Hey all! I'm Sammon, I play League of Legends for fun with my sister and together we have found an interesting role for Pantheon - ADC!

We hope to show you how to achieve the baking skills to take any bot-lane off guard and have a blast while doing so!

Pros

Tanky for an ADC
Great for ganks
Awesome roam potential
Early-Mid power spike
Completely throws the enemy bot-lane off

Cons

Requires a lot of healing - especially in lane
Vulnerable to CC
Easy to poke
Easily bullied out of lane
Melee champion in a mostly ranged lane
Can't throw bread at the enemy

We have only played Pantheon with Soraka in botlane so our knowledge on other synergies is purely theoretical.

What you typically want for a Pantheon support is:
-Poke
Being a melee champion in botlane, you are going to get outranged 100% of the time. It is a must to have a support that will convince the enemy that getting close to you a bad idea.
-Healing
You will get bullied, A LOT. Having a champion like Soraka by your side is absolutely crucial for surviving the early game and keeping your health topped up.

I like to take Precision for Pantheon because it gives him an all round boost to damage while keeping his mana topped up for the majority of the game.

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This is so easy to proc with your Empowered Shield Vault and maximizes the damage your target receives from all sources (support, wink wink) for a few seconds.

Mana can be a huge problem for Pantheon especially early on. But with this rune, even if your teammate gets the kill, you instantly refresh 20% of your mana as long as you got an assist (doesn't work if your dead - can't overflow that one).

One of the worst things a melee champion has to face is CC. Tenacity (or, 'Crowd Control Reduction') reduces the duration of all CC and is especially helpful against champions that use a lot of CC like Morgana or Lux.

Dealing more damage to low health champions is particularly synergistic with your Comet Spear and is great for executions.

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This procs every time you use your Shield Vault and gives a short burst of damage during and after the vault.

This is a great rune for stacking your damage even further. Roaming early and getting take downs will help stack this early.

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Here I take 2 sets of extra adaptive just for the extra damage it deals. Taking the 'attack speed' is not a bad option - I just feel like more damage is more helpful than dealing that damage faster as you will usually have a tough time keeping up with champions and reaping the benefits of a high attack speed.

From my knowledge of the 3 defensive mini-runes, 'health' scales the most of the 3 while the 'magic resist' or 'armor' are more early game runes. Since Pantheon is more focused on early game we will be taking the defensive rune that best suits our matchup - 'armor' for Attack Damage champions like Caitlyn and Pyke or 'magic resist' for Ability Power champions like Karma and Lux.

Starting with Pantheon's passive:

You can Empower your spells by casting spells and attacking. At 5 stacks your next spell (Q, W, E) has a neat bonus applied to it (more on that later). Remember to keep this topped up by attacking minions!

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This is your base damage ability allowing you to thrust (tap Q) or throw (hold Q) your spear. Some important things to note: Throwing your spear will cause it to do 50% less damage after hitting the first target Your spear does more damage to targets below 20% health (great for executions) The cooldown is halved if you thrust (not throw) your spear Mortal Will Bonus: deal twice as much damage and slows all targets hit - this is great for chasing down enemies just out of your range.

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The bread and butter of Pantheon's combos. This ability allows you to dash to your target and stun them momentarily. This is a powerful way to bridge the gap between you and ranged champions or chasing down fleeing enemies. Mortal Will Bonus: Your next attack will hit the enemy 3 times dealing bonus overall damage and counts for 3 stacks of your next Mortal Will

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This ability allows Pantheon to block all damage from a direction for 1 second, deals damage over duration and ends with a slam that deals damage. With this you can counter burst damage like Bullet Time, Final Spark and Ace in the Hole. This ability can be stopped early (after 0.3 seconds) so you can cancel it if the enemy has jumped over you or you just need to stop it. Mortal Will Bonus: Increases the duration to 2.5 seconds and deals bonus damage over the duration.

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Pantheon jumps high into the air and crashes down as a meteor at the target destination. Similar to Twisted Fate's Destiny this ability allows to rapidly move to another area and deals damage when you land! This is great to use for ganking other lanes and it instantly readies Mortal Will so you are ready to enter your combos immediately!

Pantheon's kit allows him to pull off some interesting, unexpected and sometimes downright dirty plays.

The most important part of understanding Pantheon's combos is knowing how Mortal Will fits into the equation.
While you could:


This allows you to close the distance between you and your enemy, stun them and deal damage before safely disengaging but this doesn't realize the full potential of Pantheon.

But lets say we have 4 stacks in Mortal Will and wanted to dash to a champion for a quick trade:


Casting the Shield Vault fully stacked Mortal Will which allowed us to deal over twice the amount of damage with Comet Spear.

If we start with a fully stacked Mortal Will and add 2 basic attacks we get to build our combo into an Empowered Aegis Assault so we can more effectively disengage - this is our defensive all-in.


Because of the Mortal Will bonus on our Shield Vault we Empowered our next basic attack which stacked Mortal Will 3 times before completing the circuit with a Comet Spear, another Basic Attack and triggering an Empowered Aegis Assault.

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If we are already in-range we chunk out quite a lot of damage utilizing our Empowered Shield Vault. Lets say we start with 4 stacks of Mortal Will:


This is our offensive all-in. If the enemy has flashed/dashed out before we get our final stack on Mortal Will we can look for anything nearby ( minion, jungle plants) to hit for that final stack and then throw (hold Q) our Comet Spear. Its also important to note that we haven't used Aegis Assault incase we need it to disengage.

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If the enemy bot-lane is hanging around near turret or directly under it we can also turret dive early game by creatively timing our Mortal Will with Aegis Assault.
Say we start with 3 stacks of Mortal Will:


The goal here is to quickly finish them off while Empowering our Aegis Assault which we can use to block ~2 tower shots, which is usually unexpected early game and will take the enemy by surprise. This is still a risky move so try to only do it if you can guarantee a kill because they are unlikely to fall for it a second time.

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Dragon / Baron combo


Repeating this combo will allow you to trigger an Empowered Comet Spear as much possible to deal the most damage to dragon / baron.

Your priority at the start is staying alive and farming. Don't be afraid to back early because missing out of CS is better than getting killed - let your support take the minions that would damage turret.

If your in a good matchup and your support has poked the enemy down you can unlock your Shield Vault at level 2 and all-in otherwise keep it at Aegis Assault so you can survive any burst they deal and disengage safely.

Level 3 is usually when you can start all-in as you can engage with Shield Vault, deal damage with Comet Spear and disengage with Aegis Assault. As soon as you get Youmuus you can consider yourself a capable fighter who can confidently survive / take any champion on the map and start bullying the enemy botlane instead.

You will have mana problems at the start of the game, but as soon as you start getting takedowns Presence of Mind will take care of all your mana problems.

Remember to keep an eye on dragon! It is your responsibility to disrupt the enemies attempts to get dragon so make sure its properly warded.

Once you hit level 6 and get your Grand Starfall you can really start to roam around the map. If Mid lane is getting pushed or you need to quickly get to dragon then pop Grand Starfall and yeet it over there.

Mid-game is where you really shine so try to make the most of it because if the game runs for too long you will find your power level falling behind other champions.

In team fights you should target the the most dangerous champion with your Shield Vault to keep them stunned for as long as possible and tank as much damage as you can with Aegis Assault. You excel at dashing into the fight so don't be afraid to target their support in the back line - just be sure you can get out alive!

Focus on taking the mid-lane turret as that lane will help the team out the most. If you see an enemy split pushing then punish them for it with your Grand Starfall

You can now solo dragon so if you are alone in the bottom of the map so be sure to take it if the situation calls for it!

Late game is where you need to split push as much as possible and take as much of the enemy jungle as you can while you roam from lane to lane.

Due to your declining status as the teams fighter you shouldn't dive into the middle of a teamfight unless you have built tanky - try to dive on the squishy champions around the edges of teamfights (and where you can easily aim your Aegis Assault should things turn south.

As always help your jungler out with any objectives they are doing. If they are trying to secure Baron and its looks like they are going to fail then take dragon. Don't try to save Baron if you are unlikely to when there is another objective you can take to counter the pressure that will come from the enemy team taking Baron.

Always target inhibitors. They put so much pressure on lane - matches have been won just because the enemy couldn't deal with all the minions!

All in all, Pantheon and Soraka bot is an interesting and fun matchup. Give it a try! Tell us what you think, and what can be improved - we appreciate the feedback!

10/08/2020 - Published!
10/08/2020 - Changelog added, Runes added