Soul Knight Prequel – Category III Paragon Build (48B DPS)

Category III Paragon Build Guide

By JD.

• There are many good classes in the game, and some are very broken. But if you are looking for the most broken class in the game, Paragon is probably that class.
• Featuring Category III damage, on demand invincibility from unflinching (permanent if you time it right), 8000+ DEF with transform, really high block rate, extreme speed (240% movement speed from just transforming), large, fast cooldown leaps, and some of the biggest AoE attacks this game has ever seen, Paragon is just broken in every measure.
• I personally focused on building for scarecrow damage, but have consulted top Valk pushers regarding High Valk viability.
• In this showcase I will share my build and some of the thought process for the choices I made for the build. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment below.

Equipment

Weapon

[BiS] Grandmaster Claymore

Pros:

• Fixed FB Backlash (x1.5 dmg w/ Twin Novae)
• GM spirit (+80% all dmg when switching weapon)
• Relatively easy to farm via crafting from boss cards, and Grandmaster is on 24 hours a day
• Is not an insane weapon, so you can get additional 40/80 magic/atk power by using spirit chip instead of FB chip

Cons:

• Making the most of the GM spirit requires frequent switching of weapon, which is tedious and difficult to time without delaying the casting of other skills, so it’s not recommended unless you have Melo levels of skill

[Recommended] Banadurr (aka Banana)

Pros:

• Gives a lot of both magic and atk power, which is great since Paragon deals hybrid damage, making it pairable with any gear type (though for the purposes of this build it’ll be for the magic power) (x1.4-1.6x damage depending on your bonus AP and MP)
• Simple to farm – BAK has increased drop rate of insane, so it’s actually a lot easier to farm for Banana than other insanes (e.g. Valor Necklace), login during 6-8pm local time and combo that with the daily invite scroll. If you want to farm during other hours, projection playground can also drop Banana.

Cons:

• Fixed Spirit FB is dedicated for DK, and thus is useless for Paragon
• Fixed FB Lifesteal is not great for Paragon, though I suppose it does give some extra survivability (wastes 3 FB slots)
• As it is an insane, it will be harder to reroll to get the perfect Banana vs other non-insane weapons
• As insane spirit chips do not exist anymore, you lose out on the bonus 40/80 atk power you would get with boss spirit chips

[Viable Alternatives] Tidepincer Staff / Pirate Anchor / Archknight Sword

• Similar to Grandmaster Claymore, but has other FBs used in the build as fixed FB
• Tidepincer Staff is magic power, which balances out the hybrid damage against the str set (even though the staff would give 1000 MP and the set only gives around 300 AP, so it’s not super balanced like Banana is)
• Pirate FB deals a little bit of additional bludgeoning (which gets converted to light through Heroic Transformation), and can make them drop some extra gold (which is kinda trivial, but hey, we take free gold right?)
• These two are both not as good as GM Claymore, so unless you find a crazy drop, you might as well get GM claymore instead
• Archknight sword is just an inverse of the other sets, you would just use GM/Tidepincer/Pirate armor instead with the same pros and cons.

Armor

[BiS] 2 pieces Archknight, 1 piece Pirate

• Fixed Spirit FB Archknight gives +400% melee damage and is very OP (if you are using 2 piece, you must also use the Archknight Eidolon)
• Fixed FB Valiant gives +200% damage when targets are above 70% HP. Since this build does so much damage that it one shots everyone, that’s basically just +200% damage. This even works with scarecrow since it is a category III class and thus heals the scarecrow to max hp every time (see video)
• Fixed Spirit Pirate is useless
• Fixed FB Serendipity is an essential FB for this build

[Viable Alternative] 3 piece Archknight

• Similar to BiS, but easier to farm since it’s only 1 boss
• Instead of Archknight Eidolon, you can use Don Kruul Eidolon, which gives free +30% all damage

Notes:

• The reason why 2 piece AK 1 piece Pirate is BiS is because Valiant and AK stack additively to each other, so an additional piece of Valiant is actually not as important as an additional Twin Novae, which we will cover later on.
• If fully built, 3 piece AK is around 10% weaker than BiS
• This build requires 2 4-piece FBs (Epicenter and Serendipity). Make sure at least one of them is helxed onto your boots, because boots cannot gain light pen as a modifier, so it’s better to sacrifice the superior mod upgrade from your boots than other armor

Necklace

[BiS] Valor Necklace

• Gives x160% damage on hammer (which is the main dps skill), obviously very OP
• When attacking (including Novae and Backlash attacks), 40% to gain resolve – combined with 4 piece Serendipity is 100%. Since the Might buff consumes resolve to double your damage, this effect is central to the build
• Fixed FB Twin Novae – Decent boost to damage, and is one of the FBs of the build
• This is an insane item and, unlike Banana, does not have a boosted drop rate. So you will be spending quite a while grinding one, and it will be very costly to farm more drops for better blue modifiers
• But it is great that this also drops from AK, so you can farm everything at once.

[Alternative (not really viable tbh)] HH: Electro

• If you cannot get Valor Necklace for some reason, Electro is an okay replacement.
• Combo with boons to get shock ailment for x130% damage
• No fixed FBs allows more flexibility but also requires more rng
• This is just worse in every way… Just get the Valor Necklace

Ring

[BiS] Prestidigitator

• The fixed cooldown ability is required for Paragon to function without significant cooldowns, so just get this.
• Since this can only be farmed from Vault of Embers, the rng sucks and you just have to roll for it.
• Make sure you get one of the non-fixed FBs as your fixed FB on presti, more on this later.

Fatebounds

Spirit FBs (the top FB of each gear piece):

• 3 piece GM / Tidepincer / Pirate / Banana
• 3 piece Archknight (1 comes from Eidolon if you are running 2+1)
• 1 piece Presti
• 1 piece Valor

Non-Spirit FBs (middle and bottom FBs)

• 4 piece Serendipity (you need 4 piece to keep constant resolve, even 3 piece + varE pet does not work)
• 4 piece Epicenter (x384% damage, it’s just very very strong. Since Paragon has such a big AoE anyways, this doesn’t make the class unviable for Valk and farming, see the video. You can choose to only have 3 piece Epi and use 3 piece Twin Novae instead for less damage and bigger AoE. For farming or climbing Valk, I recommend building another weapon that has Blowout instead of the Epicenter so you can quickly switch between big AoE and big damage).
• 3 piece lifesteal (Banana) or Backlash (Everything else) (x150% damage since it increases your hammer hits from 2 to 3)
• 3 piece Valiant or 2 piece with 2 + 1 build (explained above)
• 2 piece Twin Novae or 3 piece with 2 + 1 build (explained above)
• Note – Make sure you take inventory of what FBs are fixed on your gear sets and avoid getting those on your third slot.

Skills

• BiS for +1 skill level is Heroic, Might and Hammer. You should also use lv 7 chips for these skills.
• Luminance Grace, Lambent Aura, Unflinching is also decent, but not as good.
• Use Red Heal chip (blue for scarecrow to replenish HP) and Red Speedy Cooldown.

How to Play

Farming / Valk Climb

• For farming and Valk climb, transform and then use hammer once in a while to clear enemies. The AoE is massive, so you only need to use one in a while.
• To increase speed, you can also combo with leaping strike to dash even further even faster.
• When fighting a boss, also cast Circle of Consecration to gain additional extra light damage
• If you are lazy, simply transforming will activate the shield blast passive, so you can just walk through the stage and all the enemies will die. The blast does up to 2b damage to scarecrow, which should be enough to make floor 1-500 a breeze for Valk.

Scarecrow

• Transform and put down a Circle of Consecration, then just hold down hammer.
• You don’t actually need to cast your buffs as transforming each of your buffs twice, and every time you hammer those buffs get recast
• Make sure to recast your circle and speedy > heroic > transform when they run out.

I hope you found this helpful!