Bottom of this post shows numbers, here I’m just gonna explain it. If I don’t mention a stat that means it’s the same as his current one (as of Sept 25)

The devs clearly look at win rate for balancing, and while genji has a high win rate, it dramatically drops in higher ranks, personally I’m a masters player, but I have friends in silver to gm, so I have played in all ranks, from what I’ve understood from the playtime, the issue is deflect.

I love deflect, I would never get rid of deflect, however it’s so incredibly easy to use in low ranks as players just never stop shooting down there. My thought with deflect was one thing, how do we raise the skill ceiling of this ability without making it feel worse? When you see the explanations below you’ll have a better idea of what I mean, but I believe deflect should work more as a ‘parry’, a short term but more reliable cooldown.

Another one of genji’s issues is swift strike. The problem is, if genji is too strong, the combination of a kill resetting movement ability becomes overpowered, I wanted to keep the dash reset on a kill, so I believe actually leaning into the strength of dash and moving power from other parts of his kit, specifically his primary fire, it would make it feel a lot more consistent. Swift strike is a ‘kill tool’ I like to call it. Some characters have a high damage single ability used to get an easy pick, I feel like, to align genji with modern design, his dash damage should be raised, especially in the era of higher health bars.

The final major issue, dragon blade. Blade is simply too inconsistent, the issue with it is if you do not execute every blade perfectly, you simply waste the ult. I think part of the issue is the ‘movement creep’ in modern Overwatch that blade just can’t keep up with, even with the 20% movement speed boost. I believe in part, we can buff up his passive to keep up with the ult. As much as I dislike it, I believe it is a necessary evil to have the 3 slash TTK with the ult, so my changes, without removing the 3 slashes, make it feel better.

Shurikens:

Damage: 25 per shuriken
Projectile size: 0.085
Recovery rate (time between shots): 0.72 for both fire types

Swift Strike:

Damage: 80
New effect: Hitbox now moves with player model

Deflect:

Deflect duration: 0.75 seconds
New effect: now has two charges
Cooldown per charge: 6 seconds
New effect: can now deflect all projectile types (such as sigma rock, shion bike) does not include beams

Cyber-agility:

New effect: wall climb speed is effected by movement boosts

Dragonblade:
New effect: When activating, immediately restore one charge of deflect
New effect: Pauses timer when deflect is active
New effect: for every second that passes during dragon blade, increase movement speed by 5% during ult (does not apply if timer is paused)
New effect: during dragonblade, double jump can be reset after wall climbing or using swift strike

Minor Perks:

New Minor Perk: Sword Dance
Cooldown of deflect reduced by one second per target hit by Swift strike.

New Minor Perk: Deadliest Enemy
Deflect converts 50% of damage deflected into healing.

Major perks:

New Major Perk: Poison Tipped
When hitting all 3 shurikens from a single burst on a single target, deal additional 25 damage over time to them

New Major Perk: Executioner
Quick melee can now critical hit targets when aimed at their head

I feel like this would be a little overtuned, but can be balanced over time, this post is mainly to try and suggest a new direction for Genji’s playstyle.