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Juggernaut (State of March'23)

T

Tric

Member
Hello all, this is my opinion of the state of juggernaut, and the post was prompted by a community discussion last night. Currently I am one, if not the only, juggernaut over level 30 playing the game. My understanding of the defender specialization roles is: knight- high threat, block, single target, paladin type; marshal- crowd control, parry, runs around; juggernaut- "aoe/damage", physical defense, "unstoppable" tank. With that being said in the current state of the game marshal seems better suited for aoe (both cc and damage) at the moment and knight clearly fills their role with single target quite well. This leaves the juggernaut in a "well he has taunts but hes not a berserker" state.

The following is a breakdown of the skills (as I see them) and possible improvements. Please note the recent changes to CD reduction on the 28th were needed and appreciated.
Offensive:
Breach- bread and butter single target skill if you don't like this skill do not play juggernaut. Suggestion- slight damage increase, slight threat increase
Collateral Damage- I want to like this skill but it only hits 2 targets. Waste of stamina when i can just tab to a new target and use perforate. Suggestion- 5 target max, slight damage increase, 150% threat increase
Perforate- I see the usefulness of DoTs, holds agro from warlord songs on a mob, and I prefer it over collateral damage. Suggestion- slight threat increase
Rip- Haven't taken this off my bar since I got it, hits 4 or 5 targets, helps hold agro with the bleed. Suggestion- 150% threat increase
Defensive:
No Time To Die- Excellent skill especially solo, not sure DoTs are always effected. Newbies beware yellow and higher con mobs get a bonus and you can die
Unstoppable- Doesn't have daze resist and should be renamed Run Forest. Great for getting past canyon mandrakes. Suggestion- Add daze resist and "Terrorize" effect: on being hit threat generation/damage shield
Brace- Love and hate this skill. The basic Screen ability from support classes can overwrite the ability. Since both use physical damage resist? Really?
Threat:
Roar- Bread and butter, love it. Suggestion- Threat increase 120%, increase buff duration +1s maybe 2s
(Note- I thought this list would be longer since defender. please see the suggestions for threat increase on all the damage skills..)

As a defender Juggernaut should be focused on threat generation and my understanding is have higher damage than the other tanks. The threat is basically generated by their attacks and right now I rely on Threatening Strike and Provoke which are the two basic defender skills. Having to rely on defender skills should give you the idea that the role is a bit underwhelming in the current state. Also I cannot even come close to holding agro from a berserker on an aoe pull so the suggested threat increase is a guess, I have done no number crunching. The suggestions above are not solely my ideas and were just thrown together.


For anyone thinking of playing juggernaut I will give you the following tips and an example of gameplay post level 30 (March 2023)

Step one take all the urine you've been collecting and give it to your knight or marshal friends.
Next, look at your skill bar, find a dark hole and throw in Unstoppable and Provoke, shed a tear and stomp Collateral Damage down on top of them.
Now you are all set to jump into a dungeon with your group. But before you start pull your warden aside, show him the hole and ask him to throw lull in there as well. Ok so now your group is ready and your warden can pull like a man.
Off they go, and a short time later here comes the warden "uh sorry guys its a big pull," quick pop your Roar, done.
The zerker looks like hes about to start frothing at the mouth, hold out your shield arm "not yet bud i need to build some agro." Rip, Threatening Strike, there's 5 of them, drop the shield arm Brace.
You can see the warlord out of the corner of your eye, quick grab him and say "if you cast Screen on me we will wipe. Use it on the zerker." 4 mobs left. Phew, he casts screen on the zerker, uh and a heal.
3 mobs peel off and crush the warlord while you're mashing the Roar button (which is still on cool down). The mobs are skating towards the zerker, Roar, good job.
Why is the brigand shaking his arms up and down and stamping on the ground? Wait what is notwarlord doing, standing there full stam, looking pretty, probably a foh box healer, sad face.
3 mobs left, brigand is attacking, zerker still frothing at the mouth, dead on the floor.
Ut oh the warden is looking around for an exit? You glare at him "if you even think of running I'll dig up the graves of the last three generations of your ancestors so you can see them rolling over in their graves." He's still attacking. Roar, Rip, Breach.
Oh crap you have 80hp left, thats like 25% health. Dammit notwarlord. Get ready to pop No Time To Die.
2 mobs left, 6 resilience saves. 1 mob left, 3 resilience saves and you're not going to get a 10th.
1 mob left and the brigand is hopping up and down in joy, warden is mumbling about only being vegan on the weekend. Yay not warlord is finally doing something, the only thing he's good for, rezzing the dead.
The group kills the last mob and you're ready for the next pull.

-jugg life
 
I was in that discussion (Zardoz) and I believe I started all the Juggernaut talk (and Barb bashing). I was concerned that Barbarian had dps, aoe dps, auto-attack dps, highest armor of dps classes, and Guts so why bring a Jugg? (Barb can rip the mob off of most tanks at will then off-tank). The Juggernaut does not seem to serve a purpose right now. Knight as MT and Marshal as off-tank with CC. Why bring a Jugg when you can just grab a Barb? Or go the CC route with Brig or Warden.

The answer was that they are, "Not looking at Juggernaut right now", I feel they need to look.

Inker (Duelist)
 
Inqr said:
I was in that discussion (Zardoz) and I believe I started all the Juggernaut talk (and Barb bashing). I was concerned that Barbarian had dps, aoe dps, auto-attack dps, highest armor of dps classes, and Guts so why bring a Jugg? (Barb can rip the mob off of most tanks at will then off-tank). The Juggernaut does not seem to serve a purpose right now. Knight as MT and Marshal as off-tank with CC. Why bring a Jugg when you can just grab a Barb? Or go the CC route with Brig or Warden.

The answer was that they are, "Not looking at Juggernaut right now", I feel they need to look.

Inker (Duelist)
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Well the issues will still be there when they decide to take a look...
 
Ok so the level 34 skill is kind of like threatening strike and breach made sweet lovin = smash!

Collateral damage and unstoppable could still use a little tweaking though. And is brace getting overwritten by screen working as intended?
 
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Ive grouped with each of the other defender classes and it looks like their main attack abilities all generate more threat, some are comparable. Breach deals significantly less threat than other defender abilities. At level 35 defender criticals on their attack skills generate around 250 threat and Breach is around 150 which is a flat striker class amount of threat. So you could increase the damage dealt (which may be OP) or add a threat mod or hopefully a combination of the two. As it stands a miss/avoid with either of the 2 single target threat abilities is typically a loss of agro. Making an adjustment to Breach would make the specialization more viable.

Also Ive been trying to test Collateral Damage and its "ignore active defense" trait. What is this supposed to do? Doesn't seem to bypass Avoid or Damage Shield or Physical Resist. What is an active defense??
 
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Is it at all beneficial to tank with a Polearm? I am only level 16 and I can't figure out if the Parry/Riposte mechanic is made for the Jugg's.

The idea of a damage dealing off-tank with high parry and a built in counter-attack sounds SO FRICKIN FUN!
 
Tric said:
Ive grouped with each of the other defender classes and it looks like their main attack abilities all generate more threat, some are comparable. Breach deals significantly less threat than other defender abilities. At level 35 defender criticals on their attack skills generate around 250 threat and Breach is around 150 which is a flat striker class amount of threat. So you could increase the damage dealt (which may be OP) or add a threat mod or hopefully a combination of the two. As it stands a miss/avoid with either of the 2 single target threat abilities is typically a loss of agro. Making an adjustment to Breach would make the specialization more viable.

Also Ive been trying to test Collateral Damage and its "ignore active defense" trait. What is this supposed to do? Doesn't seem to bypass Avoid or Damage Shield or Physical Resist. What is an active defense??
Click to expand...
I've noticed the same thing with Collateral Damage. Maybe it only bypasses unbuffed AC?
 
Polearm is more for tanking and maul is more for damage. Riposte and block generate threat, and its more threat the higher those values. At higher levels there is less of a gap between skill use. Its better to try and space out your skills for consistent hits than spamming your skills like most strikers... atleast from what I remember. Or maybe there could be a change to Breach so we could deal more threat because that is another gap.

I haven't crunched the numbers but the difference between threat generated and damage done (with similar weapons) between defender roles needs to be normalized. Having a flat striker amount of threat generation isn't working for Juggernaut since the damage output is significantly lower. Not really sure what the overall goal was with Juggernaut since there haven't been many updates. Knights and Marshal skills have traits, threat, and deal similar or higher damage than juggernaut which has no threat mods or traits on their damage skills. The Juggernaut NPC describes the class well with regard to the defensive traits but Marshal is leagues ahead of grabbing group threat. Although the balance between AC/wgt and HP is a bit one sided (20wgt > 20HP). If juggernaut is supposed to fill a tank role it needs an increase of threat, damage or both.
 
Really I dont see Juggernaut as a specialization, its seems more like defender continued. And since this post has been here for a month and other specializations have gotten some changes. And noone has reached out or made any changes, I'm starting to think the devs just don't care or can't fix it.

So again-
Breach - damage/threat increase
Collateral Damage- additional targets, damage, threat
Perforate- More threat
Rip- Make this an execute, higher initial damage, more threat
Unstoppable- add daze at x level, add damage shield at y level
Roar- increase threat, increase buff time 2s

Or maybe add a quest just for juggernauts available at level 30 from the class trainer to pick a ticket for knight or marshal for a flat level transfer?
 
Thanks for this post Tric! I feel very similarly about Juggernaut by level 21. My Knight has had a far easier time managing aggro up to level 30 despite being single target focused. It looks like there are some good adjustments to the class on QA but we'll have to wait to June to see if it improves the feel of the class.

I want to love Juggernaut but there are so many lackluster aspects to their abilities. Also having to wait till 30 for a true AoE is infuriating.

Cheers.
Zig/Dradon
 
Juggernaut sounds like someone taking a lot of damages, not avoiding but being very resistant, and attacking many people at once. So it sounds very similar to berserker
 
Did Juggernaut get better with the patch of 30th of May? Currently i cant decide between Juggernaut and Knight
 
Inusaa said:
Juggernaut sounds like someone taking a lot of damages, not avoiding but being very resistant, and attacking many people at once. So it sounds very similar to berserker
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Jugg has abilities that mitigate damage but the player has to activate them at the proper moments. They have damage and some AOE but they suffer on long fights when you keep getting adds. Then their innate lower mitigation is felt and they take big hits.
 
Bazulj said:
Did Juggernaut get better with the patch of 30th of May? Currently i cant decide between Juggernaut and Knight
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It got better, many of the issues were addressed. But you are always looking at a tank with lower mitigation that will take big hits when they're on cooldown for they abilities or they run out of stamina. Knights base mitigation amounts always mean smaller hits and more survivability. The issue with Knight is controlling big pulls because of a lack of AOE taunts or even AOE damage. You have to swap and cycle your abilities across the mobs as a Knight, so it takes more effort.
 
Inqr said:
It got better, many of the issues were addressed. But you are always looking at a tank with lower mitigation that will take big hits when they're on cooldown for they abilities or they run out of stamina. Knights base mitigation amounts always mean smaller hits and more survivability. The issue with Knight is controlling big pulls because of a lack of AOE taunts or even AOE damage. You have to swap and cycle your abilities across the mobs as a Knight, so it takes more effort.
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Thank you for the input. This sounds like my first impression was not too off, with Knight being the most vanilla tank (kinda reminds a llitle bit of the classic wow warrior in the way u switched through targets and used ur abilities aka sunder armor to keep aggro).
 
As a budding juggernaut, this post saddens me. I'm only level 13, but I haven't had any issues so far. I haven't done a ton of six man group hunting though. Some of my friends are starting new characters tonight, and I am going to start a berserker with them. Do you think that will end up being my new favorite class to play?
 
Azrabaine said:
As a budding juggernaut, this post saddens me. I'm only level 13, but I haven't had any issues so far. I haven't done a ton of six man group hunting though. Some of my friends are starting new characters tonight, and I am going to start a berserker with them. Do you think that will end up being my new favorite class to play?
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It all depends on your expectations. Zerker is a button mashing high dps class that can be geared to do high damage through Haste and auto-attack. Powerful but somewhat mindless. Jugg is a DPS tank. Highest damage of the tanks and easiest AOE threat generation but lower survivability. Survivabilty comes from abilities not mitigation. If you're doing dps and trying to use defensive cooldowns you'll blow through stamina fast. Zerker can operate with no stamina. It's an apples to oranges comparison, two different roles and two different playstyles.
 
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