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Johanna Build Guide “The Crusade marches on!”
Welcome to our guide for Johanna, a Tank in Heroes of the Storm. Within these pages, you will find everything required to understand how best to play this hero, in both different map styles and team compositions.
Johanna's Overview
Johanna is a low-mobility, extremely resilient Tank, capable of Blinding, Slowing, Stunning, and briefly Pulling enemies. She excels at creating chaos and disruption in the midst of the enemy team for extended periods of time while also peeling for her allies. Johanna is one of the handful of Heroes in the game with no direct counters, and is able to fit into nearly any team composition.
Johanna's Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
High durability- Solid crowd control
- Good waveclear
- Access to Blinds
- Ability to interrupt
- Access to Unstoppable
Weaknesses
Low damage- No tools to handle high-mobility Heroes
- Low mobility
Johanna's Talent Build Cheatsheet
Shield Glare Build
Recommended
Johanna's Shield Glare Build gives you the opportunity to Blind enemy Heroes more often and, in the late-game, get self-healing and cooldown reduction from that.
You can play this Build when you and your teammates need help
against enemy Heroes who rely on Basic Attacks (for example Greymane).
Just make sure to keep at least one charge
of 
Shield Glare for peeling.
Basic Attacks Build
Situational
Johanna's Basic Attacks Build allows you to crowd control enemy Heroes more often in the late game while also having a respectable amount of additional survivability.
You can play this Build when you want more self-sustain
in the early game, thanks to 
Laws of Hope
at Level 1, and when you want more playmaking potential later on,
thanks to 
Blessed Momentum at Level 16.
Johanna's Synergies and Counters
Johanna synergizes with
Johanna pairs extremely well with Heroes that can follow up her slow but powerful engage with any kind of area of effect Ability to deal burst damage to enemy Heroes and/or to crowd control them.
Due to her weak engage when her Heroic Ability is not available, Johanna greatly benefits from Heroes that can help her with that in the 4-man (such as Maiev) and/or from the solo lane (for example Blaze).
Johanna is countered by
Johanna can be countered by constantly depleting her Health
with sustain damage, targeting her while
Iron Skin is on cooldown,
or using high-mobility Heroes
to target her backline.
Varian, due to 
Shattering Throw at Level 13,
can completely destroy Johanna's main defensive tools:
Iron Skin baseline
and 
Indestructible at Level 20.
Johanna's Maps
Johanna performs better on medium-sized Battlegrounds that favor early-game rotations with tons of waveclear (such as Tomb of the Spider Queen) or on Battlegrounds where it is easy to reach the late game (for example Warhead Junction). On the other hand, she is lackluster on most 2-lane Maps as well as Maps with wide empty areas (such as Hanamura Temple).
Johanna's Tips and Tricks
- Damage and Slow adjacent enemies with
Punish. 
Condemn can interrupt abilities like Muradin's 
Dwarf Toss or E.T.C.'s 
Mosh Pit.
Shield Glare enemies that deal significant Basic Attack damage.- Use
Blessed Shield to engage, buy time to flee, or to interrupt enemies that are channelling abilities. - Use
Iron Skin just prior to an enemy using crowd control on you.
Johanna's Role in the Current Meta
Johanna's survivability, disruption, waveclear, and crowd control make her a very solid Hero overall, and a good fit for nearly any team composition.
Johanna can be played either defensively, by blocking enemy Heroes approaching her team,
or offensively, by walking towards enemy Heroes and disrupting their moves.
Iron Skin,
with its potential 4 seconds of Unstoppable, makes Johanna
very effective versus teams with a lot of crowd control.
Last but not the least, Johanna can be played as either main Tank or Solo Laner. Just makes sure to choose the appropriate Talents based on your Role in the team, otherwise you will lack important features on your Hero.
Changelog
- 30 Mar. 2022 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 30 Mar. 2022 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 30 Mar. 2022 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 28 Jan. 2022 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 28 Jan. 2022 (this page): Builds and Maps updated.
- 13 Dec. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 13 Dec. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 07 Dec. 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Major Patch.
- 07 Dec. 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Major Patch.
- 07 Dec. 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Major Patch.
- 03 Nov. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 03 Nov. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 21 Sep. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 21 Sep. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 16 Jul. 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 16 Jul. 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 18 Jun. 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 18 Jun. 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 18 Jun. 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 30 May 2021 (talents page): Builds updated.
- 30 May 2021 (this page): Builds updated.
- 17 May 2021 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Patch.
- 17 May 2021 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Patch.
- 17 May 2021 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Patch.
- 27 Feb. 2021 (talents page): Build Tags updated.
- 27 Feb. 2021 (this page): Build Tags updated.
- 25 Feb. 2021 (talents page): New layout.
- 10 Nov. 2020 (this page): Synergies updated.
- 09 Nov. 2020 (abilities page): Ability descriptions fixed.
- 16 Jul. 2020 (talents page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jul. 2020 (abilities page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 16 Jul. 2020 (this page): Guide reviewed for the latest Balance Update.
- 10 Jul. 2020 (talents page): Builds and Descriptions modified to reflect the current metagame.
- 10 Jul. 2020 (abilities page): Ability Descriptions modified to better explain how to use Abilities effectively.
- 10 Jul. 2020 (this page): Builds and Descriptions modified to reflect the current metagame.
- 15 Apr. 2020 (talents page): Talent Build partially revised to match new standards.
- Talent Build and Talent Build Cheatsheet modified to reflect the current metagame.
- Talent Descriptions modified to better describe when to pick them.
- 15 Apr. 2020 (this page): Introduction partially revised to match new standards.
- Talent Build Cheatsheet updated to reflect the current metagame.
- Role in the Current Meta modified to remove the unnecessary part about the now fixed Experience Globes.
- 12 Dec. 2019 (this page): Added an entry about the current Anomaly to the guide.
- 11 Jun. 2019 (talents page): Updated Johanna's guide to align it more with the current state of the game.
- 16 Oct. 2018 (talents page): Changed Sins Exposed from Situational to Recommended.
- 29 Jan. 2018 (abilities page): Added Falling Sword to the page.
- 02 Nov. 2017 (talents page): Changed Subdue from Not Recommended to Recommended.
- 29 Sep. 2017 (talents page): Updated Johanna's talents for Ana's patch.
- 04 May 2017 (talents page): Updated Heaven's Fury's talent description and recommendation.
- 17 Mar. 2017 (this page): Guide updated for Probius' patch and moved to the new format.
- 29 Jan. 2017 (talents page): Changed Blessed Hammer from Not Recommended to Recommended and updated Johanna's Builds.
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Elitesparkle is a multiple times Master player in Europe who plays Heroes of the Storm since its release. He is an active member of the community who likes to teach new and veteran players all he knows about his favorite game. He also produces more teaching content on his Tips of the Storm page on Ko-fi.
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