by Sven Stumbauer
July 18 looked like same-old same-old for Overwatch fans, with just a little more complaining about the game's recent balance changes.
However, this wouldn't remain the same as the game's YouTube channel uploaded a trailer for their newest hero, Juno.
An inhabitant of Overwatch's Martian colony and formerly known as "Space Ranger" by developers and fans, her kit features an array of utility, healing, and damage that makes her a Swiss Army Knife of a support hero.
Passive
Juno has a passive that is an amalgamation of Genji, Mercy, and Echo's passives, allowing her to double jump and fall to the ground slower. This makes Juno a fairly mobile hero without the help of any abilities, but not as mobile as other supports like Lucio nor does she have the vertical mobility of characters like Lifeweaver, Baptiste, and to an extent Kiriko.
Despite being outclassed by some heroes in her class when it comes to vertical mobility, this passive is a very good one and grants Juno players a myriad of ways to disengage, stall and reach teammates in a hurry.
Mediblaster
Juno's gun boasts a feature that hasn't been seen since the release of Overwatch's first new hero post-initial launch, Ana: a gun that can both heal allies and damage enemies. Similarly, it shares a burst-fire feature like Lucio and Baptiste's weapons and also has a large 180 magazine size.
Moreover, it is a hit-scan gun with a very tight spread. However, unlike Ana's Biotic Rifle, Mediblaster suffers from damage fall-off at long ranges, thus limiting where she can position effectively during team fights.
Her gun deals 7 healing and damage per bullet which may seem underwhelming, but she fires in bursts of 12, bumping the total up to 84. These numbers give Juno very high DPS and healing potential, translating into high sustainability and a dangerous target to 1v1 on any role.
Pulsar Torpedoes
Juno's primary/offensive ability is on a 10-second cooldown and fires a series of homing projectiles that heal locked on allies and damage locked on enemies. For allies, the torpedoes heal 75 health and an additional 60 health for 3 seconds, thus making it output a maximum of 135 healing per allied target. For enemies, the damage received is a flat 75.
Be aware that it takes time to lock onto all possible allies and enemies and it also is limited to Juno's line of sight, giving this ability a fairly lengthy timeframe to use at its maximum possible value. It also has a maximum time frame of 4 seconds to lock on to any targets and if canceled without using the ability, the 10-second cooldown is halved to only 5 seconds.
While this ability may be viewed by some as fairly overturned, it has some counterplay. Firstly, since the torpedoes are projectiles, it can be inferred that heroes like D.Va, Orisa and Sigma can absorb incoming projectiles with Defense Matrix, Javelin Spin and Kinetic Grasp respectively.
Furthermore, a well-oiled team could theoretically still be able to finish off a low target due to the projectiles' travel time. While this ability has serious peel-and-play-of-the-game potential, its travel time and the amount of time it takes to lock on to additional targets make it seem more viable as a quick burst of healing or damage to a nearby friend or foe.
Glide Boost
Juno's next ability serves as yet another boost of mobility, granting her the ability to fly horizontally for 4 seconds and is on an 8-second cooldown. Unfortunately, she isn't able to fly vertically but can still gain some verticality as you can double jump once during Glide Boost's duration.
This ability is very useful to disengage from fights, peel for teammates, or get back from the spawn room to the fight quickly and alongside her passive puts her up there in Overwatch's roster when it comes to characters with the highest mobility.
Hyper Ring
Juno's subsequent cooldown also serves as an addition of a support feature once only had by Lucio and to an extent, Kiriko with her ultimate: the ability to boost speed.
Hyper Ring grants a noteworthy speed boost to allies that are near it or go through it with the buff persisting for some times after passing through the ability. It has a 16-second cooldown, the ring itself is only active for 6 seconds and serves to facilitate a more aggressive style of play by being able to rush into a fight or as a tool to reposition or disengage after a fight has gone wrong. Unfortunately, for those wanting to do their best Usain Bolt impression when rolling out of spawn, the speed boost from Hyper Ring does not stack with Lucio's speed boost or Amp It Up
This ability is certainly going to be a lot of fun on all levels of play as rush comps no longer need a Lucio to be played optimally. Alongside the general favoring of brawl/rush style compositions from the community with the popularity of characters like Ramattra, Reinhardt and Junker Queen, Juno is set to be a mainstay in compositions like these in the future and pick up the pace of play.
Orbital Beam
Juno's final ability is her ultimate, Orbital Beam. It emits a beam that moves in the direction Juno is looking when cast and provides healing and damage boosts simultaneously to allies in its radius. The healing, while substantial, takes a while to gain full value, with it only outputting 90 healing per second. As for the damage boost, it amplifies allied damage by 35%, which is higher than a Mercy blue beam which only boosts damage output by 30%.
Furthermore, given the beam's movement, allies and Juno herself will need to move accordingly with it, lessening the window where teammates can get healed and damage-boosted for its full duration.
This ultimate seems great to use on capture points to sustain through enemy ultimates or stall for allied respawns or capture progress. Coupled with its damage boost. It grants skilled players down a member or two the chance to equalize and even win a fight while disadvantaged, giving this ability an array of potential uses within any game.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Juno seems like a very good hero, but on paper, she's almost.. too good. Her utility is expansive and beneficial and if unchanged, she will certainly be a meta-defining hero on all levels of play. On the flip side, her design makes her a support character who can be both a main and flex support, which overshadows the niche roles of supports like Mercy's damage boost or Lucio's speed.
Juno isn't likely going to be the next Mauga, Illari, or 2018 Brigitte, and that's good. New heroes in the Overwatch 2 era have either been overpowered like the first two aforementioned heroes alongside the likes of Kiriko and Ramattra or immensely niche and underpowered like Lifeweaver.
Only two heroes in the eyes of most of the community were in a good state of balance when launched, being Sojourn who during Overwatch 2's first beta was a viable contender with existing snipers like Hanzo and Widow and not the meta pick she's been for most of Overwatch 2's competitive history, and Venture who had their place in lower ranks and even saw playtime in OWCS with dive and Mauga compositions.
Thankfully, Juno seems to fit that mold, at least for now. What's concerning here is her hero design and what this may mean for future heroes in Overwatch. The general problem some people in the community believe that Blizzard's development team has concerning hero design is that they are increasingly shifting to heroes that don't fit the mold of a poke, brawl, or dive style or the established roles of flex dps, hitscan, main and flex supports.
For instance, Mauga screams brawl character, yet he can play long distances like a Ramattra in Omnic Form or an Orisa. Speaking of which, Ramattra can be both a brawl and poke tank at the same time. Illari's kit resembles that of a flex support, yet her ultimate is largely an offensive one unlike most support ultimates and she can output concentrated healing on a character like Mercy or Brigitte.
The game feels like it's slowly shifting away from the archetypes that made it intriguing to begin with, and while having characters be flexible in multiple playstyles seems beneficial, it can make some heroes who were designed to be exclusively rush or dive characters a certain become left in the dust.
Not all heroes can do everything, and that's ok. Blizzard just needs to realize that for themselves and once they do, the future of Overwatch hero designs alongside the growing concerns of power creep within the game's roster of characters won't pose much of a threat.
Despite these qualms though, what matters is how much fun the game is with Juno now in the picture. Juno is going to be excellent in that department, and given the balance team's track record regarding heroes' pre-release trials by making positive changes to Venture's stats and cooldowns, the community can hopefully trust the development team to make any necessary adjustments before Season 12's launch.
Juno is available for a limited time this weekend from July 19-21.
What Are Your Thoughts On Juno If You've Played Her Already?
She's overtuned
She's strong, but not game-breaking
She's a not good, but not bad character
She isn't very good
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