Hello guys and gals and welcome to my guide, dedicated to top lane Pantheon!
Pantheon is a spell based champion for the main part. He has a very strong lane phase, even putting to knees some, otherwise, lane terrors such as Darius or Garen. He has good base damage on his spells, which is why I play him the way I do; max CDR and as much armor penetration as possible.
Through this playstyle, you achieve your ultimate goal as pantheon in any game, which is to shutdown the enemy laner completely for the rest of the game and shine during mid game. Later on, in late game, pantheon falls off so you need to build defenses as well.

Don't worry, we'll talk extensively for all of the above stated stuff later on, in their respective chapters.

Let's start from the runes. These little tiny pieces of whatever-they-are-made-of serve to enhance your stats, especially in early stages of the game.

Marks
Marks are usually (if not always) used for their offensive stats. Usually you may see magic pen marks on ap casters, flat ad marks on most ad top laners and marksmen, atk speed marks on junglers and other more special champs or even hybrid pen marks on some tanks or champs like vladimir and swain. And what about armor pen marks, you may ask. Armor pen are also quite popular especially among AD casters and assassins because these type of champs boast good base damage like you do. For pantheon, I suggest 9x armor pen marks so that you can cut down the extra armor that every top laner uses and hurt them just from level 1. However, you can use a mix of AD and ArPen for ability scaling and better last hitting. If you are bad at last hitting, you can use just flat AD Marks, which is also fine :)

Seals
Seals are usually flat armor or flat hp. Armor vs AD laner, flat hp vs AP laner. Simple.

Glyphs
Usually, top laners, even the physical damage ones, can dish out some magic damage too. You need flat magic resist for that. They are also helpful against ganks from enemy jungle and mid. If the enemy team is in total lack of magic damage, i guess you could use mana regen for extra lane spam. I would avoid cdr glyphs since with this build, you already go for max CDR (45%).

Quints
Quints are used for any type of stat. Offense, defense, utility... With pantheon, I suggest Flat AD for that early extra AD which helps with trades, spell damage and makes your crits even stronger.

Masteries are a subject of personal preference. However, to my understanding, there is only one mastery which you must max out (5 points) and that is Intelligence . This is a max CDR build and this gives you 5% of it right off the spawn without making the cdr from the items you will build any less worthy, since it also increases the notorious cdr cap by 5% (from 40%

---

>45%).

for all the rest, make decisions based on your personal preference while applying common sense :)

Core Items:




Let's say the Gods curse you and for the rest of your life, all games you will play will end only after all non-afk players in the game have completed their builds. In the games where you will play pantheon, these should take 3 of your item slots. Ok maybe not last whisper but one of its upgrades. Black Cleaver and Frozen Heart along with the Intelligence mastery, give you 45% cdr which is the maximum achievable percentage of cdr atm. These means, you will be able to spam your spells as often as possible. Frozen heart gives you the mana required to spam a lot and black cleaver actually makes it really rewarding to spam all your spells since this will bring down the armor of your opponent. Cleaver also gives you some movement speed which is precioussssssss. Note that cleaver's armor reduction is a debuff so by building this, you are a team player since both the adc and the rest of the team that is AD (if any) also benefit from this. If you read the description of the item you will probably ask yourself how the feck you are supposed to apply these stacks fast enough. Heartseeker Strike. DAT. Last whisper lowers their armor even more (only for you tho, not your teammates) and both its upgrades are super cool. Choose an upgrade depending on how tanky/beefy the enemy champions are, or if they have huge heals.
DUCK YO MAMA

When I discuss frozen heart with some people, they tend to say that it is useless vs AP. That is true. But in any game there will always be at least 1 enemy guy/gal that is depended on autoattacks and therefore, attackspeed, so this is essential early game. Now, in the rare case that enemy top, jungle and mid are all ap, you can just buy a glacial shroud and sit on that until late game where you will need it vs enemy adc.

Now I hear you asking why I am building these 3 for max CDR and not some other 3 items with moaaaarrrrr damages. Scroll up the page and witness the #yolo build. This build has far superior damage to the normal ones and makes better usage of heartseeker strike passive. However, pantheon falls off dramatically late game, he is not a pure assassin so he cant kill an apc or adc that easy and therefore he must make some defenses in order to be able to take some hits. Plus, teams usually depend on top lane (along with jungle and supp) for tanks/bruisers. That being said, I firmly believe that the yolo build is perfect if you decide to play pantheon in the middle lane.


TO CONCLUDE!!!!
As long as you build these three in an every day game (=not-those-you-are-like-30/0-from-3-minute) you can chose the rest three (boots+other 2) from the list I made in the cheat sheet.

Flash + Teleport
Flash + Ignite
Flash + Exaust

Flash is a must. Use it on pantheon or die.

Teleport for global presence, better roaming, safer laning

Ignite helps to kill more easily other people. Best anti heal stuff in game.

Exhaust vs too mobile team or team of autoattackers.

In my head. Coming soon...
Elaborate matchups, combos, gameplay advice and greek history (just to teach some people what was sparta what is a myrmidon and what the **** was going on with persians)