Pantheon is an snowbally AD Bruiser who is versatile and can be played depending on the situation both as a diver who tries to burst carries or a frontlining bruiser.

He wants to use his extremely strong pre 6 laning to get a lead. Throughout the mid- late game Pantheon should be trying to push in sidelanes and use Grand Starfall to force fights with numbers while enemies catch the waves you've shoved in.

Pantheon falling off a cliff late game is just a myth. Old Pantheon lacked an ability to survive teamfights without Aegis Assault, and had no armor pen so his damage fell off as well. It's from level 6 until 2 items where he struggles most. At level 6 if you haven't managed to get a lead pre 6, many toplaners like Tryndamere, Trundle, or Wukong that can run you down and massively outstat you can be extremely difficult to deal with.

Finishing 2 items and getting level 11 for more armor pen from Grand Starfall will finish this. At 3 items and level 16, you are a strong teamfighter and beat probably 75 percent of toplaners in the sidelane.

While he doesn't fall off, he struggles badly from behind. He has no mobility to escape ganks or teams collapsing on him in the sidelane, or just stronger enemy toplaner all ins, and so if he isn't strong enough to control the sidelane he will struggle to get gold and xp to scale. When fights roll around, as a jack of all trades champ he is able to do everything when ahead and nothing when behind. From ahead he can win 1v1 in the sidelane, pressure the map with R, 100 to 0 squishy carries, or just fight front to back if necessary.

Conqueror and Press the Attack are the two options for Pantheon. A lot of that is personal preference. Conqueror provides great sustained damage, especially in the mid to late game, and Pantheon stacks it up quickly. Press the Attack can be procced instantly with your Empowered Shield Vault.

Press the Attack is incredibly strong early and does a lot of burst while matching Conqueror sustained damage in early trades. However, as the game goes on, while you will still get a bit more burst from Press the Attack, you will really feel the difference in damage and healing with Conqueror.

I prefer Press the Attack nowadays because I feel like it fits Pantheon's identity as a champion who must get a lead in the early game better. I take Conqueror still vs tanky enemy teams and a few specific matchups, however.

Regardless of whether you have Conqueror or Press the Attack you will be in the precision tree.

Presence of Mind is the best option to fix your mana problems in one place since the mana cost reductions. Manaflow Band is a little stronger early, but it's no longer necessary and you can opt into POM now for better scaling mana.

Legend: Tenacity is a necessity as you will want Plated Steelcaps most games to match your laner. If you know you will go Mercury's Treads, you can get away with Legend: Alacrity, but honestly even more tenacity feels better than attack speed on Pantheon.

Finally, Last Stand gives a little damage and is the only option in the last line. Coup de Grace is redundant with your Comet Spear execute and you will build too much health to use Cut Down

The best secondary tree is generally Sorcery. Scorch is an absolute must IMO to be able to force the early kill. From there, I go Absolute Focus to give even more early pressure, but the more popular rune is Transcendence which is solid as well.

Some players prefer the Resolve tree and run things like Bone Plating and Second Wind. However, especially before level 6 you should be winning hard enough to where you don't need defensive stats or runes to survive. Of course with defensive runes you can win fights you wouldn't otherwise, but in general the aggressive Sorcery setup will net you more early leads.

Recently I've seen a lot of high burst damage builds being run, stuff along the lines of Eclipse> Blade of the Ruined King(edit, new ghostblade in season 13 is similar) with Press the Attack.

These builds spike harder and earlier than bruiser builds but I feel that they turn a versatile jack of all trades champion into a budget assassin. Yes, you will burst hard at 1 and 2 items, but you will be left entering midgame teamfights with little to no HP, resistances, or ability haste. As teams group you will have a harder time getting on top of and getting a combo off on priority targets, as your only gapcloser is one medium range dash. These builds can snowball hard and carry when you have a lead against squishy low CC teamcomps, but they can make you useless in other situations. Be careful when going this route

Standard Eclipse- Black Cleaver Pantheon builds have a bit of lethality and when the opportunity presents itself to jump on the ADC he is still a threat, but when he has to settle for a frontline role he can be useful there too. There are better champions if you want to play an AD assassin.

One important thing that I think many people don't understand is how armor penetration works. Let's take a target with 100 armor vs a level 16 Pantheon with a build like Divine Sunderer, Black Cleaver, Death's Dance. Pantheon has 0 lethality,30 percent armor pen from Grand Starfall passive, 6 percent armor pen from Divine Sunderer passive, and 30 percent from Black Cleaver after a combo. So that should leave the target with 100-66=34 armor, right? Wrong. Percentage pen stacks multiplacatively, so really it's 100(1-.3)(1-.06)(1-.3)=46.1. Now let's replace the Divine Sunderer with an Eclipsewith 18 lethality. Flat pen(lethality) is calculated after percent pen. So (100(1-.3)(1-.3))-18=31. So because Pantheon gets a bunch of free percent pen from Grand Starfall and uses Black Cleaver really well, more percent pen is inefficient.

Therefore, you really want to be picking up one lethality item on Pantheon despite him being a bruiser. Lethality is at its strongest early on in the game and so you want to be rushing your lethality. For this reason I rush Eclipse in 95 percent of my games. It has a great build path for the laning phase, it's cheap at 3100g and is a great one item spike that gives Pantheon all the stats he needs early.

After Eclipse or the rare time I build another mythic, I build Black Cleaver most games The item is built for Pantheon as he stacks it so quickly and the stats fit him perfectly. Then you'll usually go into your resistance items, Death's Dance and Maw of Malmortius since you already built health/ Eclipse shield. Or, you can go Edge of Night for a little more burst and some CC resistance to help you ult into fights and get on a carry. By 4th item though, you'll badly need resistances to survive teamfights. Situational items like Chempunk Chainsword, Guardian Angel, Sterak's Gage, Serpent's Fang can round out the build last. If enemy team has one fed solo ap champion, I go Eclipse, Cleaver, DD, and then Anathema's Chains. If it's just one champion, Anathema's Chains does a lot more than an MR item.

Vs an extremely tanky enemy team where lethality won't do much, go Divine Sunderer, Black Cleaver, Blade of the Ruined King. You will melt tanks like butter with this, but your burst damage will be lower and you'll be squishier than the standard build as you'll have to wait until 4th item for your resistance items.

Finally, a new build has emerged in Season 13. Youmuu's Ghostblade- Blade of the Ruined King paired with Press the Attack does insane damage. This leaves you extremely squishy and forces you to be one dimensional and open every fight with Empowered Shield Vault. This is good when you have a lead vs a squishy team without a ton of cc where you can really slice them up. If you do this, you need to get to the 2 item spike asap so you can start oneshotting so don't finish your tier 2 boots until 2 items. After this, I like to go Edge of Night into DD/Maw since you dont need percent armor pen on top of your passive pen against a squishy team,

Run Flash Ignite every single game. Pantheon has early kill pressure into every single toplaner . Against many champs like Fiora, Irelia, or Wukong that get a strong dueling ult that also lets them gapclose, he needs all the help he can get to get a lead pre 6 or he just gets run down post 6. Additionally, Grand Starfall covers for Teleport in the mid and late game. Your ultimate is better for flanking fights than Teleport and so when I've run Teleport I find myself going to a sidelane with TP up and then ulting to the fight anyways because theres no TP spot that can get me to the enemy carries like my R can.

Most bruisers will beat Pantheon in a straight up all in the laning phase, especially after level 6. Your goal is generally to whittle them down with Comet Spears and you can then win an all in. Keep your spacing and don't let them walk inside your Comet Spear range. Obviously most bruisers can close this gap with an ability, but it is important that you force them to use it to close the gap and not for damage/to gapclose again. Of course, the specifics depend more on the exact matchups and those are all written out.

Against ranged toplaners, it's pretty simple and Pantheon does pretty well into most. Wait for your level 3 without getting poked out(give a few cs if you have to), then look to engage and dump your full combo. You dont need to all in necessarily as you have long cooldowns early. Empowered Shield Vault> Comet Spear>AA>Empowered Aegis Assault and with the bonus move speed either run away for a one sided trade or chase for an all in.

Against tanks, consider Conqueror. It depends on the specific enemy champion, but you generally will win extended trades against tanks. With levels into Grand Starfall and Black Cleaver you will melt tanks later in the game. However, if you can't kill them early and they come to lane after first back with a Warden's Mail and Plated Steelcaps, you will just be tickling them.

Yes, it gets its own section. Do not empowered Shield Vault if the enemy has Bone Plating up. It treats Empowered Shield Vault as three separate attacks and so it does almost no damage. You need to land a Comet Spear before you can engage someone with Bone Plating.

In the laning phase, there's a few things you can use it for:

In your own lane, if you catch your laner lacking going for platings or overextending after you reset, ult on their head. Don't feel bad about using it to catch a big wave either, especially if you're already behind.

Ulting to mid: This is always a good option if you are able to shove in your wave toplane and their midlaner looks gankable. Grand Starfall on their head, hopefully get a kill, and you can usually get back to top without missing more than a few minions

Ulting to bot: Obviously more risky, as you will likely miss at least one wave and give up at least a plating top. In my opinion it's usually not worth it except for 2 situations: 1. You are way behind to the point of no return toplane(in this case try to leave your adc the kills if possible since you won't be doing anything with them topside) 2. Your team is way behind and their botlane has shutdowns. You need to make a play and get the shutdowns or your team will just lose regardless of you winning toplane.

Rotating mid or bot is more rewarding when a dragon is spawning soon, as even if you don't kill you create priority for your laners to go to dragon

Pantheon is very versatile and can fill a number of roles. He can ult into the backline and try to burst carries when ahead, he can frontline with a Goredrinker and kill enemy frontline with his team, or he can stay back and hold Shield Vault to shut down something like a fed Master Yi or Katarina. Which one you should do just depends on the game and what is needed, one isn't right for every game.

While Pantheon can genuinely play any role, top is the most fun and most rewarding once you learn it. Every matchup is winnable and you can force an early kill into every matchup once you learn it and for me, this is what makes him a fun main.

In midlane, half the time you'll lane against mages whose entire kit has practically double the range of Shield Vault and you'll be stuck under tower for 15 minutes. Against melee mids, you just statcheck them in every trade. Pantheon is a strong counterpick to these champs, but if they play passively you can't harass under tower or build up a big wave to 1v2 a gank in like toplane due to jungle and support being up your *** constantly. You have permanent priority and can roam, which is a strong strategy, but I like focusing on winning lane instead of running the river between every other wave.

There's two high elo Panth top players, Spear Shot and Keegun. Both of them have probably forgotten more about this champ than you or I know, give them a watch. Spear is my personal favorite, most entertaining stream you'll ever watch. THANKS FOR READING