Views: 1061 Pantheon Rework First Impressions
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After six normal games of jungle Pantheon, I have a few thoughts on our reworked Spartan.
Skins and splasharts. Amazing. Riot really did a great job on these. Mordekaiser got shafted in comaprison. (a little sad that they took he-man pantheon and made him into road warrior pantheon).
Gameplay feels smooth outside of the ult delay, but his previous ult also had a long delay, so it feels similar.
Still has his point and click stun in Shield Vault.
Comet Spear and Aegis Assault have decisions around how to use them.
His passive Mortal Will gives him more decision points around when to use which ability for maimum effect.
His mana costs are still high, which forces you into a Corrupting Potion start for lane or Hunter's Talisman for jungle for the passive mana regeneration while you are in the jungle. I held a lane against a Riven for a while in one game when my Top laner rage quit and I did try a few combos to see how I would do against her and that is when I noticed tha that a full rotation of abilities would drain 3/4 of your mana. Fortunately I was able to run over and get Blue buff for mana sustain in-between waves.
I haven't tried anything except the Electrocute page for jungle. And I've been going pretty much the same item build, with Enchantment: Warrior into Black Cleaver with boots of choice as my core. I felt the most robust when I picked up Death's Dance as my third item. That along with Aegis Assault let me survive a lot of abuse, but that is a lot of gold to fork out to get there. It is possible that it might be worth getting as a second item, the downside being that you are missing out on 10% CDR and the rage passive for sticking to targets.
I've yet to try Youmuu's Ghostblade as a second item but it is on my list.
Matchups
Kindred is the only notable jungle matchup that I've experienced so far. She pretty much seems to be able to eat your lunch at all stages of the game. Sure you can stun her, but unless you are ahead enough to 1 shot her (and she has her ult to prevent that) her kit allows her to easily kite you out while laying down enough damage to put you down, unless they are dumb and they dump everything into your Aegis Assault.
Clearing
Gets a little lower than I would like on a Red, Wolves, Blue, Gromp clear route. Enough that going to contest scuttle after is questionable.
You can do a Red, Krugs, Raptors clear for level 3, but you do it at a snails pace. The scuttles will be within 20 seconds of spawning by the time you finish that route and get over to the blue side of your jungle.
I think some sort of hybrid route will evolve, such as Red, Raptors, Wolves, Blue or Red, Krugs, Wolves, Blue. In any case you can pull the Raptor trick if you are running Hunter's Talisman of Red into Raptors where you are only popping Aegis Assault on the Raptors in order to heal up before heading over to the blue side of your jungle.
Ganking/Map Presence
If you want to level two gank you level Shield Vault after Comet Spear. How you approach a gank is likely going to vary based on how many passive stacks you have. For instance if you have 4 stacks going into the gank you will want to walk into lane and then use Shield Vault when they try to run away. This will give you five stacks. If you can stick with them, lay down as many auto attacks as you can and try to finish them off with a charged Comet Spear as it will give you additional damage if they are below 25% health. You can charge your spear and Flash to get more range on the spear.
I'm not going to say that I have all the ins and outs of his ultimate figured out. It is helpful to join fights or position yourself behind enemies that are sieging one of your turrets from level 6 and onward. But late game, ulting in ahead of your team is likely a suicide mission unless you can bring a Shen in with you. Late I feel like it would better used to catch out low health targets that are fleeing assuming you have vision of them.
;tldr
I like the rework. I feel like he may be just a bit weak on average, though the more I played him the more damage I felt like I was getting out of his kit. It looks like Riot may have some tweaks as far as his jungle proficiency in a future patch, so we shall have to see where that lands him.
Probably can't outfight a Master Yi either, so I'm really wondering what Pantheon is? A bruiser that can't bruise?
Out of the jungle your most reliable kills are ganking a lane with assistance from your laner and popping them with a spear in the back as they run away on low health.
Tank assassin? Like I really don't know what niche he is intended to fill. He isn't a duelest. Isn't a bruiser. Isn't a tank. Kind of odd mix of assassin, pseudo tank, with really conditional assassination ability (he does drive buys pretty well, but only on one target, unless two low health targets happened to be clustered together).
He is kind of fun to play for me, but when you start realizing he loses 1v1 fights to just about every melee champion (EVEN WHEN AHEAD) what have you got? He reminds of Yasuo with no minions around. Squishy low mobility ADC type.
Got several more games of Pantheon in last night.
I feel like he is almost, but not quite, there. I've been leaning into lifesteal to try and paper over some of his deficiencies. But where you get it is is important. Blade of the Ruined King feels really nice into champions that you can autoattack/tanks, and the extra attack speed can help you stack your passive quickly in order to get off more empowered abilities. But, it leaves you squishy if built early.
Currently trying the bruiser build with Ravenous Hunter instead of Relentless Hunter. The problem is that one vs the other is definitely a trade off as the later lets you get into position to get your stun off, especially after a slightly misplaced ultimate.
The other thing that I've learned is important is that there are a lot of situations in which you need to hold onto Aegis Assault because the cool down is high enough that if you use it to block something nonessential or just to get three extra stacks of your passive then it is likely not going to be back up when lethal damage comes through. It also locks you out of being able to chuck a spear for the duration which could allow a fleeing low health target time to get away.
Grand Starfall needs work. The damage feels anemic. Landing it is non-intuitive. it is fairly easy to step ouside of its path to avoid the damage. And there is no indicator other than an on the way ping (which sometimes gets lost in the chaos of a battle) so your teammates can't tell what is going on.
I feel like given that Aatrox is billed as his arch-nemesis that grievous wounds somewhere in his kit would be appropriate. And I think it would help several match-ups where in which a preeminent fighter/bruiser type doesn't really feel that good into other fighter/bruiser types.
Oh and add Udyr to the list of champions that can take your lunch money even if you are ahead in items you can't brawl with tiger Udyr.
So, if we are keeping score (i am!): Jax, Udyr, Kindred are champions that rofl stomp you in my experience.
Ekko might also be on this list, but I'll have to try that matchup again when not behind three-four levels due to league locking up on me getting me off to a much delayed jungle start. Where I think he might be problematic is the fact that he can engage and re-engage after you've blown your cool downs, giving him the advantage in most encounters.
Jax is hard to deal with as Pantheon, espeically when you feed the [family friendly blog] out of him, by having your Bot lane go aggro on their Bot lane when Jax is clearly visible on a couple of wards taking scuttle crab on the Bot side of the map and your Renekton who before that was winning lane desides to push up over and over again with no wards and start repeatedly dying to lane ganks by the Jax.
But, better jg wins!
And holy bejeebus the Zed started doing his best impression of Private Hudson (see Aliens), "Jax is fed, I repeat, Jax is fed. It is is game over man, game over!" in chat. Like STFU and play.
Played at least one game with each Pantheon skin.
Switched to using Cheap Shot instead of Sudden Impact.
Switched to Red > Krugs > Raptors > Gank > Scuttle > Gank type pattern. Pretty effective at blowing some summoner spells and potentially picking up some kill depending on what your laner brings to the gank.
Not bored yet, which is saying something for me.
Still a little hesistant to take him into ranked espeically with buffs on the horizon in 9.17.
But as one coach asked me, "are you planning on joining the LCS so your winrate and rank matters?" Nope. "Okay then. If you find ranked fun and/or rewarding then just queue up and play."
With the prevalance of things like Kai'Sa and Blade of the Ruined King and other sources of healing I find myself picking up Thornmail a lot as my armor of choice.
Going Death's Dance third item does leave you a bit on the squishy side even if it helps prevent you from being instantly killed (looking at things like Qiyana).
Panth feels like he can fit into most comps. I do find I stuggle against comps with massive AoE. Things like Brand + Amumu + Katarina. The damage they can put out together is just ludicrous.
Enjoying Panth enough that he feels a champion I could enjoy maining and that is not a feeling I've had often, Shyvana in her heyday (?season 6?), when she could farm like crazy and then stomp the Mid game.
Hail of Blades might become one of his best keystones because you can fully stack Mortal Will again after using your empowered Shield Vault super fast. I only tried Conqueror so far and that felt meh. Not great early and since lategame is already hard enough it's not really worth it IMO. Electrocute is probably better.
Hail of Blades might become one of his best keystones because you can fully stack Mortal Will again after using your empowered Shield Vault super fast. I only tried Conqueror so far and that felt meh. Not great early and since lategame is already hard enough it's not really worth it IMO. Electrocute is probably better.
I think some of the weakness comes from the fact that there were some matchups that were brutal for the other champion because a well played Pantheon could block a ridiculous number of auto attacks or turret shots (like 4?). He doesn't offer that so those matchups got a lot easier on the other side. But he will be better in other matchups now.
Damage wise I feel like he still falls off late and it gets hard to use his ultimate without a lot of consideration to how not to instantly die, so that is a source of damage from him that becomes somewhat unreliable (but he was like that before too). I suspect in most comps he should transition to a get pick and then run back and peel for his carries type of play pattern.
I'll have to try Hail of Blades. Was thinking about Conqueror so good to have your view on it. Supposedly Press the Attack is also viable on him.