Overwatch 2 will make murderbot Bastion more mobile
And do away with his pesky self-healing
Rejoice! The absolute pain in the arse that is Bastion is getting a rework for Overwatch 2, and he'll no longer be able to heal himself or turn into a murderous tank. He will be a lot more mobile and have a sticky grenade however, so watch out for that. Over the weekend, Blizzard revealed the changes coming to both Bastion and Sombra in the sequel. While Sombra's tweaks are a little more minimal, it looks like Bastion's will make him play a whole lot differently. Importantly, he'll also wear one of Torbjorn's caps. Fashion.
The devs say Bastion's sweet new headwear is to help him stand out and "add a touch of character". Lucky for you I know far too much about Overwatch's lore, and it seems that's a nod to Torbjorn. The little engineer took Bastion in and looked after him, and now the bot is wearing one of his adoptive dad's hats. It's adorable.
Alright, so that isn't the most important part of his rework. What is, at least in my opinion, is that he's becoming a lot more mobile. Bastion is keeping his two modes, recon (where he's stood up and able to walk around) and sentry (his turret form). However, in Overwatch 2, he'll be able to move while in sentry mode too. It doesn't seem as overpowered as it sounds though, because his movement and damage are reduced, and there's a cooldown period before he can switch modes again.
At first, it sounds like a scary change because I, for one, certainly don't fancy being chased down by turret Bastion. But when you consider the other changes coming to Overwatch 2, it makes sense. The game will be 5v5 rather than 6v6, losing a tank on each team, meaning one less beefy character for Bastion to hide behind. On top of that, the devs are making the tanks brawlers, encouraging them to act more like damage heroes. If everyone's moving around more and scrapping a little closer together, it seems like a good idea to let Bastion get involved too.
Blizzard are also doing away with Bastion's self-heal, and giving him a new damage-dealing ability instead. He'll have a tactical grenade that bounces off of walls, but sticks to the floor and enemy players, and will detonate after a short delay. He'll have a whole new ultimate as well, swapping out tank mode for artillery mode. With this, he'll lock into the ground briefly to unleash a long-range artillery strike at three locations on the map.
As for Sombra, her changes all seem to make her hack a bit more useful. It'll have a reduced cooldown, and be quicker to hack enemies too. Hacking won't pull her out of stealth either, though it will briefly make her visible. The hack lasts for eight seconds, and not only will it disable enemy abilities, but reveal them to Sombra and her teammates through walls (like Widowmaker's ultimate).
She'll also deal more damage to hacked enemies, which combos well with her new ultimate effect. In current Overwatch, her EMP blast takes away a portion of enemy shields, but in Overwatch 2 it will deal 40% damage to enemy HP. At the moment, Sombra isn't particularly useful damage-wise, so this is a pretty welcome change. She seems like she'd be pretty useful melting down tanks with these tweaks, whereas currently she's mostly used for picking off stragglers.
One day we'll get to try all of this out ourselves, but unfortunately Overwatch 2 still doesn't have a release date. An early build of the game will be used for the Overwatch League next year though, so hopefully the full launch won't be long after then.
Blizzard do have bigger things to worry about for now, however. Activision Blizzard were sued by a state agency in July over their alleged culture of sexual harassment and discrimination in the workplace. As of last week, ActiBliz are being investigated by the US government over the allegations, and a union has filed charges against the company too.