How Juice Affects Gameplay; How to Juice and Prevent Juice.

Juicing is a largely disliked feature in Monday Night Combat. This guide will hopefully bring complaints about it to a minimum. I do not juice, I just believe I have came across many ways to counter it.

Table of Contents:

1)About Juicing
2)How to Juice
3)How to Prevent Juicing
4)What to do when Juiced
5)How to Limit and Prevent Enemy Juice Damage
6)Conclusion


About Juice:

Juice is ultimately a feature included in Monday Night Combat to help push into the perimeter made a team that zones a tight area inside their base, making the area totally safe for them to stay, letting the enemy come to them, and then at overtime pushing into the enemy base and destroying the moneyball.

The game would be too slow like that, every game would end that way eventually. Team Fortress 2 has an "Ubercharge" feature of the Medic, which both required teamwork and a medic to do. Juicing can be done best with teamwork, but is useful even if a person lacks a cooperating team. It was intended to better balance a single person on a uncooperative team against a cooperative team. Otherwise, individual players couldn't beat a team that simply stays in base defending all game.

The intended side-effect of juice was successful. Map control was made more important than defence. Killing enemies was made more important that waiting in base.

It's effect on gameplay, however, has more consequences than that. First, some people find ways to juice safely, so they can use it to play regularly. They didn't need juice to accomplish what they need to accomplish, they can just do it easier and with more enemy kills. Second, campers can still use juice themselves, and although its unlikely they can keep their base together without map control, if a game goes into overtime, all members of the defensive team will have juice to attack with.

It is important to know all that about juicing so you know why it balances the game, and where it will be made and used best at. Expecting it is the first step.

How to Juice:

Juice was designed more "individual friendly" than the Ubercharge was. Any one of the classes can juice, and can do it alone without team support. Team support makes the effect greater, but is not directly necessary.

Juice is strong enough to dent a full blown base defence with all the enemies inside. A juiced player is instantly healed when he juices, can do three times more damage than normal, have all critical attacks, and receive one third the damage he would normally receive from enemy attacks.

Juice can be activated by pressing a button or combination of buttons once a juice bar is completely filled. The juice bar is located on the bottom of the screen's HUD, and slowly fills with purple as juice is acquired. Different classes gain different amounts of juice for the same tasks. Assassins and snipers gain more juice for tasks, but are considered less threatening with it. Gunners and tanks gain less juice for the same tasks, but are considered more dangerous with it.

To earn juice, you do damage to bots and turrets, heal away any damage or overheal any health bar if your a support, or use the melee attack. Other indirect methods include receiving damage while taunting, or deploying as a tank and receiving damage. Other ways to receive juice is to pick up many juice boxes, or buy it at a vendor for $500 when the vendor is available (as the vendors may be turned on and off, and are subjected to timers).

Tricks learned by more experienced players gain juice as a very quick rate. It is possible to fill a juice bar completely in 40 seconds without vendors.

Taunting, or a tank deploying, in front of many weak attacks, will fill the juice bar quickly. You receive the same amount of juice for an attack of any damage. A shotgun will give you very little juice but lots of damage. A lazorblazor, group of lazor bots, and bullet-based weapons from a long range, will give you more juice for less damage. Deploying or taunting in front of a lazorblazor usually will fill your juice bar completely with little damage done.

Meleeing weak opponents, like bots that are unguarded and from behind, will get you juice in just a few hits. The same can be done with a deployed enemy from behind, although they can use their jetpack to burn you, most enemies will not. When bullseye is available, you can melee him for juice instead of shoot him for lots of money, although shooting him still gives some juice.

Doing wide damage to many enemies grouped together is much slower, but still fast at the same time. Weapons like explosive round sniper rifles, grenade gun, jetgun's deathblossom, and mortar gun, can damage 15 bots at once, which earns 15 times more juice than hitting just one bot.

Choosing a class with a higher gain of juice per task is a good idea to juice often. The sniper and assassin can gain juice with a few handfulls of bot kills. The assassin can melee while she is killing them usually anyhow. The drawback is that their health is still considered defeatable while they are juiced, and they do more limited damage, as a juiced sniper cannot easily kill turrets, and an assassin has a lower effective range. The fact is that a very smart player can still do some damage with a weak juiced class.

Most, if not all, of these methods involve map control. An enemy with control of the map, that is paying attention to the areas in control, will not let you acquire juice or live long enough to earn it.

How to Prevent Juicing:

Now that you know how to juice, and furthermore, how to obtain juice and obtain it expediently, you also know how the enemy will do it. These are the only way the enemy can juice, by using an expedient trick or by slowly earning it.

To prevent them from slowly earning it, make sure they are dying regularly. An opponent with a high killstreak, especially a heavy class, should be targetted with a higher priority. Find a way to kill him. If you do have a team, have the best player, or the best class against the enemy's class, focus on that enemy.

To prevent them from earning it quickly, obtain that map control. As stated earlier, the enemy needs access to the map to juice faster. They cannot melee enemies safely if you are watching anything they could melee. They cannot taunt or deploy while getting hit by weak lazor or long-range-bullet attacks if you are watching anything that does such an attack, including your own weapon and your lazorblazor turrets. Alternatively, do not build lazorblazors and you will not need to watch them, as they are only a temporary defence that you should make only if you absolutely need something the bots will stop and destroy, and should never be upgraded or left unattended most of the time. They cannot buy juice if you are watching the juice machines.

Assassins may try to sneak some juice through bot killing and cloaked juice purchases, but you should catch them in the bot lanes or at the juice machine (it turns red if its purchased, immediately give chase while shooting if you see it randomly time-down). Even if they have a full juice bar, they haven't juiced or done any damage until your turrets are gone, so one method of prevention is to kill juicers before they make it to your base or away from the juice machine, or force him to juice to save himself and kill you so he can't cause any more harm than that.

Other tips are known to keep enemies from juicing by an experienced player. Explosive sniper rounds on allied bots keep assassins quickly killing them, as well as other pros meleeing. Tanks walking along the bot lane keep any players from walking up and meleeing or attacking. supports keeping a post at the entrance to the juice machine area keeps even cloaked enemies from entering. Map control, in the form of moving up with your bots while keeping some control over the important areas of the map between those bots and your base, practically shuts the enemy's options down for everything including juice.

How to Use Juice:

Many people complain that other players use juice to do anything and everything with. If a competent team makes it harder to get juice, a player must use it more effectively. This should be easy enough to understand since the objective is to get bots to the end of the map, but let me reiterate it if you don't understand immediately.

If you earn juice, use it to clear the biggest obstacle to your bots. It will usually be turrets, those have a higher health and armor, and bots don't get past them as easily. Then, it should be pros, as they will try destroying your bots (of course, its the pros NEAR YOUR BOTS that this applies to). After the pros near your bots, its the bots themselves, although you shouldn't need juice to defeat other bots. If you don't need to use juice to do something, be careful not to die as you save it for when you do need it. You may die before you use it, but you may use it and later run into a newly spawned pro or a pro that takes you by surprise and it could save you and your bots then.

If your target is to clear turrets for your bots, make sure to clear all the ones on the side you need them cleared from, starting with the most expensive and high-damaging turret. Avoid pros trying to stop you, move on to a different turret if you can, or kill the pro as far away as you can and continue with the turret. Turrets gone from one side ensure that your bots can walk directly to the moneyball.

If your target is pros in the way of your bots, don't use juice until you find a pro threatening your bots, or are at their base and the bots are about to enter the moneyball area (its the hardest area to get bots past, as enemies will immediately kill them from this point). Get the bots to the moneyball.

If your target is bots, then make extra sure that it's a immediately threatening wave, like 20 blackjacks within feet of your moneyball. You could also use juice to push a bunch of enemy escorting the bots away from your base.

There are many experienced tips with juice. Although juice doesn't absolutely require teamwork to use to prevent, teamwork helps to juice or prevent. Teamwork can make the push that makes juicing more effective. Multiple teammates can also juice at one time, so the timing delivers more unpreventable and widespread damage. Another tip for using juice is against another enemy juicer, by guarding around the outside of your base keeping map control with juice, and using it when an enemy uses juice to destroy your turrets. Some juiced class, like the support and gunner, repel another juiced enemy very well.

How to Prevent Damage by a Juiced Enemy:

Knowing what an experienced player will do with juice should give you an idea of when you will faced a juiced opponent. If map control is in their favor, a teammate built a lazorblazor, or the juice machines are in their control while they have an excess of cash, they will be coming with juice. However, juiced enemies aren't unstoppable. Experienced tips can be employed to limit or stop a juiced enemy's destruction.

If you have turrets, a juiced enemy will usually attack them to open a path for bots. If you go to defend the turrets and they go for kill instead, then you will die but the bots won't get through. It's frustrating, but respawn and continue trying to gain map control and fortifying, because as long as your turrets are still there you have a great chance to regain the advantage.

An enemy attacking a turret will usually attack it by charging torwards it, which means you can intercept him with a variety of techniques, possibly preventing the destruction of that turret and usually preventing the destruction of a turret after that one.

Crowd Control Basics include delaying the juicer from his target, as they only have a small time to do damage while juiced, by grappling, ice traps, or even suiciding on them, launching them off the map for a kill, and high damage moves like team-focus-fire, airstrikes, headshots, pancakes, and using juice yourself.

A specific list of experienced moves to attack a juicer with include:

Assault: Charge 3 (aim for ring-out or across map), secondary grapple, bomb knock-back, headcrab, Fireball (after any grapple animation, you are in a perfect position to throw a bomb and land a headcrab), Dragon Punch (Charge3 at close range to a wall, and then secondary grapple right when they land)

Support: Airstrike in their path (mainly for assassins, throw an airstrike on the turret they are approaching so they can't attack it), grapple, Hug of Death (throw an airstrike on top of yourself when they approach you, and then grapple them to hold them in the airstrikes path, so you both die), approach and shotgun from behind them (juiced assassins take 3-4 shotgun blasts)

Gunner: skill-grapple (when upgraded to 2 or 3, it may ringout), secondary grapple, Sumo (both grapples consecutively), slam (aim them at the edge of the ring), spun-up minigun fire (does high damage even to a juiced enemy), Duck Gallery (slam and fire, their stun makes them a sitting duck)

Sniper: ice trap, flak (will at least blur their sight), secondary grapple, skill-grapple (at level 2 you can aim for a ring-out), Heck Yeah (both grapples consecutively), Headshot, Frozen Duck (ice trap and several headshots, keep drilling until you hit oil or grey matter)

Tank: grapple, product grenade (will blind at lvl2 or higher), Charge (lvl3 will stun, and knockback is good enough to aim for a ring-out), Running Palm (charge into a grapple, aimed at an edge)

Assassin: Smokebomb (will blind, longer with higher levels), grapple, and those two being all she has makes her the worse counter-juice (even though she is the most common juicer)

Turret-Upgrade: Clutch Upgrades on Turrets make them temporarily indestructible while they are being upgraded. Best reason to keep a rokkit at lvl 2 and just hang around until a juice rusher comes in.

Focus-Fire: Everyone on your team shooting an enemy does 6x more damage, so an enemy that takes 1/3 damage will still recieve good damage. Gunner teams are best at this, as they can actually kill juicers on their first turret and sometimes before they destroy it.

Grappling Bots Beat Juicers Too!:

Conclusion:

A long winded guide (that "The Dutch Guy" helped spellcheck) about juice may make the many players who don't play so well against juice see it's weaknesses. As a player who hates juice, I can only hope most of you read this guide and understand how to prevent juicing and defeat juicers. When you make a common juicer without much other skill unable to juice, you take away his only gimmick. You either make them play without a crutch so it's skill vs skill like it should be, or you play against a weak enemy that is wasting their time failing at juicing instead of playing objectively. I believe that when you can successfully understand map control as a more reliable and powerful tactic, I can welcome you to the high level end of gameplay.

I post here sometime later, ktanksbi!

P.S.: All constructive feedback is appreciated! Any tips can be added to this guide if submitted here. I will most likely give credit.

recieve -> receive.

Nice peice (lol) of text btw, very informative.

I before E, except after C...

And when its "eigh", as in Neighbor and Weigh...

and in Receive...

Yes, that's a bad habit. Look, thanks for pointing it out, but ultimately I should be typing perfect soon so don't take it like I can't spell. I passed AP English.

OMG NEW GUIDE.

Will read and comment on after I get back from my classes which I should have left for a few minutes ago....a

I can make this "guide" WAY shorter. Ready here.

How does Juice affect gameplay? If you have juice you kill things better and stay alive easier.

How to juice? Press Left Bumper and Right Bumper together.

Prevent Juice? Kill them beforehand. If not able to do so grab them and yell "We have a juicer over here!"

/guide
:ugeek:

True story.

Most people find juice overpowered. I find it to be a gimmick, which usually diverts enemy attention for the objective. They either focus on juicing while your pushing territory, or they focus on juicing while you push territory.

Learning to play with map control, as well as prevent juice and beat juicers, is what I believe to be the gateway to high level play.

I am glad juice is in the game. If there was an aspect of Team Fort 2 I hated, it was turtles on 2fort. Overtime was kind of fun, unless it was a marathon server (unlimited time), which then it became stagnant. Both teams would walk around maybe trying to get a kill and just ignoring the objective because it's impossible to do. The objective room had turrets, sticky bombs, and a pyro guarding it, why even try? An ubercharge would break it maybe once every 2 hours, so games lasted roughly 2 hours.

I simply believe the players themselves should play with juice in mind. They have to set up base defences, push for map control, take out enemy defences, and prevent juice through the bot lanes. Thus, there is more tertiary objectives for individual players and teams as a whole to focus on. It's not just who shoots better, it's stradegy. This is more like Risk than Halo, and resources like juice and money are more important than gunfights.

I really enjoyed this guide - it's simple but informative.

No mention of bouncers? IMO bouncers are one of the best ways to prevent juiced players from getting many kills. It works very well especially on Spunky, if I know a juiced player is coming in(support especially), I spawn a few bouncers and chuckle to myself as juiced people get bouncer grappled.

BroTranq: Very informative and constructive response to the turbulant issue of juice. Whether you love it or hate it, this guide is useful and thought provoking. Bravo!

DeadEye: Perhaps its just me, but I find that (as a support) all I have to do when I encounter a bouncer on my tail is to... bounce. If I hop continuously, the Bouncer seems completely unable to connect a grapple with me. The only time I've ever been caught by bouncers is when I wasn't paying attention and ran right into them around a corner. I usually completely ignore them when I am doing a juiced attack on a base; they don't shoot, they can't catch me, and once my juice is up, I plan on probably dying anyway, so who cares if I eliminate them?

Bouncers grapple. Grapples are great counters to juicers. Therefore, bouncers are great counter-juicers and crowd-control.

So i'll be glad to add that for anyone who didn't think of that when I mentioned beating juice with grapples. Which may be a lot of people.

IMO, bouncers do occupy a lot of ANYONE's time. I grapple bouncers when they come at me, and jump so they can't grapple back, but even that holds me in one place so the enemy following the bouncer might be able to kill me. One bouncer you didn't see coming gets you while juiced, a good team can put an airstrike on top of you while your stuck in a grapple, albeit yours or the bouncer's.