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
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
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.
Currently trying the bruiser build with
The other thing that I've learned is important is that there are a lot of situations in which you need to hold onto
I feel like given that
Oh and add
So, if we are keeping score (i am!):
But, better jg wins!
And holy bejeebus the
Played at least one game with each
Switched to using
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
Going
Panth feels like he can fit into most comps. I do find I stuggle against comps with massive AoE. Things like
Enjoying Panth enough that he feels a champion I could enjoy maining and that is not a feeling I've had often,
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