Glad to admit- I was wrong w/ my initial concerns on Juno

General Discussion
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Juno is, IMO, one of the best designed new supports the developers have added.

Very impactful, very skill rewarding. Nothing egregiously cheesy in her kit. No simple “press a button” denial abilities. No reversals. No immortality effects. No obnoxious CC abilities. No simple existence AoE healing (Which isnt to knock heroes like lucio. Lucio is a very skill based hero too. Simply a “Blizzard could have…” but didnt)

Primary damage and healing is entirely hitscan skill based.

Even her lock on healing/damage- The way its actually effective- is hardly an issue. The damage is minimal and mostly feels like chip damage. The projectiles, especially if youre at any range, feel fair to LoS and dodge. The healing is small, and doesnt feel like an “oh no” reactive button that just tops everyone off - it feels like you want to use it pre-emptively, like oh- People are about to take damage, get it going and have it land the moment they take that damage. If you wait until people are already low to use it, theyre probably going to die.

Even her mobility, which is something i was easily dreading the most, “oh no, another flying hero!” - Isnt that big of a deal. Having glide boost more or less lock her into a vertical height is a brilliant way to make her feel like a flying hero, without making her feel like an obnoxious flying hero.

Even the decision to not have her doing crits like ana is, IMO, a perfect design choice (and i disagree strongly with those thinking she needs it). End of the day shes a support. She doesnt need to do huge chunky damage. This lets her base damage be decent so she can reliably do good consistent damage, without letting the peak of it get too out of hand. Theres already a lot of skill landing those shots, and with her decision / play making on who to hit / heal as it is.

The ultimate as well, feels impactful- But it doesnt feel like a cheesy “i win” button.

So a huge bravo to blizzard on this one. This is easily one of if not the “healthiest” new hero the game they have ever added.

And the initial balance is equally impressive. Not saying its “perfect” of course- but this hero feels neither too strong nor too weak to play as, with, or against.

I am incredibly impressed.

29 Likes
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Srsly I agree. All I think she needs is the ability to descend without breaking her hover and maybe some qol changes, then she’s perfect

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Looks nice in theory but why use her when you have Kiriko and Bap… I don’t think she will change the classic meta as is.

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Also agree. I feel like she should be able to hold crouch while flying- I understand not wanting to let her easily gain height, but o find there’s times where a piece of terrain, walk way, ledge, whatever is in your way- and you can’t do much about it.

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She’s essentially really reliable multi-target chip damage and multi-target healing. She’s also an anti-dueler and uses mobility to survive rather than relying on damage to live. You take her because she can do what other supports can’t which is have mobility, do damage, and heal all at the same time.

Without being obnoxious or being a pocketer while doing it.

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Not everything needs to be a meta changer. I’m just saying she’s a healthy, non obnoxious addition to the game.

She doesn’t feel weak to have as a team mate. She doesn’t feel weak as an opponent, and she’s not oppressive to play against.

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Juno is simply a safe design because she doesn’t really do anything new and is a pretty vanilla hero all things considered.

Illari was the first healing turret.
Kiriko is the first cooldown reduction and cleanse support.
Life weaver is the first pull support.

She doesn’t add new effects into the game and simply offers a different flavor of healing, dmg, mobility, and speed.

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The dream for Blizzard has always been to make support that appeal to DPS players.

This was first attempted by making support that are focused on pew pew.

Now they’re just making support so inconsequential and easy to kill that DPS players are loving it.

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Which actually isn’t that really bad when you think about it. Last support hero, Weaver, was so experimental that it either made everyone rage about “ally CC” (which is a debatable topic) or about him just being really bad at everything. Which was objective on release.

Life Weaver’s intention seemed like he was suppose to be a support who could switch from either DPS or healing depending on what was necessary for the situation with field abilities and control of the circumstances. In theory, it sounds super cool but it was so new it didn’t work well at all.

Juno on the other hand has so little damage that she isn’t really anything of a threat to anyone. However, she does have suppressive fire. Which is important in laying down damage for others. She also has solved the one thing that everyone is annoyed with whether we are talking Pharah, Echo, or Mercy, and that her flight seems acceptable to almost everyone.

You play Juno because you are basically laying down group damage and healing as a secondary healing, so your other healer can focus on other things rather than feeling like there’s a danger and they have to stop what they are doing to go do their one thing in their kit. As long as the situation either requires some damage or some healing, Juno can do it.

The only downside to her is that even with her reliable healing, she is not really defensive and can kind of get stomped. She needs a DPS or her fellow support paying attention to her like she could walk on a land mine at any second to keep someone from putting her out of the game. Whether that is just straight up blowing her up or chasing her around the map and keeping her from playing the game. It’s still new to say, but she might be a little too vulnerable, which means she either might need a LITTLE more damage or a LITTLE more mobility. Hard to say. Have to see more, but a champion like this doesn’t seem to have enough reliability in their mobility to survive which is what she needs for having that low of DPS but such high HPS. (Just not HPS she can use on herself)

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‘‘She doesnt threaten my main or my kills, so she is ok’’ has to be the most self-centered and selfish way to decree that a hero is well designed.

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I think her speed boost should be very slightly increased. Maybe like a 5-10% increase. Also the ability to descend while activating flight form. Extremely solid character otherwise.

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I mean most of what LW does isnt new aside LG.

The issue is that this playerbase doesnt know how to properly use team mobility or the value of high grounds, and that has only become worse as time passes and the game is filled more and more with f2p players who rather shelve the game for months than learn the nuance of heroes like LW.

The amount of low/mid ranks DPS that just dont know or care about the value of high grounds is insane.

3 Likes
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Mostly this. Juno has no self heal and a mobility ability that locks her into a flight pattern that is ridiculously easy to track. She’s pretty much a duck from a carnival shooting game.

He utility and ult are solid, but not strong enough to displace any of the current supports. She’s definitely going to need some buffs come full release.

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I am not sure about that. I only noticed ONE Junes after around 5 hours of playing only Junes. That’s pretty bad. Usually you run into a few people that make their presence known. Just one, and they lost.

:muscle: :joy:

Finally someone to replace that decreptit fossil that ushered in an era of powercreep.

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Although weapon swapping isn’t exactly a grand and new idea in concept, it was in a sense for the support role and sort of in general. Mercy has it, but it’s for emergencies or when she’s feeling a little Girliepop Violent. Turrbyurnn has it but it’s a hammer. Which hammers… things.

Originally, I knocked this design because I thought “Man, that really looks clunky to constantly switch through”. Though, I think the intention wasn’t for it to be easy but to have a tool to dedicate either strongly in HPS or DPS. Even though, on release, his HPS was low and his DPS was allegedly too high. It’s hard to say. Lifeweaver was a strange edition and they released him underpowered even though Lifegrip is a very interesting mechanic. I’m still not sure on how to feel about his weapon swap.

EDIT: I should have also mentioned, his hitbox also made him pretty vulnerable as well. Not sure how he feels now with hitboxes being even larger.

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The game is not divided on ‘‘heroes that annoy me are unhealthy’’ and ‘‘heroes that I like are healthy’’.

More often than not heroes that people whine about end up being crucial ecosystem pieces that stop the entire game from destabilizing like Yellowstone when wolves were killed into extinction there.

Sigma, Mei, Brig, Symmetra, Ana… Most of those heroes stop entire subsections of heroes from utterly dominating the game and turning into a PvE power fantasy for them.

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I hope she finds her place in team comps. I don’t wanna use the word “meta”

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I think I should clarify a little further here since I’m basically making walls of texts.

Juno’s abilities are good and safe in design, but she was released undertuned. However, because of her design, you could safely buff her without it causing some sort of issue. I think her HPS is fine, just her mobility isn’t good enough.

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Angry symmetra noise

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If there’s one thing they could consider for a major overhaul, it is headshots. Things would be much easier to balance if you didn’t have the wild damage variance that headshots bring.

Of course though, we’re too far into the game to really think about that kind of overhaul. Playing TF2 again though, it’s nice that everyone’s damage output is relatively predictable and you don’t have to worry about whether or not the opponent can land those shots. It lets you make better judgment calls on what to do with the amount of health you have.