Johanna, Olympic Diver
by JR Cook - 8 years ago show comments
The first build I ever wrote for BlizzPro was a Johanna guide. After some recent changes to her kit, I have decided to come back to one of my favorite tanks with a much more aggressive build that is sure to surprise enemy teams.
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 Regen Master
Yes, Knight Takes Pawn is the gold standard here, but you’re not the main tank anymore. You’re going to be taking this in order to makeup for the loss of other skills you’d normally tank up with. Make sure to get them globes.
Level 4 Eternal Retaliation
Yup, you’re already going “What?” But, getting a full creep wave with this will reduce Condemn’s cooldown by almost a full 6 seconds. That’s a huge chunk of cooldown now gone. Keep this in mind for enemy heroes as well. More is always going to be better with this.
Level 7 Conviction
Johanna now runs like Usain Bolt when using Condemn. The movement speed coupled with your Iron Skin ensures that you’re definitely getting into their backline and disrupting them hard.
Level 10 Falling Sword
The improvements to this ultimate are absolutely massive now. The damage isn’t bad, the 60 second cooldown that it now has is fantastic and you no longer move slow during this. This is 100% an ensured dive onto their back line before you even pop off a condemn or your iron skin. If they clump up, they’re dead, if they scatter, which they should, go after the ones closest to your team and lock them down.
Level 13 Hold Your Ground
This gives you additional ability to survive as you’re diving, if your Iron Skin is broken, so much the better, it comes off cool down that much quicker now. The additional 20% shields also give give you a great boost.
Level 16 Imposing Presence
Ok, you’re going to be diving them, a lot. They’re going to try and attack you, this makes them really think about doing that for very long with the attack speed slow this brings to the table. Hopefully they try and waste damage skills on you which will simply get soaked up with iron skin.
Level 20 Indestructable
The no brainer talent at 20 for Johanna. It just gives her even more survivability at the late game its going to save you when a dive goes horribly wrong and you have to run.
Strategy
First and foremost: you are not the main tank. You are giving up that kit for a huge amount of mobility and dive ability. Do not forget about that. You’re going to want to rotate a lot and gather up as many globes as humanly possible. This is vital, you no longer have Laws of Hope for that extra regen or burst heal so you need to keep that in mind. In the very early game you’re going to want to bide your time and harass people with your blind and your early condemn to help your teammates put extra damage on enemy heroes while you collect all the globes you can. Once you hit level 7 you can start being a little more aggressive while diving people in order to help secure kills, lane kills are going to be easier than anywhere else on the map due to creep pressure assisting your condemn’s cooldown. Once you hit 10 that’s when the fun begins. You are now the initiator, you can entirely bypass the front line of the enemy team and dive straight onto their healer’s and their squishy assassins and follow up with an instant iron skin/condemn combo. Of course they’re going to scatter as soon as they see you up, but that’s fine, single out whoever runs towards your team or away from their fellow teammates, they’re going to die and very quickly at that as long as you can coordinate with your team. In the late game, level 16 and onward, you’re that much more safe with imposing presence being taken and the wonderful amount of attack speed slow that brings to the table. They are almost forced to not focus on you because of it. Make sure to time your iron skin properly to soak the most amount of damage during these team fights and know when to get out using the enhanced movement speed bonus from your conviction talent. This is a highly aggressive build that seeks to do the most amount of control to the back line of a team.
