BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Placement matches just reminding me how Immortality Field as it is at the moment was a huge mistake and I was 1000% right in how it makes pirate ship exceptionally worse
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Placement matches just reminding me how Immortality Field as it is at the moment was a huge mistake and I was 1000% right in how it makes pirate ship exceptionally worse
Immortality field is so fake I hate it. It's not just the immortality, but stopping you from getting ult build on characters once they hit that 20% health mark is cheap as hell. It's also made team deathmatch even more of a joke since the cooldown doesn't matter much because you'll just die and respawn with a fresh no killz field with that no skill grenade heal spam on top of it.
And the fact that dragonstrike doesn't destroy IF is bullshit to the max. I didn't watch the whole match but this weekend I saw a bit of the Philadelphia/Boston game, and while defending Horizon B Boston did the basic bitch bunker in the corner with Bastion/Orisa/Baptiste, Philly moves the team to that side room, fires off the dragonstrike to kill the bunker but oh wait lol IF is popped up and the Philly team gets wiped out. Defense Matrix is already an ult stealer, you don't need another one.
I know Imm Field is the new shiny and so it's getting the blame, but I'm gonna call Bastion out as the real problem like I did with Rein just last page.
Bastion needs to change. Imm Field wouldn't be half the shittiness it is if it didn't enable specifically Bastion bunker. Other bunkers get less value out of standing in place for a second or two longer thanks to Imm Field. Here's a great way you could rework Bastion to be less cheesy, more skill-based, and begin to solve the burst damage problem in this game - a problem that precipitated dive meta, double sniper meta, and goats meta after that.
Nerf Sentry mode, do the ole ult-is-now-shift Blizzard Special, give Bastion some other ult, make his headshot zone in Recon mode in the small of his back. You have now created a more interesting hitscan option that brings new things to the game. How does this fix Bastion and parts of the game generally? Well...
A dps hero that can't be burst-killed - at least, not from in front - but is still vulnerable to other kinds of engagements. This solves the problem of double-sniper. So there is now one more dps hero you can run against double sniper. And that lack of dps heroes who can do that was part of why double-sniper was so good and why Goats became a thing in the first place!
Less of a bullshit combination with Imm Field because you just nerfed Sentry. Oh and because you nerfed Sentry...
A dps hero that is no longer a cheese hero. Because you nerfed Sentry mode. End of story. Bastion is cheesy just because of Sentry mode. So nerf Sentry mode and give him something else in return. That something else is...
A cool and skill-rewarding third firing mode! This tilts further into what makes Bastion cool instead of nerfing that in order to make him more like Soldier. (Like nerfing Ball to make him more like Winston do you see what I'm saying here. Bastion now has three regular firing modes. He now more directly rewards the most skillful part of his kit - tank mode - and it gives him mobility outside of his ult. Rocket jumping and projectile firing. And since you would obviously nerf the numbers so it doesn't one-shot squishies, it rewards good projectile firing from Bastion and also good projectile dodging in the enemy team. Hell, it rewards players for even picking the right mode in the first place! Because now there's three of them and not just "the mode Bastion wants to be", "the mode Bastion needs for moving" and "Bastion's ult".
And finally, a new VIABLE hero that still counters tanks to a good degree without being ridiculously buffed to get there.
It's sad that:
1) Bastion needs a rework;
2) Blizzard has no reworks in the pipeline;
3) Blizzard has said that they're locking 2/2/2;
4) Orisa got a whole heap of buffs in a mixed-success attempt to provide alternatives to Goats, making her only just 'good enough' at pro level against goats, but slightly OP in every other skill-tier of the game;
5) The best answer to bunker and Bastion bunker especially lies in certain dps-heavy comps which will be impossible or neutered by 2/2/2, and even in those 2/2/2 comps that do fare well against Bastion, the initiative and the responsibility lies primarily with the 2 dps players to pick correctly and do their fucking jobs because no tank or support can effect the outcome half as well as just picking the right goddamn dps;
6) All of these things are or will be true at the same time, causing everyone to freak out and misattribute the real problems and how the effin' eff we got here.
So instead of just fixing Bastion - a project that will take time that Blizzard hasn't already set aside in the near-past when they should have - or, hey, not imposing 2/2/2 to fix a team comp that's already dying right now at the one skill-tier it even still exists anymore...people are going to conclude that the problem is with Orisa and Baptiste and all these other scapegoat problems. And in the process this game is going to become more bland and boring because every hero will become more like every other hero in the same class. The one thing that Baptise does different to other healers will be nerfed. The things about Orisa that make her objectively better than Reinhardt will be nerfed. Bastion is just gonna be blanket nerfed and forgotten for another 18 months, as is, now that I think about it, the Balance Cycle of Bastion.
And at the end of the day what I'm trying to say is, there are a dozen great ways that I haven't even thought of that you could change heroes and the game to solve these problems and more. Problems that we think are written into the very fabric of Overwatch. Changes that would lead to a better game than just admitting defeat and going "fuck it, let's stick with 2/2/2 because balancing videogames is HARD".
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Oh Bastion has needed a nerf for a long time, I've been saying that since the big spread reduction buffs to all the characters, specifically his. But Blizzard always just compounds the problem with something new that's more immediate.
It's kind of like how Hamzo has always needed a nerf on storm arrow and ult build since last year but it's just not the priority because Bridget came and broke the game and it strung out a bunch of different trickle downs.
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
I'd like to see Bastion get less damage and a lot more durability, but frontloaded to the first few seconds of his turret form (and with a brief cooldown). Maybe just give him his frontal shield back that he had in the very start. So you compensate for the inherent weakness of being stationary, but you nerf his power when he's being shielded.
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
Fissure saying it doesn't mean it's definitely happening
Before the Fissure thing, I commented to a friend. Why are they playing DPS all of a sudden in OWL? There was no patch change to warrant this. It's welcome, but really weird.
It didn't make sense till the Fissure thing and the rumor mill said all the teams have been informed before stage 3, that stage 4 will have forced 2-2-2.
Why keep playing what is for sure a dead meta, one which you're already bad at, when you can take the time to get your DPS back into shape?
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miscellaneousinsanitygrass grows, birds fly, sun shines,and brother, i hurt peopleRegistered Userregular
now, is 2-2-2 something that's just going to be implemented in OWL's ruleset or is it going to be something the entire playerbase has to deal with?
because i feel like it's probably just going to be the former
now, is 2-2-2 something that's just going to be implemented in OWL's ruleset or is it going to be something the entire playerbase has to deal with?
because i feel like it's probably just going to be the former
There is almost certainly going to be a role-queue coming for everyone, but what exact form that takes is not known.
I don't think it'll apply to quickplay at the very least though.
Yeah if/when they implement it in comp, it's gonna require a complete overhaul of the entire matchmaking system, so I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon even if it does show up in OWL stage 4.
My guess is they're gonna try it in OWL, keep a close eye on fan reaction, and go from there.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
You know, with them putting Richard Hammond offline for about a week, I kind of would like to see them do that with a few other characters just to see what the playerbase can do in that timeframe. Like, remove Orisa for a week, then Bridget, then Widow, in a sense do a hero ban under the guise of technical issues and see what happens. I think that will open up a lot of interesting data points among both QP and comp that could maybe guide Blizzard to fixing some things.
I'd like to see Bastion get less damage and a lot more durability, but frontloaded to the first few seconds of his turret form (and with a brief cooldown). Maybe just give him his frontal shield back that he had in the very start. So you compensate for the inherent weakness of being stationary, but you nerf his power when he's being shielded.
Their initial designs of Bastion he had his own couple hundred health shield that would pop up when he entered turret form.
I'd like to see Bastion get less damage and a lot more durability, but frontloaded to the first few seconds of his turret form (and with a brief cooldown). Maybe just give him his frontal shield back that he had in the very start. So you compensate for the inherent weakness of being stationary, but you nerf his power when he's being shielded.
Their initial designs of Bastion he had his own couple hundred health shield that would pop up when he entered turret form.
And it was outrageously overpowered. If you want to nerf bunker, making Bastion more resilient is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.
Having said that, I don't think Bastion needs a rework. He's the definition of a niche character. He's garbage in any other situation. He has to have a full team supporting him. If he wasn't super strong in his niche then he'd get zero play time. He has to be good at something.
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Edit: I will make an exception for any Mei player who icewalls the main spawn exit. There should be functionality to instantly delete those accounts entirely.
I will confess to occasionally putting such a wall up, for giggles. But only long enough to give people a brief scare... I without fail will drop it long before anyone would actually be impeded by it.
Actually blocking people in this manner is reprehensible.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I'd like to see Bastion get less damage and a lot more durability, but frontloaded to the first few seconds of his turret form (and with a brief cooldown). Maybe just give him his frontal shield back that he had in the very start. So you compensate for the inherent weakness of being stationary, but you nerf his power when he's being shielded.
Their initial designs of Bastion he had his own couple hundred health shield that would pop up when he entered turret form.
And it was outrageously overpowered. If you want to nerf bunker, making Bastion more resilient is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.
Having said that, I don't think Bastion needs a rework. He's the definition of a niche character. He's garbage in any other situation. He has to have a full team supporting him. If he wasn't super strong in his niche then he'd get zero play time. He has to be good at something.
I don't think that's a very good character design - niche characters are a bit problematic in and of themselves because people who like them either don't get to play them enough, or will try to play them in bad situations and weaken their team. See Symmetra and Torb, who both got shifted more towards the center. Bastion has the additional problem of being infuriating to play against when he does fit into his niche. I don't think there's any good way to balance a character around that much DPS output at mid/long-range. IMO he needs considerably less damage and then work out a way to give him a more versatile role - they've tried that a couple ways but haven't really managed it so far.
I wouldn't mind just giving him some movement as a turret, but then you have to change his whole model to have wheels/treads. And with the necessary damage nerf it kinda just makes him into a bootleg Orisa.
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Bastion should see zero playtime because sitting in one spot is agonizing for everyone but the Bastion one tricks
Bastion one tricks are in my experience the sneakiest, most mobile little buggers. They are never in the same spot after a teamfight.
Unless it's a bunker and even then..
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
leave bastion with his ironclad and self heal and current damage.....
....but his bullets reflect off his team's barriers.
Bye bye bunker, survive on your own you robot piece of shit humanity first.
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mightyjongyoSour CrrmEast Bay, CaliforniaRegistered Userregular
I find most of my frustration with Bastion has less to do with his existence and more to do with the fact that hardly any team I've played with has had the presence of mind to switch tactics/comps to either circumvent or focus the bugger
e.g. no switches to break shields so we can hit bastion faster, or no swap to sombra/hog to try to hook bastion, or whatever else counters him
I find most of my frustration with Bastion has less to do with his existence and more to do with the fact that hardly any team I've played with has had the presence of mind to switch tactics/comps to either circumvent or focus the bugger
e.g. no switches to break shields so we can hit bastion faster, or no swap to sombra/hog to try to hook bastion, or whatever else counters him
I think that's also a class design problem, when a strategy is much easier to execute than it is to counter. If I'm doing a thing pretty easily by myself, the enemy team should not have to fix their whole comp and coordinate just to stop me alone.
I find most of my frustration with Bastion has less to do with his existence and more to do with the fact that hardly any team I've played with has had the presence of mind to switch tactics/comps to either circumvent or focus the bugger
e.g. no switches to break shields so we can hit bastion faster, or no swap to sombra/hog to try to hook bastion, or whatever else counters him
I think that's also a class design problem, when a strategy is much easier to execute than it is to counter. If I'm doing a thing pretty easily by myself, the enemy team should not have to fix their whole comp and coordinate just to stop me alone.
Bastion by himself without team support isn't going to require an entire team counterplay. If it it does, that Bastion player is much, much better than the opposing team.
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Bastion definitely needs a rework in the same way that Symmetra or Torb did, but the whole "being a static turret that does an absurd amount of point damage" is the core of his character whereas they did enough with Symmetra and Torb that they had other attributes that they could sufficiently change to make them play very differently even though they still kept some of their core design.
Personally I don't think Symmetra necessarily needed a significant rework but if they were willing to do it to her twice then I think it's a double standard to not do the same to Bastion besides just giving him more... self-sustain options to continue making him stronger by every metric
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
yeah a turret shouldnt be a hero
its pretty much that simple
transforming mech hero is a concept you can do so much with so he's an easy rework target and they could do some dope shit
in some ways if his ult was turret form and he could just stick to a chosen surface for 6 seconds and delete families at the cost of his mobility that would be both more fun and less difficult to balance - many ults are close to this design already ( eg whole hog which disables your kit but turns you into a waddling shredder, pharah ult, etc)
and if turret form was an ult you could do something much more interesting with his basic kit and remove ironclad etcetc
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
If he's picked so little then I'm not sure what the complaints about how he warps games are about.
Though looking through Overbuff there is big difference between PC/Console with him being almost twice as common on console, nearly as common as Tracer, though still being at the bottom. (Also what the fuck is up with Winston on console? He goes from almost exactly middle of the pack on PC to 2nd from the bottom!)
The other thing that leapt out at me is that he has the highest On Fire percentage. Along with Reaper I'm wondering if their Fire gain stats are based on old versions of their kit and a bit outdated.
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
Then what is everyone complaining about? He's both a low pickrate and also oppressive? That's kinda conflicting info.
And with a roster of 30+ heroes, there are going to be niches and there's no way around that. Even if you rework all of the niche heroes to be more well rounded, there will always be someone that ends up being outclassed and "needs a rework".
edit: If you want a more well rounded Bastion, then don't nerf his turret, buff his recon mode. There's no reason to be in recon mode except to move somewhere else. But at that point he's just Soldier with a massive hitbox, no sprint, and a worse ult. Now he's competing with Soldier for play time and his pick rate stays at the bottom (or gets worse).
A better solution is to fix map design. Chokes, especially in Assault maps, play perfectly into Bastion's strengths. Bastion on KOTH doesn't exactly work the same way because he's left much more vulnerable.
I do like the idea of giving him the Symm treatment with a baseline tank transformation, and he can now choose between his 3 forms. Take the "character fantasy" away from being a super strong turret, and instead about being a versatile transformation character who can fit any situation. Recon for precision hitscan, turret for shield busting (give it a shield damage boost or something), tank for group damage.
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited July 2019
One thing that I think would make him less of a problem is just... make him displaceable by boops when he's in turret mode. Maybe at a halved distance or whatever, maybe even give him the ability to move slowly while in turret mode to compensate, something. The fact remains that in a bunker comp where a team has more protective/survivability options than ever at little to no risk to reducing total damage output the skill floor disparity between teams is absurd
A better solution is to fix map design. Chokes, especially in Assault maps, play perfectly into Bastion's strengths. Bastion on KOTH doesn't exactly work the same way because he's left much more vulnerable.
I'm not against the act itself but fixing map design across the board is a whole other ballpark several orders of magnitude more difficult than fixing a single hero, and would be akin to wrapping the game design around a flawed hero kit like Old Torb instead of the other way around
One possibility is to make turret form more of a cooldown skill than a full alternate mode. When activated, Bastion goes through its (slightly quicker) transformation sequence, gains a generous temporary armor bar (200? 300?), and sprays bullets for a second and a half to two seconds, then kicks back to Recon mode. So Bastion isn't an eternal turret, but still has that same "plant feet and go ballistic" feel that defines the character.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
The only thing I dislike about it is I love how it feels to just smoke a Bastion, and if Sentry were his Overload I'd probably get to sneak up behind them less often.
Plus if Blizz were to balance that in the age of Bap, he'd be able to have like 50% uptime in Sentry.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
If he's picked so little then I'm not sure what the complaints about how he warps games are about.
Because he warps the game's he's in. Popularity has little to do with a hero's effect on the matches that they're in. And it doesn't change the fact that the hero is either absent or annoying, and the only options the designers are left with is which of those two that hero can be. That is a bad design, not a healthy niche.
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
Then what is everyone complaining about? He's both a low pickrate and also oppressive? That's kinda conflicting info.
No it's not conflicting info becaus being irrelevant most of the time and generally despised when you're NOT irrelevant is a problem.
Also, there's a difference between being niche and being SO niche that you're irrelevant most of the time and roundly desp...ahem, yeah, that stuff I just said.
And also some niches are inerently problematic. There are healthier niches, and I went through a great idea for reworking Bastion in order to show you all one: you make Bastion's niche the transforming gunmech hero. The low mobility hitscan who can't be one-shot by snipers and generally fares better against tanks. He can still be outmaneuvered. He can still be outshot in a slightly longer firefight because he's so goddamn big. But he suddenly has a niche tht NO OTHER HITSCAN has, which is why I disagree with you that he must automatically be competing with soldier now in some invented zero sum game where there's no new design territory to explore where both heroes can do different and not-oppressive things. Suddenly you have a hitscan that fares well against snipers. None currently do that. And the fact that we have no non-burst damage hitscan hero worth a damn (because they die to snipers and/or Goats...or they're Widow) is a huge part of why we're in this mess where it's Goats or 2/2/2 and there's no third way and that is an inherent FACT.
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
If he's picked so little then I'm not sure what the complaints about how he warps games are about.
Because he warps the game's he's in. Popularity has little to do with a hero's effect on the matches that they're in. And it doesn't change the fact that the hero is either absent or annoying, and the only options the designers are left with is which of those two that hero can be. That is a bad design, not a healthy niche.
Let's put to bed this idea that Bastion is a niche hero. Bastion is the least picked hero across all skill tiers, and when he is picked no one is ever happy about it. That's not a niche worth protecting: it's just a bad hero that needs fixing.
Then what is everyone complaining about? He's both a low pickrate and also oppressive? That's kinda conflicting info.
No it's not conflicting info becaus being irrelevant most of the time and generally despised when you're NOT irrelevant is a problem.
Also, there's a difference between being niche and being SO niche that you're irrelevant most of the time and roundly desp...ahem, yeah, that stuff I just said.
And also some niches are inerently problematic. There are healthier niches, and I went through a great idea for reworking Bastion in order to show you all one: you make Bastion's niche the transforming gunmech hero. The low mobility hitscan who can't be one-shot by snipers and generally fares better against tanks. He can still be outmaneuvered. He can still be outshot in a slightly longer firefight because he's so goddamn big. But he suddenly has a niche tht NO OTHER HITSCAN has, which is why I disagree with you that he must automatically be competing with soldier now in some invented zero sum game where there's no new design territory to explore where both heroes can do different and not-oppressive things. Suddenly you have a hitscan that fares well against snipers. None currently do that. And the fact that we have no non-burst damage hitscan hero worth a damn (because they die to snipers and/or Goats...or they're Widow) is a huge part of why we're in this mess where we're talking about 2/2/2.
Soldier's job is consistent pressure against anyone. He is precise enough to poke at snipers and flankers while being high enough damage to pressure tanks and barriers. Sprint let's him take and give up space quickly and Biotic Field let's him maintain space by healing up while in cover or soaking up initial damage by preemptively casting it.
What does a Bastion that can change guns do differently?
Another thing to look at would be how the sniper rifle, or whatever his equivalent is, behaves. Can he one shot squishies? If not then he can't outdamage a Widow. Widow does 297 against Bastion's armored 300hp. Any chip damage makes it a one shot or the Widow can immediately fire an uncharged shot to finish. Plus he still has a massive hitbox. Advantage is overwhelmingly in the Widow's favor. You'd be better off using your own Widow.
If he can one shot squishies then why bother with Widow? She is balanced by HP, no self heal, little mobility. Bastion has higher HP and armor, plus a self heal and now he can one shot squishies. Now he's creeping into Roadhog territory.
Say he has a burst fire. What's the advantage over a sniper? It's less precise (assuming it works similar to Baptiste) for long range and less consistent compared to an automatic (which I'm admittedly assuming would be part of the kit).
Having these multiple options means you are going to be balancing him against himself in addition to the whole cast.
And lastly, forget about pickrate for a second. What are his actual win rates? On Overbuff, in Gold and below it's slightly under 50%. In Plat and higher it is slightly over but still middle of the pack relative to the rest of the cast. So he isn't picked very much and wins around half the time when he is. And that's too strong?
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I think this is a neat idea
Immortality field is so fake I hate it. It's not just the immortality, but stopping you from getting ult build on characters once they hit that 20% health mark is cheap as hell. It's also made team deathmatch even more of a joke since the cooldown doesn't matter much because you'll just die and respawn with a fresh no killz field with that no skill grenade heal spam on top of it.
And the fact that dragonstrike doesn't destroy IF is bullshit to the max. I didn't watch the whole match but this weekend I saw a bit of the Philadelphia/Boston game, and while defending Horizon B Boston did the basic bitch bunker in the corner with Bastion/Orisa/Baptiste, Philly moves the team to that side room, fires off the dragonstrike to kill the bunker but oh wait lol IF is popped up and the Philly team gets wiped out. Defense Matrix is already an ult stealer, you don't need another one.
Bastion needs to change. Imm Field wouldn't be half the shittiness it is if it didn't enable specifically Bastion bunker. Other bunkers get less value out of standing in place for a second or two longer thanks to Imm Field. Here's a great way you could rework Bastion to be less cheesy, more skill-based, and begin to solve the burst damage problem in this game - a problem that precipitated dive meta, double sniper meta, and goats meta after that.
Nerf Sentry mode, do the ole ult-is-now-shift Blizzard Special, give Bastion some other ult, make his headshot zone in Recon mode in the small of his back. You have now created a more interesting hitscan option that brings new things to the game. How does this fix Bastion and parts of the game generally? Well...
A dps hero that can't be burst-killed - at least, not from in front - but is still vulnerable to other kinds of engagements. This solves the problem of double-sniper. So there is now one more dps hero you can run against double sniper. And that lack of dps heroes who can do that was part of why double-sniper was so good and why Goats became a thing in the first place!
Less of a bullshit combination with Imm Field because you just nerfed Sentry. Oh and because you nerfed Sentry...
A dps hero that is no longer a cheese hero. Because you nerfed Sentry mode. End of story. Bastion is cheesy just because of Sentry mode. So nerf Sentry mode and give him something else in return. That something else is...
A cool and skill-rewarding third firing mode! This tilts further into what makes Bastion cool instead of nerfing that in order to make him more like Soldier. (Like nerfing Ball to make him more like Winston do you see what I'm saying here. Bastion now has three regular firing modes. He now more directly rewards the most skillful part of his kit - tank mode - and it gives him mobility outside of his ult. Rocket jumping and projectile firing. And since you would obviously nerf the numbers so it doesn't one-shot squishies, it rewards good projectile firing from Bastion and also good projectile dodging in the enemy team. Hell, it rewards players for even picking the right mode in the first place! Because now there's three of them and not just "the mode Bastion wants to be", "the mode Bastion needs for moving" and "Bastion's ult".
And finally, a new VIABLE hero that still counters tanks to a good degree without being ridiculously buffed to get there.
It's sad that:
1) Bastion needs a rework;
2) Blizzard has no reworks in the pipeline;
3) Blizzard has said that they're locking 2/2/2;
4) Orisa got a whole heap of buffs in a mixed-success attempt to provide alternatives to Goats, making her only just 'good enough' at pro level against goats, but slightly OP in every other skill-tier of the game;
5) The best answer to bunker and Bastion bunker especially lies in certain dps-heavy comps which will be impossible or neutered by 2/2/2, and even in those 2/2/2 comps that do fare well against Bastion, the initiative and the responsibility lies primarily with the 2 dps players to pick correctly and do their fucking jobs because no tank or support can effect the outcome half as well as just picking the right goddamn dps;
6) All of these things are or will be true at the same time, causing everyone to freak out and misattribute the real problems and how the effin' eff we got here.
So instead of just fixing Bastion - a project that will take time that Blizzard hasn't already set aside in the near-past when they should have - or, hey, not imposing 2/2/2 to fix a team comp that's already dying right now at the one skill-tier it even still exists anymore...people are going to conclude that the problem is with Orisa and Baptiste and all these other scapegoat problems. And in the process this game is going to become more bland and boring because every hero will become more like every other hero in the same class. The one thing that Baptise does different to other healers will be nerfed. The things about Orisa that make her objectively better than Reinhardt will be nerfed. Bastion is just gonna be blanket nerfed and forgotten for another 18 months, as is, now that I think about it, the Balance Cycle of Bastion.
And at the end of the day what I'm trying to say is, there are a dozen great ways that I haven't even thought of that you could change heroes and the game to solve these problems and more. Problems that we think are written into the very fabric of Overwatch. Changes that would lead to a better game than just admitting defeat and going "fuck it, let's stick with 2/2/2 because balancing videogames is HARD".
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
It's kind of like how Hamzo has always needed a nerf on storm arrow and ult build since last year but it's just not the priority because Bridget came and broke the game and it strung out a bunch of different trickle downs.
Not officially but it's all but confirmed since Fissure leaked it and no one is denying it.
Actually I *think* maybe someone official from Blizz confirmed it in a blizz forum post but I'm not 100% on that
Before the Fissure thing, I commented to a friend. Why are they playing DPS all of a sudden in OWL? There was no patch change to warrant this. It's welcome, but really weird.
It didn't make sense till the Fissure thing and the rumor mill said all the teams have been informed before stage 3, that stage 4 will have forced 2-2-2.
Why keep playing what is for sure a dead meta, one which you're already bad at, when you can take the time to get your DPS back into shape?
because i feel like it's probably just going to be the former
There is almost certainly going to be a role-queue coming for everyone, but what exact form that takes is not known.
I don't think it'll apply to quickplay at the very least though.
Yeah if/when they implement it in comp, it's gonna require a complete overhaul of the entire matchmaking system, so I wouldn't expect to see it anytime soon even if it does show up in OWL stage 4.
My guess is they're gonna try it in OWL, keep a close eye on fan reaction, and go from there.
Their initial designs of Bastion he had his own couple hundred health shield that would pop up when he entered turret form.
And it was outrageously overpowered. If you want to nerf bunker, making Bastion more resilient is exactly the opposite of what you want to do.
Having said that, I don't think Bastion needs a rework. He's the definition of a niche character. He's garbage in any other situation. He has to have a full team supporting him. If he wasn't super strong in his niche then he'd get zero play time. He has to be good at something.
I will confess to occasionally putting such a wall up, for giggles. But only long enough to give people a brief scare... I without fail will drop it long before anyone would actually be impeded by it.
Actually blocking people in this manner is reprehensible.
I don't think that's a very good character design - niche characters are a bit problematic in and of themselves because people who like them either don't get to play them enough, or will try to play them in bad situations and weaken their team. See Symmetra and Torb, who both got shifted more towards the center. Bastion has the additional problem of being infuriating to play against when he does fit into his niche. I don't think there's any good way to balance a character around that much DPS output at mid/long-range. IMO he needs considerably less damage and then work out a way to give him a more versatile role - they've tried that a couple ways but haven't really managed it so far.
Bastion one tricks are in my experience the sneakiest, most mobile little buggers. They are never in the same spot after a teamfight.
Unless it's a bunker and even then..
....but his bullets reflect off his team's barriers.
Bye bye bunker, survive on your own you robot piece of shit humanity first.
e.g. no switches to break shields so we can hit bastion faster, or no swap to sombra/hog to try to hook bastion, or whatever else counters him
I think that's also a class design problem, when a strategy is much easier to execute than it is to counter. If I'm doing a thing pretty easily by myself, the enemy team should not have to fix their whole comp and coordinate just to stop me alone.
Bastion by himself without team support isn't going to require an entire team counterplay. If it it does, that Bastion player is much, much better than the opposing team.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Personally I don't think Symmetra necessarily needed a significant rework but if they were willing to do it to her twice then I think it's a double standard to not do the same to Bastion besides just giving him more... self-sustain options to continue making him stronger by every metric
its pretty much that simple
transforming mech hero is a concept you can do so much with so he's an easy rework target and they could do some dope shit
in some ways if his ult was turret form and he could just stick to a chosen surface for 6 seconds and delete families at the cost of his mobility that would be both more fun and less difficult to balance - many ults are close to this design already ( eg whole hog which disables your kit but turns you into a waddling shredder, pharah ult, etc)
and if turret form was an ult you could do something much more interesting with his basic kit and remove ironclad etcetc
If he's picked so little then I'm not sure what the complaints about how he warps games are about.
Though looking through Overbuff there is big difference between PC/Console with him being almost twice as common on console, nearly as common as Tracer, though still being at the bottom. (Also what the fuck is up with Winston on console? He goes from almost exactly middle of the pack on PC to 2nd from the bottom!)
The other thing that leapt out at me is that he has the highest On Fire percentage. Along with Reaper I'm wondering if their Fire gain stats are based on old versions of their kit and a bit outdated.
Then what is everyone complaining about? He's both a low pickrate and also oppressive? That's kinda conflicting info.
And with a roster of 30+ heroes, there are going to be niches and there's no way around that. Even if you rework all of the niche heroes to be more well rounded, there will always be someone that ends up being outclassed and "needs a rework".
edit: If you want a more well rounded Bastion, then don't nerf his turret, buff his recon mode. There's no reason to be in recon mode except to move somewhere else. But at that point he's just Soldier with a massive hitbox, no sprint, and a worse ult. Now he's competing with Soldier for play time and his pick rate stays at the bottom (or gets worse).
A better solution is to fix map design. Chokes, especially in Assault maps, play perfectly into Bastion's strengths. Bastion on KOTH doesn't exactly work the same way because he's left much more vulnerable.
I'm not against the act itself but fixing map design across the board is a whole other ballpark several orders of magnitude more difficult than fixing a single hero, and would be akin to wrapping the game design around a flawed hero kit like Old Torb instead of the other way around
The only thing I dislike about it is I love how it feels to just smoke a Bastion, and if Sentry were his Overload I'd probably get to sneak up behind them less often.
Plus if Blizz were to balance that in the age of Bap, he'd be able to have like 50% uptime in Sentry.
Because he warps the game's he's in. Popularity has little to do with a hero's effect on the matches that they're in. And it doesn't change the fact that the hero is either absent or annoying, and the only options the designers are left with is which of those two that hero can be. That is a bad design, not a healthy niche.
No it's not conflicting info becaus being irrelevant most of the time and generally despised when you're NOT irrelevant is a problem.
Also, there's a difference between being niche and being SO niche that you're irrelevant most of the time and roundly desp...ahem, yeah, that stuff I just said.
And also some niches are inerently problematic. There are healthier niches, and I went through a great idea for reworking Bastion in order to show you all one: you make Bastion's niche the transforming gunmech hero. The low mobility hitscan who can't be one-shot by snipers and generally fares better against tanks. He can still be outmaneuvered. He can still be outshot in a slightly longer firefight because he's so goddamn big. But he suddenly has a niche tht NO OTHER HITSCAN has, which is why I disagree with you that he must automatically be competing with soldier now in some invented zero sum game where there's no new design territory to explore where both heroes can do different and not-oppressive things. Suddenly you have a hitscan that fares well against snipers. None currently do that. And the fact that we have no non-burst damage hitscan hero worth a damn (because they die to snipers and/or Goats...or they're Widow) is a huge part of why we're in this mess where it's Goats or 2/2/2 and there's no third way and that is an inherent FACT.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Soldier's job is consistent pressure against anyone. He is precise enough to poke at snipers and flankers while being high enough damage to pressure tanks and barriers. Sprint let's him take and give up space quickly and Biotic Field let's him maintain space by healing up while in cover or soaking up initial damage by preemptively casting it.
What does a Bastion that can change guns do differently?
Another thing to look at would be how the sniper rifle, or whatever his equivalent is, behaves. Can he one shot squishies? If not then he can't outdamage a Widow. Widow does 297 against Bastion's armored 300hp. Any chip damage makes it a one shot or the Widow can immediately fire an uncharged shot to finish. Plus he still has a massive hitbox. Advantage is overwhelmingly in the Widow's favor. You'd be better off using your own Widow.
If he can one shot squishies then why bother with Widow? She is balanced by HP, no self heal, little mobility. Bastion has higher HP and armor, plus a self heal and now he can one shot squishies. Now he's creeping into Roadhog territory.
Say he has a burst fire. What's the advantage over a sniper? It's less precise (assuming it works similar to Baptiste) for long range and less consistent compared to an automatic (which I'm admittedly assuming would be part of the kit).
Having these multiple options means you are going to be balancing him against himself in addition to the whole cast.
And lastly, forget about pickrate for a second. What are his actual win rates? On Overbuff, in Gold and below it's slightly under 50%. In Plat and higher it is slightly over but still middle of the pack relative to the rest of the cast. So he isn't picked very much and wins around half the time when he is. And that's too strong?
this was one of those special early morning reads that literally had me laughing out loud and spitting my drink back into my cup, so thank you.
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