The Inevitable Bastion Rework

General Discussion
23

Has no one down there learned how to use Hanzo yet?

3 Likes
26

They’re probably boosted at the moment. :wink:

Just kidding. I see a lot of Hanzo, they usually seem more concerned about busting tanks over dealing with Bastion, when we do run into him.

27

Do we?

28

Like I said, I don’t rhink he’s OP, just annoying when I do see him. And yeah, my team usually doesn’t focus him. I probably will start playing with friends soon, I’m hoping I’ll be able to duo q with someone for season 13 placements when they come along.

29

When he’s power crept? It’s already happened.

30

What if Bastian was reworked into a tank…

Instead of doing toxic amounts of dmg in turret form he pushed things back similar to hogs ult.
Then his recon mode is made more tanky and viable

31

He has a negative winrate in both bronze and silver and DrClan (if he shows up) is silver and yet claims Bastion needs help.

We’ve both got people in the same rank area saying the opposite thing and there’s also stats on my side.

2 Likes
32

When something stops existing it means a lot (anything above silver and especially above plat)

33

That’s not Bastion. He was designed and should stay as a glass cannon or else what’s the point? I don’t look at a minigun and think that it should have low damage but have knockback.

34

Ill be honest I thought this said “Invisible” Bastion Rework, And was suddenly very scared and very excited

1 Like
35

Bastion’s problem is that he takes a lot of team coordination. He’s a solid DPS with fairly good survivability (Being his Self heal and Ironclad passive) while also involving a good amount of team coordination.

In low-ranks (Gold and below) he can devastate the enemy team because he can be difficult to deal with if you don’t have a cooperating team. However, in higher ranks, he’s a lot less effective unless the team is pirate shipping him, as the players in those ranks have more game sense and mechanical skills which make him easier to counter, as he is a sitting duck while in turret form and has less defence in Recon.

They’d really need to do something to raise his skill floor without lowering his skill ceiling. I don’t think a full scale rework in needed, however he does need some touch ups.

(Edit) Perhaps changing his Self-Heal ability to something which requires a tad bit more skill could be a good way in ‘reworking’ Bastion

36

His self heal is good in my opinion. I don’t think that should be changed at all. If they want to make an ability require more skill, I think it should be Ironclad. Remove the passive damage resist, change it to something more active (I’m pretty sure I have an example in this thread up a little ways). Make the player work and manage resources for that survivability…

If they want to raise both his skill ceiling and floor, they can reduce his spread, reduce his damage (I would suggest reducing it to 12), add headshots, and add a bit of bonus damage against barriers (to adjust for the damage reduction). This accomplishes about the same goal of reducing his overall damage slightly as his spread increase, but maintains his consistency, and locks the higher damage behind headshots. While he would be able to do more damage than he can now, this would only be the case for those who can get a pretty consistently high critical accuracy.

37

More like so.i can start crying expecting him to be symmetra’d

I swear if they remove his self heal im going to be angry

38

I’m going to say no again like before to reducing his damage, even with headshots. That is 100% a nerf from before when he wasn’t even super great. No ironclad and less damage but normal other stats means they would have flat out nerfed old sentry.

1 Like
39

I think Bastion is a ‘one strategy’ hero. There are slight variations on it but for the most part, he’s fit within the same lanes as old Sym and Torb because of that principle. One strategy to play that works at lower tiers but at mid-to-higher ends can be worked around or counter entirely through a moderate amount of team work.

Pirate ship is the exception but that’s a niche element and requires full teamwork to remove properly. The expectation is there though that when you run a Bastion, you will know what they are going to try and do.

I think he does need a Rework. One of, if not the last hero in the cast that does at this point given that his kit, unlike any other hero, is fundamentally designed around a singular strategy no matter the rest of the his teammates. I don’t think there’s any other hero now that operates like that.

I think there are some options to throw around at him, but I think to counter-act any new additions made to the character, some fundamental changes should be applied:

Sentry Cooldown - Make the ability have a cooldown and duration. For a set amount of time, Bastion can drop into this format and deliver stationary but insanely heavy damage output. Tweak the damage numbers and ironclad passive to allow for survival while the ability is active. You can increase his effective damage capacity with a lot more variation when sentry doesn’t last forever and has gaps for teamplays to be made against him. This also opens up other options for what he could do during his Sentry mode.

Self-Heal is a Burst - At full resource, pressing the ability gives Bastion a massive burst heal (250?) that drains the resource meter by half. Anything below full is the heal up. Reduce the resource meter’s recharge time while in Sentry and Increase it while in Recon.

With these two changes I feel like Bastion, though not entirely in the right spot, would have a lot more options and opportunities open for how to make him as viable as the rest of the cast is in more than just a single Strategy while also increasing his skill ceiling through CD and Resource management. Small numbers tweaks to damage and damage reduction passives could alleviate any issues these might bring up.

40

Nope. He is supposed to be built around sentry, that’s why he has it. Adding a random cooldown breaks everything. “Too bad my reason for existing is on cooldown.” Not even Mercy has this issue with rez because she is also based around being a primary healer.

1 Like
41

So, I think the iron clad buff is fine but needs more tweaking, his turret damage is also relatively fine but maybe could use a bump with a definite spread reduction. As for recon it needs to be competitive with soldiers left click more but even with his heal he dies too quickly so I’d opt for a tighter hitbox and maybe crit immunity.

I think one of the biggest issues with him is that you have to be careful with how he works in turret mode in relation to sheilds. In that he needs to be self reliant, but if he is too self reliant in turret mode he gives far more output than he ought to. I honestly don’t know how to fix this… Maybe restricting healing in turret form to only outside healing, reducing the amount he gets heals by his ironclad bonus and putting the transformation on cool down if he swaps? This would allow you to distribute his cooperative bonus into both modes self reliance and versatility while making the “protect bastion” strat less cheese able in all modes.

You might even be able to give his turret mode movement.

Alternatively maybe there’s a way to give his turret 2 modes, a mobile less damaging tank mode, and a more durable turret mode that does better damage but cannot move. Might add more of a difficulty curve to using him.

42

And that’s his problem. Being built around a static, stationary, one strategy capability funnels all his attention and usefulness into that form. It’s silly.

43

Silly because nobody will take the time to actually think it could be balanced. Everyone always goes to the extreme of “it’s OP or won’t work.”

44

Perhaps sentry should be less powerful and recon should be buffed a bit but the playstyle can and should be balanceable, if not by making changes on bastion himself then by tweaking heroes around him or even adding a hero that benefits him somehow

Currently the one that works best with bastion is Orisa mostly because of the anchor tank thing but what if there was an anchor support added into the game? Soldier can be considered one but he needs to take advantage of his sprint as to stay static… either way, Bastion can be balanced and in all honesty his kit doesn’t have much wiggle room