Janna the escape artist.

Janna is a very versatile character. She can be played DPS, support, or tower pushing Janna, but there are other characters that do better then Janna in all of those roles. This guide is about making yourself a Janna that no one can touch, one that will escape the enemy's best trap and be calmly pushing the next lane over before the enemy even knows you're gone.


Skills:
- Howling Gale: Ignore this skill! This skill can pester the enemy and it can help to push a lane early on, however it's damage is mediocre, it often misses, and uses a lot of manna. Escape artist Janna ignores this early game and focuses on her other two basic skills, which own if kept at max.

Note: somewhere around level 7 – 14 you should get rank one of this for the stun. Accept that it is not a damage spell and use it for stuns. Perfect the Q -left click- Q move to stun any enemies who haven't learned yet that they just can't catch the escape artist Janna.

- Zephyr:
Zephyr packs 4 important effects into one neat little package. Escape artist Janna takes full advantage of all of them:

1) Speed boost. This skill leveled up combined with movement speed 3 boots give you a normal movement speed that no one on the battlefield should be able to match. Eve, Zil, Teemo, Ramza, and a few others might be able to temporally match you for speed, but all of those wear off quickly, and they're left wondering where you just went. The only one with any chance at all of catching you in a sustained race is warwick.. slow him down and float away wind sprite.
2) Damage. Decent magic damage, low manna cost, fast regen. Use often.
3) Slow. Use when running, use when chasing, use to initiate..
4) No collision with minions or heroes when it's not on cooldown. This is unique, exploit it early game. Whenever there is a pile of friendly minions make sure you are standing on them, epically if you are laining against a caster like Annie or Zillian. Why is this important? Because in order to be an effective mage char they have to click on your icon repeatedly. You're fast, skinny, you float, and if their mouse gets even a single pixel off they target a minion. GG, Janna escapes (unhurt) again. Also, when running down a lane make sure to run over as many creeps or allies as possible, (as long as Zephyr isn't on cooldown) they'll get all hung up and start crying.

- Eye of the storm (I just call it shield):
This has two important effects
1) Disposable health. Casual attacks do nothing to you and a new shield comes up. Burst damage often won't kill you and you can get out. You can cast it on anyone who is on the front lines and they have a good chance of getting back without taking any actual damage. If a teammate is ever at low health cast a shield on them. Good chance they won't notice and think they're just that awesome, but if your team wins then that's what really matters. Good chance the enemy won't notice either and go for that tower dive and hopefully fail.

If they're sitting in a bush or near a friendly tower recalling, cast a shield on them then as well. Proactively prevent random damage, you'll be surprised how often it saves lives.

One more thing: you can shield friendly towers. This can be quite helpful when you are the only one who survived and you are trying to keep them at bay that extra 5 sec while your teammates respawn.

2) Damage boost.. and a big one as long as the shield is up. Pay attention to this, it's important. Shield your carry during team fights. Shield yourself compulsively.

- Monsoon
As an ult this kind of sucks. It does two things 1) knocks everyone back and 2) heals everyone who bothers to stay in your proximity. In practice the heal only really helps during standoffs when there's a lull in the battle. The knockback effect is far more useful. It can be used to throw an enemy back into your tower range, it can be used to help you or a teammate flee, it pushes nunu out of range when he is using his ult. Get rank 1 at level 6 and then ignore it until you have both zepher and shield maxed out, because the higher ranks don't improve the knockback and just cost more manna.


Items:
Max manna regen and cooldown reduction. Doran's Ring and a health pot is a good start. After that go for Nasher's Tooth (25% reduced cooldown and AP and such that are also good) and go for Archangel's staff (Manna regen and AP). However, don't bee-line for either. After that you have some options: Banshee's Veil lets you escape even better, but should be redundant most of the time if you have adv clense (more on that later). Aegis of the Legion is also a good one that provides extra survivability to you and everyone around you.

Summoner spells:
The secret of escape artist Janna is to adjust your monasteries to give you improved cleanse, and then to select cleanse as a summoner spell. You should be putting yourself out in the front lines much of the time just tempting the other team to try to gank you. Tempt them, and be ready. They jump you, use all their ults and summoner spells to try to get you, you cleanse and float away. If someone gets close slow them. If two get close use your ult. Usually it's best to wait 1/5th of a second before cleansing because just about everyone will stun you fist off.

The other spell is your choice. Heal is always fun, so is exhaust. Just make sure that whatever it is you pick you get the mastery upgrade for it.


Early Game laining: Get shield first, then zephyr. Sit arrogantly in the middle of the creep mob and keep yourself shielded. Ignore minion agro when your shield is up. Whack enemy heros if they come close until they get scared and learn to keep away. If your team-mate is especially aggressive then keep them shielded instead. In that case then you want to sit a couple pixels behind your creeps so you don't attract random agro.

Middle laining: Don't volunteer to go mid. Sure, you can hold your own in mid, but you're no carry. If no one else wants it then get one or two levels of gale early to harass.

Late game: flit around. Use your taunt. Help gank. If your team can manage to not wipe 4 on 5 then push a abandoned lane, probably take a tower before they decide to come gank, and then run off when they all come.


Vs Specific heros:
Zillian: stay on top of friendly creeps. Shield anyone who gets bombed, cleanse if he bombs you.

Warwick: when he flashes to you cleanse and float away, then slow him if he is one of those “fast Warwicks” He is the only one who can potentially get enough movement to catch you in a marathon.

Blitz: If he pulls you though a wall your ult can sometimes push him back to the other side. If you pull that one off make sure to /taunt.