6 abilities Johanna might bring to Heroes of the Storm

Consecration, Blessed Shield, and Deflection are just some of the spells we might see from the newest Diablo 3 Warrior.



EDIT #2: All of Johanas abilities and talents have been leaked!

The latest Blizzard reveal of Johanna has gotten everyone speculating about her role and abilities. We have yet to see a truly defensive warrior hero and, as a result, the current meta places warriors as team fight and pick off initiators, not squishy protectors.



Johanna may change this. It is impossible to say for sure what her role will be, but thanks to the curiosity and technical savvyness of some fans, we have some hints to work with. The follow information was found through sifting through the games code found and logs not present in the actual client, but floating around somewhere in the PTR. I can't say I understand how it works, but the follow bits from one of these logs is something I can understand:

storm_btn_d3ros_crusader_akkarat.dds:6:6:6:6:6:

storm_btn_d3ros_crusader_birdofprey.dds:6:6:6:6:6:

storm_btn_d3ros_crusader_blessedhammer.dds:6:6:6:6:6:

storm_btn_d3ros_crusader_blessedshield.dds:6:6:6:6:6:

storm_btn_d3ros_crusader_consecration.dds:6:6:6:6:6:

storm_btn_d3ros_crusader_deflection.dds:6:6:6:6:6:



Bolded for your convenience, those words look like spell abilities. As a matter of fact, you can check out this talent calculator for a rough description of what these abilities do in the Diablo universe. Bird of Prey can be found here and Deflection doesn't seem to be an ability found in Diablo, perhaps just an improved version of the Block talent. And interesting thing to know is that Bird of Prey, Blessed Hammer, Blessed Shield, and Consecration are all relatively ranged abilities that seem to imply Johanna might be a medium range warrior and not necessarily melee range. All of this is speculation, but I think the chances of Johanna being vastly different than any other warrior are high.



EDIT: After writing this it came to my attention that nearly EVERY Crusader talent icon can be found in the PTR code, meaning the 6 possible talents specified are, in fact, no real hints at Johanna's hero design.

This means that any early attempt to figure out what Johanna might play like has to be done off of pure speculation. With that in mind, Consecration is something feels like an iconic Blizzard spell that would be a good fit for Johanna. Provoke, which I presume would force enemy heroes to attack Johanna would be the most game changing abilitity introduced and seems like a unique enough mechanic (that at the same time has been tested before in other mobas) that Blizzard might include their own take on the ability.



The thing that first comes to mind is a hero like Axe from Dota 2. Could Johanna be the next "please attack me" style hero? As mentioned before, it trully is up to speculation at this point. No shortcuts.

In an earlier interview with Blizzard developers at Heroes of the Dorm, I was told that internally, they predict a vast meta change when the game is released due to the new hero releases. Heroes is already a warrior centric game, and I think someone like Johanna is exactly the type of vast meta change they were hinting at.

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