The Omnic Crisis
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Bastion had been languishing towards the bottom of the usage stats since the beginning of Overwatch. The friendly robot was seen as a niche pick on specific points at best and a funny gimmick that was barely even worth experimenting with at worst. The fact of the matter remained that Overwatch revolved around moving around at a breakneck pace almost all of the time. It’s the main reason why Lucio, at this point, was the only hero that had always been meta. Bastion was the complete antithesis to this, as Bastion in Recon mode was a worse Soldier with a way bigger hitbox.
The latest patch aimed to bring Bastion out of the cellar. Blizzard clearly didn’t want to tear Bastions playstyle to shreds completely. though. They instead massively buffed its survivability in turret mode. This involved giving Bastion its Ironclad passive, which gave it a 35% decrease in all damage taken during turret mode.
The Robot Gets Buff
This was fine and all, but Blizzard didn’t really take into account how much a 35% decrease in damage actually is in a game like Overwatch. Healing is absolutely everywhere in Overwatch, and almost every team has at least two healers. The impact of the supports can be felt in other ways as well; Ana’s Nanoboost, for example, which gives players another decrease in damage taken.
The end result was a Bastion that could not be killed. A Mercy and Ana supporting it with a potential Nanoboost tossed in was all Bastion needed to stay alive through an absurd amount of damage. Even ridiculously powerful attacks such as a point blank Roadhog Scrap Gun failing to take down the omnic. An Ana Biogrenade was the only way to confirm a kill onto this monster.
Barely any tournaments were going on at this time, with the small Carbon Series being the only notable one, but the meta left its mark regardless. Jeff Kaplan himself released a post noting that the change was a bit much. As a result, Ironclad was nerfed to 20% reduction, not 35%. The meta normalized after this, but players at the time will remember when Bastion was by far the most feared hero Overwatch has ever had.
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