Tweaks that fix Bastion (no rework needed)

General Discussion
1

They are:

  • Armour/base-health ratio becomes 150/150 (From 100/200)
  • 0.5 sec transformation into recon (from 1.0 sec)
  • Instantly cancel self-repair (currently can’t cancel it for first 1.1 sec of use)

The Big Changes

Bastion can now survive the Hook combo well enough if you can turn away and protect your head hitbox and also activate self-repair. Armour effectively cuts Hog’s damage in half the problem is Bastion doesn’t have enough, this is a tweak that works. But 150/150 armour/health doesn’t screw Reaper who would need the exact same number of shots to frag sentry.

DVA is not going to have an easy a time melting through Sentry, who is a strong pick in OWL and the top-ranks.

Matchups with Orisa are also now possible, it’s a simple interaction where Bastion and Orisa damage each other at predictable rates and Orisa will consistently win unless Bastion has a bit more armour.

Speeding up the transformation into sentry solves the mobility problem, how you can fight in Recon generally and enter Sentry when it’s the right time and place without an excessive delay. 0.5sec is long enough that people can’t say they have no time to act but 1.0 sec into sentry is giving way too much time for any opponents to respond.

It’s 0.5 sec to transform from sentry to recon so this just makes the transformations fair.

Self-repair could be a really useful ability but slow to activate and slow to switch back to firing mode means it’s effectively useless in combat. When you activate it then it’s like waving a huge “I’m DEFENCELESS” flag for what is (at first) only a trickle of healing. Being able to cancel it makes it useful in combat.

This also means you can use self repair with tank mode as it’s practical to shoot between each shot now.

Neutral/negligible changes:

I don’t wanna hear “wow you’re making Bastion unkillable!”

Soldier 76 needs to land only 16 rather then 15 shot from his primary fire after landing a helix rocket from sentry, a negligible change
The primary fire of Ana, Ashe, Pharah, Hanzo, Junk, Widow, McCree, Torb, Zen (as well as Secondary fire of Symm) would frag Sentry in the exact same number of shots but they aren’t the problem for Bastion.
Hanzo’s storm arrow combo would require the same number of hits on sentry.
Doomfist could still frag sentry with slam+uppercutt then 4 shotgun blasts.

2

I’d just make it so that he transforms into and out of his Ult the same speed he does in Sentry mode.

Takes no self damage during his Ult (but does take knockback)

And then that speedbuff while healing might be nice. Or damage resistance during his heal.

Also couldn’t hurt if his hitboxes got shrunk as small as is reasonable.


1 Like
3

We already have damage reduction of ironclad AND damage reduction of armour, I’d rather increase armour to keep things simple.

And buffing the power of self-repair doesn’t do any good when so many things cancel self repair like Sombra’s hack and Ana’s bionade.

Bastion’s hitbox is already really close to his visible model, the problem is he is just so big and scaling him down turned out to look ridiculous. The large size is what we have to work with. They didn’t even include his feet as hitboxes, that’s very generous.

4

I still believe any form of buff needs to go to recon mode. Thats why Iron clad should probably get the boot in favor of overall base hp buff.

5

Either way, I guess what I was going for was for him to be more viable in Recon and Tank mode.

And mostly just leave Sentry mode as-is.

For instance, maybe make Recon bastion immune to headshots.

Or maybe just shrink his headshot crit in Recon to only the little dot in font of light blue.

6

The thing about buffing Recon is it feels a bit like buffing Ashe or Widow’s hipfire to buff them.

Imagine if it took Widow or Ashe a whole 1.0 sec to even scope in, and Bastion has a “charge up” mechanic with the shrinking spread analogous to Widow charging shots.

To me, the way to increase viability in recon is to make it more viable to stay in recon but go into sentry mode when needed.

7

I actually like the idea I just came up with.

Give him a teeny tiny critical hitbox which is just his light blue front of his face.

8

[reply from comment in another thread that’s more in line with this thread topic]

I can see why you think that would be inevitable, if you play Bastion up front and just stay in one spot shooting (which is very audible) and not repositioning then the whole enemy team will easily drop on you.

Nobody can survive that.

Not even a tank.

No hero needs to be strong enough to 1 vs 6, if Bastion WAS strong enough to 1 vs 6 then any 1 vs 1 fight would be totally unbalanced.

The difference is you don’t die to a SINGLE Roadhog.

If it’s a teamfight then maybe I get a bubble after being hooked, maybe the hog gets booped to disrupt his shot, the problem is the dependence on others for SO MANY simple 1 vs 1 fights.

If you’re spending every game shouting into the mic “everyone else play the game for me!” then that’s no good, you have to be able to pull your own weight.

Well why is this a 1 vs 3? Where’s Bastion’s team? What at they doing? Why aren’t they doing something like distracting the Hanzo?

Why are ALL THREE distracted by Sentry? If sentry suddenly pops up on the high ground then Rein can’t turn his barrier away from the Ana to charge the Bastion. Hanzo can’t just drop the fight they’re in and ignore the Junkrat grenades he was just dodging.

I am addressing the Flank Bastion who gets screwed by a SINGLE hero who sees Sentry responding to sentry and being able to eliminate sentry by themselves.