Hello, I have played Pantheon a few times, but seem to like this build best. Try it out and let me know what you think. As an assassin, your job is to get in, interrupt the carry/ nuker, bash the pusher's head in, pretty much take whatever they throw, and get out before back up arrives. This build pretty much allows you to destroy any/all opposition in a few seconds and still have enough hp to survive most surprises. Obviously, you can shift any items around accordingly. As well, I am not sure at what levels skills cap, the above skill/lvl guide is just a general direction. Max Heartseeker ASAP, it is your farm/ gank tool, keep Aegis at lvl 1 unless you can't level anything else, the stun is enough to get in your HeartSeeker Skill and get going, so higher levels aren't necessary.

You can see character Pros and Cons with most other builds, but here they are once again:
PROS:
Can be used with most builds, even AP, if you want to waste the time and money.
Powerful, he's an assassin after all. You can take down tanks like Cho at lvl 2-3 with ease if you play your cards right
Has range, AOE, CC.. pretty much has everything you want in a champ.
Massive range on Ult helps you be sneaky, and go almost anywhere, no target needed.
Self sufficient, you can gank, carry, push, or fight with pretty much no items at all
With this build, experience, and learning your timing, CC's usually don't make or break you.
While difficult, a bad early- game isn't the end of you, you can operate and do some damage to a fed champ with very little (within a realm of reason, 6+ lvls higher than you and your screwed regardless)
His taunt says kicking you down a well is the least of your worries, Hahahhah!!

CONS:
Assassins are squishy unless you give them hp items, sorry.
You are required to get closer than a large number of champs in order to do the damage, range on him would be too much OP.
Low MP early- game, just use it wisely, and buy mp pots.
Build costs mucho denero (large amount of money), and unless you know how to play, you WILL struggle with Pantheon at first.
Even with equips and experience playing Pantheon, you will ult into nothing, or a turret (ouch!!) or multiple champs will run to your ult spot and wait just outside your range, smiling.
YOUR ULT IS NOT INVISIBLE!!! Your ult skill shows a thin read line (AOE) to enemies, most of the time it goes unnoticed, but experienced players know what to look out for.
Early game, your W can and will be the death of you, if not played well... stupid minions/ turrets. (\(T~T)/) << that's you crying after being killed by a minion... just keep looking and you'll see it...
Not the greatest Early game, can't jungle very well at first either, so you will trade some blows, take some damage, run back and forth, and farm minions until around lvl 6, often times even later.


The good news is his cons are all situational, and are almost unnoticeable once you learn how to initiate and fight early game. He is squishy, but if you play him well, that won't matter, because you won't be getting hit more than necessary (HP Pots) until your full power and high health.

The core items here: Frozen Heart, Boots of Lucidity, and Youmou's Ghost Blade give a Cool Down of a second or so for Spear Shot, and around 2.5 seconds for Heartseeker Strike. The Cool Down for Aegis is roughly 3-4 seconds as well. Attack Speed is good on all dps champs, but Pantheon truly shines with Heartseeker strike- this skill does a base amount of damage to monsters/minions and this damage doubles against champs. This skill also has a bonus from your attack power and hits 3 times. You can take AT LEAST a quarter of a tank's hp (3k hp with armor) with one HeartSeeker combo and to get the skill back after a second or two/ 1 Aegis, 1 Heart Seeker, 1-2 Spear Shot, all skills fresh again.. almost guarantees a kill. Once you have your core items, you have enough mana to pretty much spam these 3 skills (with Blue Buff, forever) and do lethal damage to anything that isn't fully armor and hp tanked.

The build itself is pricy, so if you are doing well you can purchase a Sword of the Occult for your first full item after Long Sword and Boots of Speed for a quick powerhouse buff. This will help you farm/ gank to get enough money to afford other items. You can then use or sell the Occult later for other items at your convenience. The other 2 items: Warmog's Armor, and Infinite Blade, are obvious in the sense that they keep you alive, and give you damage for your skill spam. You will not need attack speed, and honestly not really require a slow, because your item build will also give you a bit more movement speed. Let's be serious, if you don't kill a champion within 2-3 combo's preluded with an Ultimate(this entire set of combos should take less than 15 seconds to perform), you've lost the match already- The enemies ARE all around you, and your target is most likely either behind a turret warm and cozy, or baiting you into a trap. My overall build is just a generic guide, and you may agree, disagree or modify this at any time while you're playing.

The Hextech Blade gives you damage, ability power, and spell vamp. The first two items are obvious, you don't need attack speed or life steal when you are spamming spells, the attack pretty much won't be used at all except for minions, and the occasional last hit, when you've gone for 5 minutes or so without recharging mana and just need to finish the job. The last item (Hextech Blade) seems a bit odd on Pantheon, however you must keep in mind, the ability power does not hurt him. Aegis and Skyfall are AP based skills that utilize 100% of the AP added onto them, so the AP can help finish the kill. As well, you must think about the skill spamming. You won't be doing alot of trading basic hits, so Life Steal items are pretty much pointless, and unless you get a BloodThirster (60 dmg), it's only a waste of money. Your very being will rely on the spamming of spells, all of which do spell damage, and all of which will refund hp to you while you destroy everything (with HexTech). At this point, no other items (unless you went with Sword of the Occult) give you enough damage to overrule needing hp restored and by this late in the game the enemies are traveling in packs of 3+, depending on what map you are in, so using Heartseeker Strike will hit them all (no cap on number of targets). The only other item worth even using is the Frozen Mallet for the auto- slow, the 20 attack isn't really needed or helpful at this point, and you shouldn't need more than the hp the other 5 items give you. Just try this item out, after you get your core items,Inf. Edge, and leveled a few; and if you don't like it, feel free to adjust. OF COURSE, you will need to be a competent player in general, or you will be blaming me for losing when it's user error. PRACTICE DOES MAKE PERFECT. I honestly prefer this over the Occult, due to the enemies killing me on occasion ruins the whole point of having the Sword of Occult. As well, Sword of the Occult is very expensive for an early game item, and unless you got a good team and not- so- good enemy, the Occult won't really be useful until you level a few and build more damage naturally anyway. The reason I speak so much about the Occult is because I honestly only see it as an option opposed to the HexTech and the Frozen Mallet, and even though it's expensive, it's the cheapest item early game that can give you a serious advantage if you can keep the stacks.

I won't bother explaining runes, because there are so many guides out that can give you a much better explanation than I ever could. Let's just say you won't need CD Runes, your skills won't drop Cool Down (CD) much more, and timing seems to be perfect with just the core items and no runes, before Pantheon I used only casters, so I only have AP and Mag Pen runes. Instead let's talk about fighting!!! I will refer to your skills by button position, because I'm lazy. Spear Shot-Q, Aegis- W, HeartSeeker- E. Most avid players swear by the W-E-Q pattern. They are right for the most part, but let's discuss concepts. If you burst a champ down with 1-3 combos to .... oooohhh, say, 25% heath. Awesome, good job, your low on mana, maybe life, and your enemy is either running away crying, or dead by your partner because you can't seal the deal with W. Before you get your core items, your CD on W is extensive in terms of Pantheon's timing and spell spam technique. You need to ALWAYS keep a count of your damage vs. their hp. Use your pretty little Spear Shot with a 1 second CD, and your large mana pool (again!!! After CORE ITEMS) to widdle away at the opponents health, if they are a ranged class, you will trade blows, and you can escape and say EELLUUUU with your ultimate, or widdle them down with your guaranteed target Q ranged attack, then stun THEN HEARTSEEKER, while they are freaking out that you stopped their retreat/ advance with a shield bash. Most of the time, if I am fighting a ranged champ, I will poke with Q, then when they get in range (most mages don't keep in mind their distance is greater than yours after a few seconds of trading shots and bots are.... bots) you poke them with your E. Even if you only hit them once or twice(Heartseeker hits up to 3 times each target, I believe), you can follow up with that 1 sec Q, then W to stun them, at this time your E is recharged, and you are ready to make them go grey (when you die, your screen goes grey). Generally, all close ranged champs are cocky, and think they are going to destroy you, and most of the time they will, you're an assassin, not a tank (yet XD). I can't/won't explain every champ's ability in this thread, too lazy, so you will have to learn on your own what to watch out for. Back to my point, when they come in to hit you, E them, Q them, run away. lure them, poke them, bait them. When they get close enough again, E again, they should be around half- health or lower at this point. If not back away and poke again with Q. When you get them low enough step into them, E, Q, W, E, Q, Q, Q, W, E, ( W has a 3-4 sec CD, so 3 Q's should do it) you should have killed them by now or ignited and backed off because they are probably having a buddy come by to hit you in the head for them.

I have explained basic combat with your skills, now if you are still awake, it's time to go over Pantheon's whole concept. With practice, you will be able to gank, carry, push, burst, pretty much whatever it is you want to do with this guy. You will need to keep in mind you are not the only person on the map, and your enemies won't stand still while you hit them. Pantheon has a great movement speed with this build, and versatile skills. You should help your team by initiating, and backing off to let your team take some heat (just because you got 3.2k hp after warmog hp stacks, doesn't mean you should use it), or interrupting an attempted gank, or just generally irritating the daylights out of your opponents. I personally like to get a burster, or DPS character on my team (Annie, Teemo, Twitch, etc.), widdle down the enemy, and let my team feed early- game. You will get enough xp/ money from assists and minion/ jungle farming (while you roam looking for potential victims) to fund your core items. Until late game, that's all you REALLY need. Most champs aren't dumb enough to stand right behind their turret and recall while a champ is aiming at them, so use your character to chase them down (in time, you will be able to predict an oppenent's retreat or advance route and ult right on top of them). Pantheon has a neat little ability to auto- block the first turret shot no matter what, his passive also blocks any attack/ spell (including turrets- damage only, cc effects still work) every 4 basic attacks and/or spells used, they can combine 2 and 2 or whatever. This will allow you to ult or W right past the turret, get your stun, finish a kill or pressure a champ, and escape. Your not invincible, so don't be to aggressive, but you CAN survive at least 3 tower shots with half- HP around lvl 11 (I can't promise this if you haven't gotten Frozen Heart by now, or if your enemy has a burster). You generally don't want to rely on ganks as your main means of xp/ money before then, so we won't discuss before that point. Okay, you might be new, so, before then poke and kill as described above in a lane; jungle as well to get money and lvls after lvl 4. Help your team and they will help you (if not then you got a ****py partner and you should still help because otherwise, they will feed the enemy who will then make you their house- maid). Use your head, keep a count on enemy HP, target location, incoming friendlies.. pretty much learn the game.

I can pretty much only think of 2 spells that are really worth using on this particular champ. Flash and Ignite. Keep in mind you have some speed, and 4 good initiating/ ganking spells, but if the enemy sees you coming or is just cautious they gonn'a hurt you gooood. Flash helps mitigate damage, give you an escape, or buy you time to set up your next combo, OR the fast little bugger got away and you just need that extra 5 feet of distance to land your W again, TAA- DAAA Flash. While Ghost does a similar set- up, it's not an instant distance and can't go through walls. Ignite helps tremendously any time in any game. Early-mid game you are still not fully equipped and honestly will have trouble sealing a kill against tankier champs, especially if your new with Pantheon. I've had countless enemies escape me with 10 hp or so when I forgot to bring my Ignite, or it was on Cool Down. As well, people generally get nervous when their hp starts dropping, or their heal isn't working as planned, because, well... they're on fire, so this skill can also scare that ganker coming after you enough so that he backs off, if not, you should always keep enough mana to pop them with a W then E or hopefully have flash up. If you still can't escape, well, they just called your number. You could use a few other Summoner Spells, but I recommend these most as they are the most versatile in your pop in- pop out routine. Once again, if you need an explanation of Spells, there are far too many guides out that will help you, and... I'm lazy.

Honestly, I've gone far more into depth than planned, and I don't know how to use this guide thing to put more pics or movies in so it's going to remain boring. If you need an example, find me in-game and we can go custom, or AI, or whatever and I can show you the character/ build in action. If you have any questions feel free to search other guides or use youtube, or find me in-game and ask questions. I don't typically check my e-mail and don't want random people cursing me out via yahoo or skype or whatever. MY DISCLAIMER: no one plays exactly alike so you may not like this guide or may want to change something, go ahead, if you find an adjustment that will actually make this concept better, please, leave me a comment on this guide forum commentary thing. I am open to suggestions/ tips. I am not a Beta-Veteran or High Elo player or anything, I am just a Riot fan trying to help other Riot fans out. Hope it worked. Have a good one.