Pro tip: How to be the best (and beat the best) Bastion in 'Overwatch'

Being a pro gamer isn't easy. Mastering top competitive games takes hundreds of hours of practice — but also knowledge. Each week, we'll share the most useful tips and tricks to improve your play. It's time to get good.

Bastion, Overwatch's least-popular hero, received a major update Tuesday, upgrading the turret-wielding robot from a C-tier defensive hero to a versatile and seemingly unkillable death machine. He's being picked by both offensive and defensive teams in nearly every match at all skill levels (for good reason), so we're here to help you figure out exactly where you stand in this new Bastion-filled hellscape.

This week's pro tips will show you how to take advantage of Bastion's changes to become a formidable force with him, as well as how to counter deadly enemy Bastions. But first, here are the changes Bastion received in patch 1.8 Tuesday.

Bastion's big buffs

• Self-Repair can now be used while moving, is no longer interrupted by taking damage and is now bound to secondary fire (formerly Ability 2). Self-Repair also now has a new resource meter that depletes while the ability is active and recharges when not in use.

• Configuration: Sentry's (turret mode's) reconfiguration time decreased from 1.5 seconds to 1 second, bullet spread is increased by 50 percent and fixed at that spread, magazine size is increased from 200 to 300 and Bastion no longer deals critical damage in Sentry.

• Configuration: Recon's (walking mode's) bullet spread is decreased by 25 percent and magazine size is increased from 20 to 25.

• Configuration: Tank no longer grants bonus armor.

• New passive ability Ironclad makes Bastion take 35 percent less damage while in Sentry or Tank configurations.

The purpose of these changes was to make Bastion more versatile, which is exactly what happened. Bastion's Recon configuration is a bit more powerful at the cost of reduced range in Sentry configuration, but the real key to Bastion's newfound overpowered status comes from Self-Repair and Ironclad.

Being Bastion

Although Recon configuration was buffed, Sentry configuration is still Bastion's bread and butter. The best tactic is still to post up in a corner and blast away at enemies in turret mode, but when things get dicey you can heal yourself pretty effectively, as seen in this gif of a Bastion going up against a Soldier: 76 that just hit his ultimate ability.

The heal is not infinite, though. You can see the bar on the right side of Bastion's reticle go down as he heals, so you'll have to keep an eye on that when you're taking enemy fire.

If things really aren't looking good, Bastion can change into Recon configuration and heal himself while moving toward cover. After stepping out of the fray and healing up, you can head back in and keep your gatling gun going.

Just be mindful of where you set up your Sentry configuration, because the bullet spread has increased and Bastion is much less effective at longer ranges. The above battle against Soldier:76 is just about the maximum distance that Bastion can be really effective.

Here's an example of pro Overwatch player Brandon "Seagull" Larned putting Bastion in a spot where he forces enemies to get into a close range while effectively using Self-Repair:

Enjoy your reign of terror as a Bastion main, at least until he gets nerfed in the next patch.

Beating Bastion

The new Bastion is not completely unstoppable, although it may seem like that if you're trying to defeat him 1v1 as a short-range squishy hero like Tracer.

When you see that evil turret-bot set up somewhere on the map, remember these two words: Focus fire. Bastion is now effectively a hybrid tank/DPS hero, but can only effectively target one player at a time, so attacking him as a team is vital for stopping him.

If your team won't group up, the best single-hero counters are long-range, primarily Pharah and Ana. As long as Pharah is far enough away or effectively peak around corners, she can launch rocket after rocket at Bastion to take him down pretty quickly. Meanwhile Ana can toss a Biotic Grenade at Bastion to render his Self-Repair useless and take him out with a few shots from the Biotic Rifle.

If you've already picked a close-range hero and find yourself between a Bastion and a hard place, just jump around as much as possible to keep his sights off you as you whittle him down slowly.

If you're still finding the new Bastion too frustrating, rest-assured that chatter from the pros suggests Bastion will likely be nerfed in the near future, or other heroes may receive some small buffs to be better counters.