So, I’ve taken it upon myself to try to make Bastion a hero more in-tune with the rest of the roster. Here were my goals:
Make Bastion less of a niche pick. His current state makes it so that he is a detriment to your team unless you play around him
Dont disenfranchise the current Bastion players. There are many players happy with his current state, and a full overhaul would severely disappoint them and possibly make them lose interest in the game
Encourage movement and repositioning more. A hero like Bastion is out of place in a game like Overwatch, and shouldn’t be encouraged to sit in one place in a game full of mobility
Increase the skill floor and skill ceiling of the hero. His performance in lower ranks is really good and his performance in upper ranks is pretty lackluster. Make him a more skillful hero to play to reduce frustration in lower ranks while making him more rewarding in upper ranks
I’m trying to limit myself to the tools I have in the workshop, so don’t expect super flashy new abilities or completely mind blowing mechanics.
Here’s what I’ve come up with SO FAR:
General
Base Health reduced from 200 to 100
Base Armor increased from 100 to 150 (Max health now 250)
Recon Configuration
Primary fire damage increased by 10%
Max Ammo reduced from 35 to 25
Self Repair
When in Recon Configuration, Self Repair now consumes an additional 20% resource per second and provides a 30% speed boost while using it.
Healing Reduced by 25%
When Bastion is at full health, he will still consume 20% resource per second and receive only the speed boost.
Reconfigure
Bastion now has 35% damage resistance and 50% knockback resistance while reconfiguring. This effect is removed once the animation is complete. He can still be affected by stuns.
Sentry Configuration
Now has an overheat mechanic. When firing, a bar showing the Turret’s heat appears. The more you shoot, the further the bar will rise. When you reach the end of the bar, Bastion’s turret overheats and needs 3 seconds to cool down. Bastion can reconfigure during this cooldown period and it doesn’t effect his Recon configuration.
As you progress the heat bar, the more damage is dealt with Sentry. 0-30% of the bar is neutral level and the damage dealt is 75% of Bastion’s normal value.
From 30-70%, the heat bar is warm and the damage is Bastion’s current damage value.
From 70-99%, the heat bar is hot and the damage is 125% of bastion’s normal value.
After not firing for 0.5 seconds, the bar will automatically begin to lower at 35% per second.
Tank Configuration
???
I don’t know what to do with Tank configuration. I mean, it’s not a bad ability, it’s actually pretty good, but I still think it needs… something. If you have any ideas, let me know.
I don’t have a code yet, as the rules aren’t named and I’m still tweaking the numbers. If I could get your thoughts or suggestions, that would be great, especially if you main/play a lot of bastion.
These are all just ideas, not saying they’re necessarily GOOD. Just ideas.
Okay, good to know. The only thing that I’m considering is increasing the duration, but keeping the amount of shots he can fire the same. (If you’re curious, feel free to ask, but I’m not gonna waste either of our time if you’re uninterested)
Lot of idea’s floated around about Bastion and he’s one of the biggest examples of the Dev’s never paying attention to the fans.
I’ve always said one of the biggest things he need is more mobility and faster transformations.
Flip his Tank form and his Sentry form. Make the tank form his alt mode and leave Sentry form to be the ultimate. That way Bastion is more mobile while using his alt form and Sentry mode can do insane dmg again because well it’s an Ultimate.
I think those two changes alone would help a lot, but giving Recond mode something useful be nice as well. It’s call Recon… let it move faster, detect enemies with something like a sonar Ping or something. Heck just make it silent so you could sneak up on people.
Edit: Oh and obviously lower the dmg of the tank rockets, but maybe increase the ammo? Still a turret mode with higher dmg but mobility beats a static turret imo.
Understand. Bastion is a powerful hero with good support. Without reading that lengthy post, I am guessing you want Bastion to be more self sufficient. (too long)
He can’t. He would be OP. He feels fine in the current patch.
If Bastion was buffed, in the slightest, he would instantly become OP with good support.
That is a good idea, but when talking to Bastion players in the past, they really like sentry as it is. I want to keep their hero the way they know and love them, but still make him a more viable option.
Please read my post before commenting on it.
The point isn’t necessarily to make him more self-sufficient, but rather to increase the skill floor and ceiling. I’m adding buffs while providing compensation nerfs.
I do, however, think that Bastion should be more self sufficient. A team comp that HAS to center around one hero is, at least IMO, unhealthy for the game.
Recon is all wrong currently and in your suggestion. Right now it is a tank-sized-wannabe-Soldier 76. Your suggestion doesn’t change that really.
Recon should be the main mode Bastion players function with. Given it is the size of a tank, it needs better sustainability.
His Self Repair should be an E and remain active while Recon Mode attacks.
Recon Mode alt-Fire should be the old self barrier the sentry from had at beta except Bastion can’t attack with it in place or use his E.
Sentry mode should have its crit damage returned. However, instead of a mode-shift it would be a resource-based form. It can maintain Sentry until the resource is used then must return to Recon. The Reourse should be the same Self Repair resource.
This means Sentry is used in key moments instead of the “main way” to play Bastion.
Tank Mode needs more armor. It. Ow has less sustain that it’s launch version prior to Iron Clad being given.
While I hate changing a hero too much. Like removing Mercy’s Rez was kind of an iconic part of her kit imo… In Bastions case I think it really needs to be done.
Sentry mode is impossible to balance. Your immobile and easy to hit, meaning Sentry mode either has to do insane dmg or be really tough with high dmg resistance. Neither work that well and other than riding the payload suck for attack.
It also takes very little skill to aim with the sentry turret, so dying to it always feels cheap. However as an ultimate ability such a trade off would be more understandable. Sort of like Whole Hog or Phara’s Barrage. You can accept massive amounts of dmg and instant death from an Ultimate.
Tank mode is also a very weird projectile to get good at aiming with, not helped by how rarely it really comes up and how different it is from your normal fire mode. In general I personally get more kills as the Sentry turret than I ever do in tank mode.
Given that tank mode is already a bit of a disappointment, turning it into the normal ability so Sentry could be buffed in some way makes sense.
That was one of my ideas, but I can’t include that in the workshop so to compensate I gave him the speed boost.
I could do the second part, but again, I can’t give Bastion crits on his sentry in the workshop.
Your ideas seem to be a whole other rework. You should make a post about that if you want, as you have some good ideas. I’m trying to stick with what I can do in the workshop that way I can test it.
I’m not asking for a rework for Bastion. I’m just throwing out my ideas for a rework that put him in a different spot than he is now. This is all speculative and I’m not demanding anything.
And really? You must not know how to actually be part of a DISCUSSION THREAD when you can’t even read what I’m saying. Considering the fact that you have 4.6k+ posts, shouldn’t it be common knowledge to actually read the posts, or just don’t reply to them? Why are you replying to a post you didn’t read.
DUDE ITS JUST AN IDEA. Chill the freak out. No need to act all nitpicky and “well MY bastion does X and you should understand that.” just because I got bored and decided to make a bastion rework.
I think that your adjustments to Recon are unique, albeit, not bad. I’ve been a fan of having some form of accelerated movement speed in Recon (with some limitation of course) and I’m glad to see you gave it.
Sentry was an interesting adjustment too. The overheat mechanic gets riskier and yet more rewarding the more you fire… but my issue is that as soon as you learn the muscle memory for how long you can shoot, you can maintain that maximum damage. People will probably get frustrated with that
Tank… I don’t blame you for being unsure what to do with it. Personally, I would make it Bastion’s “E” or whatever button depending on the platform you use. I’d give it six shots, but they reload slowly and automatically, like Doomfist’s primary. Lower their damage to 110 direct hits or so.
That was the reason I had to keep tweaking the 0.5 second delay on the overheat cooldown. And I also had to increase the rate it decreases at as to prevent it from being too easy to keep it there. I still may need to tweak it, but there’s a lot of pausing when testing it out, and you tend to spend around 1/3 of your time sitting there, waiting for the bar to go down. That’s why I still have him the 40% middle ground where he still does his normal damage.
I am considering adding a 4th temperature where the damage is around 140%, but only around 90-100%.