The problem with Bastion 150 hours later

General Discussion
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I’ve been playing Overwatch pretty consistently since Season 2, and I just reached 150 hours on Bastion, my main. After the climb from Silver to Gold to Platinum to Diamond, here are my thoughts on Bastion as of right now.

Bastion is a very interesting(?) hero in my eyes due to how despite his incredibly simplistic kit, he seems to be so incredibly limited in capability. This isn’t just my experience either; many other Bastion players seem to have come to a similar conclusion. He does a lot of damage, that’s his job and that’s fine, but the fact that he’s so entirely limited in terms of HOW and WHERE he does that damage seems perhaps a little problematic.

Bastion also effectively feels like half of a hero. As said, this is a feeling, so I can’t exactly justify it, but I suspect it’s because he’s so entirely binary; he’s either really good, or really bad. This happens because he’s either left useless by counters or is left uncontested by a lack thereof, or because he’s in Sentry mode, which is quite powerful, or Recon mode, which is quite underwhelming.

This whole predicament is fully realized whenever you look at Junkertown: it’s literally the only place where he’s regularly played. Why? Because it’s the only environment where he can reliably work. He’s so limited in capability that he can only reliably work on (arguably) a single point of a single map.

Even in terms of tank busting, his effectiveness is severely limited against a skilled tank due to how many tanks have abilities (or at least an ultimate) that are CC-based, which Bastion struggles against in most environments.

The last major problem I’ve found with Bastion is how limited he is in terms of positioning, despite being quite possibly the single-most positioning-dependent hero. Much of the fun of Bastion comes from Sentry’s hilarious damage and finding interesting spots for Sentry, which is ironically severely limited due to none of his regular forms having any notable mobility capabilities. To get to many of the positions where Bastion is most powerful, he has to use his ultimate, and since, as any good Bastion player would tell you, you shouldn’t be in a single spot for more than about 20 seconds, players often find themselves using their ultimate to get to an effective position only to have to leave said position seconds later. I fully understand having Sentry be immobile, but I do think Bastion should have SOME option of mobility in a normal ability. This would help to address the major lack of adaptability he suffers from as well.

Anyways, I hope plenty of people read this, and discuss away!

TL;DR: Bastion suffers from a heavy imbalance and limitation of capabilities due to only having very binary options. Despite being very positioning-reliant he largely lacks the ability to find interesting positions.

7 Likes
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So… you’re saying bastion should climb walls? Recon could use some love, even though the rifle is already better than soldier’s (very low spread). If they REALLY wanted to buff bastion, speeding up the switch between turret/recon would be awesome.

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No. What I’m saying is that at some regular interval, like every 2 or 3 seconds, he should be able to get some vertical height. A concept I came up with awhile ago would rework Tank into a normal ability, allowing for more reliable mobility.

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Maybe you should duo with a Mei?

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I think the best fix for him is for bastion his aim use recoil instead of bloom. He’s just too much like soldier in recon. And his turret mode is too simple. If he have recoil then the dps will be about controlling recoil. And people who can control recoil better can do better dps at longer range.

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Beep blurp de brzzz beep boop ctctct

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Also new forum has a TL;DR button, click the gear above the text box.

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Making him immune to Halt and Hook and Charge while in sentry form would help.

Those are all Tank abilities, and Bastion is supposed to counter Tanks. Orisa, Roadhog, and Reinhardt don’t have to counter Bastion when their teammates can play so many other heroes that do counter Bastion.

Making Tank Mode an ability for faster movement would be weird. What would it give up in balance for that speed and availability?

A better idea is to give him a grappling anchor. Like Widowmaker’s grappling hook for getting into better firing positions in Recon Mode, but Bastion can also aim it at the ground at his feet in sentry mode to work like a one-use Fortify that counters Halt, Hook, and Charge.

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My balancing for Tank would have it lose 10% movement speed while in Tank mode, only be able to fire once every two seconds, would have 30% damage resistance, and would have each shot do 120 damage.

Ult would be an overdrive mode that would make Tank the way it is now or another form that would have the old Tank mechanics.

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So you don’t want Tank Mode to address Bastion’s mobility limitations as a Defense hero (when people are asking for even Torbjorn to scale walls like all other non-Bastion Defense characters)…

…but instead to give him an anti-squishy mode, in addition to his “anti-tank” mode?

I would personally consider it weird for tank mode to go slower than Recon over flat terrain. Given Bastion’s dune buggy skin and transformation highlight, I think they feel the same.

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I actually have a megathread with the same idea:

There’s way more in that post involving his main problems, ways to fix them, and a possible rework that includes the “mini tank mode”. It has links to fairly popular threads from the old forums about changes for him and a few demonstrations of the Bastion first shot bug with his ultimate.

I recommend you read the rework section in the post as it clears up how his ult would work with such an ability

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I think tank form should come with added speed, health, and an increased height to cannon jumping.

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That sounds kind of weird. It’ll be slowed down to 60 dps and be very hard to kill but that’s it. It’d be good for nothing but a little vertical mobility and stalling until you die.

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You realize you can literally replace “Bastion” with "Reaper"and the entire post still works out pretty well XD

Just wanted to point out that Bastion is not the only hero who suffers from “having binary options”

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Agree, any tweaking Bastion requires could be done via transform time.