Epic Games are throwing open the doors to Paragon on August 16 with an open beta, but before that there are massive changes including a new hero to add.
As Paragon gets added to that growing pool, check out the best free games on PC.
The new hero, Khaimera, will arrive on June 21 is an in-your-face brawler who gains HP regen for every hit he lands, as well as being able to jump on top of enemies and pin them for a few more punches.
Over a million players have signed up to the Paragon beta since its announcement last year, but now the closed beta weekends and paid early access periods are over as the game goes into free-to-play open beta this August.
That means all 17 currently released heroes are free to play, and includes every hero to come – and Epic plans on releasing new heroes every three weeks until late into 2017.
Creative Director of Paragon Steve Superville told PCGamesN that they are expecting to have around 40 heroes through to September 2017.
On top of adding new heroes, existing heroes are continuing to be tweaked and in the newest raft of changes slated for June 14 the assassin character Kallari is set for a complete rework.
Part of this is due to a new design philosophy to remove passives which little player control, or to copy them onto relevant active abilities, as well as making the basic attack damage scale automatically instead of being a choice to level up.
In this instance, Kallari’s Marked for Death passive that showed low health enemies on the map has been added to the ultimate and levels up alongside that ability at the levels it is taken.
The ultimate itself has also been changed and now instead of a dash forwards through opponents Kallari can teleport onto any enemy player across the map dealing damage once she arrives. It’s useful for joining a teamfight or finishing off someone fleeing on low health, who you can see thanks to the ultimate’s new passive.
Several smaller changes have been made to the way Card XP is shared out in lane, now giving equal XP to everyone near dying minions but only full XP to the last-hitter if there are more than two heroes in a lane (to stop you ganging up and pushing early).
Minions themselves now only come out four at a time, to stop massive crowds of creeps getting in your way when you’re trying to skirmish, but they deal more damage to heroes and less damage to towers.
Inhibitors now longer respawn once destroyed, UNLESS you do something new with the map’s neutral objective, the Orb Prime.
The Prime has been changed quite a lot, now offering a big single-person buff to the carrier while they try to take it to one of two depositing shrines: one on their opponents side of the map, and one on their side.
The one on their side, the defensive shrine, is new and if you pop the orb in there you’ll magically grow all your dead inhibitors back. The offensive deposit still gives the amp damage buff the carrier holds to your entire team, like it has done before.
On top of these changes, the team is getting the game ready for competitive play as a draft mode is now in the game, so you can see what your team and your opponent’s team are picking staggered between you.
The team also revealed that they were looking at ways to rework how you move quickly around the map, as the travel mode currently in the game leads to some counter-productive gameplay decisions.
They have decided to remove the ability to run quickly at will, and also take out the ability to recall to base, but replace it with a teleport which can take heroes to any friendly structures on a 90-second cooldown. The telport won’t be needed to get back out to lane from base as a “Fast Track” conduit can take you from your inhibitor to your outermost tower, essentially for free.
The ability to move quickly through the jungle will also not be lost as the Shadow Pads throughout the twisting jungle lanes could act as speed boosts, offering an optimal route between lanes.
The team is also looking at a way to not force players to come back as often, by using Drop Pods which can drop every minute that allow players to buy their cards/items while in the field, but the pods can be destroyed by enemies.
None of the travel mode changes are yet in the game, or have a release date, but they are being considered.