The devs have asked for feedback about Bastion, and seeing how bad he still is, I think it’s time to give some.
Changes I would do:
Reduce recon to sentry reconfigure time to .75 seconds
Reduce sentry to recon reconfigure time to .25 seconds
Ultimate cast time reduced to 1.25 seconds
Ultimate now gives 100 extra armor upon activation
Ironclad removed
Base health increased to 350
Tank now gives 100 extra armor
And finally as a possible E ability, how about a small, 50 health barrier he can use in sentry mode which he can use as a reaction to block things like hook. It would only regen in recon mode to encourage switching forms.
Changes I really don’t want:
Anything that removes sentry, or makes it his ultimate
Please feel free to leave your Bastion feedback here. This poor omnic needs our help. Any and all ideas on how to help him are welcome.
unfortunately, that’s really all that can be done if bastion is ever to be viable without being broken. sentry is too strong unchecked for bastion to get buffed. unfortunately, there’s like a million ways to stomp a bastion into the earth if its entire team isn’t rallying around it, and even then with the shield nerf and just one anti-nade that bastion and its team will go down.
sentry is bastion’s core identity. it’s how players will spend most of their time while playing bastion. but that design of super high damage zero movement turret doesn’t work anymore. it’s absolutely necessary to replace sentry for bastion to be stronger.
i think that bastion’s core identity can be its different forms, instead of bullethose.exe
Why not? They have hardly played around with sentry enough for us to know this. Slightly reducing some of his downsides like transformation times would give him the ability to escape some situations he would otherwise die in.
Hack is super wierd with Bastion, because it gets him out of sentry form, but sentry isn’t an ability, reconfigure is.
Sombra actually forces Bastion to use an ability with her hack, which is super strange. If it acted like normal he would be stuck in sentry. I don’t know if that would be a buff or a nerf though.
That has more to do with balance than it does with intended design. Reducing reconfigure times would help get ride of a bit of that immobility and let him function better alone. A hero shouldn’t need 5 other pockets to be somewhere decent.
sentry’s immobility and bastion’s overall size are definitely intended design. there’s a simple process behind it. big guy does big damage and goes slow.
also, where do you divorce intended design and balancing decisions? what even is the difference?
i think that that was the exact idea they were going for because it is very obviously telegraphed
the game’s like “hey this big stalwart robot is screaming a thousand bullets at you” so you go “oh hey wait i can move around and make myself harder to hit without worrying too much about missing because he can’t move”
the solution for that in bastion’s (eye)s? get a team.
Sentry is a tradeoff. High dps in exchange for immobility. In order to balance it we either need to increase to pros or reduce the cons. I say reducing the cons(long transmission times) would help him without making him busted.