Janna Build Guide by supprise
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First back
Ability Sequence
Not Updated For Current Season
The masteries shown here are not yet updated for the current season, the guide author needs to set up the new masteries. As such, they will be different than the masteries you see in-game.
Masteries
Threats to Janna with this build
| Threat | Champion | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
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2
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Taric | Really easy. He should never get in range to use his W/R with your Q/R and you can poke him freely. He does have sustain and he can stun you instead which would be quite annoying, so i put him at 2. |
About Me
My summoner name is 'Supportive Storm', right now i am platinum 3 and i hope to be climbing to diamond soon as well. I play on EUW. I have always loved playing janna (i have played her since i was level 17), it really suits my playstyle of heavy peel. It is BY FAR my best champion and it is so rewarding for me when i save another life. I've tried out all the supports but there is no champion that plays like her.
This is my current KDA :)
Ancient coin vs Spellthief's edge vs doran's shield.
This is a really hard decision. I find myself buying ancient coin the most, because 
Talisman of Ascension is really strong at the moment. But to explain which item to buy i will list which item is effective against which champions.
I forgot to include 
Blitzcrank but you should always buy 
Ancient Coin, since 
Spellthief's Edge will bait you into playing too aggressively, and unevitably you will get pulled.
Now of course it also depends on your own adc and on your playstyle. If you want to play safe, and just shield your adc as much as you can, go with Ancient Coin.
If you want to play aggresive because your own adc puts out a lot of aggresion as well, go with Spellthief's Edge.
If you want to ensure that you stay alive, because they might focus YOU, go with 
Doran's Shield
Abilities in-depth
Passive - Tailwind
Unfortunately this passive has been nerfed a lot and it does not really do much for Janna right now. It does help your allies with running towards you when in danger. Do not think that because allies follow you faster you should be in the front when walking through the enemy jungle. You should always stay behind your team so that you can Monsoon from the back and save your carries.
Q - Howling Gale
Before level 6 this is your main disengage tool. It is hard to learn the ability but when you get the hang of it, it is amazing at knocking up multiple opponents. You have two choices; press q-q IMMEDIATELY, or press q and wait for it to wind up for as long as you like. You should always try to position yourself so that one Howling Gale hits multiple enemies. You need quick reactions with this ability to be able to stop certain dashes or jumps like 
Zenith Blade or 
Resonating Strike. You need to practice this as well. You can try to start a custom game against a leona bot so you can practice interupting her Zenith Blade.
You can also wind your Howling Gale up. This used to be very useful but ever since they nerfed the width of it i feel like it is not worth it anymore. Especially for new players i'd suggest just using it immediately. If you do have a lot of experience with her and you're able to predict the enemy movements you should wind it up so that you can extend the knock-up duration.
One thing you should NEVER do is using Howling Gale just for poke. It can be used in a combo as i will explain later on but generally it's better to not use it for poke to spare your mana pool and to keep it around for when a gank might occur.
W - Zephyr
This ability is quite easy to use. It is a targetted slow but it also gives you passive movementspeed as well! This ability is key to landing your Howling Gale. It basically ensures that your Howling Gale will land. I find myself using this W-Q combo A LOT. You can also use this ability quite well in trades, especially when you have got a Spellthief's Edge. The passive movementspeed allows to to skip your boots if you can't afford it.
E - Eye of the Storm
This shield scales really well with AP, and it's great at saving an ally. The skill is a lot more complicated than you might expect. This is because of the bonus AD the shield provides. You should spam this shield in the laning phase to prevent your adc from being damaged. With my masteries and runes you should be able to keep doing this quite a lot. You do need good reflexes to prevent incoming damage. When you've still got a lot of mana you can use the shield to increase the damage of you ADC when he is using/ is about to use a skill that scales with AD. Remember that the bonus AD is applied even if the skillshot is still on it's way. So when for example your caitlyn uses 
Ace in the Hole on a low health enemy make sure that you shield her to ensure the ult to finish of it's target. You should also use this ability on yourself to be able to win short trades.
R - Monsoon
Possible one of the strongest abilities in the game and Janna's trademark. This ability allows her to pull of the most amazing saves. It is such a game-changing ability, which means that it wins you games if used right, but has bad consequences when used in a wrong way. Your ultimate can be used in different ways:
- Press R really briefly to knock back opponents and IMMEDIATELY walk away.
This technique is the most safe and straightforward one, but it is far from desirable. This technique is used because you or one of your allies is in the wrong position with the enemies trying to collapse. In this case you dont need the heal you just want to get away ASAP. Don't forget to Howling Gale immediately afterwards so you can ensure that the enemies can't catch up to you. It can also be used in conjunction with flash to knock back an enemy champion into your team. NEVER DO THIS. I know it makes for epic plays but the more you play her you will see that 99/100 times it is not worth it. ONLY use this technique when you are AHEAD, you have vision over the entire enemy team and if you're sure the enemy isn't able to get ahead of you in time (with a dash/flash).
You can also use flash to position yourself in such a way that the enemies will be knocked back in a desired way, so that they won't accidently get in front of you and that you would be surrounded.
- Press R just for the healing when you're grouped as a team.
This can be really usefull in prolonged sieges, it allows your team to stay healthy so that you can kill the towers or get objectives. In lane you can use this ability with your adc, but ONLY when you BOTH benefit from it and you're sure that you wont have to use your ult in the near future.
- Press R for the full channel if your back line is in danger of getting killed by enemy assasins or buisers. This is the most ideal situation in which you want to use it. It is really important for your carries to stay alive the later the game goes on, and it can ensure that your carries can keep putting out damage so that the enemy front line can be kite around or even killed. Like i said before you can use your flash to reposition yourself so that you can get a way better ult.
I can write way more about this ultimate and it is REALLY versatile. It is extremely rewarding when you pull it of well and it makes the difference between good Janna's and average Janna's. It is really useful to watch your own replays and figure out whether you used your ultimate ideally. This way you can improve really fast!
Viable items on Janna
Typical support items:
These items are bought to power up your allies or your team in general.
Mikael's Crucible is a very good item on Janna. It is kinda situational though. It is a free 
Cleanse and heal for an ally or yourself. When the enemy team has any form of hard CC which excludes knock-ups, because you can't cleanse those, and when the enemy team deals some magic damage, you should buy this item. It is THAT good. When you're not that good with actives, and this counts for all the other items that have actives, i would suggest really practising those items. Go into a fight and think: I will use X item when the enemy does Y. If for some reason you still can't use them well just stay away from these items.
Ardent Censer is a good item when you don't really like actives, and your allies benefit from the attack speed that it provides. Its stats are already quite good but you need at least 2 allies to benefit from attack speed for Ardent Censer to work. The amount of allies that benefit from the item should influence how much of a priority buying this item has
Twin shadows is really underrated in my opinion, and is is REALLY good when you're behind. This is for 2 reasons; First of all it's build path is really nice because you can keep buying little pieces of it (when behind you don't have a lot of gold to spend), second of all it really helps you with going somewhere safely (when behind ward control usually suffers and with twin shadows you can use the active to check if enemies are around)
This item is quite good, but usually suffers from Mikael's Crucible being better. You generally do not want that much magic resist, but when the enemy team can dish out a lot of magic damage this is a really good item. When the enemy team has a lot of AoE damage instead of single targetted damage, and not a lot of CC, this item gets better than Mikael's Crucible
Items with a lot of AP:
These items are bought to enhance the AP ratios on your abilities, so that your shields are stronger, your heals are bigger and your slows are heavier.
Mejai's Soulstealer should ONLY be bought when you have between 1400-1500 gold, because there simply aren't other items for Janna to buy with that amount of gold. I would not suggest building towards it (by for example building 
Amplifying Tome because the item doesn't do a lot besides promoting a passive playstyle where it is more important for YOU not to die rather than your carries. Still it does give a lot of AP and therefore should be bought when you've got 1400-1500 gold.
This item can be good if you're afraid that someone might try to kill YOU first. It also gives a ton of ability power but suffers from having YET ANOTHER active. It is really hard to control every single active item, compare it to having to juggle with 3 balls instead of 2. It's building path is good, now that 
Needlessly Large Rod is 1250. 
Rabadon's Deathcap is better than zhonya's because the active doesnt synergize with janna at all. You need to be there to shield allies and knock up/back enemies.
This item just gives tons of AP. To abuse it's passive effect you should be building ap-utility items with it, for example Twin Shadows or Ardent Censer. Don't build this with Mejai's Soulstealer, it will leave you REALLY squishy (you don't wanna die with Mejai's Soulstealer), and you won't always be able to utilize your AP. Your ult might overheal (healing way more than necessary).
This item is inferior to Rabadon's Deathcap, but can je just as good as Zhonya's Hourglass. If you don't need the active from zhonia's but you do have around 3000 gold it can be really good. The movementspeed is pretty good for getting around the map quicker. Janna just scales well with AP, just make sure that you can stay alive to actually aid your team (by buying tanky items with it).
Tanky items:
These items are bought to ensure that you won't die before being able to assist your allies.
I love this item a lot on janna. It doesn't give CDR, of which you will have A TON, so it's actually positive that it focusses on important stats. It makes you quite tanky and is really good when facing a team that has a lot of attack damage. The downside is that it has YET ANOTHER active, which might make it hard it to control well. This active cán help slowing enemies that try to get to you or an ally!
TOO... MUCH... CDR... Joking aside, it can be REALLY good on janna. Against full ad teams you should always try to get this item. It does have too much CDR and mana which you don't need as much as other stats. I would say that randuin's omen is generally better but you can buy this item if your build lacks CDR and you don't like all the actives.
This item can be REALLY good in certain situations. Against champions that rely on catching you out (think Blitzcrank, 
Nautilus, 
Thresh and 
Leona it really helps! Getting stunned might be the end of you when you don't buy this item. It does not have an active and it does not give CDR, which are quite positive. The things that are holding this item back though are Mikael's Crucible and Locket of the Iron Solari. So you should only buy this item when you are facing a team with a lot of magic damage, or when you don't even bother buying the mentioned items.
Boots:
These items are bought so that you can move around the map faster, which converts into better roams and better vision control.
First i didn't really like these boots, and to this day i'm not quite sold on them, but they can be really good. These boots are really cheap and when you're behind that makes it even better. When you don't have enough money for the other boots you should definetely buy these boots. It also helps a lot with roaming and with getting vision control, because you're able to do all these things so quickly!
I love to buy these boots early on as you can see from my building path. When i'm not planning on building many CDR items these boots really smooth out your CDR. From masteries you get 5% from these boots you get 15% so that leaves you able to get the perfect 40% CDR, it is a really important stat on Janna. But if you do plan on buying a lot of CDR items these boots are awful, since they are quite expensive but barely do anything.
I can see it's use but i dont really like the boots, because boots of mobility are generally better. As janna if you position well enough you shouldn't need these boots to get away from stuff. It is however more reliable than boots of mobillity and when the enemies have lots of slows it can really shine!
Always buy these boots against a full AD team. It is a really straight-forward item that works really well when up against a team that deals a lot of attack damage. It has an easy build path with 
Cloth Armor so it has that going for it as well.
Really good against a team that has a lot of CC. It is really expensive though so i wouldn't suggest buying the item when behind. But the potential is there, imagine a 
Glacial Prison hitting your entire team! You would wake up in time to be able to ult the enemy team away and save the day!
Combo's
AA= Auto Attack, also called 'Basic Attack'.
AA (still on it's way)- (self cast)-AA--AA-
This is the longest trade you will use in the laning fase. This is a really good combo because it will always work in your advantage when playing right. If the enemy does not respond to your first AA, you should just back off after the AA, that's a free AA! You can keep trying to AA them and when they DO answer some damage you can nullify it by using this combo. The W is completely optional and you can start by using W as well. Don't forget that this combo is best used when the enemy adc is about to last hit a minion, so that he has to choose between returning some damage or killing the minion. In both cases he loses. When your Eye Of The Storm is broken you should back off because most of the time you won't be able to out damage the enemy. When playing with the Ancient Coin you generally want to leave trading to your ADC, so this combo isn't used often.
-
I have talked about this one already. You will find yourself using this combo really often. Never use Howling Gale offensively without using Zephyr first.
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Never forget to use your Eye Of The Storm FIRST, before using your Monsoon. It ensures that your ally will be alive as long as you're channeling your ult.
Teamfights
I wanted to talk about teamfights specifically because it is the part where Janna shines the most and it is REALLY important that you do it right.
As you might know, in teamfights we talk about a back line and a front line. The back line consists of mages, ADC's and peeling supports (like you). The front line consists of bruisers, tanks and assasins (though assasins tend to get out of the front line really quickly). Your job is to protect your carries AT ALL COSTS. This can only be done if you stay alive, so it is best if you position yourself behind your carries. You dont need to deal damage so there is no point in standing inbetween both lines. When your team tries to engage don't forget to use your Talisman of Ascension to speed up your allies! When the enemy team has some kind of wombo combo and wants to engage upon YOUR TEAM you should try to position yourself really safely behind the backline, so that when the enemy 
Gnar/
Malphite ults, you can basically deny the enemy follow up by using your own ult, USE FLASH WHEN NEEDED. This does take a lot of patience to know when to step in, but when you use it well it is GAME CHANGING. If you can pull this off you can really say that you have mastered this champion, i would be really proud of you :) So remember that even though you should stand behind your back line at first, you should step or flash forward to knock back enemies more and potentially heal more allies.
Last words
Many thanks to all the other janna guides that inspired me to make my own! Thank you jhoijhoi for the guide that also helped me in making it as good as i can!
If you know that you love this peel-heavy style of play, don't hesitate from picking janna because it might not be cool to do so. Always try to stay positive in soloqueue and try to keep the team together. That will win you so many games! I'd really appreciate all your input since i'm completely new to making this guide.
If you would like me to watch your games and give you tips about where to improve, i would love to help you! Just add me (Supportive Storm, EUW) and i will try to help you to get into whatever league or division you want! :)
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