Juggernaut

Juggernaut
Patriots Military Builders Psychos
"I'm still worth it!" Skin "Bombardier" was inspired by a Reddit user u/just_suzz777 Skin "Bulldozer" was inspired by the contest winner on Reddit: u/JustaWallnut Skin "Court Jester" was inspired by a Reddit user u/soroka5
Main Stats
Type	Heavyweight
Rarity	Common
Health 107 Melee Damage 30
Fire Damage	5 (fire pool)
Explosive Damage	Equal to critical damage (critical) 75 (on-death explosion)
Crit. Chance	20%
Crit. Damage	10%
Speed	5
Prepare Time	35
Courage Cost	35
Behavior Stats
Agility	70
Aggression	95
Detection Range	80
Agility Penalty	50%
Aggression Penalty	50%
Morale Stats
Charisma	500
Valor	600
Charisma Radius	120
Abilities
Perks	Non-documented: Knockback resist
Special Ability	Crit. Damage is increased by 5% for every kill
Resistances
Bullet	90%
Knockback	100%
Unlock Requirements
Price	17000
Player Level	12

Juggernaut is a hulking patriot armed with a self-constructed, electric-powered exploding sledgehammer, and dressed in a black T-shirt, grey pants, gray elbow pads, yellow kneepads, a black belt, a gray motorcycle helmet with a yellow icon above its visor, and a homemade suit of heavy dark gray armor. His armor consists of a pair of front and back chest plates with a USA flag print decal on the front one, a set of shoulder plates with the right one having a yellow lightning bolt decal, a loose groin protector plate attached to the front of his belt, and a grey motorcycle helmet. His armor, helmet, and hammer all have splashes of blue paint on them. He carries a gray car battery by his waist with the wires attached to his belt.

Bombardier is Juggernaut's first exclusive skin. He is wearing a heavy bomb suit, and heavy anti-bomb padding, with a car battery on it's hips, and cables connecting to his hammer*

Bulldozer is Juggernaut's second exclusive skin.

Court Jester is Juggernaut's third exclusive skin. It can only be obtained from the Halloween Event.

He can be unlocked for 17,000 coins after reaching bus level 12.

Functionality

Basics

Juggernaut is a heavyweight, meaning he is a slow but strong unit with high health and knockback resistance. He is also a damager, meaning he will attack enemies and the barricade at close range while excelling at inflicting large amounts of raw damage to high health targets.

Juggernaut boasts good melee damage, and while he still has high health, it's somewhat for a Heavyweight, as he has less health than Chopper. He has low movement speed, his melee attacks are slow swings, and while his critical hits need a brief wind-up, they strike rather quickly.

He has a high courage cost, but prepares surprisingly fast for a melee heavyweight unit. He also has a significant amount of Charisma and Valor.

Perks and Abilities

Juggernaut's critical hit generates an explosion ahead of him with a fairly significant coverage. After slamming his sledgehammer, he moves several paces backwards. Since his critical hit is considered an explosion, it can't damage anything immune to it, nor does it receive melee damage boosts. As a consequence, it also makes it unable to damage the barricade during missions.

Juggernaut always spawns with a shield by default. The amount of shield points he has is equal to 50% of his total max health.

Enemies struck by Juggernaut's regular melee attacks will be knocked back.

Juggernaut is immune to knockback and has 90% resistance to bullet damage.

When killed, Juggernaut does not turn into a zombie. Instead, he takes a second to fall to his knees, then produces an explosion and a fire pool on the spot.

At level 13, Juggernaut will unlock his special ability, which gives him a 5% multiplicative critical damage bonus every time he gets a kill. The bonus stacks indefinitely, allowing it to improve his most powerful attack under the right circumstances. However, the bonus applies individually. The bonus from one Juggernaut won't transfer to any others.

Gameplay

Main Campaign

Stats-wise, Juggernaut can be considered as the strongest melee unit in the entire game thanks to him having the highest base health in the entire game, high damage, bullet resistance, full knockback resistance along with an ability to knock the enemy back on regular melee attacks. These are compounded by his highly damaging critical hit, giving him an exceptionally high AOE burst damage output. His critical attack is also performed relatively frequent thanks to his high base critical chance. Additionally, unlike other melee heavyweight units, his critical attack is also delivered noticeably quicker, rather than being a hinderance in a certain situations.

Juggernaut's uses are somewhat versatile, being able to be used as an offensive or defensive tank. He can be sent out in advance to clear out a large horde of zombies with his critical attack, while simultaneously delaying their advances effectively thanks to his massive base health. Since he immediately moves backwards after performing a critical hit, it improves his overall survivability when faced with greater threats that possess high damage attacks such as Crank, Prisoner, and Blue, thus prolonging his lifespan considerably. He can also counter Twins decently, with his attacks knocking them back before they can attack him. However, because he moves backwards after performing a critical attack, it makes him more suited as an offensive tank than a defensive tank. Nonetheless, if used defensively, he will perform adequately.

Despite his promising strengths, Juggernaut, much like all melee heavyweight units, quickly becomes a lackluster unit due to multitude of reasons. Obviously, he suffers from his very slowly movement and regular attack speed, rendering him unable to deal with running hordes effectively. His bullet resistance is useless by the time he is unlocked. Since he explodes himself upon dying, this can sometimes cause a problem, especially if the player’s team is consisted of multiple melee units, as it can potentially harm or kill any melee units that are brought along with Juggernaut, potentially jeopardizing mission completion progress. To add insult to injury, his special critical attack can sometimes be a hinderance, as his hitbox doesn't register properly until he finishes moving backwards, making him very vulnerable to attacks, especially to those with extended melee attack range, making it somewhat impractical. This is especially noticeable when fighting against Cranks. He is also highly discouraged from bringing him in missions with Energy Spheres, as they can render his sheer strengths useless upon approaching and are relatively common throughout the end-game progress. And, as a final nail in the coffin, his unlock price, and how late he is available makes him feel underwhelming and possibly redundant to use in spite of his impressive strengths. Overall, Juggernaut proves to be a mediocre unit overall. Therefore, purchasing him solely for the main campaign may not be a wise investment.

Skirmish

In League, he is an amazing unit to use in any level of Skirmish thanks to his bullet resistance, massive health, high damage, and highly devastating critical attack. He is able to tank a whole lot of bullets, being able to handle piercing shots from a level 13 maxed Sniper Polina with her ability more effectively than most widely used bullet-resistant units, such as Guard. In melee combat, his critical hit can even kill units behind the other melee/shooters, given he has enough upgrades to his damage and/or critical damage. Since he moves backwards after landing a critical hit, it often prevents him from getting attacked by enemy melee units, extending his lifespan exponentially. His on-death explosion also ensures that any enemy melee unit who manage to take him down will, at very least, get heavily damaged, or even burned. The fire pool on death will also help making any nearby melee units reposition due to it blocking their path.

However, he is not a perfect unit. His cost is high, which can hinder the team composition. Although his massive health and high damage allow him to survive in most situations, against enemy melee units with fast attack speed, he is likely to lose a considerable amount of health due to his slow regular melee attack speed, which combined with his slow movement speed, it allows enemy ranged units to chip him away. Flamethrower can quickly burn him to death thanks to his very high DPS, which can also negate his on death explosion and fire pool as he will turn into ashes instead. Finally, his critical strike can prove inconsistent or completely useless if his targets somehow negate it, such as against the TMF 2/2 team power (50% chance to ignore explosive damage), as well as other opponents with full explosion resistance, even if they are few and far between.

Item Sets

Juggernaut is one of the few units who struggles to get use out of any specific set.

The only three sets that can properly benefit Juggernaut's explosive crits are Gentleman, Gambling and Hunter. Gentleman offers 50% damage boost to Juggernaut's crit attack; Gambling allows him to land AoE slams much more often; Hunter can significantly increase Juggernaut's AoE damage, with the bonus ranging from ~8% to ~40%, depending on his distance. It's important to note that the crit-focused tactic is mostly oriented for PvE.

For Skirmish, it's better to equip him with survival-oriented sets due to his tanky nature. Builder is one of the best options, despite it capping at epic tier. Fast Food and Lucky Guy are also acceptable.

Like most melee heavyweights, Juggernaut can get use out of +% Health bonuses, from both books and extra buffs, they are especially important to him in context of PvP. In PvE, any form of melee buff is also highly recommended for him, although +% is best used at his higher levels. It's advised to give Juggernaut at least a few agility buffs, because 70 is still quite low for a melee unit. If you aren't planning to use him outside of Skirmish then it's acceptable to give him an agility watch, which also alleviates need for min-maxing other items' extra bonuses. However, prep. time is still more preferable if you are interested in using him in regular missions.

Skins and Synergies

Juggernaut is part of four teams, namely Patriots, Military, Builders and Psychos

Name	Juggernaut	Bombardier	Bulldozer	Court Jester
Skin
Unlock Req.	–	300 money	300 money	Obtain via gacha during Halloween Event
Team	Patriots	Military	Builders	Psychos

Juggernaut is not the best option for all teams.

In Patriots, while he might be the bulkiest member of the team, he can't offer much else to it, and generally struggles to keep up with everyone else (except for Farmer and Charlotte, who obviously can't be frontline fighters anyway). However, Juggernaut's snail pace might prove useful for keeping 3/3 condition active, without a need to rely on constantly spamming Private Rodriguez or using other units that stay behind.

In Military, their gimmicky synergies mean Juggernaut can't get much out of them, specifically their 2/2. He is only ever useful for keeping the 3/3 power active, or to ensure other threats don't get to him with the 5/5, and even then, it's only useful in Skirmish if accompanied by other military units to back him up.

As for Builders, Juggernaut works slightly better, since on top of his bullet resistance, he is one of the few proper melee units with his high stats and tends to do it better than the similarly priced Light Soldier, so he could realistically be used for the 5/5 (though his critical attack works against it), to easily activate the single-use 3/3 power, and while the 2/2 should never be relied upon, producing free copies of such a powerful unit is still appreciated.

With Psychos, Juggernaut is not a good option. As a courage unit, the 2/2 and 5/5 can only do so much unless he is used prolifically with other support items or Saw/Berserker, who are better off by themselves instead, though he can still be used alongside. His critical hit does mean he can easily benefit from the 3/3 if it triggers, and gives him a better chance to activate the other two powers, but ultimately it is still of little relevance and does not aid their gameplan well.

Trivia

• Internally, Juggernaut's slam doesn't make him move backwards. Instead, it teleports him once his crticial attack animation is finished.
  • This is why he has a modicum of invincibility frames during this attack: his hitbox doesn't move with him immediately, making him vulnerable to attacks that manage to slip in.
• His unit card seems to use an earlier rendition of the character, as it seems to have a big V on the front of his helmet instead of the current symbol.
• Juggernaut's description is a quote that references Marvel Comic's Thor Odinson. His quote is a slight alteration of a similar one uttered by Thor in the MCU film Avengers: Endgame after managing to successfully summon his hammer Mjolnir, happily announcing, "I'm still worthy!"
  • Blue crackles of electricity can be briefly seen during his critical hit animation, further cementing this reference.
• Before update 3.6.9, Juggernaut's unlock price used to be cheaper: 9,000 coins.
• Before update 3.7.9, Juggernaut had the highest base HP of all units, starting at 160 at level 0, and reaching 552 at level 13.
• Before update 3.7.9, Juggernaut used to have a large number of invincibility frames during his critical hit that allowed him to avoid damage during most of its duration.
  • The same update has also accidentally broke Juggernaut's special and his interaction with the Hunter set. The former would only work if Juggernaut killed anyone with his regular attack, meanwhile the latter was unable to grant any damage increases at all. Both issues were resolved in update 3.8.3.
• Prior to update 4.0.0, there existed a bug that was triggered by Juggernaut performing a crit. slam during wave transition in supply runs, Halloween Event, and Christmas Event. If it happened, Juggernaut would get propelled to the right at the start of the next wave. The distance he could travel varied greatly, and his speed would adjust to match the regular time he spends on his fallback animation.
  • In addition, if Juggernaut faced left during the attack, his sprite would get "corrected" into facing right. This resulted into an additional visual glitch that made it look like he does a sudden teleport to the right.

Gallery

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  Juggernaut's unit card

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  Juggernaut's critical attack