If you buff the hero with the highest DPS in the game, that will give the entire enemy team more of a reason then they already have now to dive the hell out of him and make sure he dies first and never leaves spawn.
Short answer to how to properly fix him and increase his playtime?
“Re-Work”
Funny that was not a problem except against bad people when he was launched and had real damage
His dps is fine. What we want is more independent survivability. Maybe faster transitioning in and out of tank and turret mode for example.
With his massive spread and lack of headshots he does much less damage than he used to.
If you want to fix him do this:
Sentry
Reduce spread from 3° back to 2°
Headshots added
Ammo reduced to 200
Ironclad
Removed as passive
Now applies only while using self repair at 25%
Tank
Now gains 150 armour upon activation
If you think current turret mode is fine . . . I don’t know what to say to you . . .
Real fixes:
Revert turret to how it was, lose Ironclad completely, leave the recon and healing changes.
The only thing he ever needed was some recon buffs
Maybe bring back headshots or reduced spread but just the overall damage he puts out is fine when he does land direct hits.
He would need his old tank armour back if IC was removed.
Why, he should be damage, not tanking. He is a turret. A good Bastion moves after a kill or two anyways. At least before, before Blizz f*cked him up as they did
Hello DrClan. Sorry to see last night’s post get locked. It was a lot of fun talking and discussing those issues.
Oh hey! Didn’t recognize you. I had this massive post filled with links and facts but then it got 404d a second to early, oh well.
He should be damage, but he needs his old armour(or equivalent IC) to live to deal the damage while in tank.
To be honest, I want a Rework too…
I want Bastion to be viable but I also want to be able to walk around a corner and survive within my reaction time.
Bastion’s in a worse spot than most.
Ask his mains (like any other main) and they’ll list his counters and how his 450DPS means nothing to spread and vulnerability.
Ask almost anyone else and they’ll say he’s cheap and does too much damage.
Just try a rework. Something that will be fair for Bastion’s mains and adversaries. (Doesn’t have to be fun, just fair.)
I believe I saw videos of Bastion back in Alpha or whatever where he had this shield covering himself when he was in turret form.
Maybe bring that back and nerf soemthing else.
Noooo no no no.
That was removed for a reason.
You’d have to make his DPS practically useless if you wanted to add that in.
Having to deal with that on top of a Rein/Orisa shield combo protecting him is just asking for this game to be borderline unfun and unfair
He had a 1000hp shield before. Shield hp matters. A 100hp shield wouldn’t do much other than force Roadhog to shoot once before hooking.
Anything to give Bastion that extra half second of time he needs to get things done would help. A small shield could do that. Better damage through reduced spread, however, would be preferable… Because then he wouldn’t need the extra half second to score kills in the first place.
Bastion should kill things when he shoots them. The reward of Sentry form is currently not enough to make up for the risk of being unable to move. Either the reward must increase or the risk must decrease to make Bastion viable again.
If anything, his dps is too low with that spread and no headshots. 
People will focus him the same as they do now, because most people don’t realise how little damage he does. They see that he does 450 DPS (a bunch of people still think he does 525 DPS), and assume that that’s what he does always. He’s always focused now, they can’t really focus him more…
The only difference is that with a buff, he would be able to handle a few people focusing him. He’ll still die if he’s heavily outnumbered, but he can take a couple with him, giving his team an advantage… Or he can just play smarter, and not die in the first place.