Juggernaut: How to not look like a pub

Introduction

Update #1

- Added a new alt-tab guide section and did some other minor fixes.


Juggernaut is a strong agility carry hero that can quickly win the match by mid game and with enough farm, be a constant threat in the end game. His bladefury can easily cause him to snowball extremely early game while his ultimate can kill anyone solo and help out in team fights greatly.

This guide will show you how not to play Juggernaut like a ******ed low skill pub you encounter in most games. There's a lot of material to cover since Juggernaut has some unique techniques only available to him and can only use certain items to their full potential.

Pros / Cons

Pros
-Amazing early game, mid game, and early end game presence
-Good pusher
-Good stat gain
-Excellent AOE heal that scales into late game
-Best non-ultimate crit in the game
-Ultimate can easily kill someone solo
-Benefits greatly from carry items

Cons
-Squishy and useless without farm
-Ultimate can easily be countered by creeps, blinking, decripfy, windrun, leaps, invisibility or illusions/just a lot of people
-Bladefury loses effectiveness beyond mid game quickly
-Can't carry as hard as someone like Faceless Void, Spectre, Phantom Assassin, Phantom Lancer, or Lycan
-Built-in crit negates buying any crit items
-No real built-in escape mechanism beyond running away with bladefury+tp

Quick Alt-tab guide for Juggernaut standard build

Skill build

1. Blade Fury
2. Stats
3. Blade Fury
4. Stats
5. Blade Fury
6. Omnislash
7. Blade Fury
8. Healing Ward
9. Healing Ward
10. Healing Ward
11. Omnislash
12. Healing Ward
13. Blade Dance
14. Blade Dance
15. Blade Dance
16. Omnislash
17. Blade Dance
    18-25 Stats

Item build

Starting: Tango, Healing Salve, Slippers of Agility, Stout Shield

Early: Poor Man's Shield, Quelling Blade, Phase Boots, Ring of Health, Perseverance

Core: Battle Fury, Yasha

Extension: Manta Style, Assault Cuirass, Heart of Tarrasque, Satanic, Butterfly, Boots of Travel

Situational: Black King Bar, Monkey King Bar, Diffusal Blade, Blade Mail, Vanguard, Drum of Endurance, Ring of Aquila, Soul Ring, Desolator, Vladmir's Offering

Gameplay:

-Take the short lane (That's top lane for Dire, bottom lane for Radiant)

-Lane with a strong stunner or slower (Venomancer is the best hero for this job)

-Once the target is stunned or slowed, try to block them off by moving in front of
their path, don't click the target during bladefury since it won't make you follow them, click around the area they are in

-Finish Battlefury by the 20 minute mark or less

-Help in team fights often by placing down the ward away from the action but still healing your teammates (you can make the ward follow people by selecting the ward and right clicking someone)

-Try to Omnislash without illusions or creeps around, be wary of people with escape mechanism, they can easily run away from your ult

-To push hard, buy a soul ring and spam the healing ward so you easily out-heal towers

-After completing Yasha you should work on end game items

-Try not using bladefury offensively after the mid game since it does little damage, only use it to escape or other defensive situation

-Once you get enough farm, you should be able to clear jungles in less than seconds and entire creep waves with one crit, so use that advantage for end game

Skills

The skills section will only cover the standard build, since it's useful in all games.

Bladefury


"Causes a bladestorm of destructive force around Juggernaut, rendering him immune to magic and dealing damage to nearby enemy units. Lasts 5 seconds.
Radius: 250
Duration: 5
Damage Per Second: 80/100/120/140
30/28/26/24 110

This ability won't affect mechanical units.
You can use items (including TP Scroll/ Boots of Travel) during Blade Fury.
If a unit is not being affected by Blade Fury, Yurnero can perform normal attacks against this unit.

" -Dota 2 Wiki

Bladefury, combined with a good slow or stun, will almost always guarantee a first blood or double kill within a minute in the game. There are some exceptions to this amazing combo, blinkers or people with excellent escape mechanisms can easily avoid death. There are also people that just have too much health starting to kill them in one go at level 1(ex: Doom, Tide).

Special reminder that

PRESSING RIGHT CLICK ON THE ENEMY WON'T MAKE JUGGERNAUT FOLLOW THEM DURING BLADEFURY, YOU HAVE TO KEEP CLICKING NEAR THEIR LOCATION TO DO DAMAGE

PROTIPS

• Try your best to get first blood if you can
• Max this skill out first
• You can use phase boots during bladefury in order to go through creeps
• Bladefury is magical damage, so keep that in mind against targets with magic resistance or immunity
• Don't use bladefury early game to farm creeps, you are wasting valuable mana that can be used to get free kills.
• Don't overextend with this skill and try not to dive, you aren't immortal to physical damage during bladefury
• High DPS heroes like Sven or Chaos Knight can simply right click you to death if you don't have help while attacking them in bladefury
• You can still be slowed while in bladefury
• Some magic spells will still go through bladefury

Stat



There's a reason why you get stats at level 2 and 4.
You won't have the mana capacity to do a bladefury+omnislash combo at level 6 or 7 without stats.
Besides that, Jugg has very low strength gain and desperately needs some HP to stay alive early game.
Don't be a scrub and get early crits, crits are beyond useless early game since you don't have significant damage output to make a difference. Invest in stats.
You can get an early level of healing ward though if you are getting harassed to hell and can't even farm properly. Make sure to fill out the stats later since you still need them.



Healing Ward



"Summons a Healing Ward that heals all nearby allied units, based on their max HP. The Healing Ward can move at 300 movement speed after being summoned. Lasts 25 seconds.
Range: 350
Radius: 500
Duration: 25
Heal Per Second: 2%/3%/4%/5%
60 80/100/120/140

If a unit is affected by two Healing Wards only one will work.
The ward has 1 hit point and can be attacked.
The ward won't heal mechanical units.
Can be targeted by Decrepify."

-Dota 2 Wiki


Healing ward is a great spell with a stupidly large amount of healing power. This skill is great for pushing and superior in team fights. The fact that it scales means it's more powerful as the game progresses, so get this skill as early as possible. Once a team fight starts, pop it down outside the team fight so that your team can receive its full effect and the enemy will be too busy focusing down other people instead of your ward.

PROTIPS

• Get it as early as possible (preferably after maxing out bladefury) to push harder and heal your team
• You can place the ward on a cliff so you can be healed and the enemy team will never be able to reach it
• You can move the ward around by clicking on it, as well as pressing right click will make the ward follow the person you clicked around
• Try your best to not let the enemy team kill your ward, since it dies with one auto attack.

Blade Dance



Best non-ultimate crit in the game hands down. Just don't get it until you are level 13, that's when you start doing some real damage.


Omnislash




"Juggernaut leaps towards the target enemy unit with a damaging attack, and then slashes other nearby enemy units, dealing between 175-250 damage per slash. The fewer units available to attack, the more damage those units will take; if a unit is alone, it will take all of the damage. Juggernaut becomes invulnerable while Omnislashing and mini-stuns the first target.
Range: 450
Jump Radius: 425
Number Of Attacks: 3/6/9 (6/9/12*)
Damage Per Attack: 175-250
130/120/110 (110/100/90*) 200/275/350
Blocked first instance of damage (but not ministun) if Linken's holder is primary target.
Increases number of jumps and decreases cooldown.

Each slash deals 175-250 damage, with an interval of 0.4 seconds.
The first target of Omnislash receives a mini-stun, effectively stopping its channeling actions.
With enough attack speed, Juggernaut can attack with his own attack strength while jumping around. In these attacks, Juggernaut can place buffs and trigger chance effects.
The slashes can't be avoided by evasion. Any normal attacks made, however, can.
You can use items while using Omnislash.
The Omnislash buff is not applied until after the first hit. Juggernaut is completely invulnerable under the effects of the buff.
Juggernaut gains flying vision in 200 radius for the duration of Omnislash."

-Dota 2 Wiki


Omnislash is one of the most dangerous 1v1 skill in the game. Keep in mind that battlefury will add cleave every time you do a normal attack during the ult, make it somewhat like a splash damage. In most situations, at max level, this skill should kill anyone if they are alone. Sadly, the skill is countered by a few things.

• Blinking will instantly stop the ultimate
• Invisibility will instantly stop the ultimate
• Creeps are a huge problem, since the ultimate chooses random targets, it's very likely that most of the damage will go to creeps instead of enemy heroes
• The more people involved in the ultimate, the less damage it will do
• Decripfication on the target will make them immune to all of the attacks from Omnislash, including the normal attacks

REMINDER: OMNISLASH IS PHYSICAL DAMAGE, MEANING BKB CANNOT NEGATE IT, BUT

PHYSICAL IMMUNITY WILL.

Items

Here is where we get into the real content of Juggernaut.
So many items in Dota 2, yet only a handful of items are any value to Juggernaut.

Starting

To start the match as Juggernaut, you need critical regeneration items because you can't afford to be running back to base every time you get really hurt.

Start out with one of each of these:

The stout shield and slipper of agility are for building Poor Mans Shield with just 150 gold.

OR

If you are confident enough to get a fast first blood, get these.

Early game

The Magic Wand is excellent for countering heroes like Batrider but delay your items by a little amount.

Bladefury+tp = guaranteed escape if you aren't about to die in 1 hit.
You and your lane partner should be looking for a fast kill, so once you get it, get a Poor Mans Shield.
PMS is a fantastic item, it makes the laning phase much easier, gives 20 damage reduction that Jugg really needs and gives 6 agility, that's 6 damage and almost 1 armor (7 agi=1 armor)

Next item to get is a Quelling Blade, the extra punch against creeps makes it almost a guarentee to get last hits and clears creep waves easy with battlefury, as well as having the ability to counter Natures Prophet's sprout. Unless you are godly at last hitting and NP is not in the game, there is no reason to not get this.

The boots of choice are Phase boots, it gives cheap damage and has the phase ability, making you faster for 4 seconds and able to walk through units during the time. Treads can be looked at if you skipped getting stats but it's not recommended since the lack of phase will make chasing or escaping much more difficult. Creeps are good body blockers and with bladefury you can't afford a second of the damage going to the creeps instead of enemy heroes. Phase boots will solve this problem, unlike treads.

Ring of Health is incredibly good since you will never have to go back to base due to the amount of healing it does.
Turn it into a Ring of Perseverance as soon as possible.

Core

Battlefury is Juggernaut's bread (butter is all the carry items he gets with this). 65 damage with 6 hp regeneration and 175% mana regeneration is a giant boost for Juggernaut. The 35% non reducible cleave will clear creep waves in a couple of seconds combined with a Quelling Blade. Battlefury also adds splash damage to your normal attack during Omnislash. Battlefury is crucial to farm harder and faster than the other carries in the enemy team. Juggernaut is part of a very few heroes that can have battlefury as his core.

MAKE SURE YOU COMPLETE BATTLEFURY BEFORE THE 20 MINUTE MARK, YOU ARE LIKELY TO LOSE IF IT TAKES LONGER THAN THAT

There is no reason to not get a Yasha. It gives 16 agility (=16 damage for agi heroes), 15 attack speed, and 10% movement speed. The cheap stats and MS is not something to be skipped in any game. It's recommended to get this after battlefury but it's not mandatory.

Orbs-Mid game

At this point in the game, you should be looking at what orb you want for your game. Depending on your situation, you can opt orb lifesteal, Helm of the Dominator or if you need another orb with lifesteal, Vlads since it's not an orb (No Mask of Madness here, it'll be covered later in the bad items list).

The problem with Vlads is that once you get to end game, it becomes more a burden since it takes up a valuable slot that you can use for better carry items. Usually this won't be a problem since you have already ended the game by then. On the other hand, Helm can be turned into a Satanic, a great end game item for Juggernaut. Of course, Helm is an orb, so once you get it, you cannot buy any other orbs because they won't stack.


Desolator is a mediocre orb item, but works great against squishy heroes. Desolator should not be picked up if the enemy team has lots of tanky heroes or methods of making you not be able to attack. It's only a pure damage item so it delays other important items you need to stay alive. If you really want to reduce armor then you can buy a Medallion of Courage instead.It's cheaper and you can sell it later once you're done.


Diffusal blade is a step up from Desolator. It gives nice agility stats as well as some mana, but the important thing here is the Purge. Purge will make chasing so easy that you won't even need to use Phase boots. Purge also counters Omniknight, since his ultimate is a buff, and purge debuffs it, thus making him exposed again. Feedback is also nice to remove mana pools from heroes that spam their spells. Manta and Diffusal work great since illusions from Manta will have the mana burn orb on them, making it that much easier to remove mana pools.

Orb of Venom is a nice little item that makes chasing more efficient, unfortunately it won't be turned into a Eye of Skadi since it's not cost efficient for what it does. Get this early game for ganking and chases.

Late game

Juggernaut has plenty of items to choose from once he completes his Battlefury and Yasha

Manta Style. The ultimate utility item for any agility carry. You can dodge stuns/spells/debuffs with this, since it has a 0.1 second of immunity. The extra stats and movement speed it gives is extremely helpful. The main thing about this item is the illusions. Alone they only deal 33% of your base damage and take 350% extra damage. Together they can quickly help you take down an enemy hero. There is so much utility with illusions, you can use them to fool people to using their skills on them, get yourself onto cliffs, push harder, etc. It should be considered a core, but the Ultimate Orb, which costs 2100 gold, makes it an item to wait for later. Still get that Yasha though.


Assault Cuirass will make Juggernaut almost immortal. The amount of armor this item gives is stupidly high, it even lowers the armor of the enemy team while giving your team more armor and speed. The insane attack speed makes Juggernaut a monster of a DPSer.


If you chose to get a Helm as your orb, you should finish your Satanic by now. 200% lifesteal combined with a crit will make you unkillable. The Reaver will cover all the HP you will ever need. The 5 armor and 25% lifesteal is a nice little bonus.


Just like Assault Cuirass, this will make you immortal through sheer amounts of HP. You will be able to out-heal entire mega creep waves and stacked ancients. Heart of Terrasque doesn't give agility, but it makes up for it by giving you insane tankyness.


Butterfly is probably going to be your last item. If you had any combination of the items above, the game should have ended by now. If it didn't, pick this up. Since Juggernaut is agility and Butterfly gives 30 agility, that makes a total of 60 bonus damage from this item. The amount of attack speed it gives is actually more than an Assault Cuirass, but only gives 4 armor. 35% evasion is a nice bonus to this item as well. If the game STILL hasn't ended by now, then you have done something wrong.


If the game has not ended even though you have 3 or more late game items, something has gone terribly wrong and you need to take it even further. Divine Rapier can quickly turn around games if you can stay alive long enough to use it. It's only recommended if you are about to lose and have the money to buy this. Or you could be absolutely destroying the enemy team and just have so much money that you don't know what to do with it.


On a side note, if you have tons of money and can afford it, buy yourself Boots of Travel, being able to push or help your team in a second will make games end much quicker.

Situational

Sometimes things get out of hand and it doesn't go the way you want it. Maybe the enemy team has too much DPS heroes and you can't even survive long enough to do anything. Sometimes you aren't able to farm as much as you can. Don't worry, there are items to counter almost all situations.


You need this if you are getting stun locked or spammed by magic. The argument that you don't need BKB because you have a free 5 sec magic immunity skill is ********. Once it hits mid game, you will be dealing more damage just from auto attacks than your bladefury. You need to be able to use skills and items in combination with being magic immune to get kills.

Buy these if you plan to push early and fast. Tranquil Boots can be disassembled and turned into a Vlads later on.


It's not recommended to get Vanguard but if you really cannot survive long enough to do damage, invest in this.


Anti Phantom Assassin purposes and anybody else who does extreme damage.


If you are behind on farm or are dying too much early game, get these stat items in order to stay relevant during the mid game. They'll lose effectiveness quickly but in the meantime you should already be farming those real carry items.

Only get MKB if the enemy carry has evasion.

If you badly need a stun then invest in this, the stun goes through magic immunity.

The Big No-No-Items List

How-to-tell-if-someone-playing-Juggernaut-is-a-pub items

Definition of a pub item. Sange and Yasha is part of the set of the worst items in the game. 4300 gold is expensive, only a 2% increase of MS from Yasha/Manta, 15% chance maim, this is the worst item to invest in. This isn't Heroes of Newerth, this is Dota 2. In Dota 2, maim isn't a 100% guaranteed slow. Its low stats is just pitiful.

You are throwing 4200 gold out of the window every time you buy this. The ultimate is STILL EASILY COUNTERED by the simple methods mentioned before. The stats you get from this are poor, even worse than Sange and Yasha. You will rarely have an opportunity to use all 12 slashes on one single person and you still lose damage everytime you engage on a full 5 man team. Even worse, pubs actually get this IMMEDIATELY after battlefury and later in the game they don't have enough DPS to be relevant. So many games are lost because the team's only carry couldn't carry at all with this ****ty item.

It can't be that bad to buy Refresher Orb so you can pull two ultis, right? Yeah, it is that bad. Juggernaut doesn't have the mana capacity to pull use all his skills in conjunction with Refresher Orb. Even then, it still has the same problems as the scepter, it's still easily countered. It has no carry potential and it's a waste of gold.



General brain-dead items

Get out

Juggernaut is not a radiance carrier, leave that to real radi-carries heroes like Spectre and Weaver.

Why waste money on something you can't even use effectively. This item goes against everything Juggernaut has. The ether form negates his ultimate and using bladefury on it is still useless since everyone is already beefy enough to take it. Buy a butterfly with that eaglesong instead.

You aren't SingSing, stop it.

Team Work/Gameplay

Take the short lane at all times when playing Juggernaut (The short lanes are top for Dire, bottom for Radiant).


You want to get a kill as early as you can so you can snowball into an unstoppable monster. To get easy kills, lane with someone with a strong long lasting slow or stun.

Spam that heal often, your team will really appreciate it.


Tiers of laning partners:

Venomancer Tier

Venomancer is your bro. He will help you achieve victory in a matter of minutes if you coordinate with him. If Venomancer lands his gale, it's a guaranteed kill as long as the enemy doesn't have an escape mechanism or is too tanky. His 50% slow reduced per second for 15 seconds plus bladefury will destroy anybody. If you are against squishy heroes in your lane, prepare to snowball hard.

High Tier

Rhasta's stun is excellent with bladefury and kills off an enemy hero easily. The problem is that Rhasta is slow, so he won't be able to catch up to an enemy if they survive the onslaught, as well as having little damage output and a very costly nuke.

Crystal Maiden is a great supporter for Juggernaut. Her Crystal Nova or Frosbite should be enough to catch a person and destroy them with bladefury. After the first blood, she can supply Juggernaut with tons of extra mana regeneration to get kills more often.

Medium Tier

Dazzle's slow is mediocre compared to the better heroes available. But you can still get kills if you lane with him and he gives you free heals with saving you from death.

Chen shouldn't be putting point into his slow instead of his nuke, but it works fine to get easy first bloods. He can also get jungle creeps that can stun or disable, so that's decent as well. This means though that he will leave Juggernaut with a solo, which is not favorable.

Low Tier

Anyone who is melee with a stun or slow.

You never want to dual lane melee, so try your best to avoid it.

Enemies

There are enemies though that will make life impossible by either having great escape mechanism or just tanky and thus making you lose.

(Special mentions: Pugna is on here because decripfy will make your ultimate useless. Silencer can burn your mana and force you to use spells at times where you don't want them. )

If the enemy lineup has three or more of these heroes in their lineup, consider not picking Juggernaut. All of these heroes can easily avoid a level 1 death and if you don't shut them down early, they can avoid all your future assaults.

Conclusion

There you go, that's the entire guide. Just remember,

• Try to lane with Venomancer or other good partner
• spin2win
• 20 minute or less battlefury
• Rice
• Help in teamfights
• End