Hello brothers, I am Ah Hui, welcome to this issue of "The Evolution of the Alliance". Recently I saw a very interesting set of data. Among the heroes that existed when the League of Legends server was launched, only Juggernaut has not appeared in the S game, and he is also the only hero in the past 12 years (except for some new heroes released in 2022) who has never appeared in the S game.
Don’t you think it’s a little weird? For many players, the Juggernaut is a nightmare-like existence. The game with him must be extremely stable. If you accidentally give him two heads to develop, your home will become five melons waiting to be chopped. In the later stage, he has the ability of 1V5. Why is such a feared hero so unbearable in the eyes of professional brothers? How did the designer balance him? Today we will review the evolutionary history of Juggernaut.
Alpha Strike was once Juggernaut’s ultimate move?
First of all, I would like to give you a brief introduction to the Juggernaut in ancient times. At that time, the positions of Alpha Strike and Plateau Bloodline were swapped. How outrageous were the values of the ultimate version of Alpha Strike? The number of slashes at the beginning is 10, each time can cause 300% AD damage, but the first level CD is as long as 150 seconds! This reminds me of the ultimate move of the old version of Sword Princess . Later, the damage and CD have been reduced, and a slowdown effect was added in the middle. In addition, the passive double sword is triggered by probability, and the E skill provides non-attack power but extra damage and attack speed. Since most people have never played it, I won’t go into details.
Do you miss APE back then?
Next is the first-generation Juggernaut that everyone is familiar with. The passive dual-sword trigger has been changed from a probability trigger to a seventh-slash trigger. Alpha Strike has become a Q skill, which adds extra damage to minions. The W skill adds a double resistance bonus. The attack power was increased, but there was no gain during the cooldown. The special effects at that time were quite strict. The knife was red when not open, turned blue after being opened, and had no color during cooldown. Plateau Bloodline added three new mechanisms after changing the minor skill to the ultimate move. The first is to increase the attack speed and movement speed, the second is to be immune to slowdown, and the third is to refresh all minor skills after killing.
Since both Q and W skills have high AP bonuses, the mid-lane AP Juggernaut was very popular during that period. This gameplay was not only high-intensity, but also quite disgusting. Use Q to clear the troops in the line, and chant the sutra to recover when the health is left. Man, even though he looks harmless in the early stage, when , lich, , hellfire, and hat come out, team battles will directly cut you down. During the big period, as long as one Q kills someone, a second Q will be refreshed instantly. He can hit tons of AOE and still not be able to touch a hair of him. I wonder if you are angry.
The second major redesign of Juggernaut
obviously has four skills, but only two are used in real play (QR is enough). This extremely unhealthy gameplay naturally However, it didn't last long. In the middle of the S3 season, the designer imposed sanctions on the AP Juggernaut. The Q skill was changed to an AD bonus, and the CD was reduced every time the A was leveled. The double attack power of the E skill was changed to real damage. In addition, the ultimate skill was added to extend the time after participating in the kill, and the refreshed small skills became passive.
Although the designer said, "We think there may be a way to take advantage of the strengths of both (AP and AD) in terms of game design," but anyone with a discerning eye can see that the AP Juggernaut is dead, so how strong is the AD Juggernaut? There was a very "coincidental" thing at that time. After the ultimate passive kill, the CD of the minor skill is reduced by 18 seconds, and the assist is half. The CD of the Q skill is 18/17/16/15/14 seconds. The kill will be refreshed, and the assist will be almost refreshed after the CD reduction is full. , AD Juggernaut is inherently painful to kill, and coupled with this "infinite refresh" Q, team battle harvesting is even more fierce than the AP genre, so much so that it was urgently weakened by a hot patch not long after it went online (the CD reduction of the big move was changed to a 70% reduction in the remaining cooldown of the small skill).
The Highlights and Lows of Juggernaut
After that, Juggernaut’s strength has been in a relatively moderate state until the middle of the S5 season, when the designer created an artifact for him, called the "Satisfied Devourer". When this generation of Devourers is fully stacked, it can provide phantom strike special effects (similar to the sheep knife) , its appearance has completely changed the gameplay of Juggernaut. Originally, there were many people who liked to play solo, but now they all go to the jungle. The situation at that time was that you could not see Juggernaut in the first 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, the monster came out to block and kill, and the Buddha blocked and killed the Buddha. The most important thing is that Devourer can ensure no shortage of damage with the E skill. Juggernaut can boldly add meat equipment in the mid-term, and the problem of fault tolerance is also solved. Personally, I think the Devourer version is the pinnacle of Juggernaut.
However, it only lasted for a year before Devourer was removed. It can be seen that the designer still hates playing jungle without brains, and the replacement Blood Blade has no taste at all. In addition, another core sheep sword of Juggernaut was also redone at the same time (the sputter version was changed to the Phantom Strike version, which sells for up to 3600 gold coins, and it is difficult for the jungler to suppress it), and the appearance rate suddenly fell to a low point.
However, we can see from the curve that after being unpopular for about a year, the appearance rate of Juggernaut suddenly surged again. Why is this? The key lies in the changes in version 7.2 and the enhancement of two pieces of equipment. Let’s look at the changes first. The designer added three new mechanisms to the Juggernaut, especially the two W ones that are very critical. The endgame harvesting ability is greatly enhanced, followed by the price reduction of Ruined and Black Cut. Later, the appearance rate dropped again because Ruined, Black Cut, and Electric Knife were all weakened in version 7.9.
Just when everyone thought that Juggernaut had sent it, the appearance of his good friend Gemstone ushered in another spring for him. Gemstone was on a hunger strike in the mid lane, and Juggernaut was in the jungle and took lanes. The team battle was invincible and he directly cut down the entire field. At that time, the players used a very appropriate sentence to describe the Swords combination, called "two players" ", eight people watch", because no matter whether they win or lose, the other eight people have a very uncomfortable game. There is no game experience for the opponent's mid laner to fight two. No matter how happy the others are to kill, the Juggernaut kills them all as soon as he comes out. The pressure in the early stage is huge. There is no jungler and mid laner in the first 20 minutes. If you are caught, you can only endure it. Win or lose depends on whether the sword can play. It can definitely be called one of the most vicious routines in history. In order to limit it, the designers did not hesitate to change the game mechanism. It was not until the 10.6 version that minion gold coins and double experience penalties were launched that the duo, which had been popular for two years, was forced to break up.
However, Sword Combination is a game for two people after all. The strength of the single-row Sword Master during this period is actually not very high. In the early stage of the Myth version, most people were trying to take the Siren and Shield Bow route. The output ability is indeed nothing to say, but the fault tolerance rate is also very low in an environment where the overall damage is overflowing. This Some time ago, a master developed the armor-piercing style gameplay. The stealth of the Curtain Blade can ensure that the sword master will not be killed after Q lands. The 70% refresh of the ultimate move and the high-skill skills of armor-piercing armor to quickly refresh the Q can produce the "infinite stealth" effect. The strength is quite good, but this kind of hero that is difficult to counterattack has always been the most hated by designers. In the end, after the Q skill was redone in version 12.5, the armor-piercing sword master became history.
Although the designers also strengthened the damage of the special effects Juggernaut, the problem of low fault tolerance without the Curtain Blade has never been solved, so they made an incredible change. In version 12.13, the Juggernaut's attack distance was increased from 125 to 175 yards, and the original CD of nearly 30 seconds of W was directly shortened to 9 seconds. It perfectly explains what it means to use numerical values to save the hero. This enhancement has also made the Juggernaut popular until now.
" Wuji Juggernaut has always been a hero who is strong in lower tiers, but unable to do what he wants in higher tiers."This message from the designer also expresses the inner difficulties. They have been working hard to balance the popularity of Juggernaut in all segments. However, the difficulty of getting started and the harvesting ability of Juggernaut are destined to dominate the middle and low segments. If you just add the value, there may be more people playing in high segments, but it is relatively low in the middle and low segments." The segmentation is even more out of control. If you want to balance it, you have to completely redo it. However, in this case, Carter, Akali, and Sword Princess may appear. Players in the middle and low segments will not be able to play. It is a waste of money. This may be the reason why designers have only dared to make small changes to Juggernaut
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