The Spartan

Pantheon was one of the characters that has been around in League of Legends for quite awhile, I remember him being around when I first tried the game out about a year ago or maybe a little longer than that. However he's one of the characters that I found interesting because a lot of the characters at the time seemed unique in their own way and then there's a completely random spartan looking guy amongst the portraits. It wasn't until today and last night that I actually started to try him out though, so without further ado, this is what I've deducted.

Unlike most champions I tried the testing phase out differently this time, rather than practice in the
Coop mode even though I feel like I should have still, I went straight to playing Blind Pick Dominion games. It was a completely new experience for me because not only did I have to figure out how to use his abilities even though I had glanced through them beforehand, but I also had to find out how to use them effectively. Luckily like most champions in the game his abilities weren't the most complex things to figure out, using them on the other hand was a different story.

First he has a passive that allows him to fully block an attack for every 4 spells and attacks that he does, the use of this I'm sure can be controlled by experienced Pantheon players to make him very deadly. However, as I found out, it doesn't block everything like I thought it would, instead it's limited to turret attacks and auto attacks. That doesn't diminish it's usefulness as he can effectively get rid a great amount of damage from people that focus on large hitting auto attacks such as Trynadamere or Vayne. This passive is also triggered by another ability called Aegis of Zeonia which allows Pantheon to leap a short distance towards his enemy and stun them for a second, doing minor damage, and it also immediately puts his passive shield up, letting him block the next attack. With how much Pantheon attacks and triggers the shield, it does block quite a bit of damage, however that is because Pantheon despite looking very intimidating and having a shield, is very squishy.

Like most squishy characters, he has the damage to make up for that instead of simply having damage reducing spells and CC spells. The other two skills that I didn't mention yet are Spear Shot which does quite a bit of base damage, and it has a full 100% attack damage modifier, allowing it to really start to shine when he gains more AD. The last one and his main attack for the most part is Heartseeker Strike, this is a aimed short cone attack that is channeled, it does 3 attacks with a good amount of AD modifiers as well as doing double damage to enemy champions, this is his main burst and it has a fairly short cool down, allowing him to back off if he so chooses to refresh it and burst again. It also has a secondary effect, allowing him to always perform a critical strike on targets that are under 15% with auto attacks, furthermore spear shot does more damage to enemies that are also within this health range, making Pantheon a very effective executioner.

So while all of these sound quite impressive, there are hidden draw backs of course. Pantheon isn't good at a single thing like most other melee champions are such as how Akali and Katarina have strong burst damage abilities, while Trynadamere and Master Yi are good auto attackers. This means he is at a considerable disadvantage constantly and the player must make up for that with a good item build that would allow him to have good auto-attack damage while also having high burst with his abilities. That is much harder to do in Dominion than it is in normal games because after doing a lot of both Classic, and Dominion, I can honestly say it's easier to get gold in Classic not only because matches last longer, but because last hitting minions is a much more abundant and reliable source of gold rather than the enhanced passive gold stream, and gold from getting kills or assists on champions. Furthermore, it is fairly rare to have a Dominion game where you are able to get more than 3 endgame items, even 2 is sometimes stretching it, and most champions such as Pantheon don't reach their full potential until they're able to have all 6 items. That is a overall disadvantage for everyone though of course, so in the end it could also work out to Pantheon's favor.

In any case, what I did for Pantheon's item build were a number of things different from the first few guides on Mobafire.

1. Berserker's Greaves
2. The Brutalizer
3. Trinity Force
4. Infinity Edge
5. Sanguine Blade
6. Youmuu's Ghost Blade
7. Atma's Impaler or Frozen Mallet

Honestly all of the items in my list seem to work fairly well with him, however the real key to making him effective I found out is prioritizing which items to get first regardless of it's cost because of the short duration of Dominion games. I believe Berserker's Greaves can also be changed out for either Mercery's Treads or Ionian Boots of Lucditiy for either CC reduction or Cooldown reduction allowing Pantheon to burst more. The Bloodthirster of the normal Classic mode is easily replaced by Sanguine Blade which only has 5 less AD and it's also somewhat cheaper, it's also much easier to use unlike the Bloodthrister because it doesn't require you to build stacks off killing things and it simply stacks off hitting things, of which pantheon will build up the maximum amount of stacks very quickly. The defensive item is somewhat iffy for me, as defense doesn't really seem to be much of a priority in Dominion at all as while there are death penalties they're fairly minor. In regards of defensive items however, I still wanted to get one that would improve Pantheon's offensive capabilities so that led me to either Atma's Impaler for armor and critical strike along with some extra AD from his health, or Frozen Mallet which is health, AD again, and a more reliable snare. On the other hand however, Trinity Force is pretty useful even though it's snare isn't a guaranteed effect like it is on Frozen Mallet, but with Trinity Force you do still have a snare meaning that having two snares that don't stack isn't the most effective thing around. Also of course, you could replace the defensive item with a situational defensive item which I probably would do anyway like getting Thornmail for auto attacking teams or Warmog's armor if you wanted more health, and so on.

So with all of this aside, Pantheon's performance on the battle field is quite impressive actually, he is able to cut most people up very fast with a Spear Shot, Aegis of Zeonia, and then Heartseeker Strike at the same time however, it's somewhat hard to make sure that people do stand in the Heartseeker Strike for it's full duration to get the most damage out of it, in fact most people will quickly move aside after their stun is over and it'll waste a few of the strikes. It also has a shorter cool down than Aegis of Zeonia and you'll be able to use it before your stun is back up so if you want to use it during that time, it has to be completely aimed without keeping anyone in place. After all of his attacks are done he can either back off or auto attack, and from what I've seen with a fairly strong auto attack build, pantheon is actually a decent auto attacker being able to stand up to other champions like Sion, and Wukong, and definitely able to stand up to other assassin characters like Akali as after the initial burst, they should be low on health anyway. As for backing off to wait for cooldowns, that can be much harder than it seems as Pantheon has no escape abilities other than simply running away, so in general, bursting hard first then finishing the enemy off with auto attacks or at least softening them up and surviving long enough for another round of burst is the way to go for pantheon, and in the end if you get someone to 15% or lower they're basically dead anyway because of his 100% chance to critical strike on enemies that low.

One last tactic that Pantheon can utilize is similar to Gangplank, he is able to use Spear Shot to poke and harass his enemies before going in for a full brunt melee. This is much more effective in Classic mode of course as for the most part all Dominion engagements are full brunt assaults but I did use the poke tactic with Spear Shot now and then.

So, in the end Pantheon is a fairly viable champion in Dominion but like all champions, requires some getting used to, I would say somewhat more than champions such as Jax or Master Yi.