to what the enemy is trying to shoot at Genji, and once enemies know not to shoot at the green swoosh lines, they simply don’t – you don’t get to decide to just not be effected by Rein’s Charge if he’s coming at you, not without actually doing something in return.
I think this is kind of fair because one, Rein is sort of a powerhouse in the meta right now, and two, Rein… has a whole barrier to defend himself, head included. I think it’s fair that since, I think, every single other DPS hero can attack Rein without having to be right in range of him, Genji can be allowed to do so, too. I do think this is a pretty major buff to his potential damage output, but it really just makes attacks more consistent, and I don’t think inconsistency was an intended weakness to Genji’s kit. And giving him more flexible room to engage enemies is pretty fair, again, if you compare him to Doomfist or Echo, they all have decent ranges in which to stay in the battle.
I’d argue that almost any buff to any hero is going to lower that hero’s skill ceiling. Genji in particular is one of the most difficult heroes to play and get value out of, he’s been pushed aside from power creep in other areas, I don’t think it’s unfair to make him slightly more accessible to people. Genji still has all the same weaknesses as before, there’s still many ways to handle him. My only real concern is how quickly he can get Dragonblade up, but even that has received an indirect nerf with Ana’s healing having gone down, meaning there’s also less Nanos – a very important interaction to consider.
With the direction the game has gone, these changes feel pretty warranted. If it means anything, the Moira damage nerf isn’t going through, which means Moira still has some potential to keep his time in the backline limited.
