Hi,

This is my Johanna guide(s) for all your tank needs. First off, Johanna is an amazing control tank that has good talents to take maximum advantage of her kit. She has 2 great control heroic skills, and a lot of AOE control/damage to spice things up. On top of that, she lacks any natural counters. Varian can crush her shields in the mid to late game (provided he picks his talents accordingly), but all you need to do is CC him and have your team take care of him.

The heroic talents also make Johanna a fantastic initiator, or a tank that can easily turn a fight around with a good heroic skill.

Johanna benefits from a trait that she can activate, and her talents can provide her with even more active skills.

Q - Punish
Punish hits enemies in a short circle arc in front of you and slows them down for a short duration. This is very useful when chasing a hero or preventing someone from reaching the back line. It pales in comparison to some of the top tier slowing moves like Arthas's Frozen Tempest, Probius's Warp Rift, but still allows you to hinder someone's advance quite a bit.

W - Condemn
Condemn is your most important control spell. When cast, it forms a circular aura around you that will drag enemies towards you. In a fight when you are moving forward or chasing, you should follow this up with Punish if you hit a target. Condemn also affects minions, mercenaries, but doesn't affect bosses, punishers, immortals. If you are teamed up with an AOE caster ( Kael'thas, Jaina, Gul'dan, Gazlowe, Nazeebo) or a long distance caster ( Chromie, Li-Ming), Condemn provides a fantastic opportunity for them to combo off of. Condemn can also be used when fighting on the back foot, oto prevent an enemy target from diving your back line.

E- Shield Glare
Shield glare blinds enemies in a long cone ahead of you. If you pick Holy Renewal at level 16, it also serves as a sustain skill for some healing. This is especially useful against auto-attackers, whether they're assassins, warriors or specialists. Valla, Varian (bruiser builds), Sonya, Raynor, Tychus, Falstad will suffer from this, especially in dive compositions because this will rob them of one or more auto attacks while your team can dish out the pain.

D - Iron Skin
Johanna's active trait is one of her most useful skills. The ability to make yourself unstoppable for a moment can allow you to make sure that Condemn connects and can be a game changer in a team fight. If you can anticipate some of the skills being thrown your way (Yes, I'm talking about E.T.C.'s Mosh Pit)), you can use this and then throw Blessed Shield as an interrupt. In addition to the Unstoppable buff, Iron skin also provides a shield for a short duration. It can also be used as an escape mechanism if you get caught out. The enemy team will be looking to force this out of you before they engage because it's a very valuable skill with a longer cool down than the 3 basic abilities.

R - Blessed Shield
Here comes your show stopping, fight winning skill. Especially useful against a dive composition, throw this at the main damage dealer to stop his advance, and if your team takes the hint, dumpster the unlucky fella. This spreads to two other nearby targets, so a 3-man stun can turn a fight around. Blessed shield benefits from a relatively short cool down (60 seconds) for a heroic talent, meaning that you might have it available each fight if some time passes. If you can find someone out of position, or alone and away from his team while you're grouped up, throw this and it all but guarantees your team killing that target, giving you a 5v4 opportunity for some time.

R - Falling Sword
Very similar to E.T.C.'s stage dive in mechanics, except for the awful limitation of moving for 2 seconds from your location. Falling sword will give you some damage to go with a knock up. It also serves as an temporary escape from some of the damage the enemy team can be dishing out on you. With no real, tangible advantage for knock up vs the stun option, Falling sword is also a much bigger gamble than Blessed Shield because the team just has to avoid clumping up and reduce the falling sword efficiency.

Level 1 - Reinforce
Reinforce should be your level 1 talent for 95%+ or your games on Johanna. Using abilities will grant you block charges, stacking up to 2 times. This is a fantastic damage reduction tool against any auto attack based champion.
Variation: In the highly unlikely event that you play against a comp with no auto-attackers, or only one auto attacker, you can consider Regeneration Master for better regeneration/sustain.

Level 4 - Laws of Hope
Laws of hope serves as your active sustain. 20% of your HP over 4 seconds is definitely not something you can pass over. If you activate this as soon as a fight start and you take damage, it boosts your survivability and your ability to be an annoyance in team fights. It also comes with a nice passive that regenerates 10HP/second.

Level 7 - Blessed Momentum
This is where my guide might raise some eyebrows. I see a lot of guides advocating for Conviction. While conviction is not a bad choice, I feel like it's used to compensate for bad positioning. With Blessed Momentum, every auto attack landed reduces your cool downs by 0.5 seconds. This is crucial in team fights because it will allow you to cast your spells faster and have more control during the fight. If you have an immobile target close by, make sure to land one or two hits. Using your skills more often means more damage for you, and for your team.

Level 10 - Blessed Shield
This is a no-brainer for me. Blessed Shield gives you potential for picks, interrupts, and control that isn't accessible to Johanna before level 10. See the skills section for usage details

Level 13 - Burning Rage
Another easy decision. Burning rage will provide damage to nearby enemies. This will make it all the more inviting for you to bring people in closer to you, and truly be the life of the party. Being close to the mages or auto attackers will force them to turn their attention to you because your control skills mean that you can constantly damage them, and for some heroes, you also can negate their damage. This will force the enemy team on you very quickly and can be a great distraction tool if it fits your comp. If you can't risk advancing, you're going to be applying constant pressure on any target coming forward, and when paired with Condemn, it can be used as a wave clear option.

Level 16 - Holy Renewal
Level 16 to me is the only talent tier for which Johanna has 2 viable choices. Holy renewal will heal you for every hero hit by Shield Glare which is added survivability to an already very sturdy tank. Against a poke comp, this means you can absorb the poke and just throw the glare on multiple target and regenerate some of that HP right away.
Variation - Imposing Presence
This is definitely composition dependent. In a composition with 3 auto attackers, Imposing presence will slow the nearby attackers movement and attacking speed down or 2.5 seconds when activated. The passive on the skill will make targets think twice about attacking you, which gives you more incentive to harass the auto attackers.

Level 20 - Indestructible
Am I the only one hearing Disturbed here? Indestructible makes Johanna a non-target in fights unless you get caught out of position. You should be the last target to be focused, which gives you the liberty to harass whomever you please and peel for your carries the best you can. No need to time the proc, as indestructible automatically kicks in when you would normally die. Keep the cooldown in mind however, because if the team knows it's down, and you're playing too aggressively, you could get picked and 100-0'd in a 5v1 scenario that gives the enemy team a 5v4 for a minute or more (Depending on the death timers & map location).
Variation - Storm Shield
Don't get me wrong, I almost always go Indestructible, but if your team gets killed very quickly, whether it's because of player skill, or just a bad comp, pick Storm Shield up at level 20. It will give you a chance to correct some of your team's flaws by providing some clearly much needed shielding, and that could be the extra help you need to win a team fight.

Your playstyle as Johanna should be pretty straightforward. Get in the front line, attract targets, slow them, blind them. At that point your team moves in for the kill. Even better if you can land blessed shield. Burning Rage will provide some close range AOE damage so nearby targets, and auto-attacking will reduce your cooldowns due to blessed momentum. This allows you to repeat your combo pretty quickly and have constant crowd control output.

After you hit 10, Blessed Shield is your top initiation tool. Land your CC on the enemy team's damage dealers, follow up with W-Q-E and your team should have been able to delete the target at that point. With your Iron Skin trait, you can be unstoppable for a short amount of time allowing you to move in. This is especially useful if you're against a Chromie, an Arthas, or any other hero with AOE crowd control. You can activate it as long as you're not stunned/silenced.

At level 20, Indestructible gives you extra resistance that automatically kicks in when you would normally die. This can either help you out of a pinch, or give you an extra few seconds to get some more CC or apply some more damage.

Overall, just remember that Johanna is one of the great front line picks, and you can easily stop the enemy team from diving your damage dealers. Johanna does especially well against auto-attackers because of her blind ability. Long range spell casters such as Li-Ming and Chromie have an easier time poking Johanna. Make sure to stay away from the poking until your team can dive in the fight.

You also have the privilege or being a very attractive pick, but due to the armor, shields and sustain, you're very hard to burst down unless you attract all the enemy team. This comes in handy for setting up baits, and burst healing like Rehgar's Ancestral Healing can nullify the enemy team's effort to take you down and quickly turn the fight around. Use this with caution, because an unsuccessful bait in a single tank comp means your team is down a tank and probably can't fight.

Johanna is a safe pick in most comps, and will rarely draw any bans. She generally does well on every maps, and will do good in comps with only her as the tank, or when paired up with a bruiser. The rest of the team should be able to deal more damage, because Johanna's output is limited, and she can't serve as a potent bruiser.

She's a safe first pick due to the lack of natural counters, and might go quickly in the draft phase. Definitely pick her if the other team has 3 auto-attack based champions or if you need hard CC. Avoid her if your team composition lacks damage, as a bruiser will be better suited for your composition.

Unless the other team opts to play Johanna, she generally isn't a high priority pick. Teams seem to favor E.T.C. or a double bruiser comp, which means that even if you're picking last, there's still a fairly good chance that you will get to pick Johanna. Her lack of natural counters or bruising ability means that she doesn't counter a lot of people, and generally gets overlooked despite being a fantastic pick that's generally very easy to execute.