Not since Kiriko has a new Overwatch heroes single-handedly tanked the queue times in Quick Play. I only managed to get a handful of games in and I'm certain the wait times are only going to get worse as the trial for Juno, the game's latest support hero, continues into the weekend. Not only are people clamoring to play her, she might actually be one of the best-designed heroes since Overwatch 2's release.
Juno is a purple-haired, giggly astronaut who many people are comparing to other healers like Ana, Lucio, and Baptiste. On paper, that's basically true: Her gun can heal and deal damage and she can move around the map pretty quickly with a double jump and a Hyper Ring ability that slingshots her team into battle. But she doesn't feel like any of those heroes at all when you play her.
She's extremely mobile. That's largely due to having a fairly short cooldown on her Glide Boost, a quick burst of horizontal speed that I relied on a lot to escape flanking enemies like Tracers and Echos. It doesn't let you launch into the air—she has the double jump for that—but it does keep her slippery enough to stay alive, which feels in balance with her relatively weak damage output. Juno isn't a killer unless you properly set up a play with her other abilities. Instead, she's much better at maintaining her team's momentum by orbiting around them and picking up the slack when the enemy team has stragglers or when someone on your side needs a quick assist.
Lucio held the throne as the only support in the game who could quickly speed boost allies into and out of dangerous situations. In Overwatch 2, healing alone just doesn't cut it with how lethal DPS heroes are, especially with the anti-healing debuff that their attacks apply. Juno is the first hero since Overwatch 1 who has a new way to quickly move her team around and it's called Hyper Ring. She can essentially toss down a giant space portal that gives everyone on your team nitrous as they race forward into the fray.
The Hyper Ring is Juno's signature ability and it's extremely satisfying to use. The most obvious use for it is just to catapult your team toward an objective, but it's especially powerful when combined with her ultimate Orbital Ray, which calls down a laser beam that slowly moves forward as it heals and damage-boosts anyone nearby. A well-timed Hyper Ring and Orbital Ray combo turns the enemy team into bowling pins and your team into one giant bowling ball. Overwatch has long struggled with balancing the power of ultimates and I think Juno's could be the path forward for future heroes. You can only get the most out of it by pulling off a smart combination of abilities at the right time, rather than simply hitting Q like an 'I win' button.
The best Overwatch heroes have what I like to call a 'loop' of priorities to cycle through in every match, and so far I think this is what Juno's looks like:
- Keep allies healthy with her Mediblaster gun and weaken enemies when you can
- Toss down a hyper ring to boost your team into a fight or to help them back out in time to recuperate and try again
- As a team fight erupts, shoot off her Pulsar Torpedos to heal your team and hopefully weaken enemies who aren't paying attention
- Drop her Orbital Ray ultimate to send a slow-moving beam straight through the battlefield that boosts nearby teammates' damage as they rush toward an objective or chase after targets
It takes quite a lot of practice to make her kit coalesce because most of her abilities don't make much of an impact alone. Juno's gun can't headshot, so it can be almost impossible to get enough damage in for a kill before your target gets healed and none of her abilities can really save anyone if they're outnumbered. Like Moira and Mercy, the key to Juno is to set yourself up for success before a fight goes awry. She's a brilliant blend of strategy and payoff that makes me miss when Overwatch was slow enough to have heroes who could change the course of a match by making a series of smart decisions to set their team up for success.
Juno's trial will last until this Sunday and then she'll be back as a (free) hero when Overwatch 2's season 12 starts on August 20.
