500 days since Bastion's nerf

General Discussion
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As of today (July 16th, 2018), it has been 500 days since Bastion’s Ironclad nerf that put him in a worse spot than he was in before his rework. During these 500 days, nothing has been said about Bastion. Every other f-tier hero (Hanzo, Symmetra, Sombra, Mei, Doomfist, Torbjorn) has been given a buff/rework (or has a buff/rework in progress), but Bastion has been completely left behind (presumably… they could be working on him and not telling us).

I’m not saying the nerf was unwarranted (35% Ironclad was indeed very broken), but nerfing him without giving any of his damage potential back was unwarranted. Sentry was balanced around 35% Ironclad, and then they took that away from him, but didn’t rebalance it around his new 20% Ironclad, which leaves him significantly worse off than he was before. He lacks the ranged damage to deal with threats, and he lacks the damage resistance to live through the threats.

Parts of the rework were fantastic. He got a much better Recon mode than he had before (though it’s still just a weaker version of Soldier), and a much better self-repair than he had before. But Sentry mode and Tank mode got pretty much gutted from the rework, leaving Bastion is a pretty useless state. Tank used to give 150 armor immediately upon activation, but now it only gives roughly 75 health that is only applied after the 1.5 second transformation time. Sentry used to start off at a 1° angle of spread, and max out at 2° after about 0.5 seconds or so, allowing players to shoot somewhat accurately. Now, Sentry is always at 3°, meaning all accuracy is thrown out the window, and his damage is almost pure RNG, especially against smaller targets like a majority of the cast.

All we (Bastion mains) want is a response from the devs. We just want to know that Bastion isn’t being forgotten or ignored. If they are planning a rework for him, we want to give out input on what we think he needs. Going into a rework knowing what the people would be much easier, and lead to quicker and better results than going in blind… If we know that the devs are planning something, it makes it much easier to communicate. I know they’ve said before that they don’t like announcing things too early, but perhaps it’s a better, more effective strategy than simply trying a million ideas to see what feels good.

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Preach.

My biggest problem is that Blizzard is playing by favorites.

Mercy’s rework was 10x bad as Bastions, not saying 35% IC wasn’t broken, but her meta alone lasted 6 months, and with each time they looked at her they only used a nerf feather. Meanwhile, it took 1 hit from the nerf bat 1 week after Bastions rework, and in Sombras case 2 weeks, and they both were crippled.

I’m also not saying I want Mercy gutted, but they took extreme precaution with her.

I cannot think of any other reason as to why Mercy is still so powerful when both Sombra and Bastion were stripped from their power within weeks of their powers being noticed.

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O shoot I forgot to post this earlier, UNHAPPY 500 DAYS OF WINTER, BASTION.

Seriously how does a hero go that long as UP without the Devs talking about him once? It’s insane

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I have no idea… I man, I’m glad they’re working on other heroes, but I really wish they’d just say something about Bastion :frowning:

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Yikes, hope you guys get at least an answer. Maybe he’ll be looked at after Torb? Who knows at this point, the devs are terrible at communicating with their community, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll change anytime soon. looks at Mercy Megathread

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bastion is a complicated issue.

He needs help.

But blizzard doesnt know how to buff him without bastion becoming a sub gold nightmare

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So ask us, we have lots of ideas…

If they make him require aim (by reverting the spread and headshot thing), and take away Ironclad, he becomes a lot less useful at lower ranks. He doesn’t have the safety of Ironclad anymore, making him easier to kill, and he doesn’t have an insane spread to forgive bad aim…

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iron clad gives no practical safety at all, a 75 increase in health vs a 50% decrease in damage…net nerf.

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he’s is the tachanka of overwatch

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Only Tachanka actually got buffed (I think… I don’t play Siege anymore)… He got a shield or something, right?

Giving Bastion his shield back might be a neat way to go, either as a permanent shield in Sentry mode, or an infinite durability shield on another resource (or maybe the same resource, but buff the time a bit) on E. That would give him more resource management, and make him easier to kill (I’m assuming they’d take away Ironclad to do that) if he’s not paying close attention. I would still want a few Sentry gun buffs though even with a shield, he needs his damage back, and to get rid of the massive RNG in his gun. All his spread does is make him more of a spray and pray hero, which makes dying to him feel worse than it did before.

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every change we suggested that made it in has been perfect, the one change they made without any of us is what ruined it so really (I hate bashing them) they could have easily just not done anything to sentry and he’d be perfect.

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It’s a head shield that can break after enough damage but he also has a shield that covers everything below that and it’s invincible to everything but specific abilities meant to destroy all objects.

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If they reverted bastion back to before his ironclad rework but kept his recon and self healing changes. Then gave him his frontal barrier from beta but 500 hp instead of 1,000 hp like it used to be Bastion would probably be in a pretty good spot.

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bastion is blizzards inside joke. I don’t even know why they’re making skins for him

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500 more days and they’ll buff him, you’re almost there👌

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When te actual f- was Doomfist a F-tier hero? As far as I know, he had to be nerfed at least once since his release and was always perfectly viable if not outright broken on his best days.

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Yeah, put Bastion and Torbjorn alongside with Hanzo in the god tier. Then watch everybody leaving the game.
The truth is that a year ago, every heroes that were unfun to face were low tier, then every of them, one by one have been/will be buffed/reworked until they’re all viable.
Bastion is not fun to face, not at all. So noone complaining because it’s trash tier, but at the moment it becomes almost viable, people will start complaining.

There’s some heroes that are a complete design mistake because they are highly frustrating to face when played successfully, Bastion is one of them, Hanzo is too, and god, look at the forum. People won’t stop until he’s trashtier again.

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Bastion should be one of the Heroes beaming Phar-mercy’s out of the sky.
Sadly, with his stationary play style he will always be a character that thrives on teams building around him and will struggle if not. The only way to get rid of this issue would be to buff recon mode even more so he has the escapability, but buffing recon mode isn’t really what bastion is about.
I would like to see headshots brought back in turret form on airborne opponents only. This would give him the 50/50 vs pharah he needs to be viable and allow him to combo with CC abilities coming from teammates that aren’t typically playing around the bastion.

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Again this is why blizzard is hesitant to buff bastion in his current form.

If you buff the current version of bastion to be viable in GM… just expect to see nothing but bastion/torb/orisa on EVERY 2 cp first point defense. Draw rates will go through the roof on the lower spectrum. With a torb rework in our future bastion/torb/orisa will be aids cancer ALS and then some. No thanks.

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Bastion’s issue is his core kit.

His skill floor and skill ceiling are basically the same value because he has very few buttons to press.

Personally I always felt he needs his tank and turret form switched.

In all the cut scenes and videos Bastions during the omnic crisis are shown as the most deadly in that turret form, thats when they’re cutting down crusaders left and right.

Design him so that his two base modes are walking around as he is or driving around as a tank. Nerf the damage of his shots in tank form down to 120 (same as Pharah) and increase his speed in that form, BUT he cannot jump or maneuver certain terrain (basically he can only move forward on flat terrain)

He should gain armor in tank form and lose it in recon form, that being the trade off for his mobility.

His ult would then almost immediately (maybe .5 sec) pop him into turret form for a set period of time (maybe 7 sec?) He’d full heal and have access to the armor of his tank form. Damage would stay the same, maybe give him a bit better spread so its easier to apply it where it needs to go.

The idea here is that his tank form is a mid-field bruiser that has low firing explosive projectiles (basically Pharah on the ground) that can tussle with heavier hitters do to his higher health and armor. The lower overall mobility (being stuck on flat surfaces) combined with the higher flat out movement speed means he can move between the frontline fight and the backline quickly.

Recon mode is the same, basically a mode for getting around and scouting out areas. This is how he’d get upstairs and jump ontop of things. This is most likely how he’d move around to position himself just before popping his ult. It would also be useful for taking a flanking route before dropping into tank form to surprise the enemy mid/back line with some heavy damage.

The instant nature of his new turret form coupled with the full heal would mean you’d have to keep tabs on an enemy bastion at all times since he could suddenly start mulching everyone with little to no notice.

This would give his basic kit that he uses 90% of the time much more dynamism and remove the core issue that her currently has which is that if you dont know he’s there he kills everyone, but then as soon as you know where he is he’s basically useless. By removing the stationary nature of his core kit you remove this need to play this numbers game of damage output vs survivability.