Looks like he’s been played a whole eight times in GM this week. I heard two of those actually made it out the door before switching.
Sure, he’s often considered a low rank pick, but only in Bronze is that sentiment even mildly reflected. Nobody else is afraid of Bastion and Silver+ will just laugh at him if he shows up.
So how about we buff him instead of removing him?
I truly believe he is getting a rework under OW 2, as Jeff has said he is going to be prominent and with his co-habitation with Torb. He is stuck in the old design style (niche designs) and as things progress he’s looking worse and worse. They can’t ignore him forever.
When they make skins/cosmetics for Bastion it feels like they are wasting time and resources on something pointless. They could’ve put that effort into something that actually matters.
He is absolutely abysmal currently.
For some reason the devs think he is fine right now because they have no plans to rework any hero anytime soon. They said that at Blizzcon 2019 during a interview.
Maybe he will get some love during the Overwatch 2 beta, if he’s lucky.
As an old T500 Bastion main player I just need to agree here. Bastion is too niche and requiert too much from his team ( and the map)to be viable in high ranks.
my conspiracy theory:
As soon as Jeff Kaplans daughter changed her “E54” Nickname, which originally inspired Jeff giving bastion this number… the love for bastion was gone. 
Such an illoyal behavior xD
Well I wasn’t being serious about that. I just think it’s kind of funny that the character might as well not even be there in GM. He definitely needs something. I’m just not sure what.
Easiest buff would be to make it so he isn’t paralyzed for a full 3.0sec during his ultimate.
Perhaps why france won the WC with him in 17, and USA used him to win in 2019…
Hes not “not a threat” as much as he’s a “forgotten threat” that shows back up strong on occasion until people remember how to hard counter him again, despite the fact that hes pretty rarely directly changed.
Edit: and yes, he requires a dedicated-to-the-cause team. Something you wont see much in ladder play.
Just reducing his transformation times all around would do wonders to help him keep up with the game in it’s current state.
Ehh… How about no…
A rework for Bastion is pretty much the only choice for him by now…
A rework, yes.
Not removal.
As in, he still needs to have a machine gun and still needs to be deadly.
Because he’s not outside of the game. Duh.
Most probably yes he will still retain said characteristics, but his overall situational nature, extremely problematic Sentry mode and his overall very flawed design and interactions with all of the other heroes in the roster will have to be severely tweaked…
Yes Sentry Mode is still extremely problematic, and undertuned.
It’s almost always a death sentence for the player, which it should not be.
Using Sentry Mode gives you every downside, and the enemy every advantage.
While being in Recon gives you the advantage of mobility, it also has it’s own downside due to Bastion’s size and lower consistent damage output compared to other smaller heroes.
I mean yeah all of this is true as long as Sentry mode is used without any Support from your teammates, but since that’s not the case in the grand majority of matches, then the exact opposite problem comes to the surface…
This problem, which is pretty much a fundamental design problem, is the fact that while supporting a Bastion requires minimal amounts communication/coordination between team members, in contrast very large amounts of all of that active communication are required from the team trying to counter the Bastion.
And since such levels of communication are pretty much entirely non - existent in low/mid - ranks where the grand majority of the player base is at, playing against a Bastion has been a direct and game - induced disadvantage for any team in said ranks, a major issue something which the developers had to fix years ago to be honest…
Lets not joke ourselves here, it doesn’t take OWL levels of communication to see a stationary target with no shield (Those break easily now, didn’t you hear?) And shoot it, alongside your team.
I believe it takes the same amount of communication to properly run a Bastion, as it takes to fight one.
It’s not some magical strategy that makes your teammates suddenly more intelligent.