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.

UPDATE: The Sylvanas build has been updated to reflect the changes in the Dehaka patch on March 29, 2016.

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 used to be an assassin disguised as a specialist, but as of the new patch, she plays more like a traditional specialist, though she maintains strong damage and team fight potential.

Sylvanas’ new talent tree doesn’t offer a lot of clear synergies or obvious builds, but it also allows her to be more versatile than she used to be, whereas before she was simply a glass cannon and nothing else.

With the new build, you’ll spend more time pushing and have a very strong lane presence in the early game, but don’t neglect team fights. You’re still one of the more dangerous specialists around, especially past level ten.

One thing that hasn’t change is that you’re still a very squishy hero with an unreliable escape, so you should still be very cautious, and it remains true that Sylvanas is not a great choice for soloing lanes or roaming the map solo, unlike most other specialists.

1: Paralysis: Increases the duration of black arrows by 75%.

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, and at level one, that can be a big advantage.

Later on, 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.

4: 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.

7: Possession: Permanently take control of any enemy minion. Catapults and mercenaries are immune. Three charges.

Once the game’s worst heroic, possession is actually pretty decent as a level seven talent. At that stage of the game, the enemy team is still going to have some difficulty countering, and between this and paralysis, your early game push power is going to be pretty scary.

Just make sure you’re using it any chance you get. Any time you’re passing a minion wave late game, remember to through out possession as you pass.

Random fun fact: If you possess enemy minions while your team is cursed on Cursed Hollow, the stolen minions will still have full health.

10: Mind control: After a short delay, take control of an enemy hero’s movement for a short time. During this time, you cannot take any other action, but neither can the target.

With possession moved down to level seven, Sylvanas now has two strong choices for ultimates. However, I favour mind control. It’s slightly easier to use, and vastly more fun.

Generally the idea is to find a squishy hero and “encourage” them to stroll into the waiting arms of your team. It’s obviously great for preventing a low health target from fleeing. You can also force enemies into range of your towers (just make sure there are no minions around to absorb shots) or other danger areas, or prevent someone from fleeing Artanis’ purifier beam. With very good timing, it can also serve as an interrupt for powerful abilities, like strafe.

Just be careful not to put yourself at undue risk, as you yourself are helpless during the channel. Maintain a safe distance.

13: Life drain: Shadow dagger heals you for a small amount when it spreads.

This tier is all survival options. I favour shadow dagger as a way to heal up between fights, which is not something Sylvanas can normally do without hearthing or visiting a healing fountain.

Spell shield is also a decent choice if the enemy team has strong ability damage heroes, like Li-Ming or Kael’thas.

16: Cold embrace: Shadow dagger increases damage taken by the first enemy hit.

Lots of good options on this tier. Evasive fire and remorseless are also strong choices, but cold embrace allows your team to really blow up an important single target, like a healer.

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.

I meant to do some Heroes of the Storm guides when the game officially launched, but with all the chaos of apartment-hunting and moving, I didn’t get a chance.

But now that life is more settled, and I’d like to start sharing some of what I’ve learned in my year plus of playing. I’m going to share my standard builds for my most played characters in each of the four roles. I’ll also be sharing links to their talent calculators on Heroes Nexus in case you need more info on the heroes and their abilities.

Today, I’ll be talking about my favourite support and assassin, Tassadar and Jaina. These are my two most played characters, with over 150 games played and master skins unlocked on each at the time of this writing.

UPDATE: The Jaina build has been updated to reflect the changes in the Dehaka patch on March 29, 2016.

Tassadar: Executor of All Trades

General thoughts: The great thing about Tassadar is his versatility. He doesn’t necessarily excel in any particular area, but he brings a little bit of everything to the table, and he has few, if any, major weaknesses or obvious counters.

He’s also an excellent counter to stealth heroes, especially Nova. Between his trait and psionic storm, he’s fantastic at knocking enemies out of stealth, his shields help counter their burst, and dimensional shift completely negates Nova’s triple-tap while still triggering its full cooldown.

This build is meant to build on his versatility. It will allow you to put out very high healing numbers (rivaling a Malfurion or Kharazim) while also being supremely hard to kill and doing some some fairly respectable damage.

1: Conjurer’s pursuit: Collecting healing globes permanently increases your mana regeneration.

This build focuses on making very heavy use of plasma shield and psionic storm, and you will need all the mana you can get. If you’re diligent about grabbing healing globes in the early game, this talent should be enough to sustain you.

4: Leeching plasma: Basic attacks by shielded targets heal them.

This tier offers Tassadar’s only means of actually healing damage, and leeching plasma is more reliable than healing ward. Prioritize shielding squishy heroes with high auto-attack damage, like Valla and Illidan.

7: Khala’s embrace: A portion of plasma shield will remain indefinitely after its duration runs out.

This is a crucial part of the build. Once you have this talent, you should pretty much be using plasma shield on cooldown, even if — especially if — there’s no fighting going on. By blanketing shields across your entire team, you can greatly increase their survivability. Prioritize low health heroes. Shield yourself only if you’re near death or everyone else is already shielded. Staying at range and making judicious use of dimensional shift should be enough to keep you alive under most circumstances.

10: Archon: Gain a shield and greatly increased auto-attack damage for short period.

This is by far the easier to use ultimate, and therefore my pick. It’s been nerfed a few times, but the damage can still make a difference if the enemy team is backed into a corner or otherwise unable to escape. In a pinch, its shield can also save you from certain death.

13: Prescience: Dimensional shift activates automatically at low health.

Tassadar is pretty hard to kill to begin with, but with prescience, you’re nearly immortal. It will activate when you’re stunned, and it doesn’t trigger and isn’t effected by dimensional shift’s main cooldown.

16: Second strike: You can cast a second, free psionic storm after the first one.

With the survivability of you and your team covered, it’s time to boost your damage. A second psionic storm allows you to deal more AoE damage to the enemy team, recover from a misclick, control the battlefield, or clear large minion waves easily.

Important note: Multiple psionic storms do not stack. Placing two storms directly on top of each other will not double your damage.

20: Twilight archon: Increases the damage bonus and shield of archon and increases your auto-attack range while active.

Although the damage of twilight archon is devastating, its real value is in the increased range. Enemies will find it much harder to escape your wrath.

Storm shield is also a decent choice, but twilight archon is just too much fun. People underestimate you. And then they die.

Jaina: Blizzard Entertainment

General thoughts: Jaina is a very strong assassin, but in some ways a peculiar one. She’s not a duelist or a ganker. She’s not the best in small engagements. Team fights, though? She reigns supreme. Her AoE damage and crowd control will ruin the enemy team.

Keep in mind that Jaina has very low health and no escape tools. Always stay at range, and don’t take chances. A cautious Jaina is a successful Jaina. Blizzard is your main source of damage, and frost bolt can be used to poke, wear down, or finish off a wounded target. Cone of cold is mainly used to discourage enemies who get too close. You can use it offensively, but it’s very risky, so I don’t recommend it for beginners.

This build focuses on blizzard, capitalizing on Jaina’s existing strengths.

1: Lingering chill: Chill effects last longer.

Mostly this just makes your play more forgiving by making combos easier to execute. It allows you to easily keep a target permanently chilled by spamming frost bolt.

4: Snowstorm: Increases blizzard radius.

The default radius for blizzard is pretty small. This makes it easier to clear minion waves or hit multiple enemy heroes.

7: Frostbitten: Increases damage bonus against chilled targets.

More damage.

10: Summon water elemental: Fairly self-explanatory.

I actually think ring of frost is a better ultimate if you can land it, but it’s extremely hard to use effectively. Water elemental is much safer choice.

Two things to keep in mind about water elemental: It’s very good at chasing down wounded enemies without risking yourself, and it attacks fast enough to keep a Nova from re-entering stealth. This is a great way to force her to disengage.

13: Storm front: Increases cast range of blizzard.

This is, in my view, Jaina’s most mandatory talent. The default range for blizzard puts you entirely too close to the front lines. You need the extra range.

17: Snow crash: Adds an additional hit to blizzard.

Realistically, you’re not going to hit many heroes with all three blizzard waves, but this talent is a great asset for capturing mercenary camps and keeping enemies zoned out, and the other talents in this row don’t really fit this build.

20: Wintermute: Increases the cast range of summon water elemental, and causes your elemental to mirror your ability casts for half damage.

I can’t say I’m happy about the removal of bolt of the storm from Jaina. That leaves wintermute or arcane power as your only choices. They both increase burst damage, which isn’t something Jaina needs help with by level 20.

Neither option is good, but wintermute is slightly less weak. It’s basically free damage, and the extra cast range on water elemental has its uses.

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Any questions? Ask me in the comments.