Hey summoners, just wanted to share a Pantheon build that I've been having success with at the gold tier.

This Pantheon excels at tanking, initiating, split pushing, and countering split pushers.

The key to success with this Pantheon is using some of the new itemization to keep Pantheon from falling off, like he normally would.

The biggest part of that is Muramana. This item makes Spear Shot and Aegis of Zeonia along with your basic attacks deal damage based on your maximum mana. This provides Pantheon with the additional scaling he needs to allow him to continue to scale into late game by building CDR and mana items, in addition to AD.

This is an amazing combo that I love to abuse on Pantheon and Yorick.

The two items synergize extremely well.

Muramana grants 1000 mana, 2% of your max mana as AD, and 6% of your max mana as damage on each single target spell and auto attack. This makes pantheon scale extremely well offensively with mana since both his spear throw and aegis apply this 6% mana.

Iceborn Gauntlet grants you 500 mana, 70 armor, 10% CDR for more spears and stuns, and 30 AP which will add 30 damage to aegis and a bit of damage to your ulti. The item all adds spell blade which makes your next auto attack deal 125% of your base AD on your next auto attack and makes an 30% AoE slow in that area.

This item allows you to better stick to targets and lets your team catch up when you skyfall on to a target. The item also grants 500 mana which means it adds 10 AD and 30 physiscal damage on each auto attack and single target spell. Which translates to 44 (30+10*1.4) more damage per spear and 60 (30+30AP) more damage per stun, plus 40 (30+10) more damage per auto attack. That damage, plus the sheen procs and AoE slow makes the item extremely enticing, not to mention the 70 Armor and 10% CDR.

CDR with this build is extremely strong and should be a priority to maximize as soon as possible.

Pantheon has exceptional scaling with CDR both offensively and defensively.

Pantheon's passive aegis of protection will block an auto attack after 4 attacks/casts and also blocks an attack after he uses aegis of zeonia.

With full CDR, Pantheon can mitigate the majority of an ADC's damage against him with just blocks.

Also, the majority of Pantheon's damage is CDR related since the bulk of his damage will be from Muramana and the base damages on Spear Shot and Aegis of Zeonia.

With 40% CDR, Pantheon's spear throw drops to a 2.4 second CD and aegis drops to a 5.4 second cd.

You really want to max CDR to 40%. CDR get's more valuable, the more of it you obtain:
http://www.reignofgaming.net/blogs/a-different-view/vvinrar/stuff/24330-by-the-numbers-the-power-of-cooldown-reduction

Pantheon's semi-global ultimate allows him to be very flexible.

He is able to drop in on over extended targets from outside of ward coverage. This allows him to punish over extended champions, better than most. And with IBG built and especially with 40% CDR, he can really slow down an enemy's retreat to allow his teammates to catch up.

Since we are very tanky, we can also use the ult to initiate a team fight and not get exploded because we are a poor focus target.

We can also use the ulti to safely split push. If the enemy come to stop you in mass, you jump to safety. If they don't bring multiple enemies to stop you, you are an amazing duelist who can poke about anyone out. Your passive blocks tower hits, which makes you an exceptional fighter under enemy turrets.

If they bring a split pusher against you, you are well equipped.

You have a long range teleport to get to an engagement, you also have a low CD stun to stop them from TPing out. You also have solid wave clear with HSS, IBG, and potentially sunfire cloak.

I take Flash and Ignite

Flash will help you be trickier. Pantheon suffers from low mobility, but with flash he can escape ganks, wall hop and gap close from a longer distance than expected.

Ignite is great on Pantheon because it improves his burst potential. HSS makes getting people to 15% very deadly since a single spear throw is typically deadly at that point. Ignite grants you that extra damage to get them into kill range. With the mastery point, it also will grant 5 AD and 5 AP, which makes spear throw deal 7 more damage, auto attacks deal 5 more damage, and stuns deal 5 more damage while ignite is on CD.

My mastery selection is a good reflection of my build... BALANCED.

I take 9 points in offense for Weapon Expertise . Between Spear Shot, Muramana, Sheen procs, HSS, and basic attacks, the vast majority of pantheon's damage is physical, despite his secondary nuke dealing magic damage. Hence, Weapon Expertise will drastically improve Pantheon's damage.

I also place 9 points into defense. This raises my hp pool and main counter resistance against my laning opponent.

My last 12 points are placed into utility, primarily for sustaining power and secondarily to reduce the CD of my summoner skills.

There are very few viable options for spell vamp itemization on physical damage dealers. That makes the Vampirism skill desirable. I also enjoy the increased mana regeneration and further sustain provided by the Biscuiteer mastery.

I'm a huge advocate of capping CDR early and a huge fan of spell vamp quints.

So these might seem like wonky runes... but don't knock them until you try them.

So I run, 3 CDR runes, which provide 2.5% CDR. I run 3 CDR runes on every champion that I buy Ionian Boots of Lucidity and Ignite on. The boots provide 15% CDR, the runes provide 2.5% CDR and I'm grabbing 3% cdr from the Sorcery mastery. That adds up to 20.5% CDR. You then toss 20% more CDR from items ( Glacial Shroud and Kindlegem in this case)) and you're at the 40% cap with only .5% overshot which is nothing (the last rune is still worth getting due the exponential appreciation of CDR's value).

I run 6% spell vamp (Quints) on Pantheon as well. This gives Pantheon some much needed self healing power. The quints will allow Pantheon to mitigate incoming harass using the base damages on spear throw and Aegis of Zeonia. This falls in line with Pantheon's "poke you out of lane" play-style.

I run flat AD marks which work really well with the 1.4 bonus AD ration on his spear throw and armor seals to mitigate physical damage.

I've already talked about the most importing itemization highlights... I'll just further explain a few other things.

I start with a flask every game. I enjoy the flask because it provides the right amount of mana regan and healing to allow me to trade well. I only need to gain 775g before I return the first time. The flask gives me the perfect amount of sustain to get there.

I rush a tear. Tear of the Goddess is by far the most important buy for Pantheon. It allows Pantheon to freely spam his abilities every time they are off CD and that allows Pantheon to really self heal using his 9% vamp from runes and masteries and also pour out some serious poke. You also want to start charging tear as soon as possible to get the manamune to muramana where it really provides you with hefty offensive power.

After tear, I will typically pick up a Doran's Blade I like doing this because the tear doesn't provide you with any up-front combat stats, so I grab this to bulk up hp and also bolster my AD to catch me up in the "all in" department.

I typically will finish manamune after this. If for some reason I'm behind at this point, I might hold off and grab some defense first (either GS or kindlegem or boots depending on what I need).

Next I grab boots. Movement speed is important on Pantheon because typically you don't want to straight up fight people. You want to whittle with Spear Shot and disengage initiations with Aegis of Zeonia. So it's highly beneficial to be able to out walk people. The 15% CDR on these will also help you charge your tear faster and it's the cheapest CDR source in the game.

After boots, I build a Glacial Shroud. Item will improve your dps by providing CDR and it provides AD since it has mana on it. I immediately upgrade GS into IBG for more armor, sheen procs, more mana (more AD0, and the slow which helps peel, initiate, stick, and ect.

I next pick up a kindle gem or The Brutalizer to max CDR. If either of the other team's carries are doing well, the kindle gem is the better option, because you'll have to dive them and be able to take damage while doing so.

After this point, it's all about building what you and your team needs. You can build sunfire cloak for more tankiness, pushing power, and carry melting. You can build aura items such as Aegis of the Legion if your team needs one. You upgrade the kindlegem into a Shurelya's Battlesong for the active or upgrade to Spirit of the Ancient Golem for a cost effect hp boost and tenacity. Your build options really open up at this point.

I know there are a lot of people still stuck in the past who think leveling HSS is highest priority.

But with this build, HSS is actually the least important of your abilities.

That's not to say HSS is useless... it just isn't used in the way you'd typically think a lot of the time.

First off, we max Spear Shot first, followed by aegis of zonia. We max HSS last.

The reason we don't put a lot of stock into HSS is that it doesn't synergize well with Muramana and it's not very reliable. It's a channel ability that self roots pantheon. That makes it prone to being interrupted or walked out of and it allows you enemy to gain distance away from you. It also interrupts your ability to auto attack and only counts as 1 attack towards a block.

But it's far from useless. The good news is that it still generates Sheen procs, it is still a decent ranged poke, and it almost immediately deals 2 of it's 3 strikes in damage. This means you can cast the skill in between auto attacks for a decent amount of extra damage and an extra passive stack. And you can weave it into your skill rotation to get you a sheen proc that you otherwise would have to wait for and then self interrupt the channel and auto attack to use the proc. Also, the 100% crit against low hp targets is just as effective at level 1 as 5, making rank 1 HSS a pretty awesome little tool.

Make sure you use the Full Metal Pantheon skin when using this build. That way you look the part of the ultra tanky unstoppable killing machine.

The skill and deadliness of King Leonidas and the durability of Teutonic Knight.