Jugglenaut

Jugglenaut is weird. It is spectacularly good against almost every kind of mobile unis, but does almost nothing to static defenses. This gives it a role of sorts, but unfortunately the early game is dominated by mobile units rather than defences and thus the Jugglenaut becomes a premiere rush choice. It's also really difficult to micro, because to lift heavy units like comms you need both beams to converge on one target, the overlap in arcs is small and getting them both to pick the same target can be frustrating. Switching the push and pull mode is also required to suck a unit in then push it back out again to do real damage, and also takes a lot of babying, but is at least interesting and does what you tell it.

The difference in performance between when it sucks a comm right in and blows it up, to when the beams are both shooting at different targets and not even moving them, is pretty stark.

I'd like to hear from the Jugglenaut rushers out there though. Do you like that it is somewhat of a challenge to use in a target rich environment, or is it more frustrating than anything?

I do not rush this unit, because it loses too solidly to assaults and turrets, and the fac already has enough issues with turrets without a 2k investment in something that basically cannot hurt them.

I do rush it sometimes in multiplayer, then microing it is basically all I am doing, and then I still feel I did less than my more standard teammates.

The unit takes tremendous micro to use well, its basically all I can be doing. For JJ that is a death sentence.

On a side note, I wish JJ units had a remotely consistent naming scheme. Jugglenaught especially feels random and painful, even if its cute. Sumo was more descriptive of how it worked.

@Godde:

quote: I like Jugglenaut but microing it excessively gives huge advantages. What I would like to see is that it at least turns to fire with both its' guns if you are targeting something. I would also like to see a mode that automatically throws enemies by first sucking them in and then pushing them away. That is often the preferred mode of use of use and I even have a keybinding to toggle Push and Pull. But is not always the preferred mode of use and sometimes you want to pull in commanders so that your other units can kill them and sometimes you want to push away units like gunships and tanks so that your can retreat safely. Basically i want 3 modes, Pull, Push and Throw.

I second this, though personally, I'm more of a macro player, who tries to focus on the grander battle at large instead of micromanaging my forces, and the Jugglenaut felt way too situational and micro-intensive for my liking.

As for what I'd call these modes, I'd want to be more descriptive:

"Alternating" or "Push and Pull"
"Push Only"
"Pull Only"

I might also want to suggest this feature for the Newton.

Juggernaut can kinda beat light porc by stepping on it, though. It's not cost efficient compared to Jack, but it works.

Jugglenaut is bugged and sometimes behavior is counter intuitive....

1) Sometimes it's impossible to move the target even with both beams as it appears to be totally glued to the ground...
There is a workaround - push the target somehow first either by jumping on it with sumo or by pushing it with some other units
The cause here is NOT the weight. As the same target on a different time of day, standing on bit different terrain under different angle, will be pulled in/pushed off perfectly fine.

2) In other cases when you try to pull in com and com is walking away, it actually walks away as if it had turbo reactive legs producing much more traction than jugg beams...

3) There are weird cases where jugg produces insane, unmeasurable acceleration over short distance which leads to almost instantaneous unit explosion. Looks like you just started pulling in but something went wrong, target accelerated too fast and exploded after first minor terrain bump because it was moving at near light speed...
Those cases are rare though, from my experience

4) Jugg vs Jugg fights are bugged. Outcome is extremely hard to predict, seems to be heavy rng driven
I often find my jugg unable to pull in enemy's closer while his is pulling mine at a light speed... No idea why

Overall the mechanic and experience is EXTREMELY funny, and the unit role is totally unique
I would be very sad if this mechanic left the game
However it definitely needs some polishing work to do

I'd like to point out that units acting like their glued to the floor also happens when archers fire at them. There might be something weird going on with impulse atm.

quote: I'd like to point out that units acting like their glued to the floor also happens when archers fire at them. There might be something weird going on with impulse atm.

Totally agree. Seen this too many times with archers as well. There is something off here