Devil's Playground

Pros / Cons and When to Pick

Build Stil In Progress!

- Agility based hero with decent Strength gain
- Good ultimate (can be AGH-boosted to a great one)
- 5 seconds magic immunity starting level 1
- 2% (to 5%) HP/s AoE healing au-pair with a HoT starting level 2
- Critical strike passive
- Furthermore, he is able to cast the

Omnislash + Blade Fury

- He can be basically picked during any game (like Silencer, Centaur Warrunner, a.s.o.)
- You want to pick a hero that can both support AND carry (pretty much like Abaddon)
- Your team already has a hard carry (not quite 100% true)
- Your team already has an initiator (not 100% true, either)
- Your team mates are rather durable
- Your team lacks a Semi-Carry
- The enemy team has a lot of squishy heroes
- Some of your mates' abilities synergize with yours (they have slows, stuns, disables)

- The enemy team has a lot of durable heroes
- Your team needs a support (you can be a great supporting hero, actually)
- Your team lacks a ranged hero (although some melee heroes can act like ranged ones)
- Against cheap items providing enemy physical immunity: Ghost Scepter
- Against spells providing physical immunity: Guardian Angel, friendly or not Nether Blast, a.s.o.

Introduction

Welcome to my third published guide on dotafire.com.

This guide recieved some very bad early feedback and I promised I'll turn that around.

This is it!

And these are the main (4) directions of this guide:

1. Being able to cast the Omnislash + Blade Fury combo starting level 6.

2. (Ab)using his Healing Ward spell ASAP.

3. Improving his ultimate (yes, that means buying an Aghanim's Scepter).

4. Giving Juggernaut even more AOE.

One has to have a plan when building a hero guide. You just saw mine. ^^

And the best question after seeing any such 'plan' is 'Why?'. Why should I follow a guide or another?

The thing is, there are a lot of inconsistent guides, i.e. guides that say they'll do one thing, but actually do close to nothing. Regarding Juggernaut, I call an inconsistent guide a guide that fails the minimum requirement and that is it fails to respect 'question' 1. But WHY is 1. so important?

Here is the 'Why?' question four-fold answered:

1.
Usually Omnislash is not enough for killing an enemy hero. This is the case when you're laning and there are two enemies that kind of... cluster. Unfortunately, there is also the case you misjudge the positioning of several creeps and ugh, that's it for your ulti: goes on cooldown for a bit over 2 minutes (130 seconds, actualy).

If you did manage to slash an enemy two or three times though, he might still be alive: there is more than a handful of heroes that can take a level 1 Omnislash punisment and walk away with it. To kill such an enemy hero with Juggernaut, you should ooze some auto-attacks in. But rest assured, an enemy having under 200 HP won't hold his ground to receive your upcoming punishment. They'll even try to disable you immediately after coming out of the invulnerabiity your ulti provides.

And that's where Blade Fury kicks in: providing high DPS AND (!) becoming magic immune. What else could you want? You just got the kill. ^^
Therefore having enough mana for both of your offensive spells it's kind of a must.

Other guides achieve that by taking two early points in stats that take your mana to 312, enough for an 200 gold Omnislash and for a follow-up Blade Fury; avoid that, as there are better ways to get the required mana. Much better ones.

2.
His Healing Ward is one of the best (if not really the best) healing spell in DotA 2: a (starting) 2% AOE heal per second for 25 seconds. It definitely SCALES with the amount of HP an allied hero has and it works even in combat!

3.
Definitely Aghanim's Scepter is a core item on Juggernaut: it gives him additional 100%/50%/33% more slashes while lowering the cooldown and increasing both his tankiness and mana pool.

4. If you take a second look at Juggernaut, you'll notice all of his active spells (3) are (pseudo-)AOE ones. So why not improving his fourth to an AOE, too? Exactly my point.

So ere we go!

Juggernaut is a fun hero to play, although it should be picked by medium to skilled players as he is quite squishy early on. He developed a notoriety that led to numerous Juggernaut guides.

Nevertheless, here's my 2 cents.

Hi, I'm Hi-Breed and I'll walk you through Devil;s Payground.

The first guide got a lot (7) of bad reviews because it was a Battle Fury-rushed one. The trend out there is to unanimously go for the Poor Man's Shield + Phase Boots + Drum of Endurance + Yasha (race car) core for 5725 gold. Although this is a great one, I strongly believe you can play Juggernaut in a better, different way.

Despite all the criticism, I promised I'll research Juggernaut and come at least with an equivalent (if not better) item and ability build.

Luckily for me, 6.76 through 6.81 updates introduced the Aghanim's Scepter Omnislash boost and the gold reduction of an Iron Branch to 50, which made it easier for me and my guide to prevail, and here's how I did it:

In order to cast the Omnislash + Blade Fury combo starting level 6, Juggernaut needs additional +4 INT. He'll get this from a Wraith Band / Ring of Basiius and 1-2 remaining Iron Branches.

And here's the great part: even if you CAN'T farm anything until you reach evel 6, you're still able to cast the Omnislash + Blade Fury combo at level 6 having only the starting items! Now how great is that?

By the way, I chose NOT to devote 2 levels (2 and 4) to STATS (others get their +4 INT from here), as I have a better option: take 1-2 levels of Healing Ward (and 1-0 levels in Blade Dance) and use them for increased lane presence.

Having the 2 Clarityes will even allow me and any nearby allies to 50%/75% heal. Twice!

Skill Build

STATS

The skill build is quite straightforward: max your Blade Fury by level 7, take Omnislash at 6, 11 and 16 and have two early points in Healing Ward instead of STATS. You'll mainly use Healing Ward for in-lane AoE healing or for AoE healing after a successful gank, in order to keep on pushing. After level 7, prioritize Blade Dance, as 75% AoE healing should suffice for now. Take the last 2 points in Healing Ward at levels 13 and 14 (or after your Point Booster / Aghanim's Scepter) and devote level 15 to STATS. Another option is to delay the last two points in Healing Ward for levels 24 and 25, gaining additional 2-2-2 STATS at levels 13 and 14. Take Omnislash at 16, then fill the rest with STATS / Healing Ward.

Item Build

The item build discussion is currently in progress.

As a side note, for 2220 early gold you'll get 152 HP, 35 Damage, 1.14 Armor and 8 AS.

You can add 500 gold for a total of 152 HP, 44 Damage, 4.57 Armor, 11 AS and 65% MP/s regen, in easy-to-farm installments. ^^

Having a Poor Man's Shield + Phase Boots + Bracer for 2425 gold heading for a Drum of Endurance will give you 114 HP, 36 Damage, 1.29 Armor and 9 AS, which is somewhat similar to the 2220 gold pre-core (aside the damage block).

But the 3675 Poor Man's Shield + Phase Boots + Drum of Endurance will give you 9-15-9 STATS for 171 HP, 42 Damage, 2.14 Armor, 20 AS, the Damage Block, Drum aura and its active, which is roughly 1000 gold north of the 'equivalent' (I dare saying BETTER) 8-11-5 STATS for 152 HP, 44 Damage, 4.57 Armor, 11 AS and 65% MP/s regen.

We'll come back to these.

Friends and Foes

Your friends consist of mainly ranged casters that can either highly damage your lane enemies (while disabling them or not, but at least slowing them) and/or clearing the creep waves for your signature skills.

Good friends are:

Abaddon, Dazzle, Venomancer, Crystal Maiden, Leshrac, Lina, Lion - to name only a few.

Your enemies are the ones that can slow, silence, disable or nuke you, so pretty much the whole pack! ^^

But his arch enemies are these:

Pugna and Omniknight, due to their ability of making your enemies immune to physical damage that means you just ruined your ultimate.

Pugna can be a bad pick even for your team, as a friendly Nether Blast that was misplaced will interrupt your Omnislash. :'(

Changelog