Paganini Strategy Guide

1. Hero Role

Paganini is a mid row Mage with strong crowd control and energy stealing capabilities, maybe even the strongest in the game. The rub is that he’s very squishy, so he needs help from his teammates if you really want to put a string of Sleep spells together.

2. Equipment Skill

There are two trains of thought when it comes to choosing equipment skill for Paganini. The first is to go with his 7th equipment, Robert’s Gauntlet, allowing him to cast ultimate early for a strong single-target disabling effect, which is quite effective when facing a solo-tank opponent. The second choice is his 5th equipment, Sebastian Shield, which can protect him from huge AOE attacks from the enemy. Of course, if you can manage it, it doesn’t get any better than the 8th equipment, Force Book, with its protection + disabling effect.

3. Captain Skill

For Captain Skills, we recommend huge-burst single-target damaging skills like Meteor, Fireball, or Chain Lightning. We don’t recommend sustained damage skills like Lightning Blast or Venom Aura because they might awaken targets who are under a sleep effect from Paganini’s green skill.

4. Lineup Pairings

To live up to the billing as best CC hero in the game, a lot of consideration needs to be put into which heroes you pair with Paganini. There are quite a few options for his AoE crowd control, Sleep effects, and energy steal. Below are a few lineup recommendations:

1) Lee + Paganini + Ruby (Awakened) + Coco + Mira
The idea behind this set is to make the most of Paganini’s powerful crowd control capabilities by matching it up with lots of small area of effect damage-dealing heroes. Because Paganini’s control skills are strong but easily disrupted by any damage dealt by his team, using these small AoE skills will avoid awakening enemies as much as possible, giving your team a numbers advantage. Add in Awakened Ruby’s huge crit strike buff for “Bullet Time” heroes to crank up the team’s damage output (if Ruby’s not awakened, then try using Sue), and you’ve got a lineup that will easily defeat a half-legendary “Kung Fu” team with over 20K more power than you.

2) Monk Sun + Paganini + Little Red + Ariel + Sue
This set takes advantage of Paganini’s other strong suit: energy stealing. His blue skill and passive can greatly reduce the enemy’s ability to store up energy, and his various crowd control effects will also restrict the amount of energy enemies are able to build up. In this lineup, aside from Monk Sun, all 4 other heroes have skills that reduce the opponent’s energy. Throw a CC Tank like Monk Sun on top of Paganini’s chain of disabling skills, and you’ve got a lineup that will make short work of the high and mighty “knock up team”. By the way, I’d also like to point out that in this fight, only the opponent’s Theresa in the back row cast her ultimate.