Sevarog: Paragon's Newest Hero

     At the time of writing, Sevarog has been available to play in Epic Games' MOBA Paragon for a little more than an Hour. I was among the first to hop on the second the servers were available and jumped right in to try out the 14th hero to join the growing population of Agora, and was...intrigued. Not impressed, not disappointed, but intrigued.
     Sevarog is a Growth/Corruption affinity Hero that is advertised as being a able to excel in either a Tank or Jungler role. His Passive ability "Soul Tap" allows him to build stacks of souls. Each stack gives him +3 max hp, and his model grows larger and more detailed at 20, 40, 70, and 100 stacks. His Q ability "Siphon" deals physical damage in a line in front of him. Killing a minion with this ability gives him +1 soul stack, while killing a hero gives him +3, and the ability gains a damage bonus every time he grows from collecting souls. His RMB ability "Phantom Rush" let's him dash forward and ignore unit collision, although terrain and Dekkers wall still impede his movement. His E ability "Subjugate" is a long range, small AoE that applies a snare, and then a slow while dealing physical damage. His R ability "Colossal Blow" lets him hit enemies in a cone in front of him, instantly killing minions and launching enemy heroes back a long distance.

     Because of his Q and Passive, he should be spending a lot of time farming minions, although due to his complete lack of any real damage if you build him tank, last hitting with his Q and getting soul stacks can be quite a chore, especially considering the cool down it has in earlier levels and the difficulty in setting up killing multiple minions simultaneously with one cast. Once you get him going, however, he becomes a walking (hovering?) fortress that can soak up tons of damage and provide CC to melee carries, and knock ranged heroes towards his allies to be slaughtered. However, as I said previously, if you intend on building him as a tank, forget about getting kills. You do so little damage without furiously spamming your Q and E (and eating up your energy in the process) that you'd be better off just farming until your team needs you to become a meat shield.
     I foresee Sevarog becoming a highly effective support, however, simply due to his CC abilities. If you build him as a tank, you can body block shots for your ADC, snare the enemy carry so that yours can get some free hits in, or dash behind them for a quick flank and them ult them under your tower if they push to hard. The range on his E is absolutely terrifying, and a skilled user will be able to zone out tanks or melee carries during a team fight just long enough to kill the squishies and tilt the fight in to his teams favor. I'd say practice on landing his E and using it in various situations, and then don't even worry about farming souls, just use tank cards and max out his E first if you want to be extremely obnoxious to the enemy team. The uses for a flat out hard CC are endless, especially in Paragon where heroes like Grux and Feng Mao dominate the lower ELO's due to high mobility and brutal melee damage.

     For items, I would highly recommend building a lot in to CDR and Mana so that you can spam your utilities more often and for longer periods of time. Sevarog really doesn't seem like the kind of guy who wants to be in people's faces crushing people. He seems to me to be more of the cold, calculating type who enjoys manipulating the battlefield. I'd say better to have somebody like steel or rampage fill the tank role, and have Sevarog be built as a control mage. That's not to say don't give him survivability, as you want to be able to survive dashing in to ult squishies towards your team or your towers if you're able. Use your Q to last hit minions as they come buy, and rely on your E to control the battle field and win each fight for your team.

     If you're planning to take Sevarog in to the jungle, I HIGHLY recommend taking some cards to give yourself more physical damage and attack speed. Sevarog does so little damage that his clear time will be extremely slow, although farming with his Q will be much easier. Still build in to items that give him HP and Mana, with a little CDR splashed in for good measure. Only go full tank if you want to stand in the middle of everybody getting shot so your team doesn't and do practically nothing else. Give him some love in other areas to make sure he can actually use achieve his high utility potential.

     All in all, after playing with him for a bit, my personal opinions are mixed. On the one hand he looks totally badass and has a lot of neat abilities, but on the other hand I like damage dealers and his performance in that area is so underwhelming that it's almost boring to me. Nothing he does feels like it has any impact behind it, and his pushing power is almost non existent due to his slow wave clear time. I feel like even though Epic wants to say he's a tank and a jungler, I feel he'll really shine when used by skilled support mains who can take advantage of his CC to manipulate the field to their advantage. I'll have to play with him more and mess around with his kit, maybe build a few decks just to see what all he can do, but as it stands he's not at all what I expected him to be, and there's a lot to be desired with this hero for me. That doesn't mean I won't play him, though. I used to think Anivia was one of the worst champions in League of Legends until I started messing around with her ou tof boredom and saw what she could really do. Now I own her Blackfrost skin, have level 5 mastery, and have been maining her in the mid lane for 2 years now. Maybe Sevarog will be my new Anivia?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA nobody will ever replace my bird.

Not even a pair of disembodied arms wearing a cloak and holding a hammer with a bunch of neat CC abilities.

(If you'd like to try out Sevarog for yourself, you can purchase a Founder's Pack for Paragon for $19.99 here: https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/founders, or you can wait until summer when the game goes in to Open Beta.)

The Dark Heart of a Nebula: Elite Dangerous Gameplay

A system in the deep core consisting of a Type I Jovian Gas Giant and a Spectral Type K Star orbiting a Black Hole of just over 2 Stellar Masses. This system rests at the heart of a gorgeous nebula of various shades of purple, blue and pink.

#Paragon Hero Spotlight: Grux

All joking aside, Grux is a strong melee, physical damage scaling Hero that can excel in both lane and the jungle. You want to build him mostly damage with a splash of attack speed. If you are having trouble staying alive, you can sacrifice a little damage to go in to hp. He is one of my favorite Heroes to split-push with, as combining his Q and RMB abilities allow him to clear entire minion waves very quickly, and his raw damage allows him to brutalize towers. Combining his E with his R makes for a very powerful team-fight initiate, where he charges right in to the center of the enemy team and stuns them briefly, allowing him to swing wildly and provide huge amounts of damage while his team wreaks havoc on those caught by his rampage. His E also provides him with an escape should he need it.

Paragon Gameplay

#Paragon: Is it worth a damn?

Today marks the beginning of the Early Access season for Epic Games' new MOBA Paragon. This means that anybody willing to pay at least $19.99 can get access to the early build of the game without having to hope to get lucky and receive a Beta invite. As a long-time fan of MOBAs, I was excited for the release of this game from the moment I heard about it, and naturally grabbed a Founder's Pack the moment they were available on the 13th of March, and after a few days of waiting, I finally got to sign in and play.

     As an Anivia main in League of Legends, I've always had a fondness for mid-lane mages in MOBAs, and so I decided to begin my Paragon adventure with the hero Gideon. He's mana-hungry lane-pusher with a lot of utility in his kit. He can call down an AoE meteor shower for wave clear, a skill-shot slow, a short-range teleport that can get him in and out of fights, and his ultimate creates a black hole that sucks in and continuously damages enemies, making him excellent for initiating team fights. I played a few AI co-op matches with him to get the basics of the game and to understand how to utilize his kit, and then went in to PvP once I hit account level 3 where I played a few more matches and saw a lot of success.

   

The game is fairly straight forward and instantly intuitive to any MOBA veteran. You've got your 3 lanes, with neutral camp populated jungle in between. A marskman and their support go in one of the side lanes, a tank goes on the other, a mage with pushing power goes in the mid, and a high-mobility assassin or crowd controller wanders the jungle to ambush enemies in their lanes. Two towers are placed in each lane and must be destroyed to go after the inhibitors, which allow the team who destroyed one to begin spawning super-powered minions in that lane as well as gain access to the core which must be destroyed to win the game. If you run out of mana or are low on health, you can recall back to your base to heal up and purchase upgrades before heading back out in to the fight. All standard stuff that every MOBA has, so Paragon is not unique in that sense. However, it does add its own flair to things with the gorgeous scenery, unique hero design and aesthetics, and the card system. Which, I suppose the card system is really the only thing I can think of that Paragon does differently, and even then it's just a spin-off of the standard item-purchasing system that you see in other MOBAs. But, it is a neat idea. Basically you play games and level up both your account and heroes to get rewards, all while obtaining Reputations points. These rewards can be card packs, or you can purchase card packs for 10,500 reputation (not with real money, that's the important thing to note here). These packs contain 5 random cards that you build in to decks. These cards contain items such as equipment of various stats, potions, wards, activated items, and upgrades. You then create a deck to suit your favorite heroes and then take them in to battle. The cards you pick will represent the items you can purchase with card points, which are earned alongside xp. These items are added to your slots, and then you can add upgrades to them as the game progresses by spending more card points. On Gideon, I frequently upgraded my items with the Caster upgrades, which increased my Energy Damage output, as well as the Mana and Health upgrades which increased my maximum mana and hp respectively. There are also items I've obtained that provide stats such as attack speed, physical armor, energy armor, life steal, critical strike, and other basic stats that you find in other MOBAs. The idea behind this card system is that the more you play, the more cards you earn, which in turn gives you better items and more options for builds. This is a unique take on things that might make some people angry due to a potential advantage somebody might have over a player that doesnt have as good of a deck, but the fact that you can not get cards by spending real money means that the only way to get cards is to play the game more and more, which equalizes out. A player with more cards than you has probably played more than you have, which means they are probably more skilled than you are which means they have an advantage any way.

     All that said, the game boils down in to a stereotypical MOBA that doesn't do a whole lot differently, but manages to execute the traditional mechanics perfectly. I wouldn't recommend purchasing a founders pack to anybody right now unless you REALLY want to get started, as there really isn't anything Paragon offers that any other established and free MOBAs offers already, but it is still a gorgeous, smooth games that I will be sinking a lot of hours in to. The game will be going free to play when it finally launches, and new heroes will be released for free every few weeks, so there's a lot to look forward to.

     All in all, Paragon is well worth it if you're looking for more of the same in a very pretty Unreal Engine 4 powered dress.

(If you are interested, a Paragon Founders pack can be purchased for $19.99 here: https://www.epicgames.com/paragon/founders)