It’s clear that Bastion has problems. He has been one of the weakest heroes in the game almost since launch.
He enjoyed some overpoweredness for a few days (weeks on console) after his initial rework, but was tweaked soon after.
Now he is only used in very few maps and his playrate outside of pirate ship (which already doesn’t work on every payload map) is very low.
So… what can be done with him? He hasn’t received ANYTHING for well over a year and a half. The only thing is the damage dropoff reduction, but that was more of a general change among all hitscans and isn’t a proper balance done with him in mind.
At the same time, bastion has one problem. He is a one trick hero. He can do one thing and do that one thing SUPER well… in theory.
But that means that buffing him wrongly will make him super oppressive at lower ranks, to the point people will quit playing.
I usually like to think balance changes around higher elos, after all it’s there where the tier lists and weak/strong heroes actually matter, but lower elos are a big part of the playerbase.
An idea i’ve seen many using is to give him back the burst fire and headshot potential. Before rework his gun had an increasing spread, instead of starting at max spread by default and could headshot.
That greatly rewarded aiming and burst fire, instead of blindly holding left click.
I think this is one of the buffs he needs and it would make everyone happy: it raises its skill ceiling, while leaving its skill floor untouched.
Maybe i’d also bring his mag back to 200, but that’s based on how actually powerful this would turn out to be.
tl;dr
give bastion headshots back
have the spread start low and increase (kinda like soldier), so that it rewards smart using of short bursts
the idea is to give him buffs that would raise his skill floor and make him overall more useful, without making him too oppressive at low ranks.
if this fails, i think he’ll need a deeper rework, like tank mode on E and a new ult, like many have suggested.
Not everyone knows how to counter bastion, one buff would probably make it more difficult to win a game in example: Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. Some heroes are meant to be niche picks, if bastion is good on certain maps then that’s good, sombra is good on certain maps, torbjörn is good on certain maps and orisa is good on certain maps. Not every hero needs to be picked a lot or be good on more maps.
well, bastion is good on pretty much only one comp that works on like one map, maybe two.
And the point of the thread is figuring out a buff that wouldn’t change him much at lower levels, but increase his power at higher levels.
I explained what i think would work and why, read it.
Well yes, but we are talking about a hero who has one of the highest dps in the game who can shred shields in seconds. To make bastion work is through strategies and good positioning, if bastion’s team or bastion himself lacks that then of course he is going to have a hard time.
It’s the same for torbjörn in his current state, if he is not careful against sniper or just simply placing his turret at poor positions then of course he is going to be bad.
Not all strategies will work forever, that’s why the community has to figure out a way to make it work, if you want him less situational on a king of the hill map then you have to figure out a strategy yourself. bastion’s position is kinda hard and requires time and communications to actually make it work.
And Symmetra’s “iconic” character trait was her lock on, she’s doing fine. Also turret form is not iconic nothing about bastion is iconic because there is nothing special about him.
no, bastion has always been showing tranforming into turret in animated shorts and his entire model is designed around that morphing.
Symetra’s identity is that of an architect that uses fancy technology, her lock on beam wasn’t part of her character.
Bastion turret isn’t something that can’t go away.
Sorry, but… no strategy has popped out save for some oddball moments with bastion, outside of pirate ship on junkertown.
Why are you expecting ME to come up with a strategy to make bastion work? I can’t magically make characters work if their base kit has problems.
Or instead of trying to focus all of his power into his Sentry mode why not make his Recon mode a viable option?
Some simple tweaks could make it so that if barrier tanks are not available or otherwise occupied Bastion could make higher contributions while in his more mobile form. Perhaps the “skill check” should be in his ability to know when to use each mode?
Recon suggestions: Increase his Primary clip size and allow him to self heal AND fire his primary at the same time while in recon.
This is what they tried with his rework, and now neither Recon or Sentry are powerful enough.
This would take away all decision making regarding when to repair and when not to. It would just always be good to repair when taking damage, which isn’t very interesting.
This would increase Recon’s total power budget, but it wouldn’t solve Recon’s major problems: lack of high burst damage and gigantic hitbox.
I would argue that only RECON is not powerful enough to use. Which is why you never see Bastions moving around save for to avoid a Dragonstrike or the like. His Sentry mode is VERY powerful when in the proper comp. Buffing it so that he is more powerful outside of said comp would only serve to make sentry mode broken.
No, The decision making would be transferred to that of sentry mode for longer sustained fire at the cost of being able to sustain hits while doing so or choosing to be more mobile, self sustaining, and able to contribute to the damage pool while doing so.
I am not certain he needs high burst as his sentry mode already provides some of the best shred power in the game. As for his “gigantic hitbox” that is mitigated by his new ability to heal and fire at the same time while in recon. He can potentially save himself from death by both healing and eliminating the threat to his life.
He’s had the lowest pickrate for a very long time and only got showed up by Sombra kind of recently but only because she became worse, not him getting better. At low pickrates you can’t even trust winrate anymore because Sym and Torb have like 60% but are still underpowered. IDK about now for Sym after the rework though. He’s picked so little in GM his winrate jumps from about 60%+ down to 32% over however few games he’s played there. He’s picked less than a tenth of a percent there. I was watching it over a few days and it kept doing that. In bronze and silver where he has a pickrate over 1% his winrate is negative. In conclusion pretty much nobody picks him, and the one place he’s picked more he has a negative winrate. Are you saying every single person who plays him is bad? How does that work then? I’ll just say everybody who plays Torb is just bad and now I’ve made the same argument and if you want me to believe your you have to believe mine. There’s also 2 megathreads for him and a couple other sources I can site if you want, 1 is poll with over 1k votes in favor of different changes for him so does that mean that’s over 1k people who are bad at him? That’s also only those who voted and only those on the forums so however many people actually play him regularly aren’t enough to get his stats up on tracking websites and there aren’t very many Bastion comps that work when I’ve played against them.
Bastion already must make such decisions about Recon vs Sentry. Neither mode is always better than the other… they are both equally bad for different reasons. By allowing Bastion to repair while firing, you would remove a completely different decision-making opportunity from the strategy of playing Bastion.
You’re right about that, Bastion’s Recon mode doesn’t need super amazing damage because he has another mode for that… the problem is that the super-amazing-damage-mode has terribly bad damage output in realistic situations.
Sentry mode should be far more powerful than Recon mode because of the increased risk of immobility. Increased risk is only good for gameplay if it comes with increased reward.