Infested juggernaut needs some changes

[TotallyLagging]

Since we're tweaking enemies like Scrambus and Napalms now I thought this would be worth posting.

So you might've seen some juggernaut clips before it was released.

See that? That looks like a threatening enemy. A single big, imposing enemy unit to balance the usual infested zerg rush.

But then it got released to the game and what we got was a slightly bigger charger that spams instakill quills.

So here's what I think is the problem :

The quills

- Damage is way too high for something that it can spam. 
- Super short windup animation
- Hitbox is way larger than it looks
- Projectile is difficult to see
- Damage is obnoxiously high compared to other enemies at its level

The charge

- Animation is really bad. Instead of the slow charge above, it just looks like it used Slash Dash.
- 0 windup animation, can instantly charge at you (although the damage is negligible)
- Pretty much my only problem with this is that it looks bad.

The tar

- 0 windup animation
- Honestly pretty fine damage-wise
- The visuals should probably be changed to match Tar MOAs since it's somewhat difficult to see on darker tiles.

Other things

- No visual clarity when it shows its weakspots
- The time window when it shows its weakspots is too short
- Basically 0 reason to fight outside of Jordas' quest
- Pherliac Pods has way too many parts for something that drops from 1 source
- The tilesets that the juggernaut often spawns in is way too cramped, which makes dodging borderline impossible on the Eris tilesets for example.

Before the gitgud posters starts showing off their e-peen playing a videogame that barely takes skill to play I'd have to make it clear that they're not difficult to deal with, it's just extremely unfun and badly designed. They are not challenging. You can, if the tile it spawns in allows you to, get to a high ground and it's literally powerless. It can't do anything to you. And it's about as fun as fighting Vay Hek. You just constantly shoot/melee it and hope some of your attack gets through. It's just bad enemy design all around.

Suggestions

- Make it sliiightly bigger.
- Give it clear, discernible animations for its attacks and when it shows its weakspots. Make it glow if needed.
- Make the attacks more telegraphed, allow people to dodge and punish people that stands still. This mostly concerns the quill attack.
- Give people more reason to fight it. Maybe make it drop Mutagen Mass, or guaranteed rare material from whatever planet it's spawning in. So if it spawns in the Derelict it drops Ocells, on Uranus it drops Tellurium and so on.

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

You forgot to mention that it can shoot through walls, or maybe this is a bug on PS4 idk, and yeah he looks absolute beast in those shots compared to the stationary needle gun we have ingame, and does anyone even use the pods you build from his parts?? As you said some rare resources and maybe a couple mods should be added to make him worth the boredom of fighting since the only strat to beat him is shoot_dodge_repeat since melee doesn't even tickle him

[(PSN)chris1pat8twins]

51 minutes ago, TotallyLagging said:

Since we're tweaking enemies like Scrambus and Napalms now I thought this would be worth posting.

So you might've seen some juggernaut clips before it was released.

See that? That looks like a threatening enemy. A single big, imposing enemy unit to balance the usual infested zerg rush.

But then it got released to the game and what we got was a slightly bigger charger that spams instakill quills.

So here's what I think is the problem :

The quills

- Damage is way too high for something that it can spam. 
- Super short windup animation
- Hitbox is way larger than it looks
- Projectile is difficult to see
- Damage is obnoxiously high compared to other enemies at its level

The charge

- Animation is really bad. Instead of the slow charge above, it just looks like it used Slash Dash.
- 0 windup animation, can instantly charge at you (although the damage is negligible)
- Pretty much my only problem with this is that it looks bad.

The tar

- 0 windup animation
- Honestly pretty fine damage-wise
- The visuals should probably be changed to match Tar MOAs since it's somewhat difficult to see on darker tiles.

Other things

- No visual clarity when it shows its weakspots
- The time window when it shows its weakspots is too short
- Basically 0 reason to fight outside of Jordas' quest
- Pherliac Pods has way too many parts for something that drops from 1 source
- The tilesets that the juggernaut often spawns in is way too cramped, which makes dodging borderline impossible on the Eris tilesets for example.

Before the gitgud posters starts showing off their e-peen playing a videogame that barely takes skill to play I'd have to make it clear that they're not difficult to deal with, it's just extremely unfun and badly designed. They are not challenging. You can, if the tile it spawns in allows you to, get to a high ground and it's literally powerless. It can't do anything to you. And it's about as fun as fighting Vay Hek. You just constantly shoot/melee it and hope some of your attack gets through. It's just bad enemy design all around.

Suggestions

- Make it sliiightly bigger.
- Give it clear, discernible animations for its attacks and when it shows its weakspots. Make it glow if needed.
- Make the attacks more telegraphed, allow people to dodge and punish people that stands still. This mostly concerns the quill attack.
- Give people more reason to fight it. Maybe make it drop Mutagen Mass, or guaranteed rare material from whatever planet it's spawning in. So if it spawns in the Derelict it drops Ocells, on Uranus it drops Tellurium and so on.

Well there is a juggernaut behemoth that you fight in the atlas quest. But sucks that is the only way to fight it. Be nice to fight something like it in the like the plains or sorties. Maybe it hunts down those who deliver the final blow to a regular juggernaut or completes a certain amount of infested invasions. But some other way to face it other than repeating a quest over and over. 

If De were to make this regular juggernaut bigger then they would have to make the behemoth bigger too in comparison. Also I have so many parts but I don’t really use the pods. They feel useless to me. I’ve thrown out several but they only distract a few infested. So better rewards would be nice. 

Plus while Tenno weapons get prime, grineer get wraith, and corpus get vandals as their upgrades it would be nice if the infested weapons got an upgrade as well but a little different. I was thinking that maybe they could get an ancient upgrade that requires the regular infested and a unique new infested resource like an ancient mutagen mass that can only drop from a specific source. And the juggernaut could be that source. Instead of just dropping pod parts it could drop new infested resources or parts to build a newer better infested weapon. 

Just something to think about. 

[xZynetic]

Juggernaut was already nerfed recently (unless it got reverted). It used to fire 2 sets of high-damage needles or whatever, but now it only fires one set of needles with quite low damage, which gives the enemy a huge opening to be killed easily now. The openings on the Juggernaut are extremely obvious and quite long, you just need to know what they are.

Personally I think it was a little overboard. My main issue with the enemy before was there were almost no openings to attack it while it did obnoxiously high damage, all that really needed to happen was making it so one set of needles was removed, while keeping most other things the same.

[(PSN)NachoZissou]

I always like it when my squad stop killing infested when the Juggernaut warning comes in. It's nothing more than a pain in the backside and I ignore it when possible. 

So as far as I'm concerned a rework to make it a fun diversion would be a good idea. Could even make it drop special Juggernaut themed mods or weapon parts. 

[TotallyLagging]

1 hour ago, xZynetic said:

Juggernaut was already nerfed recently (unless it got reverted). It used to fire 2 sets of high-damage needles or whatever, but now it only fires one set of needles with quite low damage, which gives the enemy a huge opening to be killed easily now. The openings on the Juggernaut are extremely obvious and quite long, you just need to know what they are.

Personally I think it was a little overboard. My main issue with the enemy before was there were almost no openings to attack it while it did obnoxiously high damage, all that really needed to happen was making it so one set of needles was removed, while keeping most other things the same.

Made this thread mostly because I went in on a Flood with Saryn, casted Molt and watched the juggernaut use the quill attack 5 times in a row on the Molt before throwing the sixth on me

I don't know maybe it's because I put a target in their face that they become really agressive, but as far as I could remember there were no juggernaut change for the last few patches or so.

Even then with only 1 spike volley the other problems are still there IMO. They're not engaging to fight.

1 hour ago, (PS4)chris1pat8twins said:

 

I thought about that, but having too much drop from a single enemy would be bad. The drop table would be way too overloaded like Shadow Stalker having 5 rare drops on his drop table.