Heroes of the Storm: My Builds – Johanna and Sylvanas

I now continue my build guides for Heroes of the Storm. Today, I’ll be looking at my top-played warrior and specialist: Johanna and Sylvanas Windrunner.

Coincidentally, Sylvanas is also one of the characters you can permanently unlock using my referral link. Learn the details here.

And don’t forget to check out my previous guides for Jaina and Tassadar.

Johanna: Shield of the Faithful

General thoughts: Johanna is the archetypal tank. She has very weak damage and mobility, but she’s extremely hardy and offers very strong crowd control. As Johanna, your most likely cause of death is going to be the inevitable overconfidence that comes from being almost — but not entirely — invincible.

As Johanna, your job is to get into the thick of battle and stay there. Constantly fowl the enemy team with your crowd control abilities. Force them to turn their attention to you — and away from your more vulnerable team mates.

Punish can more or less be your bread and butter damage ability. Condemn is useful for grouping up enemies for your team mates’ AoEs or interrupting powerful channeled abilities, like Valla’s strafe or Li-Li’s jug of a thousand cups. Shield glare is always handy but shines the most against auto-attack heroes like Valla or Illidan, and in rare cases, its long range and ability to ignore walls can allow you to land kills that would otherwise be out of reach. Iron skin’s shield is handy, but its crowd control immunity is arguably even better.

This build focuses on Johanna’s existing strengths, making her the perfect tank.

1: Reinforce: Using basic abilities grants a stack of block, reducing enemy auto-attack damage.

Pretty self-explanatory.

4: Laws of hope: Increases health regeneration. Can also be activated to provide a quick burst of healing.

Johanna has a pretty strong survival toolkit to start with, but the one she lacks is self-healing. This addresses that. The passive healing lets you recover from mild to moderate damage between fights, while the activated ability gives you burst healing to survive in the heat of battle.

Note that the passive regeneration continues even when the ability is on cooldown.

7: Battle momentum: Auto-attacks reduce ability cooldowns.

A versatile talent that allows you to apply crowd control more consistently, get more use out of reinforce, and boost your (admittedly meager) damage.

10: Falling sword: Leap into the air and crash down a few seconds later, damaging and knocking effected enemies upward.

Strong arguments can be made for both of Johanna’s ultimates, but I prefer falling sword. It deals more damage and can hit more targets, and in a pinch, you can use it as an escape tool.

13: Hold your ground: Increases the shield provided by iron skin and reduces its cooldown if it is destroyed.

Another talent that lets you hang in the thick of things longer, reinforcing your role as a frontline brawler.

16: Holy renewal: Shield glare heals you for each hero hit.

This plus laws of hope serves to address Johanna’s lack of self-healing. The healing for each hero hit is actually pretty substantive, so if you hit most or all of the enemy team, you’ll heal for a huge chunk of health. It’s at this point that you really start to get in the “she just won’t die” realm.

20: Indestructible: Upon reaching zero health, gain a shield equal to your maximum health for a few seconds. Two minute cooldown.

The name says it all, really.

If you’re being hit hard enough for this to activate, odds are you just want to retreat. You might also be able to get in some quick healing with shield glare.

Sylvanas: Screaming Fury

General thoughts: Sylvanas is listed as a specialist, but I find she’s better played more like an assassin.

In theory, she has great push power, but she’s extremely squishy and her escape tool is difficult to use, so she melts under any kind of pressure. That means that while on paper your specialist toolkit is awesome, in practice you’ll only be accomplishing much pushing if the enemy team is dumb enough to ignore you.

Unlike most specialists, Sylvanas is usually not a good choice to solo a lane — which is something I dearly wish my team mates would understand.

She is, however, a great defensive specialist — that is, she can counter enemy pushes brilliantly. She’s one of the few good counters to a pushing Azmodan, for instance.

She has also has fantastic damage and can be a real asset in a team fight, unlike many other specialists. Just remember that you’re one of the most vulnerable heroes in the game. Rely on the support of your team and be cautious.

This build increases Sylvanas’ damage, making her as lethal as any true assassin.

1: With the wind: Increases withering fire’s range.

Where possible, I like to pick talents that have both offensive and defensive applications. Something Sylvanas excels at is hunting down wounded enemies and finishing them off, and with the wind enhances your ability to do that.

Meanwhile, it also allows you to put out strong damage from a greater distance, thus putting yourself at less risk. This is crucial when you’re as squishy as Sylvanas.

As Sylvanas, your best defense is a good offense.

4: Paralysis: Doubles the duration of black arrows.

This is my one specialist pick in the build. The default duration of black arrows is a bit weak, but this gives you all the extra power you need to completely shut down enemy minion waves.

It also allows you solo mercenary camps more effectively, but despite Sylvanas’ role as a specialist, I’d still recommend getting the help of team mates where possible, especially for bruiser camps.

7: Remorseless: Using an ability empowers your next basic attack.

As Sylvanas, you’ll be spamming withering fire almost constantly. That means remorseless amounts to a nearly constant increase to your already high auto-attack damage. You can ruin people with this talent.

Try to space out your withering fire shots so that there’s an auto-attack between each one.

10: Wailing arrow: Fire an arrow over a long distance. When it reaches the end of its path or you reactivate the ability, it explodes, dealing area damage and silencing enemy heroes.

Possession is wildly regarded as one of the game’s weakest ultimates, so wailing arrow is the default choice.

There are two many uses for it. One is to fire it in the middle of a team fight to silence as many opposing players as possible. The other is to use its range to finish off one or more low health enemies that would otherwise escape. Both good choices.

You can also use it to interrupt channeled spells, but this requires very good timing and aim due to wailing arrow’s relatively slow travel time.

13: Evasive fire: Withering fire increases your movement speed for a short time. Stacks.

As Sylvanas, mobility is crucial to offense and defense. You’ll be spending most of your time either chasing and harassing enemies, or running for your life. Evasive fire helps with both.

16: Cold embrace: Shadow dagger increases damage taken by enemies, but its range is reduced.

This can be useful for clearing minion waves, but it really shines against enemy heroes. It can win team fights outright, but even against single targets, it’s plenty useful.

20: Bolt of the storm: A targeted teleport on a cooldown.

Sylvanas has a teleport by default, but between how awkward it is to use, her extremely low health, and a lack of strong competition on this talent tier, bolt of the storm becomes the obvious choice.