It appears that the devs are realizing that stationary turret-based characters just don’t work in this game, with the changes to Sym and now Torb changing how their turrets work and giving them more power in other areas. It only makes sense for Bastion to be up next, right?
Bastion’s previous rework… didn’t go great. He launched in an OP state and almost immediately was hit with a major nerf in reaction to that. Ever since, he’s probably actually been worse than he was before the rework started. Other than his niche on Junkertown he’s useless in so many situations, and it seems to get worse with every patch. In this most recent patch, Pharah became significantly stronger against Bastion and Torb’s new ultimate is going to delete him right away.
I hope that the dev team realizes that Bastion is in need of some changes, because much like Sym and Torb his stationary playstyle just doesn’t fit into the game
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Yes bastion can now throw himself half a mile behind the enemy
Yeah pretty likely, I feel like after Torb’s rework goes live the only hero that will be bad in 90% of situations will be Bastion, which really isn’t good for him ofc.
NEW ABILITY: Throw Me!. Large characters (e.g. Reinhardt, Zarya, Roadhog) can now pick up Bastion and throw him a certain distance across the map, allowing Bastion to set up behind enemy lines.
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^Honestly I want this. Sounds fun lol
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While I agree Bastion needs changes, I disagree and the stationary part not fitting in Overwatch.
The reason Torbjorn and Symmetra got the changes they did was because of automated damage, Bastion doesn’t have that.
The reason automated damage was bad was because it has a set skill floor. If it was straight up buffed to good in GM it would be crazy OP in bronze, where they were balanced before.
They fixed this problem by removing Symmetra’s lock on, reducing the amount if sentries she has but giving them lots of other buffs, and made Torbjorn’s turret target who ever you last shot at, makings it’s power tied even closer to that of the Torbjorn’s skill.
Bastion has no automated damage, and therefore doesn’t need changes like removing sentry. What he needs is his old damage back. I would propose this:
Old sentry
Old tank
Current recon
Current self repair
Ironclad attached to self repair at 25%
I really hope so, wana see my square boi more often.
Maybe they can reduce his damage slightly but have him be able to roll around in turret mode kind of like tank mode.
Being stationary isn’t his problem. His problem is not having a proper damage profile to compensate for being stationary. He has the second worse automatic firerate in the game (Behind Tracer, tied with Widowmaker), but because he’s stationary, it makes his spread almost unusable. He can’t get closer to his enemies to negate his extremely large spread. They decided that 3° was too much for Sombra (They reduced her to 2.7° I think, somewhere near there anyway) who can turn invisible to get behind her enemies, but it’s just fine for Bastion who can’t move. I really wish they’d just copy over Hammond’s spread profile, it would actually make a lot of sense on Bastion. Maybe tweak it a bit so his bloom starts a little before Hammonds does though.
Ironclad was also implemented rather poorly. A passive damage resistance is extremely hard to balance around. That’s his main main issue, not his immobility. It makes him far more pocketable than he should be, as it’s easier to heal him than it is for him to take damage. They need to do away with the passive damage resist, and either ditch Ironclad all together, or make it into something else. My personal favorite would be to allow Bastion to “overheal” himself with 75 orange armor (the armor that Torb gives currently) when repairing. Healers can’t heal this armor, only Bastion can, and Bastion can only apply it when at full health. That would solve the pocket problem, and let Bastion be more independent at the same time. Another option is to just apply the damage resist when he heals, kinda like Roadhog, but not as much resistance as Roadhog. Maybe 20-25%.
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I understand your argument for sure but I feel like being totally stationary does create a skill floor in a way, just not as obviously as automated damage does. Combat has always been about skill in two areas - aiming and movement. Bastion has to aim but doesn’t have to use any movement in combat. By not having any movement to work with in the middle of combat Bastion is really limited and ends up becoming worse as player skill goes up, the same way Sym and Torb did. If they buffed current Bastion to the point that he could survive in GM with such limited movement, he would dominate the lower ranks.
Old Bastion was much better about this. He had to move around a lot more than current Bastion, because new Bastion has Ironclad in Sentry mode which encourages a more stationary playstyle, and because of his spread, which makes him take significantly longer to kill anything than he did before, meaning he needs to stay in Sentry longer than he should. Bastion should play a lot like Widow. He should set up, get a pick, maybe two, and then reposition. But as it stands now, this isn’t how he plays, which is unfortunate.
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Yes, unfortunately the rework took him in the wrong direction. I think if they’d simply made the changes to recon and self repair and let him reconfigure faster (always his main issue), but let him keep old sentry and didn’t bother with ironclad it would have worked out better
I think they will rework Bastion to be less reliant on sitting in one place busting out 500 DPS, because the only way it works is a cheese pocket strat that everyone but the Bastion player would rather quit the game than go up against.
Which won’t go over well, given my interactions with Bastion players on here in the past.
Definitely. New Recon, New repair, new transform time, old Sentry, old Tank would be perfect. Ironclad can be removed completely for all I care, if I can kill things fast, I don’t need damage reduction.
“In order to improve his viability on offense, we are giving Bastion a pogo stick.”
His damage is actually pretty bad. He has one of the worst DPS in the game because of his spread. You can see more about that here. Though I do agree with removing the “protect me pls” strats, everyone hates those, Bastion mains included. However, reducing his damage and increasing mobility isn’t really going to help with that, it will just make him more dependent on them. He needs his old damage back and to remove the passive damage resist from Ironclad. That’s what making him so reliant on teammates, his poor damage output and high pocketability. He has to stay in one spot for far too long just to get a kill, which means his team needs to protect him while he does it. His mobility after his rework is fine, he can transform very quick. The issue is that he’s not encouraged to. That part needs to change.
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So far, hes the only hero who hasnt been worked on ever since his failed rework.
My bet, Bastion and hopefully Mercy are on the list for heroes that need reworks.