Who cares if his pickrate is abysmal though? That’s because most people don’t like his playstyle. Same with Mei, Torb, Junk to an extent…
Which is why it’s up to the user to use Sentry mode at the right time. And why Sentry should be more consistent, so that the player can make plans more effectively, and know that it’s gonna work.
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IMO his Ult and Recon are the two parts of his kit that don’t need fixing… Ironclad, Self-Repair, and Sentry are the problem parts
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ult is fine, no buffs needed. recon is ok as is. sentry mode needs upped recoil and a cool down period when the gun overheats.
Why would they just nerf him though?
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What do you mean who cares?
He’s literally one of the lowest picked heroes in the game, that’s a problem.
At this point he should just be deleted if they’re not going to overhaul him. He’s a boring hero that’s only used in cheese comps, he’s badly designed.
Why is it a problem? There’s always going to be a lowest picked hero. The only way to not have a lowest picked is to delete all of them.
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From all that’s been said it’s obviously not easy to “Fix” Bastion, mainly because you haven’t thought about this very much. Particulalry lack of thought about what the problem that even needs fixing.
Thought I will agree with you on one thing do not touch sentry mode. It is fine. It may not be great, but it is as good as it will ever be.
The major problem with Bastion’s Ult is that there’s no natural way to “git gud” with Bastion’s ultimate. It’s obviously mainly viable for the direct-hit skillshots against squishy heroes, but practising only 10 seconds at a time just when everyone’s had a warning to make special effort to avoid you or focus you down isn’t conducive to that.
I have just gone into custom games with fast recharge ultimates to play against bots. Still, there’s arguably more value in practicing using your ultimate to rocket jump into good sentry positions. I’ve honestly used tank mode more to escape as I’m rolling with 20% ironclad and I never want to be aggressive with Tank Mode because just as you’re beginning to get good you STOP DEAD IN YOUR TRACKS and are locked into an animation going to recon mode.
Frankly, I’m fine Bastion’s ult being a bit meh, and mainly being used for utility or escape… because Bastion kinda needs Utility and escape options.
@Acosn
The ult granting 10 shots but far more time to use them is brilliant but probably won’t happen. It’s just not a thing for an ult like that to persist for so long, ults are supposed to be over quickly. Wrecking ball’s mines last for 20 seconds, I think the most you could do is have Bastion 's Tank ult be 10 rockets and 20 seconds to use them then end the ult early choosing either recon or sentry mode. It would be nice if the transformations into and out of tank mode were quicker.
It’s a problem because he’s a trash pick most of the time, hence why he’s barely played except in cheese comps. Do you not understand that?
So make him better. He was more or less fine before his rework. He needed tweaks to Recon, self-repair, and his transform times. He did not need changes to Sentry mode. All they have to do is revert the Sentry mode changes, and then he’d be good again. Still probably unpopular, but he wouldn’t be trash.
Sentry mode is where pretty much all of his problems lie. It’s too inconsistent. All of his other modes are pretty much fine. Tank could use 35% Ironclad again (or armor like it used to get), but Recon is basically perfect.
Go into a custom game with infinite time and a bunch of squishy bots with no guns. Their movement patterns will be different from a human, but the hitboxen are the same, which can let you practice landing the shots. I think you said that in the next paragraph, but I wasn’t quite sure what that was getting at…
Sentry mode is difficult… but that’s what makes him such a fun hero. It’s a high risk high reward playstyle and I love it. You have to be really good with positioning and forward planning, it’s not for most players but for those who do play him it’s the reason they keep coming back to Overwatch.
It’s really satisfying to succeed in a flanking maneuver for a huge payoff. I’m rather fed up of pulling off an amazing flank as a Soldier or something and… oh they run around and shift a bit. I just didn’t have the damage to really exploit my ability to flank, with Bastion you do have the DPS. Even if Orisa has to quickly throw down a shield you can melt that in 2 seconds and since she just threw that shield down she won’t have another one ready for a while.
And I happen to think he’s slightly better than Soldier in some ways. While Bastion’s fire-rate is slightly slower, the 20 damage per bullet threshold means he needs only 10 hits to kill with each headshot reducing the hits needed to kill by one. That’s just very satisfying to me. Now whoever suggested Bastion repair while shooting no that would be way too powerful because WHILE you are exchanging fire you effectively reduce their DPS by 75.
What would be preferable is just allow Bastion’s gun to reload while self-repairing. It should even be easy to animate and only helps with Bastion peeling around cover to reload and recharge simultaneously, reward getting back into the fight quicker, not making any individual duel easier.
My worry is that when people talk about “fixing” Sentry mode… people talk far more about destroying what is fun about it to make it vanilla and boring but more widely acceptable. Far less about understanding what anyone finds enjoyable about playing Bastion and enhancing that, just trying to make Bastion more like the heroes that they play.
I’d split the difference on 35% ironclad just for “political reasons”, you can see the clickbait youtube headlines “Jeff hates us! He brought back 35% Ironclad! BETRAYAL!” And just rant about it, say how much they hate it and how they don’t care that it’s only for an ultimate.
Pick a weird number like 29% ironclad. That’ll throw them off, it doesn’t seem as close to the 35% ironclad they will bemoan so much about, but it would mean that tank bastion can absorb a full dose of Hanzo’s Storm Arrows. then after a week change it to 30% just to round it out.
“Go into a custom game with infinite time and a bunch of squishy bots with no guns… I think you said that in the next paragraph”
I did.
My idea of fixing is pretty much just a revert of his rework to it. No more Ironclad, back down to 200 ammo (maybe 250 because quite a few barriers have been added since then), headshots back, spread reverted. Keep what made it fun back then, remove that makes it bad now, no real changes to it’s functionality.
I think removing Ironclad all together and putting 150 armor back on Tank would be best. Or at least changing Ironclad into something that isn’t as inherently OP as a passive damage resistance. Something like allowing his self-repair (and only his self-repair, healers can’t touch it) to overheal him with armor. Or have the damage resist only apply then transforming and repairing kinda like Roadhog. Just something that the player has to manage instead of a magical damage resist for simply existing.
33% Ironclad (technically ⅓, which repeats forever) would put him at 450 effective health, which is roughly the same as the armor, but slightly less effective because of how armor works and whatnot… Though again, I would rather just remove it either outright, or in favor of something more “active”.
So the big difference from now is that you just start with a narrower spread but after a bit of firing it’s the same spread as now, and headshots. Headshot on 450dps are just too much, it would melt a Roadhog as quickly as a McCree’s fan the hammer, that’s really far more than necessary.
I don’t think that would add much to Bastion as much as it would annoy and infuriate tanks. One nice thing about no headshots is it’s just a worry off of my mind. Your task is far more focused on tracking targets that are being really evasive, like Hammond or Winston.
If I was going to change Bastion’s damage at all, I’d make it have no damage fall off, just for the long range shield break. Maybe reduce the spread a little bit, but when its too tight then the sudden burst, especially combined with headshots just kill so quick it’s no fun for either side.
Why reduce his ammo? What does that achieve?
Nothing.
Anyone he’s playing against won’t appreciate the difference, but it will be a greater inconvenience for Bastion players who are caught reloading.
"Something like allowing his self-repair (and only his self-repair, healers can’t touch it) to overheal him with armor. "
Sounds like one of the things that broke TF2, a kludge for an engine like this. It’s just asking for interaction contradictions, you’re going to get bugs, exploits and players just unsure what the hell is going on.
I don’t see what is achieved by getting rid of damage resistance. The whole point of Damage Resistance is in game engine terms it’s really easy to turn it on and off without breaking anything. Especially for a hero that can top up their health.
Ironclad is an important part of balancing sentry mode, the cost of immobility is so massively high.
His old max spread was 2 degrees, this one is 3 degrees. If full 2x headshots are too much, then do 1.5x headshots. But if damage is his only form of protection, then he needs a fair bit of it.
Bastion is supposed to be a good answer to tanks, tanks are supposed to fear him…
Shooting at someone that’s 25 meters away, and having a forced 50% accuracy simply because of your spread feels pretty bad. Why should he have such a large spread?
He originally had 200 ammo, and they increased it to make him more of a spray and pray hero. If he has lower spread and headshots, then he doesn’t need the extra ammo. Just don’t get caught reloading.
An overheal of like 75 armor isn’t going to break the game…
I’m only suggesting to get rid of the passive damage resistance, because that’s too strong on any hero. Damage resistance is fine. Passive damage resistance is not.
Let’s keep variable headshot bonuses to a minimum and only play around with established variables. It’s far simpler for people in the game to just keep track of “Headshot multiplier is 2x, some weapons don’t have it, and Widow is the only exception to the 2x multiplier”.
You can have one exception. When you start having an increasing list of exception things get needlessly complicated.
A better compromise would be to keep the spread maxed out as 3 degrees but bring headshots back, this will be better for the sheer sanity of the game as it gets rid of an inconsistency in the game. Almost all the firearms in the game headshot, some people who play Bastion sometimes try to go for headshots but are punished because they didn’t go on the right website to learn there are no headshots.
With a 3.0 degree spread it’s going to be hard to dump a lot of damage into headshots unless they are very close.
One reason I want to retain the wide spread is the balance against small and highly mobile heroes for whom 450dps is actually overkill, the wider spread just makes it easier to get damage on them.
“He originally had 200 ammo, and they increased it to make him more of a spray and pray hero.”
Actually, they increased it, along with his spread, to cater to his shield break and tank busting role. A role that is needed now more than ever with GOATS comp which can absorb such an obscene amount of damage and keep going.
It’s very hard to make a hero good at tank busting without just making them OP against everyone. One aspect is spread which isn’t the worst downside as while it means Damage heroes have a reasonable chance of fighting back or escaping at long range, it gives a slight edge against the very annoyingly evasive enemies at medium range like bouncing genjis, Pharas, Tracers and so on.
“An overheal of like 75 armor isn’t going to break the game…”
You know everyone said the exact same thing with TF2. Any one exception is fine, but these exceptions build up and compound on each other.
While I don’t agree that his ultimate is weak, I think having his ultimate doing more damage to shields would be interesting.
That would definitely make me shooting shields with my ult feel less wasteful
This would be pretty much useless, as the headshots would in no way be result of the player’s skill, but rather their luck. If you aim at the head, you’re going to miss a majority of your shots, and if you aim at the body, then what’s the point of headshots?
And Bastion sucks at getting close. 3 degrees is fine on someone like Tracer and Sombra, but not on an immobile gun.
And I want to increase his skill floor and ceiling so that people in lower ranks don’t complain about him as much. People who can aim will do well with him, people who can’t, won’t…
Because having a higher spread helps with shield breaking…? It just makes him all around worse at every job. Notice how he still isn’t used, even against GOATS… Because they can swarm him before he has the chance to do any meaningful damage to them because of his spread.
So don’t. Make him a decent answer to everyone instead of making him decent at one thing, and garbage at everything else.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to… unless it was added pretty recently, TF2 doesn’t have armor. Unless you’re referring to overheal in general. Only Bastion would be able to apply it, and once he did, healer’s wouldn’t be able to touch the “Ironclad armor”. Giving a hero a unique ability isn’t an “exception”, if that were the case, then everyone would just need to be Soldier 76, because anything else would be too many exceptions to the rules.