This guide will temporarily not be updated as I am currently overseas without internet access. I will make changes according to most recent patches once I come back which will be 21st February 2012.


Without any further delay, I present to you my Janna guide. In my opinion, Janna is the best support LoL has to offer. Her large amount of CCs makes her an excellent pick for laning, ganking, escaping and team fights. For this very reason, Janna should be played as full support as opposed to dealing damage.

A good support will require no extra gold and leave it to the carry to farm up. By taking creep kills from your carry, you make both your carry and yourself worse off. Janna alone cannot kill heroes and thus any extra gold on you will be useless. However, on a carry it makes a whole difference. The extra gold on your carry means they could deal enough damage to kill the enemy team's hero before any of you die, thus preventing a death on your team. Thus, this very guide focuses on the items needed to maximise your team's survivability at the minimum costs.

Please do not hesitate to leave your comments below. Any comments or suggestions are highly appreciated as through them, I will be able to further improve my guide. Last but not least, thank you for taking the time to read my Janna Guide.

15/01/2011 Added Caitlyn and Ashe to the AD Carry section.
10/01/2011 Changed mastery tree and masteries section.
12/12/2011 Changed the design of the guide by removing columns and using a different layout.
11/12/2011 Published the guide.

There has been discussion going on as to whether build Janna as a support using AP items or full support. The arguments for building AP on Janna is that she would heal more, her shield will block more damage and her spells will deal more damage. However my opinion is that a CDR Janna is the best build.

With CDR of 36% using Ionian Boots of Lucidity, Shurelya's Battlesong and Intelligence

• Howling Gale CD would be reduced by 3.6 seconds
• Zephyr CD would be reduced by 2.9 seconds
• Eye of the Storm CD would be reduced by 3.6 seconds
• Monsoon CD would be reduced by 43.2 seconds

At initial glance, a few seconds CD reduction may seem insignificant, but it truly makes a difference. Here is the breakdown.
SPACE

Howling Gale: The purpose of this skill is to disable the enemy team by knocking them up, helping your team take the kill or run away. Positives Cast it more frequently Second chance to get enemy team if they flash away Potentially disabling two wave of enemy heroes Negatives Less Damage

SPACE

Zephyr: The purpose of this skill is to allow you to chase up to the enemy team or run away while the skill is on passive. When it is on active, the enemy hero's movement is slowed, allowing your team to catch up and kill. Positives Cast it more frequently Your passive is up quicker to allow you to chase Almost permanent slow. Once it wears off, your skill is almost ready again. Negatives Less Damage

SPACE

Eye of The Storm: The purpose of this skill is to shield your team and providing an attack buff. Positives Cast it more frequently Almost permanent buff. Once it wears off, your spell is almost ready again. Potentially saving two allies instead of just one. Negatives Smaller Shield

SPACE


Based on the information above, which Janna is better? Support or AP? I don't know about you, but I know which one I'm picking.

It is true that as a support Janna, you don't need to deal damage. However, each time you cast Howling Gale or Zephyr on the enemy team, you are doing damage and every amount counts! Have you ever experienced seeing your team failing to kill someone who escaped away on low health? If you had a bit more damage from your spells, that enemy hero may have been dead.
SPACE
Janna as a support will no doubt cast many of her spells to save team or assist her team to kill. As a result, she will have mana problems and mana regen runes are preferable. The reason I chose Greater Seal of Replenishment over Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration is because mana problem only occurs in early game. Later on you will have items to fix the problem.
SPACE
More AP means your spells deal more damage, your shield is larger and you heal a bit more off Monsoon. The reason I don't take Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction is because occasionally you will take the Blue Golem Buff and thus push you over the CDR cap of 40%. Also depending on if you get Randuin's Omen or not, you will be just over the cap. I will discuss more about Randuin's Omen in the Item section.
SPACE
As a support, it is crucial to surviving. In all games you will take both physical damage and magical damage. Health is thus the best option for survivability. An extra 78 HP early game is possibly surviving two hits!

SPACE
SPACE

• Summoner's Resolve 15% more health could mean your allies surviving one more hit!
• Hardiness Early game you will be receiving mostly physical damage. The slight buff in armour will help you survive in lane longer.
• Durability 108 more health at level 18 could mean surviving one more hit!
• Veteran's Scars An extra 30 hp early game is important as Janna is squishy at the start.

• Summoner's Insight 2 extra seconds on Clairvoyance could mean seeing a ganker coming or not!
• Expanded Mind An extra 216 mana at level 18 could mean casting two more extra spells which you would be unable to cast if you didn't have it.
• Imrpoved Recall As a babysitter, you will need to go back to base more frequently than your carry as you need to buy wards, buy your gp5 items etc. The quicker you can recall, the quicker you can get back in lane and continue babysitting your ad carry.
• Meditation Janna tends to struggle with mana early on and also Swiftness doesn't benefit Janna as much since she already has Zephyr
• Greed You are not taking creep kills unless you happened to be in lane by yourself(rarely) and so this is your source of gold.
• Wealth Extra gold to buy an extra ward! The longer you can stay in lane the better.
• Awareness You will level up quicker.
• Intelligence The more CDR the better. As discussed in AP vs Support Janna
• Mastermind 15% CDR on Summoner Spells means you can cast Heal about 40 seconds quicker and Clairyovance 10 seconds quicker.

SPACE

Heal: Janna doesn't have a proper heal. Who seriously uses her ult as heal... Clearly you are going to stand in the middle of a team fight by channeling Monsoon instead of throwing out your CCs and shield. Furthermore Heal helps you sustain your lane.

SPACE

Cleanse: Cleanse can be useful in team fights. Amumu or Galio ults your team and there is nothing you can do. Cleanse allows you to be free and use your skills to reduce damages to your team down to a minimal.

SPACE

Clairyovance: Map awareness is key to winning games. Sometimes your ward in a key spot just faded out and there is no way you can get to the place in time to put up another ward. Clairvoyance provides sight of where you can't reach. Thus it is a must take for all supporters.

SPACE

Flash: Despite the nerf and huge cooldown, it is still a viable pick. When your team is in a poor position in team fights, you can quickly flash and cast Monsoon to reset the team fights.

SPACE
SPACE

Ghost: Your Zephyr is your ghost. Why would you need two ghost? You are wasting a summoner spell which could change the result of the game.

SPACE

Clarity: Sometimes you run out of mana and this could be useful. However, you shouldn't be spamming spells in the first place.

SPACE

Teleport: It allows you to go from one place to another. However, with Zephyr and Shurelya's Battlesong, it shouldn't take you that much longer. Get a summoner spell that provides more utility to your team.

SPACE

SPACE

Revive: "I died but hey wait a second, I got revive. Wait for me!" Your entire team is probably dead before you get back to the team fight. The CD is also too long.

SPACE

Smite: Cause Janna is clearly a jungler and not a support. Have you seen a Janna jungle and see the team win? Leave it for the junglers.

SPACE

Surge: Why would you need more AP? Why more attack speed? You don't carry in either departments of scaling.

SPACE

Ignite: No one takes it unless they intend to use it for the kill on heroes who run away. A good support does not KS their carry.

SPACE

Exhaust: The slow on it is good but you already have a tonne of CC and if used right, there is no need for exhaust and since you are not taking masteries in offence, there is no bonus on Exhaust. Leave it to the carries.

SPACE

Promote: It seems nice to promote a minion. However you are jeopardising your team! In the laning phase you shouldn't be really pushing and by late game, towers and minions are easy to kill. Don't waste a summoner spell.

SPACE

SPACE

• Tailwind: This passive allows your whole team to move quicker, giving you the slight edge to chase and run away.
  
• Howling Gale (Q): This skill's main purpose is to disable the enemy team in team fights. You can cast it quickly for a quick disable or let it charge fully to push a lane. Another use of it is to stop the enemy hero from channelling e.g. Nunu & Willump and Katarina.
  
• Zephyr (W): This skill also has many uses. One of its uses is to allow you to chase the fleeing enemy hero so you can slow them down for your team to catch up. It also allows you to dive in at the enemy tower to throw in your Howling Gale and quickly run back out.
• Eye of The Storm (E): This skill has two purpose. It's first and most obvious one is to provide one of your ally hero with a shield. It's second and often neglected purpose is the attack damage buff it provides. At level 5, it provides 50 bonus attack damage on who bears the shield and that is equivalent to a B. F. Sword. The buff and the shield are two separate things. Even when the shield is destroyed, as long as the buff duration is still up, your carry still receives the bonus attack damage.
• Monsoon (R): Upon activation, it knocks all enemy hero out of the area and all allies within the area are healed over time. This is a channelling spell so if interrupted, it will stop. This could be used to reset the team fight if your team is in a poor position. It could also be used to sacrifice yourself to save more and important lives. An e.g. is your Ashe, Annie and you are running away from a lost team fight on low health. You are all about to die, however, you throw out Monsoon to buy both Ashe and Annie time to run and thus only you die instead of all three. In the best case scenario, all three will survive. Rarely is it used as heal except for when your team had just won a team fight and you are all on low health but have the opportunity to push.

SPACE
SPACE

As a support it is your main priority to assist your carry in killing the enemy team and providing them with survivability. Thus we max Eye of the Storm as soon as possible and taking it at level 1. However, if you are ganking early, take Howling Gale first.
SPACE
SPACE

We max Zephyr 2nd as it increases Janna's movement speed and also has an active to slow the enemy hero. We take it first at level 4 as this is typically when your jungler will come to gank and having as many disables as possible makes killing easier.
SPACE
SPACE

We take Howling Gale at level 2 just in case a jungler comes to gank and we can use it to disable them but maxing it second last e.g. Shaco. The reason we max Howling Gale before Monsoon is that Howling Gale's CD reduces with each level and as I explained above, each second counts!
SPACE
SPACE

Monsoon is taken at level 6 to provide you with also another disable. We max it last as the CD on the spell does not decrease and rarely is it used as a heal, especially in early game.

SPACE

SPACE

By following the masteries I mentioned above, you will start off the game with 515 gold. This is just enough to buy one Faerie Charm, three sight ward, two Health Potion and one Mana Potion.

• Faerie Charm: You start with one to allow you regen some mana after casting your spells. You don't need something like a Meki Pendant as you shouldn't be wasting mana in the first place. Plus your Greater Seal of Replenishment and Meditation is more than enough to sustain you in lane if you are using your spells correctly. Also it will be later used to build a Philosopher's Stone.
  
  
• Sight WardSight Wards: This provides you with vision of the river, allowing you to back off when the enemy jungler is coming. Thus your carry and yourself will take less damage and sustain lane longer. It is crucial to stay in lane as long as possible during the laning phase. You lose experience going back and forth.
  
  
• Health Potion: Yes you took summoner's spell Heal but it would be a waste if you use it on yourself. The purpose of taking Heal is to heal your carry not you! If you are hurt, use Health Potion as it doesn't hinder your build significantly to buy potions. However, for a carry, every gold is important as it accumulates to build higher tier items.
  
  
• Mana Potion: You take one just in case the enemy's team is too aggressive and forcing you to continuously use your spells. This will allow you to quickly recover mana to continue supporting your carry. Rarely have I had to use one but it has happened to me before while laning against Vayne and Sona who were very aggressive.

SPACE

SPACE

These items are your standard core items. They offer you gold over time, CDR and a nice buff for your team.

• Philosopher's StonePhilosopher's Stone: This offers you health regen and mana regen to allow you to stay in lane longer. It also offers you gold over time and will be later used to build your next core item, Shurelya's Battlesong.
  
  
• Ionian Boots of Lucidity: The only suitable boots on a support hero. This item gives you enhanced movement speed as well as a 15% CDR, meaning you can cast your spells more frequently.
  
  
• Heart of Gold: This provides you with more survivability as well as giving you gold over time. It can later be built into one of your luxury items, Randuin's Omen.
  
  
• Aegis of the Legion: For just under 2,000 gold, you get a very good item. It offers you survivability as well as a nice aura for your team. All your team mates with any the area will get 12 Armour, 15 Magic Resistance and 8 Attack Damage. The only time you wouldn't get this item is if your team's tank is already getting it. The Aura is unique, meaning it does not stack with itself.
  
  
• Shurelya's Reverie: After a while your Philosopher's Stone will not be as effective as it originally was. You can then build it into a Shurelya's Battlesong. This item gives you another 15% CDR and an active that increases the movement speed of all allies within the area for 3 seconds. That means your team can quickly run away from a bad team fight or quickly chase up to the fleeing enemy team.
  

SPACE

SPACE

These are core items that you must have if the game ever drags on i.e. over the standard 25-35 minute mark.

• Banshee's Veil: The game sometime drags on and thus the enemy team will be doing more damage. This means you need more survivability. However, the best item for its price is the Banshee's Veil. It offers magic resistance, mana and health and thus everything you need to survive with. Did I mention it's passive? Every 45 seconds you have a shield that will protect one negative spell. This is extremely important in team fights as the first spell usually thrown out is some sort of CC. If you can avoid it, then you can do more for your team. A stunned Janna is a useless Janna.

SPACE

SPACE

These are items that you will consider taking as your fifth and last item. You would only take one of these if you have a lot of gold and hence the term luxury. Only take one of these depending on the situation. The reason I only recommend these three items as they are of roughly the same price.

• Randuin's Omen: Take this if the enemy's team main damage hero is their AD Carry. The active on this will slow both their attack speed and movement speed as well as providing you with some armour. A Vayne who has low attack speed and is out of position thanks to your disables will not deal that much damage. Also with this item your CDR will just go over the cap. I prefer this over Frozen Heart because the slow on it is greater and you are not wasting CDR. Taking Frozen Heart sends you over the CDR by about 10%! Not to mention you get health regen from Randuin's Omen.
  
  
• Force of Nature: I take this when the main source of damage from the enemy team is Magical Damage e.g. Akali. This has roughly the same price to Abyssal Mask but I take Force of Nature instead for several reasons. First of all Force of Nature provides you with more survivability through higher Magic Resistance and greater health regeneration. Also the movement speed buff allows you to run away or chase up to fleeing enemies. Abyssal Mask may seem nice because it offers you AP and a Magic Resistance Reduction aura. This seems very nice at first glance but after a closer analysis, it clearly isn't. First of all, you don't need AP as your purpose isn't to deal damage but to survive out there and support your team. Secondly the Magic Resistance Reduction is only beneficial to your AP hero but your main source of damage comes from the AD Carry. Your AP hero is pretty useless once they chuck out all their spells.
  
  
• Guardian Angel: I would take this if both the AD and AP hero on the other team are a threat or if I am just the first target. This item offers both Magic Resistance and Armour so you could say it's a balance between taking Randuin's Omen and Force of Nature. Also the fact that you can come back alive after dying means you can quickly get back into the team fight and cast another set of spells.
  
  

space

During the laning phase, all supports play the role of a babysitter and Janna is no exception. What this means is that you do not take creep kills but leave it to your lane partner. In the current meta game, it will be your AD carry who will lane with you. However, sometimes your carry won't get every creep kill so instead of wasting it, take it instead. Do not use Howling Gale on minions. In the laning phase you should not be pushing unless you have good reason e.g. both enemy heroes are missing and you have good map awareness. Don't waste mana and spells. Use it to save your carry or yourself.
space
space

Every once in a while you may be called to come to another area e.g. help take down dragon. Once you pass a key area, and if you have any wards left over, place them down. Map awareness in key areas is crucial to winning game. I will talk more about warding in the warding section. However, avoid roaming as when you leave lane, you expose yourself to ganks as well as leaving your carry without any support. Only roam when your lane is pushed and if it is safe to do so.
space
space

In team fights, your role is to protect your carries and put their enemy team in a bad position to give your team the upper hand. What this means is using your shield to protect your carries and throwing out Howling Gale to stop any channelling spells focused at your carry e.g. Nether Grasp. If a dangerous spell e.g. Frost Arrow is coming towards your carry, intercept it if it means costing your life to save your carry.

Monsoon can be used to split up the enemy team. Instead of being a 5v5 it will turn into possibly a 4 vs 3 and a 2 vs 1 (two enemy hero against you). This gives your team the upper advantage as the enemy team will possibly lose many of their damage dealers in exchange for a support on your team who deals barely any damage. Follow it up with a Howling Gale and Zephyr to delay the enemy heroes who are furthest away from the fight going on between the rest of your team and their team. The more time you buy for your team, the better it is. However, this doesn't mean I suggest doing a Kamikaze (sorry lame I know). Only do it if your team can for sure take down most of the enemy heroes. Wasting your life for no reason is just plain stupid.
space
space

As a support you should not be taking kills as you don't need a lot of gold. However, there are times where you must use your judgement to take the kill. I have seen a lot of fail support who instead of taking the kill, assume their carry will but the enemy end up fleeing on with very low health. If you are in the position to kill but your carry is not, take the kill. However, if you carry is in position, don't kill!

Another situation where you need to use your judgement as to whether to kill the enemy hero or not, is when your carry and the enemy hero are on crucial health i.e. very low. There are times when your carry will take the kill but also die in the process. However, had you taken the kill, your carry would take that one less hit and survive. Now at first glance people will say it doesnt matter if your carry dies as long as they get the kill. WRONG! I will try and explain why.
SPACE
Positives

• Your carry gets about 500 gold
• They will get a kill score instead of an assist

Negatives The enemy hero also gets gold for killing your hero Your carry will lose some experience in the mean time SPACE Your Carry Survives With An Assist Positives Your carry gets about 70% of what you get so about 350 gold They survives to farm up more gold and experience from killing minions The enemy hero does not get any gold Negatives Your carry doesn't get the kill recorded down under their name The enemy team will laugh at you because they are also stupid SPACE SPACE Now the most obvious counter argument to that is "My carry is going to go back anyway." First of all your Monsoon should still be up for use, channel it to heal your carry. Secondly your carry should have some sort of life steal item e.g. Doran's Blade they will gain back their life over time. With those two factors why is there a need to go back to base if it's safe to stay. Of course if your carry is going to die anyway as another enemy hero will take the kill, don't take the kill as there is no benefit. Let your carry die with taking the kill.

For the time being I will only have a map of where to ward in the game. I will update this section with screen shot of exactly how to place your wards.

Credit goes to jhoijhoi for her warding section.
space
space

This is where you should place Sight Ward.

• Yellow: Vital to protect the jungler on your team
• Blue: Protect your lane from being ganked
• Red: Keep an eye out on Baron and Dragon so they don't get stolen
• Orange: Allows your jungler to counter jungle and open up opportunities to gank.

This section will discuss which AD carry is well suited with Janna. Unfortunately only some carries will be covered as the others I haven't really laned much with or I don't play them enough to have full knowledge of their ideal support.

SPACE
SPACE Ashe is a unique AD carry. Rather than being a "right click carry" she is more of a utility AD carry. What I mean by this is that her base damage is lower than other AD carries and thus she relies on Volley and Enchanted Crystal Arrow in team fights to maximise her damage output.

IMO Sona is the best support to go with Ashe because of her Power Chord. The ability to reduce the damage output on the enemy carry and provide attack damage bonus on her carry is an excellent choice for Ashe who loses in terms of base damage. Initiating with Crescendo and hitting, allows Enchanted Crystal Arrow to easily hit and maximise stun duration. However, despite saying that, it does not mean Janna is completely useless laning with Ashe. I would put her 2nd best babysitter for Ashe with Taric close behind.

• Initiate with Zephyr to slow down target, making it easier to land Howling Gale. When Howling Gale hits, it makes landing Enchanted Crystal Arrow much easier. Quickly follow up with Eye of the Storm on Ashe to see the enemy champ's life bar disappear quickly.
• If need be, run quickly past the stunned target and fire up Monsoon to blow enemy champ towards Ashe, allowing her even more time to deal damage as well as staying in range to land her Frost Shot

SPACE
SPACE Caitlyn is one of the best carries in the game. She completely dominates in laning phase by holding the biggest range in the game (except when Tristana hits about level 13 and Kog'Maw at level 9). This allows her to harass effectively and stay in safe distance. Her passive can be quickly charged up by staying in brush which makes her even more deadly.

IMO Janna is the best support for Caitlyn. This is because Janna has a lot of CC which enables Caitlyn to deal massive damage by quickly working up her passive. Eye of the Storm also benefits Caitlyn's massive range, making an enemy champ who is too "focused" on farming to take a massive hit. Janna has a lot of tricks with Caitlyn and I would love to share some with you.

• Quickly fire a Howling Gale and Zephyr on the enemy champ that gets caught in a Yordle Snap Trap and quickly placing Eye of the Storm on Caitlyn. The reason is normally with a Yordle Snap Trap, Caitlyn can only follow up with Piltover Peacemaker but by following it up with Howling Gale, Zephyr and Eye of the Storm, you allow Caitlyn to follow up with additional auto attacks and could even trigger a Headshot. This combo does a lot of damage, forcing the enemy champ to be continously cautious of where they are and possible forget that your jungler is running towards them. This combo can also worth with Taric's Dazzle.
• Cast Eye of the Storm on Caitlyn if you see her have Headshot ready to deal even more damage.
• See Caitlyn using Ace in the Hole on a fleeing target and the other champ is within your range and stands in the line of fire to block the kill? Cast Monsoon to blow them out of the way and by the time they can get back, it's too late to block it. Unless the fleeing target has such great map awareness that they can line it up with where their team mate's new standing position.

I would like to thank the following people for helping me with my guide.

• jhoihoi: for her section on warding which I have extracted and for her guide on how to make a guide
• Janna Guide Writer: Unfortunately, I don't remember his/her name but the guide they wrote brought me to realise how to play Janna properly. It was the first guide I encountered in suggesting to buy CDR items instead of AP. From there I started to develop my own playstyle.
• Riot Games: For the Janna picture I posted in the introduction section