Dwarven Paragon

The elite of the Norkrak dwarves, Paragons are just that - paragons of dwarven martial might.

Girded in the heavy black plate of the dwarven elite, these stout warriors make a fine addition to any block of infantry, able to endure a great deal of incoming projectiles and either wade into an enemy on the offense, or letting the foe break upon them on the defense.

Most seem to prefer to use great-weapons in battle, mainly dwarven great axes and halberds, but a fair chunk also make use of one-handed hammers and fighting axes and it's far from abnormal to see a group of them let fly with a barrage of Dwarven Throwers, specially designed and enchanted throwing hammers that appear to be used solely by these elites among the Norkrak Realm's troops.

That said, while fairly quick for such heavily armored warriors, they are still somewhat slow thanks in part to their reduced stature and the simple mass of their armor. As such, they can definitely be worn down through scratch damage when faced with sheer volume of fire, and they are extremely vulnerable to AOE damage from magic even on lower difficulty settings (such as from a balrog's fiery parting gift to its slayers or from a firing line of drow mages.) As many use two-handed weapons besides the dwarven halberd, they are also vulnerable to cavalry, with their only real defense being clustering up with a block of their fellows and hoping they don't get scratch-damaged to death by horse archers or end up on the receiving end of a couched lance.

That said, in either case once they've reached an opponent or a rider has become bogged down amid the the dwarven shield wall, they typically dispatch their opponents quite handily.

Their preference for great weapons also makes them less than ideal for offensive sieges, as lack of protection and relative sluggishness means enemy rangers are likely to have chipped away a significant portion of their health pool by the time they've reached the top of the walls - assuming enemy mages haven't blasted them off the ladders already.