Why can’t Blizzard realise yet that Bastion needs help? My only question here.
I have no doubt they know Bastion is not doing well, but they probably don’t know what they want to do with him
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They probably are waiting for overwatch 2 to work on a rework, because let’s be honest, a buff can’t do anything for him
Although I must say I’ve seen some pretty interesting changes that could work and are easy to make done by shifting power from Sentry to recon, such as iron clad, heal while shooting, etc. Pretty interesting I must say
Ironclad in recon mode, it’ll be fine. It’s not where bastion is strong but it’s key to overall viability.
Yeah… a lot of their choices for who to buff/nerf seem random, but I imagine with their plans to release multiple heroes with OW2 it’s a pretty awkward game to deal with balancing right now
As they have to balance these multiple heroes that will drop at once, and also balance the public game, while making sure neither totally ruins the other
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But then it would be pretty dang hard to finish Bastion off since he could move out of the fire, heal, and take less damage in the process. It would also undermine the value of sentry mode since that’s where Bastion is supposed to be strongest.
This was my idea, ill just quote it from another thread
But realsitically, they either
1: are okay with him beeing niche
2: Dont care
3: Are already planning something for him
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Yeah, that’s the idea, and you win because they’ve stopped threatening you with a 450dps gatling gun.
Why would they give up 450dps unless it was for something worthwhile like a CHANCE to escape.
No, Bastion is NOT supposed to be all sentry just like Hammond isn’t supposed to be all-ball, they’re supposed to be more equal.
I do think Bastion and Hammond were made to be imbalanced in usage, that’s the intent. Neither mode is useless for them, but they clearly intend for one to be used more often than the other.
And I know the intent is for Bastion to be hard to finish off, but that’s what got Ironclad nerfed in the first place. Bastion has a huge upside with huge downsides. The more you decrease the downsides, the harder it is to deal with the upside. Bastion is supposed to be extremely dangerous, but easy to take down if you make it past the line of defense.
I doubt they don’t care and they probably want people to use the characters they made. I think it really is just a problem of the character being too hard to balance.
Yet they clearly said they wanted to de-emphasise sentry and have recon be used more.
How do you know that? And what do you mean? Do you mean you “know” that when playing bastion you should never feel pressured to exit sentry mode to escape in recon mode?
I’ll tell you that after putting hundreds of hours into bastion… it isn’t that way.
The downsides of sentry are IDENTICAL.
You’re just as easily hooked/hacked/tranq’d/charged or forced to leave sentry as you know you’re about to be destroyed.
The problem is you can’t viably attempt a neutral game. You know what a neutral game? it’s where you give up to avoid a loss, every hero has this. When Reaper gives up an attack to use wraith to escape, that’s the neutral game. When he uses wraith just to juke out a flashbang then immediately cancel it with fully loaded guns that’s the “positive game”.
Whoa whoa whoa… there you go with the assumptions again.
Defences?
So the only way we can consider Bastion playing is where some other barrier-tank deems is appropriate? No. That sucks. That’s bunker. Forget about bunker, it it putting too many resources in for too little out, it only works in very rare circumstances as a surprise but 95% of the time it’s a losing strategy.
If you hook bastion you’ve already done great by
- taking away bastion’s ability to attack with 3450dps
- now exposed his head critbox frontally
- much MUCH larger hitbbox generally
- perfectly positioned to pour damage into him
why do you need to “win-more” of also taking away ironclad?
And different but equivalent things if charged/slept/hacked/etc.
Why is it so intolerable that Bastion has a fighting chance just to attempt a “neutral game”?
Because Bastion has sentry mode? That’s why his “neutral game” isn’t so good
You can’t give him massive attack and the means to get out of trouble with any kind of reliability. Bastion is very much an all or nothing character. If they wanted to emphasize recon mode to an equal degree to sentry mode then they would have made it so.
If they want Bastion to work reliably without barriers, then they will have to make the modes equal. To do that though, sentry mode has to lose the damage and make up for it some other way, which is a tall order. A Bastion with the current sentry mode and a buffed up to its level recon mode would be way out of line. And no, I don’t mean Bastion’s recon gun doing that damage, I just mean the general power level.
And it is no assumption that Bastion is designed around being dangerous, yet vulnerable. How else would you counter him?
Well the neutral game is obviously not staying in sentry mode. It’s not a “neutral game” to stay in sentry mode and keep shooting and win.
I think you’re a little too fixated on memes and stereotypes of bastion. Try to forget everything you’ve ever heard about bastion, then take just a fresh look at the wiki of the hero. Forget about everyone you ever heard say “just get behind barriers” 99% of the people who say that have never played bastion except to soft-throw.
Why not? Every other hero does.
No bastion should NOT that’s terrible design for everyone, the greatest criticism of bastion by both those who main that hero and those who play against or with bastion is precisely that.
But what’s been done it the “all” has been reduced but the “nothing”… has not. Especially not for CC.
That’s not an argument against Bastion, that’s an argument against any update except bug-fixes since the game came out in 2016.
Should any beneficial change for a hero you like have never been implemented as if the devs really wanted that they would have “made it so” before?
They DID! Sentry and Recon used to have identical hp+resistances.
And when they did give sentry ironclad they explicitly said this was an attempt to make recon relatively more importance.
No it doesn’t, you just want to nerf a hero’s core ability when they have the lowest pickrate for some nebulous advantage that you won’t even consider.
Okay, but why? What’s the reason?
You’ve given no reasoning like “if X is the case then Y will happen and that would be terrible because Z”
You may have “if Ironclad recon is the case then he will survive roadhog hook combos” but the “because z” isn’t there. Why can’t they possibly survive that? Why is it so insufficient to pull them out of position and stop their key ability?
What do you mean “How else would you counter him?”!?!?!
Bastion would be countered the EXACT SAME WAY they currently are countered it’s just their counters wouldn’t be guaranteed to kill.
Look, you have to deal with a simple fact: all these CC is supposed to be hard to land therefore it isn’t a problem if it’s easy to score a follow up kill. But if the hook and so on is easy to land on a stationary sentry then the trade off is to make the follow up harder.
It’s still a counter, it’s just not an excessively hard counter.
Alright, I can’t continue this arguement seriously if you think I have a chip on my shoulder against Bastion
I don’t want to nerf Bastion, I’m just saying he’s one of those characters that you can’t just buff significantly without also nerfing him.
Why would I want to nerf the worst character in the game?
If you really think it takes a “chip on your shoulder” just to not care about heroes you aren’t invested in, I don’t think you understand the phrase “chip on your shoulder”
How could I possibly think you wanted to nerf bastion… I mean you did out right suggest nerfing the one unique positive of their kit.
Why?
Other heroes with low pickrates got straight buffs.
I don’t know, you’re holding your cards to your chest but most likely you simply have no interest in ever playing bastion so it’s “everything to gain, nothing to lose” if bastion’s single outstanding attribute is deleted…