🤖 My Bastion Feedback

General Discussion
1

I finally got Jeff to respond to a thread about Bastion, and he said they were happy to listen to feedback:

Unfortunately, my post was swamped by people talking about the CC changes, so I’m making a new thread for this.

Bastion’s first problem: Sentry isn’t worth it:

Sentry is what people are supposed to play Bastion for. Anything else in his kit is like a worse form of Soldier 76. This is alright, but problem is that the pros of sentry are out weighed by the cons. Let’s go through a list.

Pros:
High dps
damage reduction via ironclad

cons:
Immobile
long transformation times

The cons out weigh the pros here because while you can deal high damage, you are extremely vulnerable, and even if you see danger coming most of the time your transformations are too long for you to do anything about it. This means Bastion will always need protection while in sentry, as it is often impossible for him to defend or escape himself. Even with his passive damage resistance, he just gets overwhelmed and it takes too long to do anything to prevent it.

When the main ability of a hero isn’t worth it, he doesn’t get picked. Instead, they could pick another hero with high damage, and avoid all the drawbacks of being immobile. This then brings me to my next point.

Bastion’s second problem: Other heroes can do his niche better than him
Bastion’s niche used to be being a barrier buster, but that is done by everyone these days. With barrier health as low as it is, there is no need to deal with all the baggage that Bastion brings when you could pick Junkrat, Soldier 76, or any number of heroes and bust the barrier from a much safer position. Additionally, these heroes are useful in other situations as well. Even if Bastion is a niche hero, he should be the best at his one niche.

Bastion’s third problem: His ultimate is too squishy
Bastion’s ultimate used to give him 150 additional armor immediately upon activation. These days, it only gives a 20% damage reduction after the 1.5 second cast time. This is a result of the ironclad nerf that happened after his last rework. However, the nerf was never needed for his ultimate, just his sentry form but tank just became collateral damage. It now gives less protection after the cast time, when it used to give much more instantly. This results in Bastion being taken out before he even gets a chance to shoot.

Bastion’s third problem: Ironclad
Ironclad as a passive has a problem which makes pocketing a Bastion even more rewarding than other heroes. When Mercy heals any other hero for 1 second, she restores 50 health. When she heals Bastion for 1 second, that 50 health is effectively 60 because it has a 20% damage reduction on it. This encourages pocketing Bastion, which is what many people find annoying about him.

How to solve these problems:

  • Reduce recon to sentry reconfigure time to .75 seconds
  • Reduce sentry to recon reconfigure time to .25 seconds

Both of these slightly reduce the cons of sentry form, and let Bastion escape from situations where he would otherwise die with no way to fight back.

  • Change base health to 350
  • Remove his ironclad passive
  • Adjust self repair resource to compensate for the extra health

While this is slightly less protection than ironclad currently gives him, it applies in recon as well. This would also reducing the effectiveness of pocketing a Bastion back to normal levels.

  • Ultimate cast time reduced to 1.25 seconds
  • Ultimate now gives 100 extra armor upon activation

This should help Bastion survive during his ultimate by bringing it up to it;s old but still balanced durability.

An optional but interesting E ability
If the above changes don’t work out, Bastion still has an open E ability. The best change I have seen is to give him a reaction based barrier ability, which looks visually like his old barrier. It would only be available in sentry. The way it would work is that it would be used to block incoming bursts of damage, but couldn’t be used for sustained blocking. It wouldn’t be passively active, the player would need to activate it when they see the damage coming in.

It could have a little as 50 health, and only last a second, but it would be used to block things like hook and self destruct. Its health could only regenerate in recon mode, which encourages switching forms frequently.

Hopefully you see this feedback, and I hope Bastion can get some of the fixes he deserves.

6 Likes
2

These changes are so boring and uncreative … hope they never do this

3

Contrary to the post above mine, I think these are interesting ideas that I would totally love to try out! And I’m someone who plays the hero themselves.

4 Likes
4

Yeah… I just watched a game where I realized Echo also counters Bastion profoundly hard because of just being stationary in Sentry.

Guy needs something.

4 Likes
5

I don’t believe they will change Bastion. He needs support just like any other hero.

Do you remember when Bastion had his own shield? They took it away because he was too self reliant. Need at least one shield tank and good heals to make him work.

My Bastion has dominated Echo in games with good heals and a little protection.

6

This is exactly his problem. A hero isn’t good if it take multiple pockets and certain maps to make him playable.

7

Why not instead of 20% ironclad, have no iron clad but give him a 150 hp shield?
Still allowing him to be taken out without frustration but transfers his damage reduction to give him the ability to do better on his own.

Ironclad could come back into play when he is mobile, for escape and repairing purposes

8

I still think the largest problem above everything is the lack mobility in sentry mode…and I mean 0 mobility…if he had even a small movement ability on a cooldown I think it would help tremendously…like a quick dash that he could use to engage or disengage

9

I wonder what would happen if bastion could heal while shooting :thinking:

10

That would certainly make Bastion better, but it may not feel like Bastion at that point.

11

These are more or less the changes I’d like to see to Bastion. I never felt like he needed a full-on rework like Symm or Torb, but instead just a redistribution of power. I agree with the faster transform times, his sentry should be more flexible without touching his raw damage output. I didn’t get to play Bastion way back when he had a personal shield, but a toggle-able shield with a smaller health pool feels like it would fit better in the game’s balance by today’s standard than how it worked back then.

2 Likes
12

Allow bastion to slightly raise and lower himself in turret form.

  1. Could make use of cover.

  2. Allows tea-bagging.

14

So 3 heroes dominate a single hero?

1 Like
15

They nerfed his damage by 50% in sentry and then nerfed the spread by 33% (which is actually much worse because there’s more area closer to the outside of a circle). They kind of buffed spread but the whole backwards spread thing is still straight up worse than before.

1 Like
17

Nerfing while buffing hasn’t worked a single time for Bastion so how’bout we try something new and not nerf him at the same time? Ironclad being traded into health or something isn’t exactly a nerf because there are also benefits of having it as raw health.

1 Like
19

The thing with Bastion is that he just needs buffs or a rework. He does not need any nerfs at all. Like I said I would be fine with the changes sugested above but also would add bonus movement speed in recon mode and a hitbox reduchtion by 20%. Right now its easier to hit a Bastion than a Rein or Zarya…

How about also keeping Ironclad but making it -25% damage but just in front of him. If you attack him from behind or one of the sides he takes full damage. So something like a “passive shield”.

20

That’s literally everything in the game. You need to shoot it to kill it and if you don’t shoot it, it will kill you. That’s called being dumb.

21

I find this all… interesting.

Do i think these changes would work?
What is… “Working” Anyways.

Yes, i think they’d at least prop Bastion up a little.

But they’re… simple.
Simple isn’t a bad thing, simple is actually hard to pull off for some people, myself included… Complicated is just easier, because it has so many more parts, we don’t have to make it look good as a whole.

I personally love when something can be beautifully simple, but… in this case it is my personal opinion that we don’t need a new paint job, or a new outlook… we need a wrench, and a whole new frame.

23

Yea… that would definitely make Bastion feel better, but the same argument could be made like this:

“Soldier doesn’t really feel great when he’s between reloads, and relying on his helix rockets, so why don’t we give him some kind of hovering device, for vertical mobility for a short time, on a rather punishing resource?”

You should however, play Pharah.

In the case of Bastion… if mobility is your problem, you should play Tracer.

Bastion’s main defense is based on the trade off of:

“Hey i’m not going to move now, but i’m also going to be deadly if you get near me”

The problem is, that trade off no longer exists because too many people didn’t like… dying.

Now the interaction is a lot more like:

“Hey, i’m going to lock myself to the ground and make myself a larger immobile target, so please feel free to rush me, because i can’t even punish you by looking at your head”

1 Like
24

This is all really long complicated way to have recon have the same effective-HP as sentry mode when surely the simpler and more straightforward solution is to just have ironclad apply constantly regardless of what mode bastion is in? Adding all that in the patch notes, it’ll be a mess.

You have to balance how Ironclad change in effectiveness of healing with how 20% ironclad not exactly a problem right now, it’s enough of a struggle to keep sentry bastion alive. Also people are concerned about feeding ult charge, damage reduction leads to less ult-charge being fed than just having more health.

Would be better if it was something that applied in all modes.

Like how Hammond’s adaptive shield applies in all modes.

It’d be nice if it was a utility that had team benefit, something like sonic arrow.