Johanna Build Guide “The Crusade marches on!”

1. Johanna's Overview

Johanna is a low-mobility, extremely resilient Tank, capable of Blinding, Slowing, Stunning, and pulling enemies. She excels at creating chaos and disruption in the midst of the enemy team for extended periods of time, rather than peeling for her allies, as is typical of other Tanks. 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.

2. Johanna's Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

• Extremely resilient
• Condemn provides you with one of the best waveclear abilities of any Tank in the game
• Laws of Hope provides a massive amount of health regeneration and healing
• Strong against Basic Attackers
• Iron Skin absorbs a significant amount of damage and provides with you 4 seconds of Unstoppable, preventing crowd control from affecting you

Weaknesses

• Very little burst damage
• Low mobility and no gap-closer
• Relatively weak early game
• Can be kited by most ranged Heroes
• Poor peeling when compared to other Tanks

3. Johanna's Talent Build Cheatsheet

Defensive Build

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The Defensive Build focuses solely on Johanna's survival on the battlefield. The choice of Laws of Hope at Level 1 makes her a strong early-game laner. It is important to keep in mind that Subdue at Level 7 can be a strong alternative choice, especially if the enemy team consists of multiple melee Assassins and/or Warriors, who are usually easier to hit with Punish than ranged Heroes.

Bruiser Build

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Level 1

Level 4

Level 7 ?

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The Bruiser Build is only recommended if your team already has a dedicated full Tank. While Johanna loses Blessed Shield with this Build, which means she will not be able to peel as well for her backline, she gains a lot of initiation power thanks to Falling Sword.

See our Talents page for further information »

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4. Johanna's Synergies and Counters

Johanna synergizes with

Johanna pairs extremely well with Assassins that possess strong waveclear, such as Gul'dan, Kael'thas, or Jaina, since her Condemn works very well with the follow up AoE damage from those Heroes. For the same reason, Johanna allows aggressive Supports like Rehgar to shine.

Johanna is countered by

Johanna is one of the few Heroes in the game that has no natural counters. She cannot be bursted quickly by Assassins, or crowd controlled by Supports or Tanks, due to Iron Skin. However, this does not mean she is overpowered or always a good pick to have on your team. Johanna is instead countered by playstyle, such as ignoring her in team fights or targeting her while Iron Skin is on cooldown. Johanna also lacks good mobility and has no gap-closers, meaning that she can be kited very effectively and has difficulty keeping up with dive-heavy allies. The only Hero we would currently consider to be a "counter" to Johanna is Varian due to his Shattering Throw talent at Level 13, which allows him to shatter both Johanna's Iron Skin and her Indestructible talent at Level 20.

5. Johanna's Maps

Johanna's stronger maps

Johanna's average maps

Johanna's weaker maps

Johanna is a decent pick on almost any map with the exception of Warhead Junction. She thrives on battlegrounds like Dragon Shire or Tomb of the Spider Queen that favor early game rotations with tons of waveclear.

6. 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.

7. Johanna's Role in the Current Meta

Johanna's Tankiness, disruption, waveclear, crowd control, and good sustained damage makes her a very strong Hero overall, and a good fit for nearly any team composition. She synergises well with a wide variety of Heroes, especially the ones that provide additional waveclear. She has no natural Hero counters. Double Warrior team compositions are also quite strong with Johanna, so long as the rest of the team is focused on sustaining, rather than bursting (regarding healing and damage). Iron Skin, with its 4 seconds of Unstoppable also makes Johanna very effective versus teams made up of lots of crowd control, as she is mostly unaffected by it.

Although Johanna is able to play defensively, providing some peeling for her allies, she is more potent when played aggressively. Her disruptions, in the form of Blinds, damage, Slows, Stuns, and pulls, are all AoE and therefore more effective when used against multiple enemies. Additionally, Johanna's large amount of maximum health and relatively low damage output versus single targets (compared to Assassins) means that the enemy team is incentivised to ignore her, instead prioritising more the vulnerable backline Heroes. Therefore, it is important to zone the enemy team's carries as much as possible, which can typically only be done with an aggressive playstyle.

8. Changelog