Genji is already one of the most powerful heroes in Overwatch, but it seems the sword-wielding character is about to get a little stronger. According to Overwatch principal designer Geoff Goodman, Genji will soon receive a noteworthy buff to the number of sword slashes he can swing with his Dragonblade.
In his comments on the Genji buff, Goodman revealed how a recent update to the game caused an issue to Genji’s swings that was affected by player latency. As it turns out, the higher a player’s latency, the more swings they could wield. Goodman said:
“Before the last major patch, the amount of sword swings you could get changed depending on your latency. Strangely, if you had higher latency you could swing more often. This bug was fixed, which caused some players to suddenly get less swings than they were used to.”
When players had high latency, they could reach up to seven Dragonblade katana swings, while everyone else was relegated to six. The bug fix put the limit at six for all players, which caused some disappointment among the players who were previously reaching seven swings. Goodman continued:
“With that in mind we’re going to increase his swing speed overall so he’ll gain that 7th swing back for all players, regardless of latency. I’m not entirely sure when we can get that update into the players hands, but we’ll make sure its in the patch notes when it hits.”
Since the introduction of Overwatch, Genji has been the focus of many discussions about character power, and as such has gone through a couple rounds of nerfs and buffs. Hopefully, the upcoming buff to his Dragonblade will make sure the character is properly balanced.
While there will almost surely be a constant give and take of balancing in a game like Overwatch, Blizzard seems especially focused on getting everything right in the game. With Olympic eSports on the horizon, Blizzard and other developers will want to get their games as balanced as possible in order to avoid any issues once the games go Olympic.
Overwatch is currently available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
Source: Blizzard