Will Bastion's buff make Sombra more viable ?

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Hi folks ! Newcomer here.

I had a question going throught my mind recently. I'm not a pro player, nor a great theorycrafter, so I'd like your analysis on this. And I apologise if what I say has already been said, but I did some digging on this subreddit and didn't found anything on that.

So, as says the title, I think this bastion buff could make sombra more viable, especialy on low ELO. I think that for two main reasons. First, The bastion can now deal efficiently with characters he couldn't before. We all know that he had a lot of hard counters. The first on mind was obviously Genji, who wrecked him on a 1v1 situation and could easily and quikly deal with him even with the team around, Tracer had a little harder time but was fine, a Phara coming from an unexpected angle 3-shoted Bastion, D.va could create a window of fire for her team, Zen was really good with his discord (especially with a Tracer and a Genji) and Hanzo and Widowmaker were just hard counters. Even Ana could deal with Bastion pretty easily.

But now, with those changes Bastion will be much harder to get for those characters. Of course, D.va and Zen can still create an opportunity for their team (even if discord is less effective on the sentry/tank mode), but Genji and Tracer will have a much harder time. Due to his passive and his healing, Phara can just no longer take a Bastion in sentry mode by herself. Of course Widow and Hanzo are still his counters, but they remain very easily countrable characters, especialy if someone not comfortable with this pick switches to it in order to take out Bastion. Overall, it seems that now, beating a Bastion will demand much team skill (a flanker on the Bastion, protected by Zarya/D.va, with Zen's debuff for instance), and it's nothing impossible to achieve. But it could be in low ELO, where team coordination is not that high, an synergies are not exploited. That's where Sombra goes in.

Sombra recieved some little changes before Bastion, including reducing her hack's cast time to 0.8s. That means that, if Sombra tries to hack a sentry Bastion, either way Bastion tries to locate her and shoot her while standing still (but Sombra can still hack him while moving, of course) or he goes to recon mode (0.5s) to try to go to safety, he has a really short time to react (he or his team). And if Sombra is in a remotly unexpected spot (like above or below Bastion), she is almost sure to hack him before anyone can do anything. And a hacked Bastion goes instantly back to recon, can't go to sentry (so he can't get his passive back) and can't heal himself. It opens an oportunity for the team and make the Bastion an easy target.

That's why I think it will make Sombra more effective. Because people will encounter Bastion in their game, just like we did when the game started. They'll switch to Genji, and see it does not work that well (imo), they'll switch to Widow or Hanzo, and maybe will get the pick on Bastion, but if they are not used to the hero they won't be able to do much during the rest of the game. And some will switch to Sombra, and see it works pretty well (still imo), and that they can have impact of the game. And thus, almost by natural selection, people will switch more naturally on Sombra when it will come to take out a Bastion.

I don't know what you guys think about it, but I'd like you returns on that, and your opinion :)

Oh, and sorry for broken english, not a fluent speaker here

Posted Feb 16, 2017, 10:30 PM UTC · edited

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