Overwatch won me over during its open Beta weekend and also did a great job with the heroes. All the characters are crafted well with their skill sets and efficiency, resulting in me finding my seven personal favourites. But is one member of the roster too powerful for his own good? As an ongoing talking point within the community, today I discuss my thoughts on Bastion and whether I believe he is overpowered in Overwatch.

To understand whether this character is too powerful, we must first look at his ability set. First are his two modes: Recon and Sentry. Recon mode allows Bastion to use his assault rifle arm which can deal 20 damage per bullet but can suffer from fall off at long ranges. This rifle also fires around eight shots a second with a 20 bullet magazine. With this in mind, you can possibly deal 160 damage per second as long as you keep to a good range against your target. What makes this more powerful however, is that there is no recoil on the weapon as well, causing the DPS to potentially rise depending on aim. Already things seem too good to be true but just wait till we do the numbers on his Sentry mode. Whilst in this mode Bastion’s chain gun can fire 30 rounds per second, dealing 15 damage per shot resulting in 450 damage per second as long as you are at an optimal range. Again with no recoil or even an overheat mechanic on the mini-gun, Bastion’s DPS stays as one of the highest amongst the Overwatch roster.

If we are judging the damage that he can do in Sentry mode whilst fighting against foes, then only the healthiest of characters would be able to tackle him head on. However, this is only if you are taking him on from the front. Characters such as Tracer, Reaper and Genji can get behind him with their speed and deal incredible damage up close to stop him. Also, characters like Hanzo, Widowmaker and Symmetra can deal damage from afar if he stays stationary for a long amount of time. With this to consider, Bastion can be countered in both of his forms and therefore cannot be claimed as overpowered but can be seen more as an unbalanced hero. After looking at his other mechanics, I still believe this robotic warrior needs to be looked into before the game’s launch.

I say this based on Bastion’s lack of substantial weapon cooldowns and recoil in both his Recon and Sentry forms. As stated earlier, due to the weapons having no recoil, Bastion is able to keep his DPS on the highest spectrum at all times. The only thing players will have to worry about is keeping a steady aim which, if you are staying within range, should be easy to do. Following this is a lack of cool downs, obviously not including his ultimate ability. He can actively go into his Self-Repair whilst standing still or in Sentry mode but there is no penalty apart from a one second cool down if the repair is interrupted, which is too low. On top of this, activating Reconfigure to change modes takes anything from 0.5 – 1 second to complete. Upon activating and deactivating this, you can also quickly reload your initial weapon which can take up to 3-4 seconds to complete depending on which mode you are in. This results in Bastion being able to reload any of his guns faster than anyone else in the cast, which is incredible.

So with this all said, how would I go about balancing Bastion? First off, add a cooldown timer on Reconfigure that will cause players to have to commit to their mode change for a limited time before switching back out. This in turn makes his modes more situational and requires more skill to efficiently use. His submachine gun should have more recoil or accuracy as his damage fall off at range is balanced well. As for the mini-gun, it would be best to have it overheat if it was continuing fire after a certain amount of time, resulting in Bastion not just holding down the trigger and melting an entire team. As for the self-repair, it is okay as it is when it comes to amount of health recovered but the penalty for it being interrupted, I would increase to about 4-5 seconds. My reasoning for this is so that players have to time the healing right instead of abusing it to stay at full all the time.

With these changes I believe Bastion can be made better as a skill based defensive character. I do not hate him, but I do think that his skill set is too powerful in comparison to the other heroes. What are your thoughts on Bastion? Is he the only one that should be reworked before Overwatch releases? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

by Dominic Coles | May 24th, 2016