Why is Pantheon's spear not a skillshot?
It's a medium to long range high damage spammable ability, and not one specifically meant for close quarters trades. Why on earth wouldn't it be a skillshot?
11 Comments
Spartans never miss their spears.
Turning the entire game into skill shots would make mobility broken, and when mobility is broken who has a bigger kit wins.
Or is that your ideal balanced game?
His spear is single target and semi-spammable yes, it also has not too big of a range, costs mana (which is quite big on Panth) and he can't target something he can't see or not in range.
It's ok.
Because what early game would he have without it. HURR A DURR SOMEONE DOES A LOT OF DAMAGE LETS MAKE IT A SKILL SHOT isn't how the game works especially on someone with a hugely projected ult with a long flight time.
If you make it a skill shot you better make damn well sure he gets a huge buff to his kit for gutting his early game. Point and click is a strength not a skill point. Sometimes knowledge of mechanics > skill as it should be. Riot trying to move everything to skill doesn't work when half of the champs are balanced around knowledge.
It's how Nidalee is so broken. She has "counterplay" that is easy to see, but she gets away with being broken because it's all projected even though she has continually had bugs making her kit more effective or has had issues with toxicity for a long time.
Because Pantheon is still from a time of "Point and click" is everything. And he doesn't really need a kit update at the moment so they are probably going to leave it for now.
Because balance :^)
mainly because of pantheon low mana pool. If he spam the spear he will run out of mana rather fast.
Why is Pantheon's spear not a skillshot?
He has to be different than Nidalee somehow.
Also, a big part of Pantheon's play style and identity is he's a lane bully, which is due in part to his ability to snipe opponents with spears in-lane.
Point-click skills don't have many advantages over skillshots (they have less range, they can't hit targets in stealth/fog of war/brush) but they do excel in one key area - sniping targets hiding in a wave of minions. Point-click also differ in that they're potentially better than skillshots and pegging fleeing targets (though skillshot's roughly double range usually negates that bonus).
In either case, Pantheon is a lane-bully in part because he can reliably harass opponents if they get close to him, and Pantheon's spear crits against low-HP targets fleeing from him, which are the 2 specific areas in which point-click makes a lot of sense.
Finally, in Pantheon's overall aesthetic and play-style, he's generally a manly-man focusing on bravery and fighting his opponent head-on. His medium-range spears don't really break this aesthetic currently, because they still put him in within the gap-closer/ability range of pretty much everything in the game.
Changing his spear into a skillshot, however, would promote a play style more akin to champions like Nidalee, Lux, and Teemo - where their behavior is all about playing smarter rather than harder, lobbing a barrage of harass at an opponent without creating an opening to counter-attack, and in general being the kind of nuisance and annoyance you wouldn't expect from a Spartan.
I believe not, that plus Pantheon is easily low on mana early game because of spamming his Q and then his combo.
Because Panth has garbage mana and if he is constantly spamming his Q's he wont have enough mana to do his full combo. Panth needs mana to be able to kill you. If he spams his Q he will be low on mana and be effectively useless. Plus it requires him to get within the range of most gap closers or CC abilities to use it. Besides Panth doesnt build tanky first anyways so he has an extremely hard time dealing with pretty much any of the meta top lane picks and his jungle is rather weak compared to how it used to be. If anything he needs buffs.
Because why does everything need to be a skill shot? Like honestly the only reason this game is tolerable right now is because there are point and click abilities. Are these toxic? No. Do they lack counterplay? Yes. But you know what else does, mobility.
The only reliable counter to mobile champions are point and clicks. And if you go around removing them from the game, you have effectively started mobility creep. Don't believe me? Look at the last 4 champions and you'll see it.
Stop trying to turn everything into a "skill"shot.