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She is not meant to carry the game, she's an assassin. You can deal huge amounts of DPS as another hero but it means nothing if they heal it all back. Your job is to take targets who are getting low on health and finishing them or pulling targets with low health pools into your team so they aren't a threat and can't respond when their frontline initiates. If your team is halfway decent and you're good at finishing targets who are trying to get away you can even build Glass Cannon and snowball with her. Many, many times, I've killed carries with a single combo with no chance for them to even react.
Her gun damage is decent, and you can box with people reliably while waiting for support to show up for a swap. Her carbine has very low range falloff, which makes it easy to slowly chip away at spirit shields and health with very little risk to Paradox. Cooldown items give her the ability to stop entire lane pushes because the team often doesn't want to deal with getting chunked for a third of their health every 10 seconds. It's basically Vindicta ult without the execute mechanic when built around.
I have 182 games played with her, 91 of them being wins, and my winrate improves the more I climb in MMR. You really need a good team to use her effectively, but when you get one, there's almost nothing the other team can do to avoid getting picked off one by one unless they hide in base.
Her gun is pretty good after the velocity changes, I will give her that. But she has no reason to build into gun damage outside that. We see some of the new Paradox top tier players building her into full punching: which is a clear sign of a hero that struggles a lot with consistent DPS (Shiv and Abrams being prime examples - but of course Abrams also gets the damage boost).
I have never, in any pro play match nor my own, seen Paradox 100 to 0 someone "without them being able to react". The advantage Paradox gets is that the opponent is in a position they don't want to be so they generally try to flee. This helps her a lot of course, but cannot be attributed to her ability to take out targets on her own. Damage wise you can pick almost any other hero and do the same thing while having a much easier time.
The only true advantage I can see her bringing to a draft is a swap. Her Q as an angle to how she's useful? Just pick Geist and do everything she does way better while being more tanky and having better dps. Her wall has been nerfed to bejesus and back as a utility tool. Carbine harass? Sure it's safe, but it also deals no damage and is more a vector to set up Mystic Shot. And as Paradox generally wants to set up Swap with Carbine as well you can't just randomly throw it out all the time either.
She firmly falls into the supportive character class, but I think what she brings to the table just isn't enough to warrant drafting. You can absolutely do well with her and her skill ceiling is very high, making her interesting to play. Imagine if you would have Vengeful spirit and you would take away her ability to swap allies. The hero would be so much worse.
I strongly suspect this hero will be considered bad once we get more support options. Her kit feels way, way too weak to compensate for the admittedly powerful ultimate.
Also, what do you mean Carbine is a setup for Mystic Shot? Carbine triggers Mystic Shot on its own, which is why you build it into Mystic Burst in lane for big chunky damage. Comparing her to a worse version of Geist makes zero sense, they're entirely different characters with different abilities besides Geist having a grenade. Wall was nerfed because it's extremely powerful in 1v1 situations and it still has the ability to silence late when fully leveled, which is the main concern in teamfights besides a little extra damage from swapping someone through it.
Of course her swap gives her viability in competitive play, of course if you removed it she wouldn't be good, but she DOES have it. I don't see what your point is here.
How many games do you have played on her?
What you are describing is not only an insane scenario (Mystic Reverb on Carbine, really?), it is also flat out not true. You can test the damage for yourself. I will admit I'm wrong when I think I am, but you are overexaggerating.
Attached a screenshot with items miles beyond what Paradox would buy in a normal game, on top of a headshot with Carbine:
https://i.imgur.com/WANvAmV.png
Not even reaching 400 damage.
The comparison to Geist was because the point of this thread was to find a reason why you would want to draft Paradox. You said Timebomb is a good ability to have in a team, but it's completely inferior to several alternatives. Paradox brings her swap to the team, and almost nothing else that other heroes don't do much better.
I have around 100 games on Paradox, but that has nothing to do with the argument. I have seen many pro players play Paradox, and even in those games almost everything she contributes is either through a massive skill-gap or just swapping people (most notably MichealS). I think this hero is very overrated just because good players do well with her stomping weaker opponents.
It's entirely realistic to build Mystic Reverb if you farm well. With Warp Stone you're annoyingly hard to kill and can get in and out chipping at them VERY hard unless they respect you. I'll concede that you can't carry by yourself, but she's extremely threatening if your team plays with you and you get a swap, because even if you don't, they have to run away and take the Carbine damage.
Spacing with her is very important. At endgame if the game is going long I have full slots, Fortitude to trade, Mystic Reverb, and sometimes even Glass Cannon depending on how well laning went. If they choose to build damage and neglect defense you'll nuke carries, and easily control engagements while doing very good damage.
She's fine. Swap will always be good enough to justify her.
https://imgur.com/a/DHuL5O8
It went on so long I got Echo Shard AND Refresher for memes. Long before this I had a core build that could do enough damage to get several kills. The initial burst doesn't have to kill them, you're an assassin. You hit them hard and chase them down then get out. She just also has the ability to initiate fights.
And the Replay ID: 27046374
With her built in slows, stops, silence on wall, and swap, she has a ton of CC.
The nerfs to wall hurt, and were probably done partly because of me.
I was telling people how insane it was to drop 5 silencing walls basically back to back, able to deal large chunks of enemy health without building spirit or gun.
The build still feels usable, it just doesn't feel as stupidly oppressive.
Even still I'm definitely getting more kills than deaths in most of my games, despite the claims that her swap is a trade, because durability is kind of an obvious way to build her.
That's such a weird example.
For one, you gave her end game items, but clearly didn't level her up, which affects a lot.
But for two, you're only going off bullet items. You do know that even though it scales off bullet damage, it still triggers things like Mystic Burst because it does spirit damage, right? And that non-weapon items still boost weapon damage?
I personally only use it for the speed boost and time stop, since I prioritize Wall->Swap->Bomb but now I'm curious how a Carbine build would feel.
Even still, I don't expect it to do as much damage as Talon's Arrow or Vindicta's ult, which only do damage, they don't have utility built in.
What no? This was to illustrate a point. Of course this isn't a valid build lol...
I already stated that Carbine is just a means to apply Mystic Shot, but you seemed to disagree, so I left it out.
Credit where credit is due: this is a lot of damage for any hero. But again it's anecdotal evidence. I can produce 70-90k damage in a 50m game with even the worst heroes in a regular game IF I happen to take off. It does not constitute much of a counterargument to anything.
I did level her up somewhat. The effect on Carbine is surprisingly minimal. And Carbine has 3/3 pips in it here. But yes: the example was to demonstrate primarily how poorly it scales with gun damage and how most of it comes from Mystic Shot (which I have said several times now).
Your build is how I see most competitive players play Paradox as well -- but that just reinforces my point: you draft her for her ability to swap people almost entirely. And I think that just isn't enough once there are going to be more support picks available.
You're convinced she's bad though she sees near constant use and play in the pro scene and that has not changed and likely will not unless she gets nerfed heavily. I don't see why we're arguing about Mystic Shot and how it procs, your initial complaint is that she doesn't do damage, which is just not true. The game I linked was NOT a stomp. Nobody even came close to the numbers I was putting up, and they had 50 minutes to average out and get to full build and nobody even came close.
If you're still convinced she's bad just pick somebody else and move on. She does not need buffs to damage. The only thing I would change about her is making her invuln during the swap so you can't be hit with charged melee mid swap if they're already charging it up.
To clarify, the item they're referring to is Mystic Burst (Tier 1 item). Anyway, continue with the discussion :)
Of all the abilities in the game, only a few of them enable the use of the tech, but some items also allow it. Suffice to say, if your character happens to be the one of only a few that has an in built ability that can Heavy Melee Cancel, they get to do a lot more with it.
Paradox is one of those Heroes.
Activating Carbine (Not shooting it, the act of starting it's timer with 3) cancels Heavy Melee. Doing so has at least one obvious application of feinting to cause a parry to wiff, but the other is the mobility spike it offers, especially with the item Melee Charge, which extends the distance your Heavy Melee throws you forward, and the velocity.
Doing the Heavy Melee Cancel can also carry your momentum. Cancelling a jumping Heavy Melee with Carbine as Paradox is lunging does not cancel the momentum, and gives a large speed boost. Abrams can also do this with Siphon Life.
Fleet Foot lets any character do it. More importantly, it lets any character with an ability that lets them cancel a Heavy Melee do so twice.
This isn't something you should need convincing of, if you've SEEN it you know it's stupidly powerful at a glance, to the point where there's real discussion to be had over whether or not it should exist. It was in fact patched out, but it was also re-introduced because it's kind of fun, and it's not a 100% unbeatable megaglitch.
I also have issues with your demonstration:
But having 4 massive Weapon items isn't an "insane scenario"?
Thanks for the context on heavy punch canceling.
The goal I tried describing was SUPPOSED to be insane. It was to show that even under extreme circumstances Carbine does not deal respectable damage.
The entire point of this thread was that I think Paradox is highly overvalued just because she does one particular thing really well. I strongly suspect this hero will be seen as much worse once more options filling a similar niche come around.
I think it's bad for the game to base balance off if a character abuses a bunch of canceling / movement mechanics that are unintuitive for new players
"Cancelling a jumping Heavy Melee with Carbine as Paradox is lunging does not cancel the momentum," seems more like an unintentional edge case to me, and from a new player's perspective just makes the game less internally consistent.
Having said that, I think it's neat tech. If they nerf it, I'd prefer it be removed from abilities but left on items, that way any character could still make use of it, rather than having just a couple who can Superman across the map in one swoop.
Oh, so you did. My mistake, I've seen a lot of low/mid players try to build this anyway, so it doesn't seem outlandish to me, although I wouldn't build it. I'd build Reverb after the must builds for sure, though.
Still, the Vit and Spirit items with weapon damage add up, and the fact that Mystic Shot isn't in there is case and point; despite being only tier 2 and having less overall weapon damage that some of those tier 4's, it's a must have item for Carbine Paradox, because it happens to have direct synergy with Carbine in being the shot you want it to proc on, and because it scales with Spirit Power, any Spirit you get adds to that shot.
Basically, Carbine, despite scaling from Weapon Damage, can be made to scale with Spirit Power via Mystic Shot.
(Note, it doesn't make Carbine multiply the damage from Mystic Shot, but the damage is added on to the same shot regardless, so in effect, Carbine ends up scaling with both if you pro Mystic Shot with it).
Your demo did not have Spirit Items.
Mystic Shot scales at 0.8.
And just to be clear again, this isn't because Mystic Shot is busted OP, it's not, it just so happens that it works really, really well with Paradox in particular, making it a must pick up for Carbine builds to the point that it's preferable to keep it for as long as possible, even forgoing T4 items for it until forced to.
So first, the one particular thing she does really well happens to be one of the best things you can do in the game.
Secondly, taking stock of your gaps in knowledge, it makes sense that you'd think she's overrated, because you just don't understand why she was as powerful as she was.
However, you point about filling a similar niche is 100% correct.
Once more tools exist that partly emulate the utility of Paradoxical Swap or Time Wall, the less of a monopoly she will hold over the initiator role. This is the solution, and I think this should happen.
I want to say the same with McGinnis' wall, maybe a door sized barrier active item that you can use to block a normal sized door, but can be destroyed with a little bit of damage. This also doubles as a weaker Paradox Time Wall, and portable cover, it's uses would be pretty broad.