I would rather play Widowmaker by that pointā¦
Nice to see you back!
Which rework are you talking about? Tank on E? You had a lot of them if I remember.
Itās been the same rework the whole time Iāve just been iterating on it for over 2 years now lol
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IDK which Tank On E (TOE) was your idea but I donāt like how so many Tank on E ideas change so much about tank, which is inappropriate for several reasons;
(1) it makes all existing experience, tips, tricks and tech with tank mode obsolete overnight. Every youtube video anyone ever did on tank mode is now completely non-transferable for these Tank On E (TOE) ideas that change way too much. But if you just RESIST the urge to pointlessly change too much then most of whatās already established for Bastion would be transferable.
For example, increasing the fire rate means Bastion canāt heal between each shot any more. Yet changes like saying you can enter and leave tank mode at will leads to the cheese of entering tank mode just to make a single rocket jump while transforming into sentry mid-air.
(2) itās not like tank mode as an ult right now is very good in the first place, these transformation times are extremely limiting, the whistle destroys any surprise, without direct hit OHK on squishies the actual damage rate is not high, it doesnāt take a very large damage nerf to bring it from (barely) good enough to be an ult to be balanced as a cooldown ability.
(3) All these efforts to make tank mode SO weak are to justify Bastion being in tank mode for, like, half the game. Tank mode is clearly a tenuous state (in terms of visual appearance) for Bastion, while his recon and sentry mode are solid and move smoothly with electronic precision, Tank Mode is shaking, vibrating and barely holding itself together. It is a āspecial stateā.
Too many TOE ideas to make tank mode effectively totally replace recon mode as basically the only way to get around other than sentry mode.
(4) Most Tank on E ideas are all way WAY too focused on 1 vs 1 combat and not enough focus on things like:
- Out of combat utility such as rocket jump to high ground
- Synergy with all the damage boosting attacks in the game
- Affects on particular comps but against and counter-synergy
For example, efforts to make Bastionās Tank-on-E a clone of junkrat/pharah primary fire Bastionās high knockback is casually sacrificed as contrary to a very weak rapid fire explosive weapon, but that knockback is what allows Bastion to rocket jump to high ground. That knockback also limits its damage against a cluster of enemies in something like a bunker comp as it pushes them apart, so subsequent rockets donāt do so much damage.
Also careless things like moving to a more rapid fire and rockets doing 135 damage. Except that means when nano boosted or under Orisaās supercharge rockets now OHK squishiesā¦ while having a much faster firing rate! That has suddenly gone way too much the other way.
Every supposedly simple change has many complex ramifications with all the abilities and ults of the other 29 heroes in the game.
Tank on E should ideally change as little as possible of tank as it currently is.
Lets try to look at Bastion from outsiders. From a balance perspective, Bastion IS going to get tank mode as an ult and theyāre going to have to deal with it. But currently Tank mode is mostly dealt with just by running and hiding a bit from tank mode since currently tank is easily neutralised by how tank cannot over-extend as if the ability ends with him trapped in that slow transformation heās a sitting duck.
Iāve gone over everything in the rework with at least 5 other people, down to every number and synergy. I assure you itās fine but if you want to see for yourself I have a mostly finished Bastion rework on the Workshop if you want to look at it let me know
Was it this one?
Replacing ironclad with bonus armour is a good idea but only +50 is too little and amounts to a nerf. Giving up the synergy with healers by trading damage reduction for Bonus Armour (because bonus armour is nonrecoverable health) should not be paired with a net nerf in absolute ability to withstand damage. Especially as this would be coming after the armour nerfs. I think you proposed this idea before armour was nerfed in Overwatch so may have rightly been worried about just giving bastion so much armour. No such concern should be held any more.
Also with no buffs to self-repair rate itās going to take longer for Bastion to get to a point from 1HP to be able to survive 349 damage. Removing the delay in self-repair would not be enough to make up the difference as the heal delay is only 0.3sec, equivalent to 22HP. So thatās another nerf.
Less max spread canāt compensate considering all the things that kill Sentry-mode bastion absurdly quickly, like junkrat.
But on to your tank idea, itās effectively an 8 second cooldown as a quantised resource meter and somehow (without breaking animations) make the transition time to and from tank mode much much quicker.
This would make tank mode very routine, thereās too little reason to ever not use tank mode to resposition, the DPS is basically the same as recon modeās SMG except you can rocket jump, heal between shots and donāt have to continually track. Does Bastion need to be able to rocket jump to high ground THAT often?
And as itās regenerating a round every 2 seconds, this is happening at the same time as the fire rate so effectively you could fire 7 shots in a row at effectively 1 shot every second:
Zero second: SHOOT 4->3 (capacity is under 4, start the 2.0 sec timer)
1 second after fist shot: SHOOT 3->2
2 seconds after fist shot: SHOOT 2->1 + 1 round ā 2 rounds
3 seconds after fist shot: SHOOT 2->1
4 seconds after fist shot: SHOOT 1->0 +1 round = 1 round
5 seconds after fist shot: SHOOT 1->0
6 seconds after fist shot: (wait 0.1sec) +1 round SHOOT 1->0
Because thatās the consequence of the clip size replenishing by +1 after every 2 seconds of the capacity being under 4. Okay, lets say you fix that and you meant after 2 seconds of not firing the capacity replenishes 1 round.
Either way this would make tank mode such a routine boiler-plate mode, recon has so little place. Whatās recon mode got? Slightly delayed spread? This has still made recon effectively redundant for how you can use it so often so easily and for so long. What is the three way balance between Recon, Sentry and Tank? Itās just sentry and tank with recon as just the mode you spawn in.
Hereās the link to my project on the Workshop with the code and all the changes in its description: https://overwatchforge.com/view/Bastion-Rework-version-0.3/XOb4Qsaablj4_cFt
Iāll read your other stuff you pointed out but at least just check out the new patch notes I provided and tell me if your thoughts change at all
- Recon clip size increased from 35 to 36
- Recon now fires in 3-round bursts at a rate of 2.4 bursts per second
Why!?!? Why is recon now burst fire? This is a pointless change. Why is a machine using a burst fire weapon as if his muscles get overwhelmed, a burst fire mechanism is like what a human would have for their weapon, not a machine. Think of what a machine gun on a WW2 fighter plane would have.
- Passive damage resistance removed
- Bastionās healthpool goes from 100 HP 200 armor to 50 HP 250 armor while in Sentry and Tank (takes effect as soon as transformation begins)
Massive nerf.
So many things are so unaffected by armour this makes bastion way way too vulnerable to attacks where he just canāt react in time.
- Spread begins firing with a 0.5 degree spread, blooms to 3 degree spread over 5 seconds
- Can now deal 2x crits
- Damage per round decreased from 15 to 12
This is far too powerful.
Bastionās minigun would increase in spread from only 0.5 degrees to 0.76 degrees in the time it takes for him to deal 200 damage. He can just tap on squishies from range and easily kill them. This is too much.
Itās great that right now Bastionās spread works the opposite way to precisely stop that where heās just tapping short accurate bursts with his minigun but his targets have a chance to survive. The only problem is right now the chance is far too generous, the spread never shrinks enough.
The overheat and cooling mechanic is pointlessly complicated. Youāre ditching all existing reload animations and now somehow have a cooling animation? heat builds up 10% per second, thatās 10 seconds of firing, then 2 seconds holding the reload buttonā¦ youāve just replicated having a limited capacity that means you can only fire 300 rounds at 30 rounds per second for 10 seconds before having to begin a reload animation that lasts 2 seconds!
The ultimate is incredibly boring, itās just suping everything up, it doesnāt do anything interesting.
You know what Iād find interesting as an ult, Bastion spews oil everywhere and enemies standing in the oil (and bastion) lose traction. They can still move but lose all ability to quickly change their momentum, they keep sliding the way they were going and canāt jump. Like the sloped surfaces on roofs. Or so that it doesnāt interfere with the models of torbās ult, a load of ball bearings. Something like that.
I mean wouldnāt that be fun? It would really mix up the game, not just give yourself a (demi) god mode.
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Well that was unnecessarily rudeā¦
The point here is to make Bastion more independent, as his inflexibility and total dependence on his team are what hold him back more than anything else. As many T500 players have told me:
āWe donāt play Bastion much because heās a burden to set up and play withā
Thatās where the idea of the burst fire comes in; it makes Recon more of a viable tool because the range and accuracy of the weapon is increased considerably, meaning Bastionās enormous hitbox (especially his head) and his utter lack of any sort of mobility doesnāt make the modeās pros totally outweigh its cons. It means that in Recon he can function more like a stripped-down hybrid of Baptiste and Soldier.
This independence comes at a cost, however, and that cost is durability and effectiveness while pocketed. Bastionās current Ironclad passive is why pirate ship exists at all; the damage resistance, while largely negligible on its own, makes him a perfect target for pocketing. The overarching idea here is that Bastion is mid-to-long range, very similar to Ashe, but has to play smarter and be more proactive because sitting in one place for too long or not being properly aggressive and/or passive will get you killed faster and more easily.
As for the damage, you need to keep things in perspective:
Widow does more damage in a single tap, and can deal that damage from any range while still being very small. Hanzo can do something similar, and better yet Hanzo can do so while pressuring barriers. We want to avoid spamming down chokes as Bastion; thatās why the reverse-spread is problematic. Plus, if Iām going to be as large as I am and completely immobile I better be able to one-tap things as soon as they come into my line of sight. I can only do so, however, if I have good aim, as without it the tighter spread is less forgiving and on top of that the base damage is reduced, so I need to be able to land headshots to one-tap.
The overheat mechanic provides Bastion with more overall flexibility with how much he can be firing, since you donāt have to vent and instead just wait a moment for the heat to dissipate. It also forces you to manage your firing and not hold down M1 carelessly, as if it reaches 100% heat youāre heavily punished for it.
The ultimate is very simple, yes, but it also is an additional layer of flexibility to the hero and requires Bastion players to think about what theyāre going to use it for.
My disagreement was polite, it was not rude.
Yet you want him weaker in sentry mode.
Surely you mean ādonāt make the modeās contras totally outweight its prosā
FYI: the opposite of āproā is ācontraā as āconā means āalong withā
I donāt think itās a good idea to try to fix a hero by just trying to make them like another hero. Itās good to look to parts of other heroes as an example of what is or isnāt powerful enough, but not just copy them.
If you want to increase the effectiveness of recon modeās gun, why not just increase the damage per bullet? 23 or 25 damage per bullet would reduce the number of hits needed to kill substantially and be in line with plausible ātime to killā that Recon mode needs.
Why fundamentally change how his gun works as ifā¦ youāre just trying to make a brand new heroā¦
Widow needs to headshot and needs to charge up a second shot in 1.25 sec.
Again, a headshot, 1.3 sec to charge up a follow up. With a projectile that has (some) flight time.
Hanzo is mediocre at pressuring barriers.
Whoās āweā?
Even for those where that is the concern, you donāt have to go to such an extreme opposite, you can have the spread shrink quicker, it wouldnāt have to shrink much quicker for it to be enough to survive a head-to-head fight.
Allow the devs to build on their changes.
Why?
Why do you need to kill them in 0.56 sec out to 35 metres?
Bastion is dying quickly, but NOT THAT QUICKLY! For example Hanzo is killing him in 1.2 sec with the 125dmg arrow into Storm Arrows. Buff him a bit to survive another arrow, 1.5 sec and have his spread tighten a bit quicker, you donāt need to totally change the fundamentals of the hero. And this doesnāt help him at all from things like Roadhog hooks or ana sleep darts.
Where bastion has increasing problems is when he suddenly has to deal with multiple opponents in rapid succession, yet your bloom spread means quickly following up attacks on subsequent opponents is worse!
Thatās the problem with your update, it doesnāt seem to consider any of the previous decisions made by the developers, they set the max spread to 3 degrees for a reason, they set it to have inverse spread for a reason, setting the inverse spread to a smaller minimum value or just shrink at a faster rate would be a continuation of their line of reasoning. You just want them to say all their decisions were wrong.
Iām only prepared to say their past decisions only became wrong as time changed, they may have been the best decisions to make at the time but with armour nerf it is now viable to give bastion a LOT of bonus armour instead of damage reduction.
How is killing rein in 0.76sec if drag your crosshair over his head hitbox justified?
I wouldnāt want this, this is the opposite extreme of a weak Bastion, this wouldnāt be remotely fun to play, it would be like cheating. Except it would only be like everyone was cheating as Iād be so weak, it would be like a hacked COD server.
All that complexity for a very certain type of flexibility?
Yet in other ways itās EXTREMELY inflexible, if you go to 99%, fine, but go to 100% (which is not going to be easy to tell) then youāre effectively stunned for 6 seconds, unable to shoot nor move.
You know what the problem isā¦
youāre just deleting bastion.
Youāre deleting bastion and making a brand new hero with the same assets and a similar concept.
You need to take this āupdateā you have for Bastion, and sell it as a brand new hero that is just using Bastion as a placeholder for now. Because what this sounds like is something like a WW2 machine gunner. Many short bursts, overheating, this is like another sort of soldier who can at any moment āgo proneā and deploy the bipod on his machine gun that he normally hip-fires and start firing short accurate bursts of fire but if he pins the trigger (and he can) then accuracy completely disappears and his LMG overheats.
No it doesnāt, it just boosts everything. Thereās no particular thought to it other than - like any ult - donāt waste it by using when it would be wasted.
I think the difference balance wise is a burst would probably have better spread or just happen quicker. This means thereās a, well, burst of damage, but the overall dps would be lower because of the intervals.
(in context youāre talking about crit damage and regular bloom)
he had crits before and it wasnāt an issue. There were memes, sure, but memes nonetheless. Tapping on squishies is kind of what heās supposed to do. Also getting 100% headshots at ranges youāre suggesting is just not going to happen.
An alternative I did think of before is him having an ammo switch type thing in sentry. Precision ammo, and regular (or something like that). Precision ammo can headshot but only has 150 bullets (and potentially a faster reverse bloom because the total time firing is 5 seconds), regular cannot headshot but has the normal 300 bullets.
switching ammo types makes him automatically reload because heās switching his whole magazine so he doesnāt just rapid switch between them. He can switch in recon but it just changes the ammo type heāll have in sentry next time he uses it (still with a 2 second switch time).
E is open so it would just go there.
I mean that doesnāt address any of his flexibility or independence issues so while I like the idea for Sentry it doesnāt really fix anything
Delete bastion from the game. Kill his character. He is OP in low ranks and worthless in high ranks.
A character who can put out something like 1600 dps should not be in the game. Poor design, not fun to play against or to have on your team.
I used to like him back in the day but I feel he should just be deleted at this point.
He has a negative winrate in low ranks. Try again.
- Try againā¦ again?
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What in general do you think would fix that? I donāt mean an idea in particular but feel free to share, but what would make him more flexible? More mobility? More firepower? More protection? That sort of thing.
He needs a redesign, right now he is garbage. Heās bad and he is terrible to play against.
Delete him or redesign him from the ground up.
The only part I agree with here is that he no longer works.
As my buddy Master Ian Gamer said:
āBastion is a hero that was designed back when Blizzard wasnāt sure what Overwatch was going to become, and what it has become does not work for Bastion.ā
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Design from the ground up? No.
Thereās a working kit that can be put together with what he currently has they just need to be rearranged in the right way and gone over with a coating of new mechanics
Not to sound rude but I was asking Astro.