Best Counters to Shion in Overwatch Season 3

Shion is Overwatch‘s 52nd hero and she launched into Season 3 as a Flanker Damage hero armed with dual Kira Pistols. Her core game plan revolves around using Joyride to traverse the map quickly and get into flanking positions for surprise attacks, and she becomes self-sufficient fast once she is in your backline.

She looks strong on paper thanks to her mobility, burst damage, and finishing power, but since she only just released, a lot of the counter strategies are still being figured out in real time. In this guide, I will break down the best heroes and approaches to shut her down before she becomes a menace for your team.

Best Shion Counters

Before getting into specific hero counters, let me go over her kit a bit and how a typical Shion player tends to operate. She excels in close to mid range so that is exactly where you do not want to be fighting her. Try to engage from medium or long range whenever possible and force the fight onto your terms rather than hers.

Positioning matters a lot against her too. Since her movement is primarily horizontal thanks to Joyride, using high ground is an effective way to throw off her pathing and make her flanking routes less reliable.

If you happen to see Shion strafe behind cover, be ready for her to come out swinging with Execution or Joyride the moment she reappears. Use that window to reposition or get behind a barrier rather than standing your ground and trading.

It is also worth knowing that her ultimate, Satsuriku Spree, deals fully projectile based damage. This means you can block it entirely using barriers or damage mitigation abilities like Reinhardt’s Barrier Field or Orisa’s Javelin Spin. Holding a barrier at the right moment can completely shut down what is supposed to be her biggest finishing tool.

How to Counter Shion

Countering Shion mainly comes down to two things. You either need heroes who can match or outpace her mobility while putting out strong DPS of their own, or heroes with tools that can shut down or block her ultimate before it gets a chance to do real damage.

It is also worth saying that Shion is strong but far from broken. In most matchups, if you have better aim than the enemy Shion and make a point of focusing her down, she will not be much of a threat regardless of what counter you bring.

With both of those priorities in mind though, here are some of the best heroes you can pick to counter her effectively.

Cassidy

Cassidy is one of the best DPS heroes for shutting down flanking enemies and Shion fits squarely into that category. His combination of burst damage and the hard crowd control from Flashbang makes him extremely dangerous for any flanker to engage, Shion included.

One thing to keep in mind is that his revolver suffers from severe damage falloff at range, so you want to stay close to your target to maximize your damage output. This makes him particularly strong on smaller maps or in tighter areas where you cannot get much distance from Shion anyway.

Whenever she tries to dive in, use Flashbang to stop her in her tracks and immediately follow up with damage before she can reposition or escape. Beyond his effectiveness against flankers, Cassidy is also one of the easiest heroes in the game to pick up.

There is no real learning curve involved. He is a straightforward point and shoot hero which makes him a great option even if you do not have much experience playing DPS.

Tracer

One hero who can easily match Shion’s mobility is Tracer, thanks to her Recall and Blink abilities. She is also capable of putting out a serious amount of damage on top of that mobility.

Overall, a good Tracer will make the enemy Shion lose value or force her to stay occupied dealing with you, rather than getting free reign to dive your backline.

Tracer is incredibly mobile and genuinely difficult to fight in a straight engagement. Her small hitbox and fast movement make her hard to hit consistently. She can reliably dodge enemy cooldowns and even Ultimates by timing her Blinks and Recall correctly.

Against a skilled Tracer player, you can never fully ignore her, but actually killing her often feels close to impossible if she is playing well.

The one caveat worth mentioning is that Tracer does require a fair amount of practice to use effectively. Poorly timed abilities will not make her good, regardless of how strong her kit is on paper, so there is a real learning curve attached to playing her well.

The other thing to keep in mind is the limited effective range of her Pulse Pistols. She falls off significantly at range and needs to stay close to deal real damage, which means positioning and timing matter just as much as raw mechanical skill.

Mizuki

Mizuki’s Binding Chain is genuinely effective against Shion’s mobility. It can lock her down long enough for his team to dish out damage and take her out before she gets the chance to reposition.

On top of that, Katashiro Return gives him a reliable way to escape if Shion ever locks onto him directly and starts pressuring him one on one.

Kekkai Sanctuary rounds out his kit as a strong support tool for the team. It is capable of blocking Shion’s Satsuriku Spree ultimate entirely, which can completely shut down one of her biggest damage windows in a teamfight.

Roadhog

Roadhog’s Chain Hook is highly effective against Shion’s Joyride ability. It can pull her off the motorcycle entirely before she gets the chance to dismount and launch it at your team or escape into a flank.

Landing a hook the moment she mounts up shuts down her mobility play completely and drags her straight into your team’s crosshairs.

Once she is hooked in close, Roadhog’s high burst damage from his shotgun can punish her hard before she has any chance to recover, heal up from Joyride’s Refuel perk, or create distance again.

Junkrat

Junkrat is also a strong pick against a Shion trying to dive your backline. His entire kit revolves around controlling space with bouncing projectiles and shutting down flanking routes using his trap.

You should always have a Steel Trap placed somewhere covering the enemy’s most likely forward approach or guarding your own flank. Catching Shion in a trap the moment she tries to dismount and engage can completely ruin her play before it even starts.

That said, you generally want to avoid committing to a one on one fight against Shion directly with Junkrat. His weapon relies on splash damage and slower projectile speed, which means he can struggle badly against a mobile hero who is actively closing the distance and dodging his shots in real time.

Wrapping Up

That covers some of the strongest counters you can bring against Shion in Overwatch Season 3. At the end of the day, none of this is mandatory. Shion is a genuinely strong hero, but she is far from unbeatable or broken in any way. In most games, you do not even need a hard counter pick to deal with her effectively.

Simply keeping your focus on her whenever she shows up, and not letting her freely dive your backline, is often enough to neutralize most of her value on its own. Communication with your team matters just as much as your hero picks here. Call her out the moment she appears and prioritize her in fights, and she becomes a lot more manageable.