Overwatch 2’s next hero, Juno, Revealed

Juno officially Launches on August 20th when Season 12 begins.

Juno does look pretty much identical to the concept art that we saw way back last year at BlizzCon. It’s officially the time to welcome Juno into the Overwatch 2 roster of heroes. The new hero has finally been revealed with a gameplay trailer to show off her abilities and was originally announced under the codename Space Ranger at BlizzCon 2023.

overwatch 2

Juno is a movement-themed healer that can move smoothly around the battlefield and boost herself and her teammates up as she heals and supports them with damage. There’s a speculation that she’s the daughter of Mei’s friend Jiayi as her place in the lore and story of Overwatch is a bit unclear right now. It was, however, confirmed, that she’d be Overwatch’s first Martian character, as well as a “highly mobile support hero”. Juno is a bouncy space cadet support character in Overwatch 2 who will come to the game when season 12 goes live in August.

Overwatch 2 Juno Release date

Juno is set to be released in Season 12 of Overwatch 2, which is scheduled to begin on Tuesday, August 20. The new content will be added through an update that will go live at 11:00 am PT (7:00 pm BST).

Players have gotten a chance to try the hero during a limited-time trial that took place from July 19 to July 21 just like what happened with Just like Venture and Mauga.

Juno Overwatch 2 Trailer

Here is the gameplay trailer for Overwatch 2 Juno that gives us a look at her different unique abilities:

Juno All Abilities

Mediblaster

The first ability or weapon is the Mediblaster. Juno fires a 12-round hit scan burst with 180 ammo which means 15 shots before reloading. This deals seven damage per bullet, so 84 damage total. You cannot headshot with this weapon and armored targets cut this damage in half to 3.5 per shot. There is a weapon falloff range of 30 M to 45 M.

Mediblaster also heals and it operates exactly the same as its offensive counterpart, with 7 healing per bullet and 84 healing if you land all the bullets and there’s healing falloff. He’ll be the first support hero that has this as you’re healing 2.1 per bullet at the max range of 45M.

Martian Overboots (Passive)

Let’s move on to Juno’s passive first Martian Overboots which does two things. One, the boots allow her to double jump feels similar to Genji, and secondly, allow you to slowly descend by holding the jump button and it feels exactly the same as Mercy.

Glide Boost Ability 1

Now things her fun when combining her passive with her first ability Glide Boost. This lets you glide horizontally with a 50% speed boost increase. It lasts 4 seconds with an 8-second cooldown. You can jump once when gliding but it locks you into one axis, so you can’t look up or down to fly in that direction nor can you press a button to descend.

·       Since you can only jump once, it is probably better to double jump before activating Glide boost to gain a little more height depending on the situation.

·       One way to climb vertically is to hug your body against the map and use the natural curves of the map to push yourself up.

Pulsar torpedoes

This ability locks onto any friendly and enemy players in your line of sight only. If you look away from your target or they break the line of sight, it will not fire. If it hits a teammate then it heals a flat 75 Hp and 60 Hp over 3 seconds afterwards for a total of 135 Hp. If it hits the enemy, it’s 75 Damage. You can hold the torpedoes for up to 4 seconds with a 10-second cooldown.

If you cancel the ability or hold it but never actually lock onto a single target then the cooldown is reduced in half at only 5 seconds. But if there’s any single target marked at any point even if you look away then it will go on that 10-second cooldown. This ability has a range of about 40 M, so if you step beyond that distance then the lock-on disappears.

This works like a life weaver where if a target moves behind cover while it’s traveling it will still follow them, unlike Kiriko. The damage portion doesn’t follow the same rule and enemies can break out of line of sight.

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Hyper Ring

This third ability is a hyper ring, which fires that increase movement speed by 50% or allies only and that lasts for 3 seconds. It’s allies only, so enemies cannot use it. It lasts 6 seconds and has a 16-second cooldown upon firing, so by the time the ring actually expires, there are only 10 seconds left on the cooldown effectively giving you a speed ring every 10 seconds.

Hyper ring has a max range of 15 m before it opens up. Obviously, if you shoot it at the ground, you can shorten that distance. Now, this is not an active projectile so Diva cannot eat it and barriers cannot block it.

The ring gives you the movement speed as soon as the projectile is traveling out like before it turns into the ring, so if your teammates are clumped beside or in front of you then they will be speed-boosted earlier. It will not work if they are behind you. If you fire it at its max distance then you and your team can gain that speed benefit and then you can pass through the ring and refresh the speed boost for another 3 seconds afterward which allows you to traverse about 45 m with the speed benefit.

Orbital Ray (Ultimate)

Finally, we have the Ultimate Orbital Ray which is a slow linear traveling heal and damage boost buff. It travels only at about 20 m of distance and it only lasts 10 seconds. This gives any Ally a 35% damage boost while firing inside of it and it heals about 90 Hp per second, so 900 Hp total over the 10 seconds. There’s a bit of a lingering effect so you don’t have to stand in the Ray at all times. You can pop in and out and still receive benefits for about a second before it dissipates.

More about Juno

Juno in Overwatch 2 will be available to pick in all game modes other than Overwatch 2’s Competitive matchmaking, though in nearly all of them. If you don’t want to compete with your fellow support players to see who can click her fastest then remember that it won’t be in the No Limits arcade mode, though, so that’ll be the best spot to try her out. We didn’t get an in-depth look at all the nuances of Juno’s kit in Blizzard’s new gameplay trailer but the developers shared its release covers everything you need to know in detail in an Overview.

As for Juno’s place in the story? We don’t know anything yet officially beyond the fact that she apparently came back from a trip to Mars. Many players assumed this referred to Mei’s friend and grad school classmate Jiayi whom she occasionally mentions in dialogue. The developers of Overwatch 2 just released hero backstory trailers soon after new characters are revealed with gameplay teasers like this one.

A few weeks back, Blizzard teased her imminent appearance in Overwatch 2 and showed that she’d made the journey from Mars to Earth and parked her landing craft on the Dorado map. Juno may be related to another character from deep Overwatch lore: Jiaya, who is a former classmate of Mei who worked as a scientist at Lucheng Interstellar.

Lucheng Interstellar is a Chinese company that built the Horizon Lunar Colony. Lucheng Interstellar must have been involved in developing a colony on Mars; Juno’s suit features the Lucheng logo. The name Juno, for what it’s worth, is the mother of the god Mars in Roman mythology.

Overwatch 2 is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.