Bastion can more than keep up mainly as he doesn’t need to take detours.
The self-repair means no detours for healthpacks.
One thing that limits the tactical versatility of bastion is where he can set up without being far too vulnerable. Many heroes have become far more powerful (back when they were trying to buff heroes to stop GOATS) like Junkrat able to frag sentry with only 3 grenades. Any of these options let’s sentry barely survive that.
Also attempts to make Reaper viable against tanks make him too good against bastion, more armour does a huge amount to help.
Brute force is the only option that remotely makes sense for bastion’s character design.
Bastion is a bipedal robot the size of a forklift truck, this is NOT a hero that can be sprinting around or double jumping or scaling walls, this is a hero where brute force makes sense.
This is exactly the right set of question(s) to ask. And IIRC, the devs have commented on taking this approach (to Bastion among others). No sense making changes arbitrarily, if no specific issues are addressed. Everyone can see the ‘meta indicators’ his pickrate w.r.t winrates are 2-mode - success at the low ranks and the utmost top ranks. But that doesn’t solve his rework.
I think a mixture of those with a rework towards the (off)tank role. Frankly I just prefer open freedom, but if it had to be 222 jail, Bastion literally does everything a tank is supposed to do, minus the protection/setup that other tanks offer. So buff those areas and you have another kind of “tank” - I mean why not? We already have dive tanks, disrupt tanks, anchor tanks, side/flank tanks…
Or, you could just have a Bastion — just like a Mei, Sombra, and Torb are hardly interchangeable with others in their “(sub-)Role” — no?
I mean, the closest match we had to Bastion’s “off-tank”-ness, if he were made more mobile and responsive, was pre-nerf Hanzo or FtH-buffed McCree. 6 shots of 250 crit-capable dps Storm Arrows atop versatile range or a 330-damage FtH. They made threatening space like no one’s business.
His RECON mode should have some sort of “Recon” ability. Like, he uses his bird, Ganymede, to spot enemies or something. Or can even deploy Proxmity Sensors that detect enemy movement… flagging opponents without showing their outlines.
If you mean dps/utility hybrids than yes - although every hero in the game has a kit that can somewhat transcend a specific role, depending on the situation.
But right now you could potentially kill 2 birds with 1 stone - tank intrigue (and therefore 222 queues) by making Bastion protect/setup allies along with raw space-take (via dmg pressure). The same has been proposed for Mei and Doomfist, being brawlish and tank-like, while Sym/Sombra being support-like. All of these hybrids are extremely viable outside of scripted 222; where every fight is expected to play out a certain way because of the rigid structure and ttk safety net.
Those Mcree/Hanzo attempts were higher risk/reward space. With less sustain and more burst. Widow does this as well. Every hero in the game can command an xyz/t presence and for a respect radius, it’s how they do it, and what other synergies their kit offers, that determines if it’s tank vs. damage vs. sup.
What Bastion lacks is the ability to be more independent of his teams choices.
I would simply give him a passive that gives him a temp speed boost for a few seconds after he swaps out of Sentry mode. This would mean he can reposition from a threat faster and also pursue enemies when he ults a little more consistently.
Dont remember who posted it but someone suggested swapping his ult with his turret mode, switching the damage outputs as well obviously. I thought it was a pretty unique idea.
That’s why I’m against bastion getting a 400HP personal barrier.
But that’s not what’s happening here, bastion is getting almost instantly get melted by a bit of Junkrat spam and I’m saying to be able to survive just a little bit more.
No, that’s arguing from extremes.
If Bastion can survive a whole 5 grenades from Junkrat, that would be broken.
Dying to only 3 nades is F-tier.
A middle ground, is possible, please don’t deny nuance.
So ALL HEROES in a video game must be small fast and extremely mobile? You haven’t fixed any game, you’ve just forced everyone to be very very similar to each other.
I’d like an ability that’s based on draining Bastion’s remaining ammunition so forcing a reload, you could either stay in recon.
If it’s health “quickly gaiend then quickly lost” then the convention is for it to be temporary shields aka dark blue health.
Everyone is arguing from extremes.
Sentry is either destroyed by only 3 junkrat nades or it’s effectively impossible for junkrat to destroy bastion in sentry.
No one wants to seriously consider any middle ground where bastion is tough enough, not surge to extremes.
Look, if bastion had 200 armour he could survive 3 nades but even with a mercy pocket Bastion couldn’t survive 5 nades from junkrat.
Bastion would have a 400HP barrier!
50HP.
2 second fixed no-cancel duration
10 second standard cooldown.
That would be something remotely appropriate for a DPS.
50HP is more than enough, it will basically block the entirety of the damage of one shot, so a helix rocket, effectively the barrier had 120HP as it blocked a 120HP rocket. Also block the entire damage of a DVA bomb.
250HP is a massive increase in damage survivability, especially if it was on a resource meter and used remotely to its full potential like tapping it on with just 1HP to entirely negate a 140 damage symm orb.
Can you be an “off tank”… while not being in the tank queue?
Hey, I love the idea of getting in those lighting fast tank queue times but if the devs have a broader solution to the DPS queue times they want to at least try rather than moving some of the least popular DPS heroes to the tank queue, then I’d like to focus on bastion in the DPS queue.
I have - in the past - argued that Bastion should be a tank because of listed similarities to Roadhog, except my argument then collided with those who argued that Roadhog should be a DPS hero precisely because of the qualities I mentioned in comparison/
I think this is okay, it’s okay for the roles to not be so extremely different, it’s okay to have “borderline” cases where Roadhog is a very DPS’y tank and Bastion be a very tank’y DPS.
Overwatch would be a very boring game if tanks were all so distinctly similar and DPS heroes were all so distinctly similar.
Just as Roadhog is the tank you choose when you want a tank that’s more like a DPS, Bastion can be the DPS you’d pick when you want something more like a Tank.
I’ve been thinking of an E-ability that would be in fitting with the theme of bastion as a robot, which has two essential qualities:
Made of steel so should be tough
Got super advanced sensors
Some sort of E-ability he could use in any mode but would naturally be more useful in recon mode. Something like a heads-up-display that tracks enemies through walls a bit like wall hacks but on a long cooldown and only benefits bastion. it could be a target lock-on system that not only reveals their position but includes a “target leading computer” to aim direct hits with the ultimate.
You sort of saw this in the Bastion short The Last Bastion where the omnic is seen “scanning” for threats.
I’m reminded of when R2D2 had rocket jets.
Hmm, a bastion taking off like a rocket? In a way it fits with the theme of bastion being tough literally made of steel as being made of steel means you can resit the flames of the rocket.
It would have to be different from pharah who has the feeling of a very light hero, her armour is clearly thin and lightweight allowing her to accelerate upwards extremely fast. If bastion were to have rocket boosters as an E-ability it should be more evocative of an Apollo rocket slowly accelerating.
This could lead to quite a fast movement horizontally but in a straight line so this speed boost can’t be used for A+D strafing but to get the straight line distance. It could be used vertically for a slower and chaotic vertical climb which would be far too vulnerable to do when in line of sight of an enemy as you’d me moving quite slowly and predictably upwards.
Though I can imagine the memes. People hysterically reacting to Bastion rocketing through with huge glowing rocket plumes behind him.
A middle ground is not going to stick around for very long as patch changes happen. It might as well not exist.
They need only be mobile enough to keep up with the team and the changing demands of the battlefield. Sitting in one spot with a horrendously long exit animation denies Bastion from fulfilling this simple criterion.
That’s not an argument that only applied to bastion, that applies to every hero, that’s a reason to give up trying to make any balance improvements to any hero yet it’s only being applied to bastion.
Unless you can link me to comments showing you have previously held this believe for all heroes that the devs shouldn’t release any more balance patches for any hero.
Because there’s no reason this especially applies to bastion, it applies to all heroes or none.
Really, it applies to none.
Why would bastion have to “keep up”? Bastion is generally a hero you don’t want to get to the fight first, you want tracer to arrive early and get in amongst them sewing chaos then while they’re all distracted by Tracer (or Genji, Lucio or whoever) then they’re ideal targets for sentry setting up on a nearby corner and mowing them down.
It’s also worth noting that the two (TTK = 3 nades and TTK (even with pocket heals) = 5 nades) are only 1.3 seconds apart.
Previously, due to the Transformation delay, if he started to flee after the 2nd nade was near to hitting, his death would still be guaranteed.
Now, he can flee after the 2nd or even 3rd nade, giving him time to react.
That added time is not tactically significant for a focused burn, but it is gameplay significant for the Bastion, who would have previously felt like a free kill.
As much as I’d previously felt that asking for a “Recon” ability leaned to heavily into a naming coincidence (it is only a “Recon” mode insofar as all other mechs in the omnic were even larger and louder, not that it’s actually a particularly competent Recon unit), I have to admit that I like having two ways in which a Bastion might help in dealing with a choke-push, either by setting up in high ground in preparation or by getting against a wall, channeling his Sensor thing, and scouting out enemies that way, or something like that.
I also wouldn’t mind a passive in Recon mode that acts a bit like the CoD enemy scan upon damage taken, better indicating where the shot came from, or even something like Spotter + High Alert (whereby enemies are labelled sooner and when an enemy lines up a shot on you from outside your field of view, your screen lights up in their direction).
To be fair, though, both seem rather tangential improvements at best. That’s not to say they shouldn’t happen or be discussed; I just care more about his Transformation weaknesses and the excessive vulnerability issues therein, if the two paths of improvement would ever be somehow mutually exclusive.
Either Bastion gets blown up or he doesn’t. There’s no dodging or mobility involved, nor are there any get out of jail abilities to factor in, and the enemy isn’t gonna miss much. It’s a very polar interaction and that tends to not stay balanced.
I have hundreds, if not thousands of posts arguing against Dva reverts for precisely this reason. Quite a few for mass rez too.
Bastion prevents the team from taking and giving ground as a full 6 and that’s a massive detriment. This is why pro usage of Bastion is very limited to specific areas where that isn’t super necessary.
I.e. you want the team to fight 5v6 while you set up. This is exactly my point.
