Johanna Abilities and Strategy

• Try to damage and Slow adjacent enemy Heroes with Punish, usually after casting Condemn to group them.
• Condemn can interrupt animations (such as Dwarf Toss by Muradin) or channelling Abilities (for example Mosh Pit by E.T.C.).
• Use Shield Glare to Blind enemies that deal significant damage with Basic Attacks.
• Use Blessed Shield to engage, buy time to flee, or to interrupt enemies that are channelling Abilities (such as Holy Word: Salvation by Anduin).
• Use Iron Skin just prior to an enemy using crowd control on you and/or to mitigate incoming burst damage.

Punish is a Basic Ability that deals a minor amount of damage and applies a decaying Slow to enemies in a small area in front of Johanna, useful for peeling melee Heroes away from your team.

The short range requires you to be in the midst of the fighting in order to hit enemy Heroes, but Condemn can be used to line up targets for Punish, pulling all nearby enemies within range.

Condemn is a Basic Ability that, after a short delay, briefly Stuns all enemies around Johanna.

With the exception of clearing Minions and Mercenaries who will take triple damage from it, Condemn should be used purely for its utility because it does not deal a lot of damage.

When you want to engage and you do not have your Heroic Ability available, you should usually start the fight with Condemn to pull one or more enemy Heroes towards you and then follow up with Punish while your team adds crowd control and damage.

In case you need to interrupt a particular enemy Ability, you better keep Condemn ready to use rather than wasting it on cooldown.

Shield Glare is a Basic Ability whose primary effect is to Blind, even if it deals a small amount of damage to them.

Rather than using it only to deal damage, you better use Shield Glare to reduce the damage done by enemy Heroes that heavily rely on Basic Attacks (for example Greymane, especially when he commits in Worgen Form).

In this section we discuss how this Heroic Ability works and give some tips on how to use it. If you are looking for a detailed explanation on when and why you should pick it, check out the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.

Falling Sword is a Heroic Ability that makes Johanna disappear from the battlefield for 2 seconds while in the air, give Unstoppable to allied Heroes below her while flying, and then land in the chosen position, damaging and briefly Stunning enemies hit.

While flying, Johanna goes into Stasis, meaning that you can cast this Ability to dodge targeted effects (for example Last Rites by Malthael) or to remove from yourself damage over time that would otherwise kill you.

At the end of the flying animation, Johanna will hit all enemies around her landing point. In particular, the impact will deal a moderate amount of damage and briefly Stun all enemies in the area.

Even if you can use it to escape from danger when necessary, Falling Sword is a powerful dive tool that can be used offensively to close the gap between her and enemy Heroes. Keep in mind that going in aggressively could backfire because Johanna will be isolated from her team for a few seconds and her team will be without a Tank to peel for them, giving the enemy team a big opportunity to burst down someone, however, the ability to make allied Heroes Unstoppable can help with that.

In this section we discuss how this Heroic Ability works and give some tips on how to use it. If you are looking for a detailed explanation on when and why you should pick it, check out the dedicated section in the Talent Build page.

Blessed Shield is a Heroic Ability that Johanna can use to patch out her lack of engage tools and to further improve her peeling capabilities.

The long Stun it provides on the primary target gives you enough time to close the gap between you and the target enemy Hero when using it from maximum range. This kind of engage requires you to have good aim and your team to be ready to follow up. In case you miss, you can even consider to disengage and try again later, unless you really have to fight, in which case you will play defensively rather than aggressively while waiting for its cooldown.

Iron Skin is a Trait that gives Johanna a huge Shield which also makes her Unstoppable for the duration, meaning that destroying the Shield will make the Unstoppable end preemptively.

Iron Skin can help you to survive situations that would have otherwise meant certain death as it allows you to completely negate enemy crowd control effects. Use it to prevent crowd control only if the enemy team can follow up with significant damage or further crowd control. Using it to negate crowd control that would not have harmed you is a waste of an important cooldown that the enemy team could exploit to their advantage as Johanna without Iron Skin available will suddenly become their favorite target to take down. Avoid using it too late against enemy teams who have access to a high amount of crowd control, else they will just chain them and kill you before you can even cast Iron Skin.