Johanna, Game of Stuns
by JR Cook - 9 years ago show comments
With amazing wave clear, peeling abilities, short cool downs on her stuns and slows and a trait that renders her immune to crowd control, Johanna the Crusader brings a great deal to a team composition. Currently one of the best warriors in Heroes of the Storm at the moment, a good Johanna can turn a team fight to your favor. Here I’ll explain my favorite Johanna build for going into the nexus and strats on how to help your team.
Skills
Q – Punish
This is your slow, it hits in a wide arc in front of her, this slows the any enemies in front of her for two seconds. It is also a massive slow at 60%. At higher levels this is going to be a critical part of your wave clear.
W – Condemn
This is probably one of the best abilities in the game. It is a short cool down stun that activates after a second in a circle around her. This is used to not only stun but pull people towards Johanna. This sets up for her Q and other abilities. With a 10 second cool down you will be using this a great deal.
E – Shield Glare
This is an underestimated ability of Johanna’s. This deals a small amount of damage in a expanding cone in front of Johanna. What makes this ability good is it will blind enemies for 1.5 seconds. The range of this ability is quite simply, huge. It’s great for sniping people off of mounts as they are on their way to an objective. This is a great skill to use against right clickers like Valla or Hammer.
D – Trait Iron Skin
This is a fantastic ability for a beefy tank like Johanna. After activating this Johanna gains a shield and becomes Unstoppable for 4 seconds. With some practice you can activate this preemptively before you get stunned or use it in other great ways to help your team.
Ultimates
Johanna channels her inner Dragoon and jumps high into the sky and after a delay will come crashing down onto enemies sending them into the sky. That pesky Nazeebo constantly ulting from behind walls? Jump over it and smack him in his face a few times for being annoying.
Johanna chucks her shield towards the enemy in a skill shot that stuns the first enemy that it hits for a 1.5 second stun plus some damage. Then the shield bounces towards the next 2 closest enemies for 0.75 second stuns each.
The Build
Level 1
This ability is the core of your wave clear. This lets your condemn deal an extra 300% damage to enemy creeps and minions as well as stun those creeps for 3 seconds. This is still a fantastic ability and should still remain part of her core kit.
Level 4
This gives Johanna extra sustain in lane. In addition to giving you an extra 1hp/sec regen, popping this trait will heal Johanna for 20% of her max health. Despite the 60 second cooldown, this trait is still nothing to sneeze at. Sometimes that extra bit of heal is all you need to soak that damage for your team and win that early team fight.
Level 7
Now a very good case can be made for taking Conviction at this level however I am in love with battle momentum. This skill will allow you to solo camps very quickly while taking a minimum amount of damage thanks to every right click attack lowering all your skill cool downs. However if you have someone who can jungle effectively Conviction can be the way to go.
Level 10
This skill really isn’t that hard to land. Its a bouncing stun that lands on 3 enemy heroes that stuns the first enemy for 1.5 seconds and the other 2 for 0.75 seconds This skill is amazing for shutting down channeling ults like Ravenous Spirit, Jug of 1000 Cups and others like it. Despite the nerfs to it recently it still gives Johanna ample time to run in and land an additional condemn and punish for some serious lockdown on the enemy team. This skill will be up more often than you think so feel free to use it on a single target that’s running.
Level 13
This is the dead zone talent area for a lot of heroes I feel and Johanna is no exception. I take Spell Shield here since it helps with her sustainability in team fights. This is nothing more than an extra plate of armor in her already formidable defense. If you’re surviving a lot of team fights by this point with plenty of HP to spare, take Burning Rage instead.
Level 16
Hammerdin invades Heroes of the Storm! This talent when in practice doesn’t seem like much as it creates a single hammer that spins around Johanna in an expanding arc around her, but this really is a great talent for that extra damage you need in team fights or taking late game mercs to put that extra pressure on the enemy team that you could need.
Level 20
This talent is so good it almost seems unfair to every other tank in the game. After taking lethal damage Johanna gains a shield that’s equal to her maximum health for 5 seconds. That’s a 5 second window that you can use to escape, punch more people in the face, or peel the enemy team off of your squishies. I can’t express how amazing this talent is for her. Popping Laws of Hope after this trait activates gives her an unfair amount of sustain to get that extra condemn off or to back away safely.
Strategy
Early game you’re going to want to be in your opponents face hard but not to the point where you have to well/hearth back. You have to make them respect that you are entirely willing to get up in their face and hit them with condemns and punishes. With your build, you will obliterate creep waves in a hurry and push up to their gates in a hurry. Make sure to rotate to other lanes and get the pressure off your teammates while your creep wave is pushed up to their gates. Once you hit level 7, you can move off to merc camps after objectives occur. Nobody really expects Johanna to solo camps quickly so they’re probably looking for you in other places waiting for you to run out and attempt to condemn them. Once you hit ten, you want to prioritize being with your team above anything else, you’ve got one of the best initiating/disengaging stuns in the game. Being with your team is a massive priority now. If it a team fight is going south, you may want to work your way to the back line, utilizing your d, and hit as many as you can with your condemn before running off yourself. Sometimes you’ll make it out, sometimes you won’t, but saving your teammates will always be priority number one. Make sure you get as close to squishies as you possibly can, if you can take a channeling ult out quickly, you just did your team a big favor and already swung the team fight into your favor. Proper use of your ult here is key. I personally hold it at the beginning of a fight looking for those channel ults to come out and then shut them down quickly, getting bonus stuns via the condem/blessed shield. You’ve got sustain for days with this amazing tank. As I mentioned earlier, you don’t always have to take battle momentum, but I feel its a better option for her in the long run.
