Genji’s buffs have turned him into a lethal killing machine lately. Changes to Deflect’s duration, primary fire damage and secondary fire spread have made the hero far deadlier and capable of building Dragon Blade faster.
In pro play, the Paris Eternal emerged victorious in the Overwatch League Summer Showdown tournament largely thanks to prodigy Yeong-han ‘SP9RK1E’ Kim’s performance on Genji.
While SP9RK1E told Dexerto he wants Blizzard to balance the hero “very fairly” and not implement nerfs just because of his skills alone, there’s no disputing how Genji has taken over the ranked environment.
Genji’s stats reach new highs
According to the stat-tracking site Overbuff, Genji has the highest pickrate out of any DPS hero when all ranks are factored in at 4.76% and a winrate of 51.72%.
The only heroes with a pickrate higher are Reinhardt, Ana, Zarya, Moira and Mercy. However, when you look only at Grand Master ranks, Genji looks even more impressive with a 56.99% winrate – the third-most in the game.
While all these stats are for the past month, things get even crazier when we hone in on this past week alone. When honing in on the week of July 1 – July 8, the Shimada brother has a whopping 8.05% pickrate in GM – even beating out the likes of Reinhardt.
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Additionally, his winrate reaches an absurd 57.76%. Now that players have had time to play around with the Genji buffs, it’s clear that he may be slightly overtuned and the devs may try to reel him in a touch.
There’s no telling on what the developers will do, seeing as the hero was given several major buffs at once, but it’s possible that they adjust either the Shuriken damage or the spread. It’s unlikely they will revert the ability to manually cancel Deflect as that has been a long-requested quality of life change.
Regardless, we’ll have to wait and see just how Blizzard decides to approach balancing Genji and if they have something up their sleeve.
