There is now no counter play between Pharah and Bastion once Bastion is set up. The changes that she got are 1. less splash but more direct damage (this doesn’t matter against Bastion as a Pharah generally only direct hits Bastion) and 2. increased fire rate (which just makes you kill a Bastion much faster).
Before these changes there were options as Bastion to survive.
Once you get hit by a rocket, there is already another one on the way to hit you. It takes 4 rockets to kill you in sentry, or 3 in recon, or 2 in sentry and 1 in recon. (don’t say “just fight her in recon mode”. This is addressing the very common scenario of when you are set up in sentry and you can get by a rocket) So when you get hit once you can either:
Stay in sentry and start self healing and call for shielding or healing: the healing allows you to take an extra rocket before dying, so your healer/tank has the time of 3 rockets to respond.
Stay in sentry and return fire: with good tracking, if they are close enough, you can kill them before they fire the 4th rocket to kill you. Or if they are out of range to kill them fast enough, you can couple returning fire with asking for healing or shielding, this would mean the risk of your healer/tank would only have the time of 2 rockets to respond, but the benefit of if they do you will most likely secure the elim.
Hop out of sentry immediately and start self healing as you walk to cover: the second rocket in the air will impact you before you transform completely, meaning you can only survive one more hit as you now don’t have ironclad. The Pharah will then most likely hit the next rocket as you are slow and big, so this tactic only works if cover is really close.
With her faster fire rate, the reaction time of your teammates in option 1 has to be much faster, the distance you’ll be able to take her down in option 2 is much shorter (doesn’t matter how fast you lock onto her and how well you track, with his spread in sentry you can only kill her so fast), and the distance you can run to cover in option 3 is much shorter.
With all this said, I dont know if anything needs to be changed; I am just bringing attention to an interaction that’ll make a big difference that many probably didnt think about.
Bastion is actually a great Pharamery counter for those that cant play Widow. He does reliable and hard hitting hitscan damage so either pocket him or shield him then the Pharah either gets destroyed or forced inti hiding
Only with constant pocketing. If the shield and healing isn’t on you for a few seconds, with her faster fire rate, you die. And it would be nice to be able to not require constant pocketing.
Pharah doesn’t require pocket. The stats I posted are without mercy pocket. With mercy pocket it is even more unbalanced, as you can’t kill her and she can kill you almost twice as fast. Don’t know why you’d even say that…
As Terra said. He never countered Pharmacy. At any range other than like 20 feet, Mercy can out-heal his damage to a small and mobile target like Pharah.
Bastion is only good against a Pharmercy that’s playing 10 meters from the point. He’s got a much larger spread in Sentry mode than Soldier’s maximum spread, making him very inconsistent at the ranges that a good Pharah should be playing at. His spread is more similar to D.va’s than it is to his own spread in Recon mode.
As an example, if Bastion is on the hump of Volskaya B, and Pharah is hovering above the choke, then Bastion can’t hit her enough to out-damage Mercy’s healing.
btw push the full quote button (right next to the bold option) so you don’t break quotes. It shows as I said he’s a PharMercy counter because of regular highlighting and quoting.
Yeah I wondered how to do that. Although I also made it replying to CreamGod so the quote button won’t do it. But that’s good to know, thanks.
Also I like how me, Terra, Grant, and like 5 others are the only Bastion supporters left and we show up in a ton of threads together. Lol. (also so great the Blizz doesn’t care…)
full quote then just remove the stuff you don’t want it to say. Now you’ve got a proper quote of only the section you want.
If it’s a reply to someone else then start replying the the comment you want to quote from, full quote, remove the stuff you don’t want, copy it, then go to where you actually want to reply and paste it.
I mean, someone has to get all of the “He needs to lose self-healing, lose 50% of his DPS in Sentry, and gain 0.01% more Ironclad, then he’ll be balanced” out of here…
I mean cmon. They just reworked Torb in a huge way. Give Bastion the same deal. Idk how. Movement ability while in turret? Front shield (it’s always been called OP to have an individual front shield, but now Brig has it…)?
Yes, but counter generally means “40% chance to escape, 20% chance to win”. With this it’s a MUCH more uneven battle than Tracer/Brig, Winston/Reaper, Pharah/Widow etc.
Who says? Nowhere have I seen a thing that says she should be a Bastion counter. If anything, by example midrange hitscans should counter her, which is what he’s supposed to be.
Bastion 1.0 was pretty much the best counter to Pharah, and he should be. Bastion is pretty much what they use for anti-air in real life, it makes sense that he would be the best counter to Pharah.
