hey I'm harmless poke a top 100 gamain and coach and in this video I will give you a quick and comprehensive guide on how to play the cyberg Ninja at his core geni is a highly mobile Clos range duelist that Chimes on maps with lots of high grounds due to his passive which gives him lots of verticality through wall climb and double jump his weapon can be used to hit a chip away at enemies from range with a precise but slow modifier or to burst down opponents up close using a fan of sh with a large spread can be fired moderately fast this kit allows him to take positions that almost no other character can access safely enabling him to apply pressure from aggressive angles to either expose weaknesses on the enemy front line and slowly wear it down or to harass valuable backline targets and potentially even assassinate them given the opportunity this is all possible because of his true kons which are flexible tools that can be used offensively or defensively depending on the situation deflect is very straightforward understand as it does exactly what the name suggests throwing most forms of damage that hit it back towards the direction you're aiming at with some exceptions that can bypass it such as beam type weapons and some projectiles like Sigma rock or anything that's outside its area of coverage like shots aimed at Genji's back it also has a need interaction with melee weapons parrying the blow to block the damage without deflecting it back you can use this ability to rotate from one position to the next one to deal damage in the duel or to get out of things go B to catch a crucial cool down like antibiotic grenade or even an ultimate like Z's grab and surge turn the tid of a fight in an instance and the list goes on similarly to deflect Dash is simple to understand but has tons of depth to it using it causes gen you to dash forward up to 15 M piercing through enemies while dealing 50 damage to them and stopping early if it hits any form of terrain which is really useful to do on purpose to avoid overshooting your targets when trying to close gap on them this ability has a unique property to it causing it to instantly come off Kon if Genji participates in an elimination making him one of the best characters in the game at snowballing and Advantage as he can just chain Dash after Dash to relentlessly chase the remainder of the enemy team until there's no one left standing you can use Dash to cross dangerous Sidelines safely to disorient on Enemy No to escape from bad situation in an instant or to get close enough to your opponents to use your secondary fire for a massive burst of damage the only thing it can't do is delete more from the game The Last tool in gen's kit is his Ultimate Dragon Blade once used it refreshes his Dash Kone and temporarily changes his weapon into a powerful Katana for 6 seconds dealing 110 damage per swing to all Targets within its reach while active you gain a 30% speed boost making it easier to chase targets trying to get outside the reach of this deadly melee weapon combine that with gain this passive mobility and flexible coolon and the result is a hyper mobile healing machine capable of wiping out entire teams in an instant given the opportunity due to this enemies will try their best to shut down your o giving you all their attention and resources for a chance to live another day for this reason it's important to be smart about how to use the ultimate so make sure to go in 1v5 and complain that your team sucks am I right so make use of your kids to find good angles to engage from and maximize your chances of success by going in after your team takes the attention and forces resources from the enemy team allowing you to outplay the rest of their damage and tools with a well Tim deflect or Juke now let's go over his play Style by going over some high level gameplay in this example we see a composition with a lot of range damage which means I need to be careful when poking as I'm at a heavy disadvantage in that category this is quite a common scenario for Genji as a lot of characters are stronger than him and mid to long range in exchange for being weaker up close which is where he thrives because of that my goal is to close the gap to gain the upper hands which is done by using my Mobility to go from cover to cover take gradually more aggressive angles while staying safe until eventually I've achieved a good enough setup to make a play setting up is only half the story though as the quality of my play is heavily tied to timing go in too early and everyone turns to deal with me forcing me out immediately if not outright killing me and thus creating a temporary five 4 Advantage for the enemy team to capitalize on going too late however and sad 54 happened at the start of the fight causing my team to get beaten up before I do anything and thus forcing me to do enough on my own using the opening they created to offset the massive dis Advantage we started with which is usually not possible to recover from for these reasons it's crucial that I go in right after my tank do so one I'm not a center of attention and two everyone is still in good shape since the fight just started that's why I have yet to go in so far as my team was too far back for a solo play to realistically have any sort of impact which is about to change now this duel I just took with the Baptist is a perfect example as my distraction gave our front line a resource Advantage which I Look to capitalize on once my corons are back and the Baptist moves up to help his sigar unfortunately I missed all of my shots but since I had my cool available and an Escape Plan ready I could always get out safely no matter the outcome of my play allowing me to try again later this short clip encapsulates gen's General gameplay Loop poke set up then engage but why do we poke didn't I say that geneng is not that good in that department well yes his projectiles can be very hard to hit a range due to their low speed but there are multiple ways of making making them more reliable and useful at the start of the junker down match you can see me mostly just spamming the corners of this piece of cover since the enemy team is likely to hide behind it between shots to stay safe essentially just giving our team some hot spots to place our crossair at as those areas will frequently have targets to shoot at same thing can be said about this spam angle a little later here we can see me land a ton of folk on their unaware Sigma as he wasn't trying to dodge my shots add to that his larger hit box and the odds of my shurikens connect were very good lastly Genji can play much more aggressive angles than most characters so while he may not deal as much damage as someone like hash he can do so from positions he can't play hitting his opponents where they think they're safe and creating crossfires with his team exposing vulnerabilities on the enemy formation that can be exploited by you and your teammates that's right there is the main reason why we poke to gain something such as space to set up a strong play or a resource Advantage we can capitalize on such as forcing out the key def ensive coolon that allows a dive to happen notice how poking serves the purpose of enabling the other two steps meaning that it is valuable but not worth dying for as it isn't the most important part of your kit that would be your Clos range damage which can be set up through smart paing if the map gives you that option saving your dash for another use such as juking or running away or simply through a dash engage which is the more common method as it relies on a Kon rather than specific flank routes with the downside of using using your main Mobility Kum to go in reducing your options to either push an advantage if the dive goes well or to run away if it goes badly so when should you use one or the other choosing between them is really easy actually as you should always use the stronger option when given the opportunity meaning Dash engages are used in all other cases all right but when should you engage to answer that let's take a look at a different match as I come back after respawning I see that my junker Queen is trying to push their junker Queen and baguett were stuck in this room with no way out their situation is certainly dire but ultimates will soon be available for both sides giving them a chance to clutch this fight if they see an opportunity for this reason instead of waiting for my tank to push in first I lead the charge getting a quick burst of damage in before deflecting their attempt to retaliate as I back out allowing my tank to walk in for free to finish off their support since they wasted the cotons they needed to survive that push trying to punish my engagement which is exactly the point of it my goal was never to get a kill on my own there as it was highly unlikely to happen and attempting it would simply cause me to over extend and die instead I went in to force a reaction creating resources of my opponents to create a vulnerability that my junker Queen could then exploit to get a kill winning the fight this is called a soft engage as you go in without committing as opposed to a hard engage which is when you do commit to the engagements low risk low reward versus high RIS risk High reward knowing when to soft versus hard engage is a crucial skill to develop as too much risk all the time will cause you to be dead permanently but too little risk and you simply won't get enough value to make a positive impact in a match in general it's not worth it to take many risks during the Poke phase as no one is really committed and so there's no risk to make a play before the fight is over this is why a character like Genji will do a mix of poking and soft engaging early in the fight as both of these are lowrisk method of looking for an advantage that could trigger a hard engage later that's not to say that you should never hard engage early on but you need to be really confident that the risk reward is worth it such as in this example as I knew the Widowmaker was completely isolated from her team and they have an overwhelming advantage in a Clos range duel against her making this a lowrisk high reward play in contrast this Dash commit earlier in the match was a terrible decision as the enemy team still had all of their defense resources available to save the baguette for my die causing me to fail the assassination and die since I didn't turn a dash reset to get out had I not tried to get a pick there opting for a soft engage instead of a hard one I could have simply dashed out after forcing out a ton of resources securing a massive Advantage for our team to capitalize on all right let's look at one more clip to talk about the last concept related to engagements opportunity cost here we just want to fight and as I set up on the ha I hear the footsteps of the enemy Widowmaker around this tunnel giving me an idea her team isn't there yet so if I look for a quick duel now and get out soon after my cool Downs will have refreshed by the time the Poke phase might begin meaning that making the soft engage won't cost me a better opportunity later on as there won't be any during my 8 Seconds of downtime the same can't be said about this situation though as making that same playe now would prevent me from diving the Widowmaker responding late is likely to be isolated once again which is much more valuable than going in one V4 and getting forced out immediately unfortunately my juner queen goes in 1 V5 and dies for no reason accidentally bringing the enemy team towards the isolated cidy and does ruining my spawn Camp play thankfully my widowmakers finds a trade on their Venture and head shots their junker Queen forcing a ton of resources and giving me a great opportunity to Blade which I capitalize on as we were unlikely to win if I didn't use it and the risk reward was worth it as you can see combination of opportunity cost and risk reward evaluations are what dictate whether I should poke softer High engage or even just not do anything for a bit to save my resources for a future moment signing up that next play the stakes of the fight are also really important as they change how much risk you're willing to take and even how many ultimates you and your team want to use to try and win that fight lastly the speed at which you expect a fight to end after both teams commit to it also plays a huge role in deciding how you should approach it as there is very little value in soft engaging to guarantee you can go in again 8 seconds later if one of the teams will already be dead by them which is why you see commit my D in the zat for some extra damage here as both teams used a lot of very lethal ultimates at once bringing a quick end to this exchange and that's a wrap well kind of there are some things I didn't fully flesh out during this guide or at not directly that I would like to quickly mention to avoid any potential confusion or unanswered questions setting up for example is something I ignored on purpose as it is quite straightforward to understand and the game play does a good job of showcasing it already if you want to dive a Target you need to be close enough to be able to go in them as well as having the resource to do so most of the magic here is actually tied to other Concepts such as poking to gain the space required for setting up more aggressive place or timing as knowing when you want to go in which let's just say is 10 seconds from now as that's when your road hog will get pushed by derisa alongside how long it will take for you to set up from where you currently are which in this case is 6 seconds tells you when you need to stop trading Resources with your opponents and start saving them up and or rotating to a certain position so that you are ready at the correct moment since I had time to spare here I could have just poked for a bit before flanking but I didn't want to lose the surprise factor of my play so I refra from doing so another concept that's in a similar situation is the leash a name that essentially just refers to playing around the effective range of your team which is where they can apply pressure on your opponents and support you by healing and stuff this is very easy to see in this clip as this other High Ground enables me to make the same place as the one I'm currently on top of but positioning there would put me outside the range of my team preventing us from coordinating with one another blade is also an easy topic because what it does is essentially a superpower one specific engagement most of the rules still apply but can or should be slightly adapted for example due to its power and therefore higher reward enemy team will spend more resources than normal to try and stop you increasing the risk as well for this reason it might be wise to go in later than usual allowing your team to soak up more resources than what's normally possible to recover from because enabling your old to go crazy more than makes up for the extra beating they took lastly for real this time mechanics the Genji Community is obsessed with one shot combos extremely fast blades and all that flashy stuff and sure it's very important to be able to execute the place you go for but it's even more important to know what place you should be going for in the first place putting too much emphasis on the wrong thing at the wrong time is what causes so many players to develop bad habits that take years to break and keeps them from climbing the ladder or even from enjoying the game however once you have the fundamentals down and they're used to get the skill kits absolutely do practice your aim and ghost stashes in such as you have built a strong Foundation through which you can endlessly develop your skill as a player if you have any questions regarding this guide or even Beyond it make sure to join the Discord server linked below you will gain access to a community full of gjam mains helping each other improve by answering questions and reviewing replay codes for free which of course includes me and if you're looking for paid coaching I offer that as well with one of my most recent students going from high Platinum to high diamond in a single day after our session if you have already joined and you're looking for more educational content to help improve your gameplay check out this playlist filled with narrated videos going over my thought process in high level matches