Would you suggest IC at just the start of reconfigure, or until the end of the transformation also (to protect him when picking himself up to run for cover)?
War is one of the most fluid things that i know of. Baptise is one a strength multipler for bastion but at the same time i can only go with my five hours on the PTR . Bapt will be great booster for Bastion but at the same time i see how limited Bapts cooldowns could possibly screw over any form of bastion based Bunker/pirate ship comp.
Bapt needs to go into the wild for a fair assessment. the PTR is basically petri dish compared to the live servers.
At the start.
Essentially itās his old armor on Qā¦ Or Winston/Torb.
The moment they press Q/E, they get their health instantly.
The same would apply to Bastion, only it would be his IC.
So Shift = IC , and then 1s transform time
Q = IC, and then 1.5s transformation time
Whereas currently itās Q = 1.5s transformation time, and then 20% IC.
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I think 20% DamageReduction (DR) tied to Sentry/Tank mode is a dead end for buffing Bastion. The developers apparently said the reason bottom pickrate heroes arenāt given buffs is they are so worried that buffing them at all will easily tip them into being too powerful. Yet this leaves Bastion far too vulnerable, heās an incredibly vulnerable hero and itās chasing diminishing returns to try to get 20% DR to apply in a few more circumstances.
Clearly they wanted it to be 35% damage reduction which would have been significant DR but relented as that was too much DR to have while still attacking and reloading. And this DR isnāt relevant to recon mode which is what the developers are trying to make a more balanced part of Bastionās gameplay loop.
Thatās why I think it would be perfect to have the DR but much higher at 50% Damage Reduction but only apply when Self-Repair is activated:
- This aspect of Bastionās defence is always relevant, in Recon, Sentry and Tank mode as bastion is always very vulnerable
- It empowers the playerās choice in how much defence they need by how soon and how much they have self-repair with 50% DR active.
- There is an inherent balance between attack and defence, you sacrifice your attack for more defence.
- This compromise is relatively better in tank mode, so it would be a skill based buff for his ult, the skill of good timing of self-repair between shots.
Fights with Bastion have too much of a binary outcome, thereās no middle ground for Bastion.
So many heroes Bastion attack have compromise options like fade, translocator, meiās ice block, sprint, DVAās DMā¦ all things compromise on their attack ability for excellent defence. Bastion has no such GOOD compromise. Self-repair is sort of a good compromise, but itās not good enough. 0.5sec delay and THEN 75HP/sec healing is not enough to be worth giving up attacking.
You know why? Even factoring 20% DR or ironclad, unless the attack is less than about 95DPS youāre dooming yourself. Youāre guaranteed to end up in a trap where youāre
- losing health
- stationary
- not attacking
- not reloading
Almost no hero in the game will deal less than 95DPS to you, especially after the buff to beam attacks against armour. Yeah, beams are no longer reduced to half damage against armour.
This changes completely if Self-Repair had 50% damage reduction along with 75hp/sec healing.
Now Bastion can stabilise while taking about 150DPS of damage. 150DPS is a pretty typical example of long range fire that utterly destroys Bastion like Zenās primary fire. But Zen is still getting something for shooting at Bastion, he is saving his rein from being melted by forcing the Bastion to stop shooting.
This is a far better balance of power between Bastion and his opponents.
Beam weapons typically max out at about 190dps, perfect for this, armour reduces that by 20% and 50% DR on top of that reduces it to the same as the healing amount. This is fair as so many heroes have abilities to entirely negate damage like Fade, Wraith, Iceblock, etc.
Powerful close range weapons like shotguns/SMGs are still reduced in power greatly by armour. Bastion can now be health-stable while Reaper, Tracer, or Torb are blasting into him. Again, this requires Bastion give up his attack, give up his reload, this is the defensive option that Bastion needs.
He needs it in Recon as well as sentry+tank.
Itās more important that Bastion be survivable than he continue attacking.
Itās impractical to buff Bastionās defences while attacking, thatās why so far heās not getting defensive buffs, they donāt want him to be unkillable while blasting out 450DPS yet there are times he still needs to deal 450DPS.
This patch seems really interesting.
Every hero who the community considers a bit weak was buffed, except for Bastion. I was talking with Diego last night and he suggested that maybe they didnāt give him any buffs or QoL changes is because they are planning a rework for him. Thoughts?
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This PTR is changing, itās still being updated before the current PTR goes live. Junkrat just got a buff on the PTR. Which is going to be devastating as he now does 140 damage per direct hit (ouch). This is some serious power-creep.
This PTR leaves Bastion in a perilous state, ābeamā weapons have all had a huge buff against him due to how much he depends on armour.
McCreeās fan-hammer nerf still leaves Bastion vulnerable to a roll->flashbang-fan combo, Bastion has zero coutnerplay to that if caught in recon mode. But itās a step in the right direction.
Reaperās lifesteal is going down to 40%, which is still about 112hp/sec healing while dealing full body hits. It should be noted Reaper does almost half damage against armour so armour is still a really good counter to Reaper.
I think this all clears the way for Bastion having a much higher percentage of his health pool being armour. Even 100%. So his entire health bar is yellow blocks. This would be a way of toughening him up without just giving him as much HP as a tank.
Bastion having 300 armour would have been unthinkable before as pretty much all beam weapons did half damage to armour so Bastion would have effectively 600HP to all those attacks. Now all ābeamā attacks deal only 20% less damage to armour.
Bastion having all armour would only substantially toughen him against close range SMG/Shotgun attacks. Just to note, 300A isnāt quite the same as simply having 600HP as headshots effectively triple the damage if each bullet pellet does 5-7 damage (Tracer, Hog, Doom, Reaper, Hammond). DVA is the only one who does so little damage per hit that headshots on armour are worthlessā¦ but she has defence matrix which is amazingly good against Bastion.
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Maybe not fully, but more armor and halfling the time it takes to transform would be great. Also old tank durability.
Maybe 0.5sec into-sentry to match the 0.5sec out-of-sentryā¦ but to halve the 0.5sec reconfig time from Sentry->recon would just invite ridicule (0.25sec is too fast) and inevitable excessive blacklash. Bastion is not helped by āmemesā that whip up the lynch mob to hate him.
By my eye, 0.7 sec recon->sentry reconfig time would work really well for the ājump and transform mid airā trick as youād be able to begin firing as soon as you landed from a running jump over horizontal ground.
There is a place where transformation time is way too damn long and thatās tank mode. Thatās 1.5 seconds and the animation clearly takes its time, the inverse animation takes only 1.0 sec. But both Animations lock aim and movement. Whatās it called when a hero canāt move, canāt aim and canāt attack. Thatās called a stun. For Bastion to activate AND to end his ult he is under a stun effect.
100% armour would be a nice touch though, it reflects how he looks like he should be the most armoured hero in the game just from his appearance which seems to be an arrangement of steel girders. Nothing about him suggest lightweight metal or delicate internal parts, heās all armoured plate.
IDK if you caught my proposal for 50% damage reduction on self-repair but that would be a buff to tank mode, and it would be a skill dependent buff. Youād have to time the heals between shots well enough.
It looks better when the patch notes arenāt super long with a dozen little changes, instead just āhealth is now this, that is gone, but this ability now has this.ā.
I think they will buff Bastion soon, maybe headshot back !
Anyway, my change still the same.
- When slept, Bastion stay in turret form.
- if Bastion get stun/sleept/freeze during his transformation time into turret mode, he will not be interupted at 70% of his cast time (0.7 seconds).
- Increase Bastion health to 350HP (125 armor).
- Increase his heal rate by 20%.
- Increase his heal capacity by 20%.
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I think a .25 second transformation from senty to recon wouldnāt get that much backlash. The hard part was convincing people to let him kill faster, which we finally did.
Long time no see uwu
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i like bastion alot and would like to play him more. i cant think of anything he needs currently that wouldnt break him, as hes one of those heroes that simply cannot be balanced at both high and low SR.
when im feeling cheeky i play him in recon mode, much the way you would play soldier. honestly, he has constant self heals, better weapon spread, and his weapon falloff dmg and bullet dmg are damn near the same as soldier.
hes a machine, cant he be made faster? heh.
Itās not a drastic change to his gameplay, but a small life improvement who will sure help him in high rank of play to become more viable.
We can also make a full rework of him based on his ātransformā abilities, like put a non-ulted version of Tank like a second abilities or something.
I have one :
Add a new abilities called āTankā on his E :
- 10 Seconds cooldown, 1.0 seconds Cast time into/out-of Tank.
- One shell of 130 damage every 1 seconds. We keep the same AoE on explosion.
- (Something who work like Doomfist shotgun), have 4 shots automatically reload one bullet every 4 Seconds.
Replace Tank with a new ultimate called āHigh chargeā
- Instant cast, Last 8 Seconds.
- Increase Bastion base speed in Recon by 20%.
- Increase Bastion Recon rate of fire by 35%.
- Increase Bastion Sentry rate of fire by 35%.
- Increase Tank rate of fire from 1 seconds to 0.5 second.
- Tank have unlimited Ammo
My problem is with chasing diminishing returns.
Itās such diminishing returns to try to get merely up to 20% ironclad while in the reconfig animation. itās a complicated mechanic to explain and understand.
We need less complex and situational solutions. Like if the problem with stuns causing an animation to run to the end then reverse again, there is already another way it can work. Roadhogās hook instantly cancels any animation. So just change it so that stuns will cancel animations. Nice simple straightforward rule so if a McCree stuns Bastion as going from Recon -> Sentry he instantly ends up in sentry.
125 armour is such an insignificant increase in armour, itāll only help against 1 and a half shots from Reaper and has the problem of being only 50HP less than tanks such as Orisa. Any duel with Reaper is going to be a real close fight, youāre going to need armour all the way down to 0HP or else
And thereās more diminishing returns trying to reduce a transformation time by only 0.25sec, thatās such a short period of time yet as you try to compress an animation into a shorter and shorter period it looks worse and worse.
This is the trap with changes to Bastionā¦ they are direct buffs that are either too insignificant to make him overpowered or they make bastion too strong in doing a particular thing.
Thereās a huge problem with āTank on Eā and thatās Bastion routinely rocket jumping and transforming mid air into sentry so that he has mobility and firepower at the same time. This is going to be way too powerful yet if Bastion canāt rocket jump with a tank mode any more suddenly youāre removing a whole aspect of his play.
That aspect of using his ult to jump to high ground.
Bastionās ult is currently on 2000 charge, contrast that with DVA who needs only 1375 charge for her ult. Bastionās ult could be on a much lower charge and itād be worth it even if the ult itself didnāt last as long.
The one-hit-kill of Bastionās tank rockets is really important:
- When pushing through a choke, insta-kill a McCree before he flashbangs + fan hammers you
- Overcome high heals of ults like transcendence and coalescence.
- Clearing out a lot of snipers who wonāt stick around to be hit by a 2nd rocket but will reemerge when the ult ends
- Slower attack rate with more damage per rocket gives bastion a chance to heal between each rocket.
- The slow fire rate limits āpo-go rocket jumpingā by bastion so Bastion canāt endlessly gain height up a wall while repeatedly rocket jumping.
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Thats what i was thinking as well. Didnt they hint that they might be reworking him some time ago?
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They said that there were no future reworks planned, but if they decided to do one it would be Bastion.
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A perfect example of a good hint with no backlash.
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That was it, I knew they phrased it in a really weird way.
They basically said āweāre not planning anything but weāre planning to plan thisā
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Astro and Terran gave them some backlash about it not already happening 
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