Genji nerfs now live in Overwatch’s latest patch

Update July 28 2:55pm CT: Blizzard deactivated the Overwatch patch that went live earlier today. “Hit a little snag after release,” community manager for Overwatch Josh Nash said in a forum reply. “Team is taking a look now.” It’s unclear when this patch will be reactivated.

Overwatch fans can finally stop having heart palpitations wondering if last week’s Experimental Card changes would make it to live servers. The game’s latest live patch, uploaded today, only includes the Genji nerfs proposed in the Experimental Card.

In the Experimental Card, support hero Moira received a ton of proposed changes. These included a scaling damage buff to her Biotic Orb as well as a new version of Fade, which gave a second of immortality to all allies after using the ability. Developers said yesterday that the Moira changes wouldn’t go to the live servers and, if they did, a lot of fine-tuning would be necessary.

Minor nerfs to Genji’s kit have made it to the live servers, however.

Hero changes

Genji

• Shuriken damage decreased from 30 to 28.
• Secondary fire recovery increased from 0.65 to 0.75.

In June, Genji received huge buffs to his kit, including the ability to cancel Deflect and use it for a longer period of time. His shuriken damage also increased to 30, which allowed him to easily inflict large amounts of damage on enemies in short periods of time. This nerf bumps that damage back down to 28, where it was before the June buff.

Genji’s secondary fire is a spread of shurikens thrown on a horizontal plane, allowing Genji to hit multiple enemies—or have a better chance at hitting multiple enemies. This “spam damage” often allowed Genji to build his ultimate, Dragonblade, at a higher rate. An increase to the secondary fire recovery will reduce the speed of this spam damage.

These are extremely minor nerfs that likely won’t do much to displace Genji in the current meta. But they might make him less overpowered in competitive and professional play.

This patch is now live on all Overwatch servers. The changes will be effective immediately in all modes of Overwatch, including quick play, arcade, and competitive mode. The Overwatch League will likely implement this patch in a few weeks after the Countdown Cup is complete.