Overwatch 2 Season 17 will soon blast our omnic friend with the shrink ray. Here’s how tiny Bastion will affect your matches.
In one of Blizzard Entertainment's newest posts, associate hero designer Scott Kennedy revealed that Overwatch 2 Season 17 will blast one of our beloved omnics with the shrink ray. Bastion will become 10% smaller.
"Bastion's size will be reduced by 10% when Season 17 launches to give him a survivability boost. While it’s not the most earth-shattering change to ever hit Overwatch, it's a testament to the many different ways we can change and balance the game for every hero."
Tiny Bastion in Overwatch 2 Season 17
Overwatch 2 Season 17 will launch on June 24, and players who main Bastion will notice his reduced size. This 10% reduction will improve the omnic's survivability. Basically, tinier Bastion will mean a smaller hitbox.
In the post, Kennedy shared the behind-the-scenes story of how this decision to shrink Bastion came about. When he joined the Overwatch 2's hero design team last year, one of his early balance ideas was to reduce Bastion's size. Bastion deals heavy damage and has the largest health and armor pool among damage heroes. However, his large model makes survivability quite challenging.
At first, implementing this change seemed difficult, but support from other Overwatch 2 departments helped push it forward. Internal testing showed that a 15% size reduction made Bastion look too small, so the team kept adjusting the numbers.
"We found that reducing his size by 15% simply made him too cute, so we kept tweaking the numbers," Kennedy revealed. In the end, the team decided to reduce Bastion's size by 10%.
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More Overwatch 2 Season 17 spoilers
In addition to a tinier Bastion next season, players will be able to look forward to several Overwatch 2 updates. These will include a mythic hero skin for D.Va, a mythic weapon skin for Reaper, the new Aatlis map, map voting, a trial for upcoming hero Aqua, and an adjustment to damage heroes.
"One big adjustment heading to Season 17 is increasing the damage role passive healing reduction from 25% to 30%," Kennedy explained. The global health regeneration timer will increase from 5 seconds to 6 seconds to make damage feel more impactful during matches, too.
As for other hero adjustments, Junker Queen's Commanding Shout will prioritize ally Overhealth while Pharah's Helix Shields and Lifeweaver's Cleansing Grasp will get some balance tweaks and quality-of-life improvements.
That's all for now. Are you ready for Season 17? Stick around on esports.gg for more Overwatch 2 news and updates!
