I see a lot of you people complaining about Sombra, which I kind of get in that she’s a frequent rage pick so it’s annoying to see her every match, but also kind of don’t get in that she’s not that scary if you’re well-matched with your opponents and know how to deal with her.
Nonetheless, here’s my two cents: I decided to futz around on Sym in quickplay even though she’s allegedly a throw pick. And I discovered she may be the only literal shutdown hard-counter of Sombra in the game. It’s really simple: use your turrets defensively. Put them at your feet, preferably a little behind you. You have three of them, so put a couple more in e.g. reasonable flanking spots to help your teammates, or leave a breadcrumb trail of them to help your supports.
Sombra literally cannot hack them, cannot hack you around them, and any attempt will kick her out of invis and keep her out until she escapes. Plus she takes constant damage. The only way she gets to use her kit in this case is if she plays close to a teammate (to draw the turrets’ fire), which is antithetical to her whole usual style of play.
I think she might be a decent pick in general when you’re dealing with other back-line flankers. A lot of the reason she’s supposedly underpowered is her turrets just aren’t that scary when used offensively; the whole team can just take a moment to delete them while they push through the choke. But used defensively, against (typically) a single squishy target, they’re gonna cause real problems for the enemy.
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I can vouch for this.
One time I was backfilled into a team that had trouble with a spawn camping Sombra.
I picked Symm and immediately placed turrets and it shut down the Sombra.
Yes I was still actively looking for her to beam, but the turrets did the work automatically.
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The issue at that point is that Symmetra is very easy to counter by people besides Sombra. She is unfortunately a liability in this hitscan laden meta.
All of this stinks to cope because Symmetra gets shredded by a half decent Sombra. Symmetra doesnt have any real way to threaten Sombra, sentries are little ineffective balls of low damage.
With Virus, Sombra doesnt even need to land more than a couple headshots on a Sym to pop her like a grape.
That(/if) you killed Sombra with Sym that speaks more about how bad that Sombra was than about how ‘‘Sym counters Sombra’’.
In fact, its the other way around.
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Yeah, i was going to say. Virus + sym head hitbox + charge gimmick = quick take down.
Ehh, I don’t think it’s the other way around necessarily, Symm does counter Sombra in the macro sense by making her waste time with turrets. It’s just Symm doesn’t counter Sombra in the head on fight, as it goes with most of her encounters.
Symm is meant to play the slow game, and that can certainly mess with Sombra’s ability to do what she wants to do. Just don’t try to fight Sombra without some good distraction or pre-chip.
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Last three sym mains trying to be relevant again 
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That was when sentries were a threat. Right now, they are not.
Sym hard counters herself lol.
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Who thought that a squishy close range hero with zero mobility and delayed damage was a good idea?
Oh wait, she can taxi pro teams for clip memes!!!
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It’s not about them being a threat, it’s them stopping hacks and revealing her location. The turrets have never been an actual threat to Sombra in terms of damage.
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They could possibly fix both the mobility and delayed dmg issue with a simple buff. I made a post the other day suggesting that passing through tp grants Sym level 3 beam and increases her secondary fire rate. Back when she could tp bomb she was still niche pick but could still do pretty good. Allowing for backline assassinations again would help her function somewhat like an actual dps hero.
it does sound reasonable. you have to look at in neutral perspective. ideally symmetra’s kit is close aoe damage. sombra cant hack with damage being applied to her immediately out of stealth. a big disadvantage which will probably make the sombra run or go into defensive.
big advantage the higher the skill level
This is only true of symmetra is playing really close to her teams. Without a healer on sym, sombra wins the 1v1 100% of the time, it doesn’t matter if you can’t hack her because you don’t need a hack to secure that kill
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Sombra can usually destroy a sym before turrets do any significant damage and just translocates
Sym is an easy delete for Sombra if she can manage to get the hack off at the beginning of the fight.
If a turret has her, that would make it more difficult, but not impossible, and with Sombra being able to translocate away from the turrets, she can still eat away at Sym with her DoT, and ranged damage.
If Sombra gets a hack off on Sym, all of her shield health disappears, and the ‘virus’ eats away at her real health, a few pellets from her uzi is sufficient to finish the job.
Sombra is far more equipped to get in and out prior to dying than what Sym is. Does Sym make it more difficult with choice turret placement? Sure, but that’s just a minor inconvenience, it doesn’t completely shut her down.
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The most impressive thing about this post is that op managed to see a Sym in the wild.
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I still play Sym fairly regularly. Usually in Total Mayhem though, simply due to the shortened cooldowns of turrets. She’s far more versatile when she’s not hamstrung by cooldowns, and the double health gives her more survivability.
She still gets hard countered, but due to reduced cooldowns, you have more uptime on your TP, and can use it to blip around kind of like Tracer.
Is it something that would be beneficial to Sym full time, rather than in TM? You betcha, it would help her out a ton, but it’s really the extra HP and the cooldown shortening that makes her even remotely fun to play in that mode. You still get deleted if focused, you just have a bit more reaction time and a way out if you can get a TP out and use it quickly enough.
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I was the Sym in the wild, to be clear.
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