14 of the 17 Damage Heroes have some way to get to higher ground, and Torb has some increased horizontal jump distance and can get his turret to high ground and McCree has combat roll.
This is a balance limitation, when playing Bastion you can only go the same places that the Barrier Tanks like Orisa and Sigma can go, this encourages bunker comp and discourages positioning as a means of defence.
Of the many suggestions of an E-ability they are almost all direct offence or direct defence abilities which inherently synergise with Bunker Comp, but the idea of vertical mobility on a long cooldown has been overlooked. Bastion can already get to high ground with the ultimateâs rocket jumps but no other damage hero needs to burn something as expensive as an ultimate to do this.
Yes, Bastion can get to high ground with Mei wall or Symm TP, but Orisa + Sigma can ALSO benefit from that so introducing them doesnât encourage Bastion play outside a bunker that moves the WHOLE bunker to high ground.
If youâre worried about something like a ârocket pack jumpâ being used to transform into sentry and start shooting while flying through the air, the jump ability could be a channelled ability that blocked the ability to reconfigure into sentry.
The overwhelming complaint with Bastion is how the hero is combined with double barrier, thereâs no way you could get value out of vertical mobility and still benefit from double-barrier.
Surely you can see the value of having the high ground
Highground when you canât move is much worse, movement amplifies highgrounds value by a lot, but when youâd usually want to play something like hanzo pharah into bastion what is more valuable, no protection on highground while being iMobile or sitting with your tanks
Yes, I know how very powerful it is for Hanzo walking up to a ledge and shooting down barely headglitching, even that slower movement massively shields Hanzoâs hitbox.
But Bastion can still get value just by how vertical movement allows more angles of attack, longer sightlines (out of hook range), more warning of approaching heroes (Sombraâs translocator) and I can even get up to where opponents are on the high ground.
When Hanzo has high ground advantage on me then I simply cannot use Sentry.
Thatâs not really a choice as in my experience you donât get protection with the tanks either. Itâs a slow chore but those barriers inevitably go down and then youâre in a bad position as the tanks donât want to fight where Bastion wants to fight.
High ground itself is protection, you can more reliably stay out of range of Roadhog, also just being on the high ground means you can fight only the heroes with vertical mobility. You can use the ledges as physical cover, you canât be directly charged into.
I still want a scooter mode for Bastion thatâs a transformation ability.
He would turn into a scooter that makes him 33% faster and allow a passanger to ride on him. Would allow him the ability to get around quicker, to get back from spawn quicker, and it would allow him the ability to taxi someone with an ultimate behind enemy lines or even nope out of there with an Ana if everyone wipes.
I think as long as it was slow, it would be a reasonable request. Like⌠he shoots a grappling hook, and has to âwalkâ up the wall at a reduced pace. Just so he can get to good spots, but not be used as an escape tool.
I mean does anyone even use Bapâs super jump? I know I donât because I find it useless in legitimately every PvP situation. Sure it may be good for positioning purposes like getting him up on those platforms above ground level. But other than that itâs pretty useless, so I see no reason to be giving any other character the ability to do that when they donât have a whole lot of mobility while in the air.
A grappling hook may be more trouble than itâs worth testing all the weird interactions (think of all the trouble with Hammondâs grapple), not only is it a clone of Widowmaker itâs also a clone of a similar looking robot from Apex Legends who also has a grappling hook for mobility.
Plus, a grappling hook doesnât help in many places where you need to get over a low wall with sloping top, a slow grappling hook would get you up a few feet then youâd just slip back over.
One thing that wouldnât need much testing would be just increase jump velocity and limit it by having a âcast timeâ delay so you canât suddenly leap up into the sky with no warning.
So pressing E would cause Bastion to stop for 1.0sec slowly charging up a jump. Then after that 1 second, jump with +100% jump velocity. +100% jump velocity would give a height slightly lower than a Bastion tank modeâs rocket jump, enough to get to most high ground jumps but not all.
In contrast, Baptiste can use Exo-boots to charge up a +200% jump velocity jump crouching (3m/s movement) for only 0.7sec. So not as good as Exo-boots.
I already addressed this:
Itâs too expensive and just doesnât make sense all things considered.
This very loud ultimate (map wide announcement and tank tracks anyone with headphones can locate) leaves you extremely vulnerable when the ultimate ends where youâre locked into a 1.5sec animation where you canât move, shoot nor even turn your camera view. And when you use tank mode to get to high ground youâre mainly going to be within line-of-sight of flying heroes who are the worst target to try to land direct hits with rockets.
It only seems like a good idea if you havenât had experience with the hero to see how it works out in practice.
