I haven't been playing too much Overwatch this past year but I still watch tournaments pretty regularly.
That said, why is that most once Genji specialists have started to migrate away from playing Genji? Been seeing a lot of big name players swapping over to Tracer, Pharah or hitscan in place of the ninja.
Is this due to balance changes I haven't been keeping up with or players/teams adapting?
every hero comes and goes when it comes to genji we had:
hard genji meta (nano genji win team fight)
than came triple tank and genji dropped out
than was dive/triple dps genji was back
now we have weird meta or more like there is no new meta established because of many changes in short time (doomfist came and disapeared now junk is op soon we'll see how mercy changes affect meta)
its not new thing that genji is not meta it happened before and will happen in future thats just the way meta fluctuates
TBH i think it's more teams learning how to play around genji blade, like you don't see 4-6K blades anymore except from time to time when we see agilities, but other then that, teams use support ults better, they just kill him in the blade, etc. also, with the new moth Mercy, you need long ranged hitscan like Mccree or widow to kill her, or at least limit her options, and with more Mercy, there's more Pharah, which genji isn't that strong against, and Junkrat is difficult to play genji against, same thing with a good hog, plus genji can't kill junk tires too well.
Well, lessening the impact of blade has always been a thing, but now teams can do it so effectively and consistently, that not even the best Genji players like Shadowburn can make it work at times, SDB has been playing a wide veritety of heroes with mixed success, and that's not the only reason for Genjis decline, but with teams playing against him so often and having tons of experience, it's not helping genji.
they couldnt make it work during triple tank meta either and nearly no one played him back then
compared to back then now genji is much more effective so did teams forget how to play against him or did meta change?
teams can really quickly adapt to heros it really doesnt take them 2 years to be able to learn how to counter hero
teams know how to play against genji for years they havent invented anything new and we have just good old meta shift
yes, true, but when was the last time you've seen a genji get more then 2 kills with a dragon blade? Other then like twice from agilites, it's not that teams don't know how to counter genji, they've perfected it, to the point where it's nearly impossible to get value out of a blade, this is why Shadowburn has been playing less genji over all even before these Mercy and D.va changes, i'm not saying it's the only reason, obviously projectile players picking up Junkrat since he's risen to the top of the meta is a factor, along with all the other balance changes, but it's still hard for even the best genjis in the world to get value out of genji now, if you watch a tournament with SDB a year ago on genji compared to now, it's evident his playstyle has changed, teams punish risks and don't allow genji's to get aggressive, it could also be the fact that Zen is alot more meta and his ult counters genji, that could be it actually.
contenders season 1 here or here
contenders season 0 its more rare now again coz his blade is weaker and he rarely has nanoboost coz no one playes ana and nano is weaker but it happens
and why do you think genji players changed their playstyle? sdb could be more agressive year ago for obvieus reasons (which i mentioned) and are all due to meta and hero changes:
ana had op healing, able to heal even triple tank team alone so keeping genji alive when ulting, or healing him with nade when he was low was easy
nanoboost reduced damage taken plus you were faster, so it was really hard to kill nanoblading genji, not because teams didnt know how but because meta was different
so now let me ask you a question, during triple tank meta genji was pretty much not played (not like now more rarely but not played at all in pro matches) so back than teams really had to know how to counter him if he waas not played at all, so did teams forget how to counter him?
spoiler: no and again you really think teams need 2 years to adapt to something? np genji has multi kills with dragon blade when meta favors it (nanoblade meta) ut when it doesnt he wont (triple tank meta)
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