Hello again, I’ll skip the introductions and get to the point.

If you’d like to see my prior work look here:

Bastion: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20745694434

Orisa: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20755585355

Mercy: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20757266428

Bastion, oh boy

General direction for change suggestions:

Increase base survivability against low damage attacks

Slightly increase Recon’s sustainable damage

Increase the finesse required to use the Sentry mode’s gun, but increase its effectiveness when used properly

Increase sentry mode’s ability to deny damage to self- while not making Bastion able to passively deny damage

Increase the general usability of Tank mode

Mechanically speaking: Bastion is an extremely unique hero. The entirety of his kit works as a foil to Soldier:76. Both heroes are built around being generalist characters who can fill roughly every damage based role while having a notable quantity of self-sustainability. Yet while Soldier:76 accomplishes this by being average across the board with his abilities- Bastion switches between extremely specialist roles. In this way, Bastion can be thought of as three very different (yet uniquely limited) heroes that can be interchanged at (nearly) any moment. This makes the issues with each of Bastion’s modes a lot easier to diagnose.

As a whole, Bastion suffers largely from the removal of a crucial part of his kit. Originally, Bastion was intended to have a large permanent shield in sentry mode to block incoming damage. For obvious reasons, a 1000 health personal shield was rather broken. This feature was removed and Bastion’s sentry mode was granted the ability to aim in all directions (previously there was a frontal 180° limit); Yet the increased ability to turn did not effectively make up for his kit lacking any way to mitigate damage. Many iterations and mechanics have been tried since then ranging from granting bonus armor when in sentry mode, and the various versions of ironclad (which is effectively the same gyst as increasing health, except more confusing). None of these options have effectively helped Bastion, and the comparison of pre-ironclad and post-ironclad stats indicate anything it is that Bastion lost its niche, while gaining at best the status of a gimped Soldier:76.

Recon can be seen as the “average” mode across the board, and is by far the most reliable and functional of all three of Bastion’s modes. Yet when compared to other heroes such as Soldier:76, McCree, or Hanzo (all of which fill a rather general “mid range reliable damage” playstyle) the issues present in Recon begins to show. Bastion does not have mobility, nor Bastion have any effective method to secure kills. Soldier:76 has Helix Rockets, McCree has both Flashbang and high burst damage with headshots, and Hanzo has, well, his bow. Recon does benefit from having a rather reliable damage and accurate spread, but it also does not have as much sustained firepower as any of the other characters.

Sentry has always been the red herring out of Bastion’s kit. In theory it is the strongest part of Bastion’s repertoire, yet in effect it has always been the most niche out of his modes due largely by how vulnerable it makes Bastion to health-affecting abilities (Ana’s Biotic Grenade, Zen’s Discord), displacement tools (such as Roadhog’s Hook), and general damage. This has been alleviated partly by lowering the time required to get into sentry yet the lowered range and damage of the sentry gun has led to Bastion being largely incapable of retaliating against enemies using cover.

Tank mode is the oddball ult. It’s entire balancing points it towards being an ult to be used against light, small HP heroes- damage dealers and supports. Yet it is on a hero whose primary use is against tanks. And against tanks, it is by far one of the least reliable ults since nearly every tank can either completely deny it with shields or abilities, or simply, well, tank the shots. It can be an extremely powerful ult in specific situations, but due to Bastion’s lack of mobility, its large character size, and with the extremely loud sound effects from both recon and tank mode, it can be largely dealt with by a single player or two paying attention.

Suggestions: In general: Change health to 50HP/ 250 armor (from 200/100) This would give Bastion a larger capacity to survive in general. His larger character size makes him take far more damage than most other characters in the game. Healing is useful for tanking damage, but time spent healing is time spent not dying. Bastion is already largely countered by characters who can peek, fire once for massive damage, and then quickly hide. This would give him a better capacity to survive the other half of cast. Remove Ironclad in Sentry and Tank mode 35% ironclad is too much. 20% is too little. Anything in between is still confusing to comprehend how it works when stacked with the effects of armor. More on this to follow New passive ability: Piercing damage All of Bastion’s attacks completely ignore the effects of armor and other damage reductions The idea behind this change being to address how badly the sentry gun interacts with tanks. The Sentry gun’s purpose has always been effectively an anti-tank style of weapon. Yet it has always had its damage interact oddly with armored enemies. Adding this ability would also grant Bastion’s recon mode a health damage boost against tanks, while not directly affecting his output against most non-tank characters in the game. See Sentry gun for more information Recon changes: Lower reload time to 1.5s (from 2.0s) Bastion’s reload time is abnormally long compared to every other DPS hero (barring Torbjorn and Doomfist) yet his damage in Recon is rather average across the board (if not weaker considering the lack of a damage-dealing ability). Decreasing the reload time would help to alleviate Bastion’s lack of sustainable firepower in combat in Recon. Sentry changes: Sentry Gun Remove ammo buff (lower ammo from 300 to 200) Remove gun spread nerfs (specifically the +50% maximum spread, and “maximum spread at all times”) Reduce damage by 60% (from base 15 to 6) All of these changes aim to address three issues- each of which build on each other. First and foremost is the accuracy problem. The intent behind lowering the accuracy of the sentry mode was to lower the damage dealt to characters that are smaller (and have smaller health pools). The accuracy was an issue since the Sentry gun’s base damage is extremely high (point blank and out to distance!). Yet the damage against tanks was always weaker due to armor lowering the sentry gun’s damage from anywhere between 33-50%. But even that much reduction only worked to partially counteract the effects of headshots (+100% damage).

By reducing the base damage to slightly less than half, the Sentry’s gun is not quite as overbearing against squishy targets as the original damage was, thus allowing for the accuracy nerf to be removed. By doing so, you improve the capacity for better players in the higher skill levels (where Bastion currently suffers) to utilize the character. Yet overall Bastion would be able to maintain a similar damage output against tanks due to his attacks ignoring the damage reduction of armor. The reduced damage would lower Bastion’s capacity to act as a “shield breaker”, but he would still have far more power in that department than most other DPS characters. Allow for headshots By reintroducing headshots Bastion gets more skill-indexing added onto an otherwise lackluster mode. Yet it also allows for the Bastion player to counteract the effects of having the base damage reduced. It would also allow for a skillful Bastion player to be able to react to certain scenarios that Bastion’s current iteration cannot (e.g. a Reinhardt charging directly into the Bastion) New ability: Directional shield Allows for the Bastion to use the movement keys to create a roughly 70° wide shield in any of the cardinal directions around them. 400HP 1.5s duration, 6.5 second recharge 0.25s activation, .5s deactivation Cannot attack while projecting the shield Cannot heal while projecting the shield. Stops repair from charging while active Shield changes with the movement keys being pressed, not locked to a single direction The addition of a temporary shield would be a much better method for helping the Sentry mode have survivability- while not affecting every enemy the Bastion fights against. It would leave Bastion vulnerable to healers and bursts of damage. But it would also allow for the Bastion to be able to react to ultimates and high impact abilities to a higher degree than “just die”. There is potential to make the shield use the same resource as Repair, though that would require quite a lot of fine number tuning. Tank changes: Activating ult fully heals Bastion Activating ult grants +150 armor Undoing the Tank nerf from his rework. Remove self-damage from tank shots that do not damage enemies This would allow for using the tank for Rocket Jumping more effectively



Q.O.L. Fixes: Recon mode Reduce the “bounce” of Bastion’s gun when jumping and landing. The squash and stretch is far too exaggerated (also to this to Torb too, pls)

Tank mode Remove the center dot from the Tank HUD and allow for the user to use their crosshair Move the duration bar from the bottom left to beneath the crosshair (like most duration abilities), and change it out to the white color to allow for better visibility.



I hope this thread can provide some useful or meaningful suggestions for helping Bastion be more balanced across the board. Thank you for your time.