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/JustaWallnutSkin "Court Jester" was inspired by a Reddit user u/soroka5

## Abilities

###  Special Ability

Crit. Damage is increased by 5% for every kill

## Unlock Requirements

### Player Level

12

* Juggernaut
* Bombardier
* Bulldozer
* Court Jester

 **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

Like most melee heavyweights, Juggernaut can get use out of +% Health bonuses, from both books and extra buffs. Any form of melee buff is also highly recommended, although +% is best used at his higher levels. It's recommended 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.

Juggernaut is one of the few units who struggles to get use out of any specific set. While there exist options which should theoretically aid his gimmicks, in practice they just don't:

* Since Juggernaut's criticals don't have range values attributed to them, he can't utilize Hunter's benefits;
* Juggernaut can't get use out of Gentleman since his criticals count as explosive damage, not melee. And even though he is able to trigger the effect, by the time he finishes his crit animation the buff has less than a second of use left;
* Hitman set is ill-advised in general, especially since Juggernaut's base crit. chance isn't very high.

The only set that can properly benefit Juggernaut's gimmick of explosive criticals is Gambling, since it allows him to land the AoE slams much more often.

However, it's important to note that the above use case is mostly oriented for Skirmish. Depending on wave layouts, common Juggernaut crits might be either useful, or disruptive during regular missions. SwissMade serves as a compromise to this, since it allows to increase Juggernaut's damage output at least a little bit, while allowing to safely use crit. chance books. Big Boy is an alternative for builds that focus entirely on Juggernaut 's melee damage. However, it's far from a perfect option for him, and mostly servers as a gimmick strategy. In case you decide to try it out, the choice between +% Health and +% Melee books depends on extra buffs of other items.

## Skins and Synergies

Juggernaut is part of three teams, namely Patriots, Military, and Builders.

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 Redstreak but he isn't meant to be at frontlines anyway). However, Juggernaut's snail pace might prove useful for keeping 3/3 condition active, without a need to rely on constantly sending out 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 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, 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.

## Trivia

* 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.
* Update 3.7.9 technically stripped Juggernaut of some benefits he had, a few of which could be considered unintentional. Prior to that update, he used to have a notable amount of invincibility frames during his critical hit that allowed him to avoid damage during most of its duration. He also was able to benefit from the Hunter item set with his crit attack's extended range, before the way this set tracks distance between the attacker and the target was changed. His special ability was also affected, seemingly as an error, as it can only grant extra damage through kills done by Juggernaut's normal attacks.

## Gallery

Juggernaut's unit cardJuggernaut's critical attack

 Humans
 TMF Squad