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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 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
Punish Build
Recommended
Johanna's Punish Build is a great choice when playing as Tank against a team composition that relies on burst damage because it improves your survivability against that, as well as your engage and peeling.
Subdue at Level 4 is a key Talent
because it provides a powerful Slow that,
in combination with 
Condemn
as a setup for Punish,
allows you to crowd control enemy Heroes
for a signficant amount when your Heroic Ability is not available.
Shield Glare Build
SituationalJohanna's Shield Glare Build is a great choice when playing as Tank against a team composition that relies on sustain damage because it improves your survivability against that and gives you some tools to help your team as well.
The combination of 
Zealous Glare at Level 1,
Holy Renewal at Level 16, and usually
Blinded By The Light at Level 20 boosts
your and your team's survivability in the late game.
Basic Attacks Build
Situational
Johanna's Basic Attacks Build is a good choice when playing as Solo Laner because it improves your self-sustain, waveclear, and damage output.
The self-sustain
from 
Laws of Hope at Level 1
allows you to stay on the battlefield for longer periods of time
and therefore avoid to lose potential Experience.
The waveclear from Eternal Retaliation at Level 4
helps you to take care of the solo lane
and allows you to double soak if necessary.
While you have other Talents increasing your damage output,
Heaven's Fury is a huge boost to that
for team fights that happen in the late game.
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 (such as Maiev).
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.
Johanna's 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.
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 distrupting their moves.
Iron Skin,
with its potential 4 seconds of Unstoppable makes Johanna
very effective versus teams with a lot of crowd control.
Changelog
- 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 Buy me a coffee page.
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