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The State of JJ

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5 years ago
It still functions in team games, but its crippling weakness against fleas, and general instability continues to keep it down.

Just watched all of Godde's games in the last month. He lost one game playing Spiders on a giant map, and two games playing JJ on maps that in theory suited them. These were his only (1v1) losses.

There are many paths to the Factory being more functional, but I stand by my original recommendation to replace the constable weapon with a weak laser, to help repel light raiders and bridge the lack of function left by the pyro. I understand this might go against sensibilities because there is already 1 weapon wielding builder, but a light, cheap, jumpy one with a beam is about as far as you can sensibly get from the Wielder.
+4 / -0

5 years ago
Fleas get relentlessly murdered by the placeholder
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Did he ever get a Jugglenaut up? They can't get hit by fleas unless they are widowed 2 times.
+1 / -0


5 years ago
It could be okay to have Constable be the gun-toting con if Welder was not, so why not swap the sidearms?
+1 / -0

5 years ago
USrankRyMarq do you have the replays?
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Just use the LLT-sidearm of cons. Spam llt everywhere. Spider has no arty so you just win.
+1 / -2
I think that Spiders vs JJ is balanced if the JJ player can just get past the Flea harassment without getting too far behind but that is highly map dependent. If there are too many mexes and they are too far apart like on Trojan Hills or WanderLust, JJ simply cannot contest with Flea harassment while also sufficiently preventing the spider player from expanding nakedly. Fleas are also a decent defensive counter against lone Pyros if you micro them correctly even if the Pyro uses jump to escape the range of Fleas for a short while.
The fact that a single Flea can force a Constable to retreat makes JJ expansion prohibitively expensive against Flea harassment. Even if the Constable can retreat into the range of defenses, the Fleas can just sit outside the defensive ranges and the JJ player is forced to either defense creep towards the mexes or bring a 220 cost Pyro to deal with a few Fleas.
If the Constable could kill a Flea in 2-3 shots I feel that the match-up would be better balanced and 7-10 DPS would hardly matter in other match-ups.

However, I do think that JJ is potentially sleeper OP due to their high micro units and high skill ceiling.
-Constable, the cheapest con that is fast, can jump and has a slowing beam. Totally OP with the correct micro but it is relatively weak and often automatically targeted with high priority by enemy units so using it offensively has to be done with good micro and care if they aren't simply to just be wasted.
-Puppy, requires the right targets and will die to raiders pretty easily if it gets kited. Pretty good against Cloakbots(Scythes especially), gunships and airplanes in general, and can be used to suck up contested wrecks.
-Pyro, the difference between a well timed jump and no jump can be huge. Also generally needs to be repaired to make cost against other raiders.
-Moderator, you need to pick targets manually quite often to avoid wasting shots on low priority targets such as raiders, nanoframes, solars and mexes. Being a perfectly accurate skirmishers they can also benefit hugely from manual dodging and being retreated for repairs against other skirmishers like Ronins and Rogues. If caught out of position, they are easily overwhelmed by cheap units so even their maneuvers have to be premeditated with risk-assessment of being overrun.
-Placeholder, often requires manual micro to be effective or it can even cause harm to your own units.
-Jack, super short range and being relative slow means that you have to box in the enemy to deal effective damage. Also requires heal to be effective.
-Firewalker, great unit against Spiders, Shieldbots and Cloakies. Turning too quickly for their weapons to keep up, it is not rare to see them dancing around at the frontline without firing against moving targets. They easily waste their shots on lone enemy units and to protect them against surprise groups of raiders, Ravens, Sharpshooters, Widows and Scythes their employment needs to be premeditated and distinct. However with a few puppies running circles around them, a few Pyros guarding their flanks, a field of literal fire laid infront of them and some flanking puppies or defences to limit the angles of approach for sharpshooters, they are almost impossible to destroy cost effectively by said factories.
-Jugglenaut, dies easily without proper support. Needs to constantly take damage when pulling in enemies and be repaired at some point. Sometimes you have to constantly juggle pushing and pulling to be effective and not draw in too many enemy riots that kills your reloading Moderators. Jugglenauts also makes using Firewalkers and Placeholders harder as they will fire at units pulled into the Jugglenaut.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
I dont do much 1v1 so this doesn't really affect me. JJ are useful in teams because ther units really have an impact when they come into play a bit later on. However, if its that weak vs spiders then adding a small amount of damage to Constable's slow beam so that it can kill lone fleas (but little else) seems quite reasonable to me.
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Interesting, What would happen if Jumpbots used puppies to screen out fleas instead of pyros early in the match?
+0 / -0


5 years ago
To the above, a puppy costs 50 or 55 I can't remember, a flea costs 20. Often a flea is too small and fast for the puppy to hit and it loses health every attack attempt, whilst the flea is hitting it.

Basically, against fleas, puppies is a big no no.
+2 / -0

5 years ago
I would really like to see a replay with fleas vs puppies. The explanation makes sense, but I think the interaction is more complicated than that. Puppies kill fleas and widows in 1 hit, kill weavers, venoms, and recluses in 2 hits.

Fleas can be traded for puppies at a 2.5 times metal advantage assuming 100% efficiency. The vulnerable spiders mentioned are traded for puppies for a 2 times metal loss assuming 100% efficiency.

The question is whether fleas can give spiders enough control so that the match can be won before a Jugglenaut or 2 Firewalkers comes online and counters the whole factory, even if puppies are in play and putting pressure on everything.
+0 / -0


5 years ago
Oflameo, at my elo, fleas decide the game within the first few minutes. The spider player will almost always spam an incredible amount of fleas, rendering the JJ player helpless to expand without investing far more than the spider player has to.

Don't forget that puppies have to be able to get close to redbacks or venoms to attack them. They absolutely do not help against them. They make it easier for them to win.
+1 / -0


5 years ago
If the JJ player keeps spamming Puppies, why would the Spider player ever need to stop spamming Fleas?
Puppies can't really raid because they cannot really make cost against against mexes and light porc.
They can basically only make cost by killing cons and they are easy to protect by the faster fleas or some light porc.
Pyros are pretty bad against light defenses aswell(a Pyro can just barely win against a single Lotus turret), so if the Spider player just makes some Lotus turrets, it is really hard for the JJ player to raid expansion costeffectively.
It is a line of Pyros that is hard to deal with for the Spider player.
If you just get 3 Pyros and use them together, Fleas can't really touch them, Venoms are easily burned to death and Redbacks are easily avoided. The JJ player can choose the engagements then and retreat damaged Pyros with properly timed jumps.
+2 / -0
sometimes I wonder about strong strategies which use restricted sets of units.

jj seems playable with just builders, defenses, pyros, jacks and firewalkers. Players may be able to even skip the firewalkers.

jacks can overpower defenses and by jumping in first allow following pyros to have a few extra seconds to tear apart an enemy army, even if most die in the process. The jj player will probably make cost vs a spider army that way (which has wide units with relatively low hp/cost).


pyros vs venom is something that can snowball hard one way or the other.
+1 / -0


5 years ago
A 3 pyro line does not protect the varying mex spots which are common on spider-friendly maps. Infact, most of the spider friendly maps have a lot of expansion options which makes the problem of 1 flea preventing cheap expansion even worse.

Serious Suggestion: Make fleas more like drones. Have a broodmother unit which spawns upto a maximum of X fleas, one per Z seconds.
+0 / -0
5 years ago
build bigger maps
+0 / -0
Bigger maps makes the problem worse. Fastest and cheapest unit in the game. Only 1 need be at the enemy expansion to nullify it. Now the JJ player has to send over more sluggish and expensive units across a wider battlefield? No. This might be part of why you don't see spiders on the smallest maps as much.

And to stay on topic, it's exactly because JJ's cheapest unit suicides and can't make cost against fleas that this is a problem unique to JJ. All other factories can in some fashion deal with it relatively cheaply.
+4 / -0

5 years ago
I'd switch constable's weapon to something that dealt normal damage or mixed damage with shorter range to compensate. As it is now, it's too useful against riots and not useful enough against low weight raiders, namely fleas.

But flea needs a dps nerf.
+0 / -0
5 years ago
This thread makes me think the issue is with the flea
+2 / -0


5 years ago
You're on the money there isaach. Here's why it's fleas and not other cheap raiders (glaive, bandit, dagger) that don't give JJ this problem: Constable can most times jump out of danger onto otherwise hard to reach terrain. Flea, for it's incredible price, cares not for terrain!
+0 / -0
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