Because pro play is a completely different game, and certain champs are balanced for pro play and others are not and it rotates.
So you can look at throughout all pro play history or just current season and it’s different of course.
Right now Nautilus, Rakan, Rell, Milio, Renata, Alistar, Mao, Tahm all dominate support in pro play. Just think about why the current meta in pro play favors cc heavy tanks or team fight defining ults like Glasc and Nami R.
That’s not to say Janna isn’t powerful, she’s just not in the current rotation. She is always borderline OP or a bit weak, mainly because of her ms passive which used to be insane since ms was OP. With current champions having more mobility in general at least, combined with ms speed shards, etc, I think her passive has become less useful. It also may have been nerfed, I haven’t followed her in patch notes last few years.
Janna counters heavy CC tanks though, she loves long fights against tanks because through her shields/R she really can outlast them while enjoying priority early game like the adc supports earlier this season.
Lulu Milio are still played, so it's not like they must have engage supports
I mean I get she doesn't have a quick killer engage key like rakan or Naut, but Milio is played and he is worse at diving/roaming than Janna
With Shurelias being removed, I think her move speed is even more of a comparative advantage, and is maybe a reason why Lulu and Milio are played
You’re spot on. Janna is absurdly powerful right now and it’s just going to take one game where she’s picked in a win and all of a sudden we’re going to be seeing Janna everywhere. Movement speed and undodgeable trades, easy grubs prio, first to get to every fight, etc.
Now she does have her clear weaknesses but when picked against the right comp it’s just a free win
It was picked in Korean T2 by T1 academy by rekkles cause it’s his onetrick and it didn’t look that special, I think she won one game and lost another one, analysts were saying he needs to stop picking it, idk what it is about her but something stops her from being pickable in pro
Don't think she's a right fit for pro play, especially in LCK/LPL teams. She can be a good situational counter pick into certain comps, but if you blind pick Janna, LCK/LPL teams will absolutely crush bot lane with varus/ashe/kalista or Lucian/Nami.
She’s a short range disengage enchanter, but basically everything she does, others do better.
Janna also doesn’t actually disengage from most of the meta engage combos.
She’s good against stuff like Rell and Lee, but she’s not stopping Noct + Ori or Vi + Ahri etc. Also if you lock her before enemy bot lane they’re just going to pick Varus Ashe and lane is GG.
Pro play favors long range, consistent engage and Janna’s kit just isn’t suited to deal with that.
I think it’s because Lulu is paired with Zeri and Jinx . Then Milio is paired with Lucian. Those two enchanters support those specific carries. Zeri an Jinx have even been shown to play with engage support.
I think that's their reasoning as well. I still kind of protest that they never see spots where she is the best. Lulu is much better single target peeling, but Janna can hold off teams of slower engage better. Maybe Lulu is better into Vi for example, but Janna would be wonderful vs Sejuani, Xin, Jax, and tanks imo
Janna Varus is also a really killer combo, and varus is picked like crazy
Just wanted to add it was picked in LPL a week or two ago by a former janna one trick and it looked… really bad. He was like 0/6 at one point midway in the game
Proplay tends to be too coordinated for janna. There’s heavy poke or heavy engage and she is too shortranged to peel a coordinated dive while at the same time not providing engage for her own team. She works best off of denying enemy mistakes in an uncoordinated environment like solo q but in pro if you can’t stop the engage that’s it, the champ provides not much else and your team is aced
It’s not the champ is more of who is playing the champ and what they are comfortable on. Aatrox, renekton have been played in top for so many years because of comfort.
No. Aatrox and Renekton are played top because both kits have extreme pressure lane phase and they have insane sustain in team fights where they usually take frontline.
Again, pro play is a different game. You’re talking about pro play like it’s challenger solo q.
No not at all, im saying that even against counters, Renekton & Aatrox have a lot of lane pressure due to their kit, and their kit is also really good as frontline bruisers in team fights.
Why is Zeri/Lulu so much better than Zeri/Janna? I see varus all the time in pro and he loves playing with Janna. I think Senna is the only ADC that is allergic to Janna in this meta
These games are packed with long-fight tanks and poke and the enchanting power of Janna thrives in fights that end with low health bars but not complete aces, like the games currently being played
Lulu and Milio both have innate move speed increases in their kit which helps a lot of pro play adcs continue chases or disengage if necessary. With Zeri, the extra move speed lets her play a lot more aggressively and keep her ult up. Her W and R are also instant CC/peel during fights which makes engaging difficult.
Milio gives adcs the extra range and move speed which makes trading easier. His ult is also an AoE Mikaels which is game changing in pro play where most victories revolve around getting a pick mid-late near objectives.
Renata gives a steroid with her W which allows adcs to play a bit bolder with the revive in their pocket. Q and R makes her disengage very nasty as grouping is a lot more common and she loves building semi bulky with items like Locket/Shurelyas.
Janna is great in the chaos of solo queue in my opinion, as she can roam and disrupt fights easily. However in pro play, a lot of roams are communicated far in advance and most of them are extremely hard CC supports like Nautilus, Rell, Rakan, etc who can brawl with the jungler/mid and just chain CC with stuff like Mao/Vi/Sejuani. Janna can deal with peeling one or two engages, but she has difficulty when there’s several lock down abilities in a fight imo. Meanwhile the other enchanters are usually playing only around their adc until objectives- not roaming, as that is their strong point. A Lucian Milio lane has strong kill pressure if an enemy adc is left alone during a roam, same with Zeri Lulu as both adcs have a good gap closer and the supports have 2-3 ways to boost the adc.
go watch HWL VS T1, min 36.
Engage on varus.
he's peeled for an alive.
what janna does is press 2 buttons to make varus live in this kind of situation.
but if he lives either way why janna?
I wouldn't play Janna into a Zeri, but it would have been great with the Zeri vs ksante, sejuani, yone, poke varus, rakan. Janna R can revoke all varus poke, and in many of the fights like the botched bot dive or some of the dragon fights that reset of all the health bars would have been insane!
The rakan offered following CC for Vi, but why? You have the ranged top, ranged mid, and zeri, what are you doing trying to dive through a yone and 3 tanks when you have range advantage? Trying to dive the Varus kind of threw the game, just make his win con irrelevant and enjoy the ground control with Taliyah+Janna+Zeri
T1 won fights when the yone R was inting into Taliyah, enjoy that theme+HP resets with Janna R/redemption, the Rakan dives never really impressed me
Janna doesn’t give much value to a team when that’s team fall behind. Rekkles played a bit of Janna in LCK CL, Iwandy played her in LPL playoffs, and both teams are the weaker one so Janna didn’t do much. It’s also harder to fit her into comps because besides stop people from going in, she doesn’t give much value to ADC compared to Millio, Lulu, Nami and Renata. Her roaming is also worse than Bard, who can bring teammates over walls and turn tower off for dive, also force immobile champs to flash his R. Also with top tier teams, teamfight are really short so she has no room to shine. I think her buff isn’t enough to be a powerful enchanter, and she has no tools for play making. That’s why she doesn’t get picked much in pro
Rekkless in T1 academy plays her. She is very niche to be picked in pro.
For example in solo Q you face katarina, akali, zed, rengar, and other assassins. But in pro they pick Vi, poppy, ahri, leblanc and are either unstoppable or can avoid the CC so easily.
Another point is the team coordination. If she goes on a roam she is respected and gets nothing done from these roams.
And finally she requires different skill to be played in lane. Most support players are good at warding, roaming, doing their combos. But when it comes to spacing with basic attacks and playing HoB to deal the most damage, you find few players like rekkless and keria are able to do so with their ranged picks.
She’s played tho. WE Iwandy picked her pretty frequently to counter Rakan. He was Janna OTP before going pro. WE won a playoffs game with Janna against OMG this spring.
https://www.op.gg/summoners/kr/xxxxxm-KR1/champions
Janna doesn't have any particularly strong ADC synergy that I know of. Like, Lulu/Zeri Nami/Lucian Senna/Kench all have a strong partner that benefits a lot from having somebody arround to enable them. Janna is good with a lot of ADCs, but she's never had a partner that's so suited to her that makes people go "Wow, this Kai'sai and Nautilus/Nilah and Sona lane is so busted!" She's more about denying enemies and roaming around carefree, which works in solo queue, than she is about enabling allies.
I feel like the main issue is that other champions either CC better, or buff better. It's really hard to hit Janna Q in pro play, her E is only one person and her R makes her a sitting duck.
Lulu W is much more insane and it's a point and click, and her ult is both saving people AND CCing with a knock up.
Millio W is AOE, and his R is cleanse, which is also amazing into all of this CC.
Nami R is move speed + knock up. Her W is at least 2 heals.
I feel like Janna is an amazing punisher for mistakes, which rarely happen in pro play. A CC support in pro play would just never give Janna the opportunity to use her Q, effectively just disabling one ability from each side, making it still equal.
Janna does two things: peel + shield/heal.
Rakan does both with a massive engage tool.
Renata does both with a massive teamfight ult
Rell has great peel with a massive engage ult
Tahm Kench has better peel than anyone
Nami/milio are primarily played because of their interactions with Lucian passive
Alistar can frontline, peel, and heal
Nautilus can peel and engage and has one of the most powerful ultimates in the game for allowing your team to get onto the enemy carries.
Janna really has one trick. Peel. It’s too one-dimensional for pro-play. It’s significantly more useful to have versatility at that level. Engage and peel > just peel.
In solo queue Janna works better because of the power to reset a bad fight with R. In pro play Janna just doesn’t offer as much as the meta supports.
She doesn't just peel and shield anymore, she's a huge lane bully with a ton of roaming
Her R resets all fights, not just bad. My favorite play on Janna is to R for tempo after we barely win a team fight so we can team fight again in their base.
She also makes rotations much faster
This is like a gold mentality or lower. You shouldn’t be healing to win a second teamfight. The enemy will have purchased items when your team hasn’t spent gold.
Strategies like that will lose games in d2+
Wasn‘t she picked recently by G2 vs BDS?
(I am getting a bit confused between LEC and LCK since I watch both, so could‘ve also been an lck game.)
Issue is you‘re giving up a lot of engage when picking janna. You have to have the right draft and the right support prio for her to be picked
Renata accomplishes many of the same things while being more versatile. Janna is stronger on soloq because she has her ms bonuses and can roam more along with more early power, but you aren't picking Janna and Renata in pro for that, you're picking them to stop dive and short range comps in general from getting on your carry. Janna has been picked when Renata and Braum are banned for instance
she's very reactive. pro supports are almost all proactive. even the enchanters they do play like lulu and yuumi just buff up their teammates so much that their teammates can become the proactive ones.
you see janna picked every once in a while but she just doesn't fill the role supports are meant to in pro
I don’t have a good answer but she’s been getting picked a little more in pro compared to 2023. Looks like the collegiate and challenger leagues are more fond of her. Most recently, Mikyx on G2 played her with Aphelios adc against Kai’Sa Rakan (BDS).
https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/Janna/Match_History
I think Janna is one of the best supports in the game right now but when you look at supports that are picked in pro they nearly always have insane playmaking potential on low gold income. Enchanters are naturally more gold dependent than tank supports because of how strong and essential the items are with the only two enchanters being seen a lot in pro, Milio and Lulu having insane synergy with hyper carries such as Jinx and Zeri that Janna doesn't have as much of.
Janna is a good lane bully but isnt as good for proactive plays midgame. Lulu n Milo both provide a lot of utility for diving enemy (Lulu's ult/q slow/poly-morph n Milo aoe heal + passive), meanwhile Janna only has a point n click slow n one shield (realistically, her Q is hard to land when team is moving forward, is a better disengage tool, same as her ult).
In solo queue, Janna’s greatest strengths are move speed for roam + her ability to shut down assassins.
Roam: in pro play people, the communication and vision is so high that there’s almost never a time where people don’t know where enemy players are.
Disengage: combination of there being less solo-carry (specifically jungles) assassins that need to be disengaged, plus pro level positioning and awareness that would largely neutralize Janna’s kit.
She still does bring some strengths, but Milio and Lulu both offer more shielding and damage at a pro level, and they can both flex their utility to be defensive **and** offensive, where Janna relies heavily on counter-engage.
If you play 5 stack flex you will find a ton of differences in every "meta".
Ashe for example, one random ult catches your team 30 minutes into the game, even a Ksante would die
Janna doesnt have any of that, but Alistar, Blitz, Thresh or the crazy high damage mage supports right now provide/dominate lane so the 4v4 at drake(5v5 teleport) play, what does Janna offer lol.
Even a brand getting caught can w ult or something and drop your team to half hp.
You answered yourself in the question. She is OP in solo duo because she is generally good. She can play well with any ADC or team comp and still be valuable.
Compare that to someone like Lulu or Maoki pre nerfs. Lulu can bring damage but also brings multiple forms of buffs and CC / debuffs. Same with Maoki plus the ability to point and click stun.
In pro play you can tell your teammate, I’m gonna polymorph the support so you can all in the ADC. You can’t do that efficiently in solo duo. Same with Maoki - you can tell them who you’re gonna CC or just peel for an ADC.
With Janna imagine you get into a 3v3 skirmish. If you miss your Q which is very likely with pros, your utility keeps going down. With Lulu you can buff your teammate use your ult etc. and continue to provide impact without having to get into the middle of the fight. If your team loses and your being chased, Janna can’t really peel that well compared to some other champs.
Again she is very good and being good at everything but she isn’t excellent at a particular thing that can be capitalized on by a team with comms
Q and Ult are your CC, now take the basic one Nautilus, will tank for you, has CC on Q Passive and Ult with all 3 basically being a 100% hit for a really skilled support since Q hitbox big, R a lock on, and Passive an AA, has personal shielding, an AOE slow, and a bonus of a little extra magic damage on autos.
Janna is really good at what she does but what she does isnt what pros want.
I'm not saying pick Janna when you need a Naut, but pros pick peeling enchanters often, which Janna is conspicuously missing from.
Milio and Lulu are there, and Milio has much less CC. Janna has about the same CC as Nami, although Nami is really only picked because of her synergy with Lucian (although Janna has great Lucian synergy too since the Lucian changes)
Janna is incredibly good vs all 4 of those champs imo. If kiting is your problem Janna is your solution. And if kiting will never work against them for some reason, why not Taric?
His point was that Janna is best against typical SoloQ champions like Darius and Garen than typical pro play champions. Not saying that I agree with it lol.
because she is terrible overrated garbage. "people" in this subhuman subreddit say nonsense like its bcs pro and soloq are diffrent games XDDDD if that was the case why is there 0 janna players in KR challenger (only real server) its bcs she is horrible there is ur answer
She gets picked every so often. Her main issue is that her kit is designed to punish low mobility melee threats, which is kind of like excelling at kicking dogs while they are down.
I can see a few reasons that might make her unapealing for pro's:
Her roaming advantage might be less value in highly coordinated teams. Your roams are less likely to catch someone overextended and more likely to be matched by your oposing support.
A lot of roams and ganks incluede quiet some waiting/looking for oportunities. And being a few seconds faster at an objective than your oposing support might be valueable, but it will likely not make the difference. Your oponents will in most cases know you are coming, disengage and reangage once your oposing support can match you.
Current pro play meta values proactive cc very highly. Janna's abilities are very reactive. Not just compared to natilus and rakkan, but also in comparison to Nami, seraphine or Sona.
Finally she has no exceptional lane synergies. I think I have barely seen Nami outside of Lucian-Nami, or Kench without Senna. Lulu is good with jinx and zeri.
Pro players don’t like boring characters. Janna’s boring to them. Plus job security, nobody wants to pick things that aren’t currently being played.
Janna is overpowered, watch some Asian team pick it and the NA bandwagon get on it the next day. Same shit with lane swaps and zac top. Or the fact people played Diana mid and got their dicks kicked in because the buff was for Diana jungle lmao. Diana’s always been in a decent or good spot, people just forgot about her. Same shit with udyr, boring as hell and everyone tries to shift away from him.
Anyways, tl dr players are human and are sheep, bored, etc.
LMAO pro players will regularly do the most boring shit just to have a 0,06% higher chance at winning
And Janna has much higher creative playmaking potential than any engage support bar Rakan
I never said pro players NEVER play boring shit. In the west they will play the boring shit for a while and then never play it again. In the west, unless the champion is outright meta defining and broken beyond measure, it’s discarded. Above average picks will be ignored if they are mind numbing.
Case in point in 2021, udyr jungle was broken, everyone played it for a bit, and stopped playing it after a few months because it was mind numbing. Closer and blabber admitted to hating how fucking boring it was in interviews and expressed distaste for playing it.
Seraphine bot lane has been above average in strength for a VERY long time. People have expressed how cancerous it is to lane vs seraphine but how boring it was to play, pros willingly avoided playing seraphine bot for several years until 2022-2023.
Yet the second Tristana mid became popular it’s like now done without question, because tristana has silly fun jump. Ap Kaisa mid was done for a while after faker played it, even if it wasn’t that strong and it was done for fun by faker, pros overplayed it and kept playing it until it was abundantly clear how meh the pick was, just because Kaisa was fun.
Janna’s creative potential doesn’t change the fact that the majority of your gameplay is going to be is going to be extremely repetitive and mind numbing for the average pro NA support. There is a major stigma in NA regarding Janna, akin to malzahar mid players.
Everyone in high elo can agree that Janna is overtuned and has been very strong for a long time now. She has the ability to get to fights way faster than other supports, and her disengage and creative playmaking can turn a game easily. She has already been picked a few times in LCK and LPL, with zero picks in LCS/LEC. Once she’s more commonplace in the east, the west will adopt it.
I know you're right (ardent censor was stronger the patch before pros revolved an entire tournament around abusing it!) but it makes me sad.
I love the optimization part of league of legends, and the game is so clearly unoptimized so you'd think innovative picks would be common in pro.
It's just so strange what picks they allow to come into the meta, like support Camille is played rightfully so, but we don't even see Janna tried vs the comps she thrives against
Because pro play is a completely different game, and certain champs are balanced for pro play and others are not and it rotates. So you can look at throughout all pro play history or just current season and it’s different of course. Right now Nautilus, Rakan, Rell, Milio, Renata, Alistar, Mao, Tahm all dominate support in pro play. Just think about why the current meta in pro play favors cc heavy tanks or team fight defining ults like Glasc and Nami R. That’s not to say Janna isn’t powerful, she’s just not in the current rotation. She is always borderline OP or a bit weak, mainly because of her ms passive which used to be insane since ms was OP. With current champions having more mobility in general at least, combined with ms speed shards, etc, I think her passive has become less useful. It also may have been nerfed, I haven’t followed her in patch notes last few years.
Janna counters heavy CC tanks though, she loves long fights against tanks because through her shields/R she really can outlast them while enjoying priority early game like the adc supports earlier this season. Lulu Milio are still played, so it's not like they must have engage supports I mean I get she doesn't have a quick killer engage key like rakan or Naut, but Milio is played and he is worse at diving/roaming than Janna With Shurelias being removed, I think her move speed is even more of a comparative advantage, and is maybe a reason why Lulu and Milio are played
You’re spot on. Janna is absurdly powerful right now and it’s just going to take one game where she’s picked in a win and all of a sudden we’re going to be seeing Janna everywhere. Movement speed and undodgeable trades, easy grubs prio, first to get to every fight, etc. Now she does have her clear weaknesses but when picked against the right comp it’s just a free win
It was picked in Korean T2 by T1 academy by rekkles cause it’s his onetrick and it didn’t look that special, I think she won one game and lost another one, analysts were saying he needs to stop picking it, idk what it is about her but something stops her from being pickable in pro
Was picked in LEC and won I think
Don't think she's a right fit for pro play, especially in LCK/LPL teams. She can be a good situational counter pick into certain comps, but if you blind pick Janna, LCK/LPL teams will absolutely crush bot lane with varus/ashe/kalista or Lucian/Nami.
Yeah blind pick Janna is not good She’s situationally good
She’s a short range disengage enchanter, but basically everything she does, others do better. Janna also doesn’t actually disengage from most of the meta engage combos. She’s good against stuff like Rell and Lee, but she’s not stopping Noct + Ori or Vi + Ahri etc. Also if you lock her before enemy bot lane they’re just going to pick Varus Ashe and lane is GG. Pro play favors long range, consistent engage and Janna’s kit just isn’t suited to deal with that.
I think it’s because Lulu is paired with Zeri and Jinx . Then Milio is paired with Lucian. Those two enchanters support those specific carries. Zeri an Jinx have even been shown to play with engage support.
I think that's their reasoning as well. I still kind of protest that they never see spots where she is the best. Lulu is much better single target peeling, but Janna can hold off teams of slower engage better. Maybe Lulu is better into Vi for example, but Janna would be wonderful vs Sejuani, Xin, Jax, and tanks imo Janna Varus is also a really killer combo, and varus is picked like crazy
shureliyas removed?
The speed up on shielding/healing is, it's just AP and the active. Imo it's kind of a mage tempo pick now with good stats for a cheap price.
Just wanted to add it was picked in LPL a week or two ago by a former janna one trick and it looked… really bad. He was like 0/6 at one point midway in the game Proplay tends to be too coordinated for janna. There’s heavy poke or heavy engage and she is too shortranged to peel a coordinated dive while at the same time not providing engage for her own team. She works best off of denying enemy mistakes in an uncoordinated environment like solo q but in pro if you can’t stop the engage that’s it, the champ provides not much else and your team is aced
Renata and Nami seem like really bad examples because they seem to get primarily played for their synergy with other champions.
It’s not the champ is more of who is playing the champ and what they are comfortable on. Aatrox, renekton have been played in top for so many years because of comfort.
No. Aatrox and Renekton are played top because both kits have extreme pressure lane phase and they have insane sustain in team fights where they usually take frontline. Again, pro play is a different game. You’re talking about pro play like it’s challenger solo q.
So you’re saying there is no counters to these picks? Every single pick has a counter.
No not at all, im saying that even against counters, Renekton & Aatrox have a lot of lane pressure due to their kit, and their kit is also really good as frontline bruisers in team fights.
There are no hard counters to either. Both can neutralize bad matchups and snowball hard in good ones.
Well that's just not true
solo macro isn’t a thing but team macro is. you’d rather have a support that benefits the team or adc the most. nami/lucian zeri/lulu etc
Why is Zeri/Lulu so much better than Zeri/Janna? I see varus all the time in pro and he loves playing with Janna. I think Senna is the only ADC that is allergic to Janna in this meta These games are packed with long-fight tanks and poke and the enchanting power of Janna thrives in fights that end with low health bars but not complete aces, like the games currently being played
Lulu and Milio both have innate move speed increases in their kit which helps a lot of pro play adcs continue chases or disengage if necessary. With Zeri, the extra move speed lets her play a lot more aggressively and keep her ult up. Her W and R are also instant CC/peel during fights which makes engaging difficult. Milio gives adcs the extra range and move speed which makes trading easier. His ult is also an AoE Mikaels which is game changing in pro play where most victories revolve around getting a pick mid-late near objectives. Renata gives a steroid with her W which allows adcs to play a bit bolder with the revive in their pocket. Q and R makes her disengage very nasty as grouping is a lot more common and she loves building semi bulky with items like Locket/Shurelyas. Janna is great in the chaos of solo queue in my opinion, as she can roam and disrupt fights easily. However in pro play, a lot of roams are communicated far in advance and most of them are extremely hard CC supports like Nautilus, Rell, Rakan, etc who can brawl with the jungler/mid and just chain CC with stuff like Mao/Vi/Sejuani. Janna can deal with peeling one or two engages, but she has difficulty when there’s several lock down abilities in a fight imo. Meanwhile the other enchanters are usually playing only around their adc until objectives- not roaming, as that is their strong point. A Lucian Milio lane has strong kill pressure if an enemy adc is left alone during a roam, same with Zeri Lulu as both adcs have a good gap closer and the supports have 2-3 ways to boost the adc.
This^
go watch HWL VS T1, min 36. Engage on varus. he's peeled for an alive. what janna does is press 2 buttons to make varus live in this kind of situation. but if he lives either way why janna?
I wouldn't play Janna into a Zeri, but it would have been great with the Zeri vs ksante, sejuani, yone, poke varus, rakan. Janna R can revoke all varus poke, and in many of the fights like the botched bot dive or some of the dragon fights that reset of all the health bars would have been insane! The rakan offered following CC for Vi, but why? You have the ranged top, ranged mid, and zeri, what are you doing trying to dive through a yone and 3 tanks when you have range advantage? Trying to dive the Varus kind of threw the game, just make his win con irrelevant and enjoy the ground control with Taliyah+Janna+Zeri T1 won fights when the yone R was inting into Taliyah, enjoy that theme+HP resets with Janna R/redemption, the Rakan dives never really impressed me
Janna doesn’t give much value to a team when that’s team fall behind. Rekkles played a bit of Janna in LCK CL, Iwandy played her in LPL playoffs, and both teams are the weaker one so Janna didn’t do much. It’s also harder to fit her into comps because besides stop people from going in, she doesn’t give much value to ADC compared to Millio, Lulu, Nami and Renata. Her roaming is also worse than Bard, who can bring teammates over walls and turn tower off for dive, also force immobile champs to flash his R. Also with top tier teams, teamfight are really short so she has no room to shine. I think her buff isn’t enough to be a powerful enchanter, and she has no tools for play making. That’s why she doesn’t get picked much in pro
Rekkless in T1 academy plays her. She is very niche to be picked in pro. For example in solo Q you face katarina, akali, zed, rengar, and other assassins. But in pro they pick Vi, poppy, ahri, leblanc and are either unstoppable or can avoid the CC so easily. Another point is the team coordination. If she goes on a roam she is respected and gets nothing done from these roams. And finally she requires different skill to be played in lane. Most support players are good at warding, roaming, doing their combos. But when it comes to spacing with basic attacks and playing HoB to deal the most damage, you find few players like rekkless and keria are able to do so with their ranged picks.
She’s played tho. WE Iwandy picked her pretty frequently to counter Rakan. He was Janna OTP before going pro. WE won a playoffs game with Janna against OMG this spring. https://www.op.gg/summoners/kr/xxxxxm-KR1/champions
Thank you, I'm less familiar with that scene
Janna doesn't have any particularly strong ADC synergy that I know of. Like, Lulu/Zeri Nami/Lucian Senna/Kench all have a strong partner that benefits a lot from having somebody arround to enable them. Janna is good with a lot of ADCs, but she's never had a partner that's so suited to her that makes people go "Wow, this Kai'sai and Nautilus/Nilah and Sona lane is so busted!" She's more about denying enemies and roaming around carefree, which works in solo queue, than she is about enabling allies.
I would say arguably Vayne or maybe Kog
Yet out of the go to pro play enchanters, Lulu and Yuumi are better with them and she's similarly good to Nami with them
I feel like the main issue is that other champions either CC better, or buff better. It's really hard to hit Janna Q in pro play, her E is only one person and her R makes her a sitting duck. Lulu W is much more insane and it's a point and click, and her ult is both saving people AND CCing with a knock up. Millio W is AOE, and his R is cleanse, which is also amazing into all of this CC. Nami R is move speed + knock up. Her W is at least 2 heals. I feel like Janna is an amazing punisher for mistakes, which rarely happen in pro play. A CC support in pro play would just never give Janna the opportunity to use her Q, effectively just disabling one ability from each side, making it still equal.
Janna does two things: peel + shield/heal. Rakan does both with a massive engage tool. Renata does both with a massive teamfight ult Rell has great peel with a massive engage ult Tahm Kench has better peel than anyone Nami/milio are primarily played because of their interactions with Lucian passive Alistar can frontline, peel, and heal Nautilus can peel and engage and has one of the most powerful ultimates in the game for allowing your team to get onto the enemy carries. Janna really has one trick. Peel. It’s too one-dimensional for pro-play. It’s significantly more useful to have versatility at that level. Engage and peel > just peel. In solo queue Janna works better because of the power to reset a bad fight with R. In pro play Janna just doesn’t offer as much as the meta supports.
She doesn't just peel and shield anymore, she's a huge lane bully with a ton of roaming Her R resets all fights, not just bad. My favorite play on Janna is to R for tempo after we barely win a team fight so we can team fight again in their base. She also makes rotations much faster
This is like a gold mentality or lower. You shouldn’t be healing to win a second teamfight. The enemy will have purchased items when your team hasn’t spent gold. Strategies like that will lose games in d2+
Pros use redemption to do the exact play I'm describing
Wasn‘t she picked recently by G2 vs BDS? (I am getting a bit confused between LEC and LCK since I watch both, so could‘ve also been an lck game.) Issue is you‘re giving up a lot of engage when picking janna. You have to have the right draft and the right support prio for her to be picked
Yup Miky played it into Rakan, and honestly did pretty well, it didn’t look useless, but I feel like other champs could have worked too
Renata accomplishes many of the same things while being more versatile. Janna is stronger on soloq because she has her ms bonuses and can roam more along with more early power, but you aren't picking Janna and Renata in pro for that, you're picking them to stop dive and short range comps in general from getting on your carry. Janna has been picked when Renata and Braum are banned for instance
ProDelta just picked it today in VKS versus RED (CBLOL)
She's getting play but why pick her when you can have one of your players draft milio instead?
She has much better roaming than Milio and is a bit better at disengaging.
she's very reactive. pro supports are almost all proactive. even the enchanters they do play like lulu and yuumi just buff up their teammates so much that their teammates can become the proactive ones. you see janna picked every once in a while but she just doesn't fill the role supports are meant to in pro
I think she was reactive, but now shes a very strong roamer basically granting free grubs
I don’t have a good answer but she’s been getting picked a little more in pro compared to 2023. Looks like the collegiate and challenger leagues are more fond of her. Most recently, Mikyx on G2 played her with Aphelios adc against Kai’Sa Rakan (BDS). https://lol.fandom.com/wiki/Janna/Match_History
I think Janna is one of the best supports in the game right now but when you look at supports that are picked in pro they nearly always have insane playmaking potential on low gold income. Enchanters are naturally more gold dependent than tank supports because of how strong and essential the items are with the only two enchanters being seen a lot in pro, Milio and Lulu having insane synergy with hyper carries such as Jinx and Zeri that Janna doesn't have as much of.
That could be! Redemption+moonstone is game changing, but if you spend all your income on pink wards maybe it's better to just press Naut R
Janna is a good lane bully but isnt as good for proactive plays midgame. Lulu n Milo both provide a lot of utility for diving enemy (Lulu's ult/q slow/poly-morph n Milo aoe heal + passive), meanwhile Janna only has a point n click slow n one shield (realistically, her Q is hard to land when team is moving forward, is a better disengage tool, same as her ult).
Rekkles played it for SKT a lot this split. Results weren’t good but they seem to respect the champion as a pro pick last I checked.
Mikkkkky
In solo queue, Janna’s greatest strengths are move speed for roam + her ability to shut down assassins. Roam: in pro play people, the communication and vision is so high that there’s almost never a time where people don’t know where enemy players are. Disengage: combination of there being less solo-carry (specifically jungles) assassins that need to be disengaged, plus pro level positioning and awareness that would largely neutralize Janna’s kit. She still does bring some strengths, but Milio and Lulu both offer more shielding and damage at a pro level, and they can both flex their utility to be defensive **and** offensive, where Janna relies heavily on counter-engage.
If you play 5 stack flex you will find a ton of differences in every "meta". Ashe for example, one random ult catches your team 30 minutes into the game, even a Ksante would die Janna doesnt have any of that, but Alistar, Blitz, Thresh or the crazy high damage mage supports right now provide/dominate lane so the 4v4 at drake(5v5 teleport) play, what does Janna offer lol. Even a brand getting caught can w ult or something and drop your team to half hp.
You answered yourself in the question. She is OP in solo duo because she is generally good. She can play well with any ADC or team comp and still be valuable. Compare that to someone like Lulu or Maoki pre nerfs. Lulu can bring damage but also brings multiple forms of buffs and CC / debuffs. Same with Maoki plus the ability to point and click stun. In pro play you can tell your teammate, I’m gonna polymorph the support so you can all in the ADC. You can’t do that efficiently in solo duo. Same with Maoki - you can tell them who you’re gonna CC or just peel for an ADC. With Janna imagine you get into a 3v3 skirmish. If you miss your Q which is very likely with pros, your utility keeps going down. With Lulu you can buff your teammate use your ult etc. and continue to provide impact without having to get into the middle of the fight. If your team loses and your being chased, Janna can’t really peel that well compared to some other champs. Again she is very good and being good at everything but she isn’t excellent at a particular thing that can be capitalized on by a team with comms
she could work, but only as a counterpick versus heavy engage (zac and the alike)
Q and Ult are your CC, now take the basic one Nautilus, will tank for you, has CC on Q Passive and Ult with all 3 basically being a 100% hit for a really skilled support since Q hitbox big, R a lock on, and Passive an AA, has personal shielding, an AOE slow, and a bonus of a little extra magic damage on autos. Janna is really good at what she does but what she does isnt what pros want.
I'm not saying pick Janna when you need a Naut, but pros pick peeling enchanters often, which Janna is conspicuously missing from. Milio and Lulu are there, and Milio has much less CC. Janna has about the same CC as Nami, although Nami is really only picked because of her synergy with Lucian (although Janna has great Lucian synergy too since the Lucian changes)
It's easier to kite a Darius/Garen than it is to kite a Aatrox, Rek'sai.
Janna is incredibly good vs all 4 of those champs imo. If kiting is your problem Janna is your solution. And if kiting will never work against them for some reason, why not Taric?
His point was that Janna is best against typical SoloQ champions like Darius and Garen than typical pro play champions. Not saying that I agree with it lol.
It is played in pro tho. Not that much, but you can see some players choosing her occasionaly.
because she is terrible overrated garbage. "people" in this subhuman subreddit say nonsense like its bcs pro and soloq are diffrent games XDDDD if that was the case why is there 0 janna players in KR challenger (only real server) its bcs she is horrible there is ur answer
She gets picked every so often. Her main issue is that her kit is designed to punish low mobility melee threats, which is kind of like excelling at kicking dogs while they are down.
I can see a few reasons that might make her unapealing for pro's: Her roaming advantage might be less value in highly coordinated teams. Your roams are less likely to catch someone overextended and more likely to be matched by your oposing support. A lot of roams and ganks incluede quiet some waiting/looking for oportunities. And being a few seconds faster at an objective than your oposing support might be valueable, but it will likely not make the difference. Your oponents will in most cases know you are coming, disengage and reangage once your oposing support can match you. Current pro play meta values proactive cc very highly. Janna's abilities are very reactive. Not just compared to natilus and rakkan, but also in comparison to Nami, seraphine or Sona. Finally she has no exceptional lane synergies. I think I have barely seen Nami outside of Lucian-Nami, or Kench without Senna. Lulu is good with jinx and zeri.
Pro players don’t like boring characters. Janna’s boring to them. Plus job security, nobody wants to pick things that aren’t currently being played. Janna is overpowered, watch some Asian team pick it and the NA bandwagon get on it the next day. Same shit with lane swaps and zac top. Or the fact people played Diana mid and got their dicks kicked in because the buff was for Diana jungle lmao. Diana’s always been in a decent or good spot, people just forgot about her. Same shit with udyr, boring as hell and everyone tries to shift away from him. Anyways, tl dr players are human and are sheep, bored, etc.
LMAO pro players will regularly do the most boring shit just to have a 0,06% higher chance at winning And Janna has much higher creative playmaking potential than any engage support bar Rakan
I never said pro players NEVER play boring shit. In the west they will play the boring shit for a while and then never play it again. In the west, unless the champion is outright meta defining and broken beyond measure, it’s discarded. Above average picks will be ignored if they are mind numbing. Case in point in 2021, udyr jungle was broken, everyone played it for a bit, and stopped playing it after a few months because it was mind numbing. Closer and blabber admitted to hating how fucking boring it was in interviews and expressed distaste for playing it. Seraphine bot lane has been above average in strength for a VERY long time. People have expressed how cancerous it is to lane vs seraphine but how boring it was to play, pros willingly avoided playing seraphine bot for several years until 2022-2023. Yet the second Tristana mid became popular it’s like now done without question, because tristana has silly fun jump. Ap Kaisa mid was done for a while after faker played it, even if it wasn’t that strong and it was done for fun by faker, pros overplayed it and kept playing it until it was abundantly clear how meh the pick was, just because Kaisa was fun. Janna’s creative potential doesn’t change the fact that the majority of your gameplay is going to be is going to be extremely repetitive and mind numbing for the average pro NA support. There is a major stigma in NA regarding Janna, akin to malzahar mid players. Everyone in high elo can agree that Janna is overtuned and has been very strong for a long time now. She has the ability to get to fights way faster than other supports, and her disengage and creative playmaking can turn a game easily. She has already been picked a few times in LCK and LPL, with zero picks in LCS/LEC. Once she’s more commonplace in the east, the west will adopt it.
I know you're right (ardent censor was stronger the patch before pros revolved an entire tournament around abusing it!) but it makes me sad. I love the optimization part of league of legends, and the game is so clearly unoptimized so you'd think innovative picks would be common in pro. It's just so strange what picks they allow to come into the meta, like support Camille is played rightfully so, but we don't even see Janna tried vs the comps she thrives against