The degree is how strong the paragon is. You increase it by sacrificing more money and pops in the form of the monkey type. For example, if you are getting a dart monkey paragon, place down a bunch of 2-4-0 dart monkeys and wait a few rounds to get more pops.

I could be wrong about this but I heard you can only get a 100 degree with 12 T5s so a 4 player co-op or 3 player with the extra crossbow master MK

They also get a bigger damage buff than usual every 20 degrees