Janna Build Guide by Turbopasta

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my guide on Janna! Are you tired of the same old "Max shield first" builds for Janna? Or are you just looking for an awesome way to build and play Janna? Regardless of your reason, if you are reading this, there is a good chance you are ready to flip birds at people. With my guide, you will be flipping more birds than you can possibly count. You will be the envy of Swain players everywhere.

Oh, and one quick important thing you should know before you start this: You should be playing with the Frost Queen Janna skin. It makes the constant slows that this build produces very demoralizing to your opponents.

Without further ado, let's get started! But first...

An important question

Question: has the enemy champion been recently stricken with a bird? If the answer is yes, then good work, you are doing your job well. If the answer is no, then put a bird on it.

In case you don't get it yet, this guide is about putting birds on things.

Runes

Since you are playing support, you aren't going to be building Janna very offensively. I like getting 9 Greater Seal of Gold and 3 Greater Quintessence of Gold. Having both of these runes equiped gives you a total of 5.3 gold per 10 seconds, which is like having a free Gold Per 10 item as soon as the game starts. This might not seem like a big deal to some, but it is, as this means that in the first 10 minutes of the game, you've earned a free 318 gold. This, along with passive gold gain, ensures that you can make money relatively easily for a support. I also like to get 9 Greater Mark of Magic Penetration as it really adds a lot more power to your Zephyr. HOWEVER, depending on your playstyle, you may want to get 9 Greater Mark of Desolation instead, if you like to spam autoattacks on people. Lastly, I snag 9 Greater Glyph of Scaling Mana Regeneration to help her sustain in lane.

Masteries

I like to put 3 points into Hardiness for an early +6 armor. This helps Janna to survive autoattacks from stuff on bottom lane like Caitlyn or Kog'Maw. I throw the rest of my points into Utility, since that's pretty much what Janna is meant to be with this build. I skip Good Hands , Improved Recall , Transmutation , Runic Affinity , and Strength of Spirit . The reasons I skip these things are...

• With the massive speed you have, along with Flash, you shouldn't be dying very often.
• No real reason for improved Recall. Nice spell to have, but not mandatory.
• You aren't doing enough damage for spellvamp to be of any use.
• You aren't jungling.
• You aren't stacking mana, so the last one doesn't really come in much handy.

Summoner Spells

Items

Throughout the entire game, since you are support, you should be buying Sight Wards and Vision Wards on a fairly regular basis, especially if you have around 200-300 leftover gold after buying something, since you can't spend that money on much of anything else, really.

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Start with Faerie Charm, 3x Health Potion and 3x Sight Wardlike a (good) support should. If you are new to playing a support champion, it is imporant to know that you should be warding the low bush near your opponent's tower (do this pretty early if you aren't being pushed all the way back to your tower) and the bush near the river (ward this at around level 3 or 4, maybe earlier if the other team has a Lee Sin or a Shaco jungling). You'd be surprised at how long 3 wards can last you.

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By the time you go back to base for the first time, you should be able to afford a Philosopher's Stone and some Boots of Speed. Spend any leftover money you have on wards and/or health potions.

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In this guide, you are going to want to rush Rylai's Crystal Scepter as fast as you can after getting the previous items. The extra health helps you, but that isn't why you're rushing it. No, you want this thing for the kick-*** slow that it puts on people. 35% slow from Rylai's plus 48% slow from Zephyr (at level 5) is an incredible amount of slow. Your enemies might as well just turn into snails, 'cause they aren't going anywhere. Not only that, but you can also slow and knock-up enemies with your Howling Gale in a pinch, which might just save your life or someone else's if they're running away from something scary.

I feel it's worth mentioning here that using Monsoon does not proc the slow from Rylai's.

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Ionian Boots of Lucidity are a great item for Janna to have, especially when you consider that, besides making Shyrelya's Reviere at the end of the build, the items in this guide give Janna no CDR otherwise. Getting these boots right after Rylai's makes sense, since now you can Zephyr people with super-slow birds more frequently.

you can also get yourself some Boots of Swiftness. Janna is one of the only champions that I will ever recommend this item on, but they're pretty great on her. These shoes, along with the passive speed boost from Zephyr, allow her to throw super-slow birds at people in the middle of fights and get away unscathed. If you don't feel like you really need the extra speed, get Lucidity for more tornado-bird spammage instead, or Mercury's Treads if you're being wrecked by slows, stuns, or magic.

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I thought about building a Randuin's Omen at this point of the build, just to add to this somewhat gimmicky (and effective) idea I have going on, but I just figured that there wasn't much purpose for even MORE AoE slow at this point, and it's even less useful when you consider that you have to be pretty close to enemies to use this. So typically, I build an Aegis of the Legion at this point of the game. I like getting an Aegis since it finally gives you the armor you need to survive surprise ganks from enemies. Hit points alone aren't of much use if you don't have some sort of resistance to back them up. The range that this thing has to cover allies is pretty huge too, so you should be giving everyone a buff whenever you are even close to a teamfight with them.

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Choice #1: If you are being focused down by the enemy team constantly (And you probably are), dying before you even know what just happened, consider building a Guardian Angel on Janna. This is a great item for her, because not only does it give slightly better personal defenses than Aegis, but you can use Monsoon the moment you come back to life for a (hopefully easy) escape.

Choice #2: You can also opt for something a little more unconventional: A Frozen Mallet. This should be picked if you are fighting champs that have little to no range or gap-closers (Such as Garen, Master Yi, Shyvana and Rammus). Obviously, if you mismicro yourself, you will probably die, so don't make stupid mistakes and attack stuff that can get you instantly killed.

Now, I KNOW that some people are going to question my judgement when they see that suggest building Frozen Mallet on Janna along with Rylai's, especially since Frozen Mallet is mostly used on ranged AD carries. "Does this even stack with Rylai's", you ask?

IMPORANT NOTE: THE SLOWS FROM RYLAI'S AND FROZEN MALLET DO NOT STACK.

So no, they do not. The basic idea here is that by the time you get to this point of your build, people will most likely be engaging in teamfights everywhere. With these two items, you can throw a bird at one champ, which procs Ryali's, and an auto-attack at another enemy champ, which procs Frozen Mallet. Top it off with a well-placed tornado, and you've got slows everywhere, which helps your team in dramatic ways. Not only that, but the extra health from Frozen Mallet helps your surviveablity, and not only THAT, but with this item, you can now chase down running opponents with your auto-attack when Zephyr is on cooldown. So as you can see, this item has multiple purposes on Janna. The extra health is nice too.

That being said, however, Frozen Mallet isn't totally necessary on Janna for this build to work. It's true, most games you play as Janna won't get to the point where you have enough money to make it this far into the build. Rylai's is your core item which powers everything you do, which is why we get it pretty early into the build.

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Finally, upgrade your Philosopher into a Shurelya's Reverie . This is standard on a lot of supports, and for good reason. The crown is a great item for a support to have, as you can often save yourself and teammates with it's active proc. I like to build it as late as possible so you can keep earning gold over time with Philiosopher's Stone.

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You may have noticed that at this point, you don't have a dedicated 6th item. That's because...you aren't supposed to! See, as a support, you want to dedicate at least 1 item slot to holding wards. So once you've built all of the previous items in the list, you--yep, you guessed it,--buy about a million Sight Ward.

Keep in mind that once your are in lategame, your warding priorities are most often The Baron, the Dragon, and Red Buffs/Blue Buffs, in that order.

Skills (Sequence and gameplay tips)

With Janna, you are going to want to max Zephyr first, Eye of the Storm second, and Howling Gale last, while leveling up your ultimate whenever you can. It's not unusual to help an ally on bot lane grab a firstblood with this skill order, as many people don't expect such a powerful slow that early in the game.

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First off, dat passive. Tailwind is a great passive for a support like Janna, and honestly, for just about every other champ on your team. How cool is it that you can inadvertently help people in their lanes without even doing anything? Just make sure not to die, lest your allies lose the movement speed boost.

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With your rune and mastery setup, Zephyr should be pretty spammable, so don't be afraid to shoe people away with it, but at the same time, make sure you don't run out of mana too fast. It's something you kind of need to experiment with yourself to understand. Not only does it dish out a great slow, but it also gives you a passive movement speed boost, which is critical to surviving in lane, especially when you don't start with shoes.

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Eye Of The Storm is a good spell to max out second. Most guides I see these days have Janna max it first, but the reason I don't like this is that, let's say you are playing with a random in ranked. Let's say the random player is kind of bad. You see an opening for your ranged AD carry to harass someone in the lane. You throw your shield on them, but...they don't do anything. They just sit there and let it go to waste. You would be shocked at how many people in ranked actually don't know that, along with getting a shield from Janna, they also get a boost to their attack power. Sure, you can tell them about this when the game starts, but many bad players will forget about this in the heat of battle. I like maxing zephyr first because, when your ally sees an enemy get slowed down, it's much more obvious for them to know what to do then when you throw a shield on them. Along with harass from Zephyr, you should also get some autoattacks in whenever it's safe, and sometimes when it's not.

Howling Gale is good for chasing down enemies, and for escaping from them. Treat it like a super-weak version of Exhaust that you can use on multiple people. You can also use to check bushes, should you not have Clairvoyance or a ward handy, and you can use it on minions to help your ally push a lane. Don't be afraid to use this on minions. It does such little damage, especially at lvl 1, that you typically won't steal any minions from your ally with it. Keep in mind that Howling Gale DOES NOT give you sight, so if you are running from an enemy and you throw one down, you are just going to have to try and time it properly based on how fast the enemy was going. Howling gale also hurts dragon and baron, but it does not knock them up.
AN IMPORANT NOTE ABOUT HOWLING GALE:
I didn't actually know this when I started playing Janna, but you can press Q before the tornado is fully charged and it will launch to it's destination ahead of time. Doing this, however, lowers the range that you get out of it. I know, I'm an idiot, right?

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Oh, and who could forget about that ultimate, Monsoon. One thing you should know about this ultimate is that it is a double-edged sword. Big time. A bad Janna can ruin a teamfight just as well as a good one can dominate it. See, this ultimate makes Janna blast ALL the enemies around her back. Every time you use it, you should have an idea of what you want to accomplish with it, never use it randomly in a teamfight for no reason. That being said, there are TONS of applications for this ultimate. So many, in fact, that I feel the need to separate this part into a list.

• It creates a field that heals allies.
• You can flash behind an enemy champ and use your ulti to force that single champion into your allies.
• If you see an ally getting ganked, and he's losing the fight, you can often save them with your ultimate
• You can use it to interrupt channeling spells, such as Nunu's ultimate.
  You can use it in combination with stuff like Vayne's condemn to keep people on walls a bit longer.
• You can save yourself from random ganks with Monsoon.
• Since Monsoon heals Janna as well, you can use it to save yourself from things like Karthus's Requiem.

Good times to use it purely for healing purposes are, right before you go back to base, after a baron fight, an early dragon fight, or a successful teamfight, assuming that your allies are damaged.

Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed reading my guide on Janna: The bird flipper. Go now, my child, and cover the town in birds.