If your piston were bent, you would have a dead engine, if the conrod were bent you would have an extremely noisy 3 cyl engine as the 4th would not fire correctly.
Ticking is usually head work required, the rocker shaft or one arm of the exhaust rockers must have fractured. Lower block noise is never a tick, its more of a deep rumble with high frequency as the crank rpm is double the cam rpm.