So, full disclosure: I do main Genji. If that’s enough for you to not want to adress my perspective then thats fine you’re welcome to leave the thread.
Now Im just gonna go ahead and say it: Genji is trash…well most of the time. Let me elaborate. There has been a pretty heated up debate this last couple of days regarding the balance of input/output of certain heroes, specifically Moira. Well Genji’s current situation its just the opposite. While Moira is able to get huge value with little input requirements for the player, Genji’s balance shifts heavily in the other direction with consistently underwhelming value obtained out of high ammounts of input.
There are a lot of things that just shut Genji down consistently and easily while at the same time he needs so many things to go right for him to get impact that its honeslty kind of ridiculous.
There is also an abundance of just better options in the DPS pool to pick him. After just a couple hours of experience with Reaper I get way more value with him by litereally just W+M1 until the enemies either get rolled over or Im forced to fade away, heal up and then repeat. I know most people on this forum despise Genji but he does need help regardless of how much this particular groups hate him.
Now I dont want to decrease his mechanical requirements in any way. Im ok with him being a harder hero to play profitiently but I do think he needs to be rewarded appropiately when the player manages to play him on an acceptable level.
A few changes Id like to see on experimental:
FFS Fix the deflect hitbox. Half of the time it just straigh up doesn’t work. Its unreliable and thats just unacceptable. The bare minimum is for the freaking ability to work as intended. I strongly doubt its current state constitutes “as intended”.
Buff his shuriken damage to 30. Thats the same as a melee attack per shuriken. this allows him to kill a squishy with 3 shurikens to the head and melee. I know this sounds like a huge buff but keep in mind we are talking about a game where a Reaper can 2 shot tanks without being really accurate… asking a player to land 3 critical shots and melee to get a kill is a fairly high requirement to meet compared most of other heroes present in the game right now. DF can delete people with just 1 ability without critical hits being required. In the general context of the game. 30 dmg per shuriken isnt that big of a buff while being able to increase Genji’s reliability without nerfing any other heroes and keeping it fair.
I feel like this is an obvious one but fix wallclimb? like its been 4 years how does it still bug out at times is beyond me. Anyone that plays Genji has been in this situation of you just falling to your death bc he will randomly stop climbing or it wont just work to begin with.
Fix his ult. The last second of the ult is completely wasted. he normally has enough time to begin a slash animation but the ult runs out before completeing it thus damage doesnt apply even if you did hit someone with the frames you had. So essentially your last second in ult its like you dont have ult at all. If you deflect then it gets cancelled bc Genji puts away the sword. So you are esentially useless during that last second except for dash. A possible fix would be to decrease the time of the ult so he puts the sword away as soon as the last slash is finished making the duration accurately represented by the anmations in game. That way you dont have any downtime other than the animation of Genji putting out the sword. No more ghost slashes or unreliable feedback. This can sound like a nerf but its essentialy a QoL change since it wont decrease the potential number of slashes he gets out of ult. If he starts a slash but the timer ends it shouldn’t cancel out.
Keep in mind that if the timer and the animation are properly synced up the only way for this to happen will be for Genji to skip a few slashes beforehand essentially d-syncronizing the animation and lowering his total potential damage. So yeah his ult lasts 1 more slash in that case time-wise but not really at the same time since he cannot possibly make more slashes than intended. This would be essentially a trade-off because he may gain 1 slash in time but lose damage from other slashes for that to happen at all. If this is too broken then just force the animation to end once there is no time to complete a slash si he doesnt have that stupid downtime for no reason.
Keep in mind I would like to see these changes on experimental, bit by bit. I dont intend or want Genji to be broken all of a sudden. I do have to deal with enemy Genjis all the time too and him being broken doesn’t benefit me in that aspect since Im not usually the better one. I just want for him to feel fair and powerful just like other heroes do. Feel free to share your thoughts with one another below, and sorry or the long post. Have a great day.
Edits 1&2: wording and typos Edit 3: Just wanted to add that I have 220hrs on Genji since 2016. Just so you guys know that Ive played him a lot Edit 4: More typos
*Edit 5: a user named Charleewhy pointed out that his deflect is no longer cancelled by the end of his ult. * *Didn’t knoe about that so thank you dude! However, ghost slashes are still a thing and the change I proposed is still valid in that aspect. *
Genji is a situational hero he cant be good against 31 other heros cause he burst down who he is good against. so he cant become allround without becoming op.
unlike say a soldier, hanzo.
People generally swap to counter genji cause he is oppressive against heros that are his fodder.
The bigger porblem with genji are his mains they dont swap when countered want a situational hero to be allround good.
I do agree the wall climb problem bug needs to be fixed on him and hanzo.
Yes. He’s bad. Definitely not worth the effort it takes to play him. And we have a much more mobile and better genji now called echo and even she’s nothing too strong.
people however seem to be happier to see genji burn in hell. So don’t expect blizzard to do anything. He’s just another dps in trash tier who’ll stay there for years right alongside soldier and others.
I do think Zen needs even more love than our green ninja. But other heroes are not the point of this thread. I also have 220hrs on Genji so my perspective about his state in particular may be more valuable than my perspective on other heroes.
Also for the record, I do switch heroes quite often. As I said Reaper tends to provide me with a lot of value even if Im not as experienced on him. I also play tons of Pharah and can destroy Moiras and Brigs consistently with her. Not swapping isnt the problem. Before Brig and Moira Genji was countereable by Winston, Cree, Sombra, Roadhog, Mei, Symm, Torb, Zarya…He had a lot of counters and now he has even more. No other hero has that much opposition so asking Genji playerrs to only play him when the matchup is favourable is unrealistic. Its always unfavourable nowdays.
I did play a lot of soldier back in moth meta too. Its proven to be kind of decent for me lately although the abundance of barriers kinda destroys any value you may be able to get otherwise. I’ve learned to look for unexpected angles with him to pressure enemies and that seems to kinda work sometimes. Unless an enemy Dva has something to say about it that is.
His ultimate is pretty counterable. Roadhog’s ult will singlehandedly mess his resets up and not let him get close to the enemy team. Hack will do something similar. Beat drop, shatter, grav, Primal rage, Pharah’s blast, trans (unless he is nanoed) but even trans and a good boop will mess him up. Also Boop+speedboost can save your team. A lot of these answers seem to be extremely undervalued by the community but Ive had countless blades ruined for those things. There are ways to deal with him, they just require some level of awareness and mechanics and thus for some reason part of the community pretend like those abilities dont counter him.
Best way to counter an ulting Genji is to just gtfo and mess his reset rythm.
peoples definition of counterable for genji ult is basically “Just shoot/stun him” which is a counter for literally eveyone, its not something unique to genji, that counters everyone.
which relies on a few things
enemy has a hog
hog has ult
hog is alive for when genji ults
Genji doesnt deflect it.
Hacking someone to stop their ult is not something unique to genji’s ult
I guess what I’m trying to say is, the only counters to his ultimate is to either have Lucio/Zen/Bap, or to stun him to death… there’s not other unique counterplay that most other ultimates have.
It wont counter any hero that doesnt need to get close to ult your team. It wont counter DF’s ult either bc his ult makes him untergetable by any ability in the game. Also, the fact that it counters other things not just only Genji doesnt really make those abilities less impactful against a Genji. In fact those abilities get a lot of value when used on an ulting Genji.
1.The enemy may need a hog so a tank has to swap just like we expect a Genji to swap when the enemy has a Mei, a Moira, a Brig…
2. Yeah thats fair. Hog should hold on to his ult to counter Genji just like Zen holds to his ult to counter Reaper’s or Pharah’s. Thats a base mechanic of the game for a lot of its interactions. Hog needs to be smart about his ult economy or it wont work and thats fair. Genji has to have that same discipline too.
3. Yeah thats still fair. If that hog missplays and dies then he doesnt get to cancel Genji’s blade. Thats fair. It works the other way around too. Genji is easier to kill even.
4. If Genji deflects it he will stil push the enemies away which is what he doesnt want to happen. and if he doesnt deflect it at them somehow then as soon as deflect is up he will be pushed away by the remaining of Hog’s ult which by the way got a pretty substantial buff recently.
Hack is specially hurtful for ability reliant heroes like DF or Genji. Hack gets WAY more value out when you hack someone like Genji with it. A good Mccree wont care about it bc he will still headshot things.
Not a single mechanic in this game should be specifically targeted to deal with any specific hero. Counuterplay should be paramount but it looks like you just want a “delete Genji instantly no matter what” button and thats not realistic or fair.
I could see an arument made here but I do think the primary changes his blade needs I already mentiones on the Original Post. If those turn out to be too strong I’d be ok with him getting a blade nerf.
now i want they stick to 28 damage, but buff his left click fire rate, something from 0.95 to 0.8, it seem so slugish
about his ult, kinda want they buff it to 8 sec, but it will sheath automaticly after 7 slash, even it still 5 sec if u use all 7 slash ur ult are dissappear, kinda like QOL change, this will also help against CC that making him have to run to people for slash… but it kinda lowered his skill abit idk
The main problem as to why Genji is hardly even played anymore is most likely due to the fact that he has so many counters now. And a lot of his counters don’t even require mad aiming skills to do their job. They added like what, 3-ish hard counters to him since launch? let’s see what we got here…
Moira
Brigitte
Doomfist
Winston
Zarya
And then you have a couple of soft counters to him as well, like Reinhardt and Sigma. The fact that a lot of these heroes don’t even require much aim in order to shut down a genji, is what astounds me.
The reason for this is in long and mid range you can outskill genji with aim, in close range you simply cant with aim unless you are say reaper.
everyother hero aim based hero would struggle cause at that range, even good aimers in kovacks aim trainer can track only between 30-40% exceptionally great aimers would do 65%. This is against a thick cylinder that moves in a horizontal plane.
Now think genji a jumping dashing slender hitbox at close range it will never be balanced for aim heros against genji at close range.
Tracer is balanced cause at anytime a aim based hero can delete her if they land the shots.
Where as genji of the 30% shots that average player can hit he is going to deflect some of it dash through to avoid some of it or escape, you are stuck with a uphill battle.
This is why he has counter that dont require much aim or melee heros, zarya does require quite a good amount of tracking aim, but she wins cause of her bubble. high health as well as being able to beam up through deflect.
He is always going to suffer against melee beam or aimlock heros.
Cause he is oppresive against aim dependent heros.
I still get the ghost slashes tho. So maybe the deflect thing is fixed but the ult’s animations being inconsistent and unclear at least from a first person perspective is still a thing. However Ill edit the OP to reflect what you just said, ty
