But seriously, can we just talk about Pantheon for a sec?

Around Christmas of 2014, I started playing. At the time was a pretty good champion. He was actually the first champion I bought and in a way my first main. My friend and I would play our favorite combo of top, since jungling wasn't even a concept to us. Little did I know, the champion who I just thought "was cool because he's a Spartan" was about to become a highly dominant champion in soloque.

In the beginning of Season 4, champions like Pantheon, Kha'Zix, Lee Sin, Elise, and Evelynn were pretty dominant. All of them got their respective nerfs in some aspect. The hardest hitting arguably being Kha'Zix and Evelynn's guttings before finally being buffed from the ground up.

Alright, well good ol' Leonidas was still viable. The only major nerfs he got were to his ultimate. But god damn. He could no longer use summs before landing, and could also no longer use abilities, specifically his W, just before landing to get into action quicker.

This meant no more smite stealing baron before landing with W to wreak havoc. Additionally his ult had received many range changes, once being global, then at one point almost being able to barely reach the other side of your nexus, but eventually to being about a third of the map. Alright, a respectable range. But the time it took to cast, now combined with how long it takes to land was detrimental to his once legendary ganks. His ult wasn't a complete killer anymore, and was pretty much a less restricted Rek'Sai ultimate.

Worlds happen. First worlds I've seen, and before the ones in about a month the only worlds I've seen. Pantheon actually does get played once, by none of than inSec. It was glorious. He inspired me to once again pick up the left handed spear, despite the splash showing it in his right hand. Yes, that is true, Pantheon's splash shows the spear in his right hand, when in fact he is a lefty. That fact always made him feel close to me, as I am also a lefty.

Pre-Season 5 roles around. The biggest changes? Dragon and jungle items. With dragon having 1/4th the attack speed and 4x the damage, Pantheon could actually solo drag level 2 for the powerful, since his passive blocked the shot. And Warrior gave Pantheon armor pen, his favorite stat along with armor shred. Pantheon was once again top-tier.

But soon that was nerfed. Hard. Less attack speed, along with removing his ability to block dragon's hits, by making them count as spells. This is proven by the fact that Noc can block them with his W now, and Jax cannot with his E. Just thought that was interesting.

So Pantheon is hit hard. But he's not garbage, yet. More nerfs. Cinderhulk. Warrior gets another hit. Cinderhulk means tanks are back, so his damage on a target below 15% is harder to do. The final hit? Dragon gets its attack speed buffed back to normal, and damage put back to normal. So essentially dragon now attacks just like in Season 4 and before. Why is that so important? Because it still was counted as a spell, not an attack. So now Pantheon still could not solo dragon, however most champions now could because the higher attack speed/lower damage model is more friendly, except when Pantheon gets nerfed.

And he never got compensated. The next time we hear about Pantheon would be this very patch we're on now, where he gets a very slight attack speed buff.

So how do we make Pantheon actually viable again?

Firstly, change dragon's attack back to count as an auto attack again instead of spell. It always bother me that when dragon's attack was changed back to how it was in previous seasons, this was not. Even Baron got a treatment like that when he got his fancy new attacks, making his normal attacks still blocked. This change isn't even really for Pantheon, but rather for consistency. Also, it's annoying getting popped by dragon.

Let his W reflect damage against jungle creeps. As of season 5 Pantheon has had almost no sustain since creeps became stronger. His only saving grace was god ganks and level 2 dragons. He has neither of those right now.

Let him W out of his ult. The stipulation would be that Pantheon would also be stunned by the "shock" of prematurely landing. Because he came down with the extra force, both him and the W target would be stunned for 1.5x the duration of his normal W stun. This means that if he does end the landing early, he must do it with W, cannot use summs yet, and would also be stunned with his target.

Alternatively, Riot could go the less fun way and just make his ult cast and land time shorter. But I think we can all agree that him coming down with so much force that he stuns himself and the enemy would be way more badass and fitting of a Spartan. If proven to be OP, the self stun could be changed to not be affected by tenacity and QSS effects, however the stun on the enemy could be.

Of course these changes would be after worlds, as to not scramble everyone just before them. But please Riot, do something. You know something is wrong when one of the best champions, who is already sticky and would love to be stickier still isn't played. Think about it. If this Black Cleaver came out during Season 4, when Pantheon was already dominant, people would've flipped out. In theory the new Black Cleaver should've been a huge buff, but he still is never played. I literally don't think I've seen a single Pantheon since Cinderhulk came out. So, around February/March. At least 6 months. I've seen pretty much every champion but Pantheon. To be honest, I forgot that my once favorite champion even existed for a bit. I've seen Yorrick, the champion Riot literally wants to forget about, more than Pantheon.

Please Riot, don't let me go into Season 6 without Pantheon once again coming back. He can't be gone. Pantheon is by far one of the coolest and most unique champions. He has so many mechanics that he pioneered (the crit on targets below 15%, who else has that?). The block, the mechanic of stacking the block with attacks and abilities, the once global ultimate (okay, gets that one). And besides, who doesn't want this badass to make a return?