(Suggestion) Pantheon Mechanics Revised

Pantheon has long been one of my least favorite characters in League, both to play as and especially to play against. The main reason for this (along with his generic Greco-Roman soldier design) is because his kit is mechanically simplistic and straightforward in a way that can be extremely oppressive to his opponents in lane, making him near Garen levels of braindead to play as and often thoroughly frustrating to play against. Because I love both League and game design/balancing, I've done a lot of thinking about what could be done to change Pantheon for the better in a way that focuses on some of his strengths while accentuating or creating necessary weaknesses to allow for a better overall experience. In this post, I will lay out the primary problems I see with Pantheon as well as my suggestions for how these problems could be addressed. The hope is that these changes will add some additional considerations and interactions to playing Pantheon successfully while also granting Pantheon's opponents clearer openings to retaliate.

First, the main problems with Pantheon that I'm looking to address with my suggestions:

• Safe, high damage poke with an extremely low cooldown and negligible mana costs. In my opinion, Pantheon's Q (Spear Shot) is the biggest offender and problem with Pantheon. It may not be much of a problem on its own, but it's a nightmare in the context of Pantheon's kit. This spell can chunk all but the tankiest lane opponents down in a fairly short time with no counterplay outside of staying out of the spell's range. Some might argue that mana costs make this spell prohibitive and that Pantheon's lane opponent can just take the hits until he's out of mana. The problem that I see with that argument, based on experience in play both as and against Pantheon, is that unless Pantheon's opponent has a really powerful sustain mechanic that allows them to heal without having to be in range of Pantheon's spears (Garen, Mundo, Trundle come to mind) then the spears will chunk the opponent down enough that they will burn through all of their corrupting flask charges/potions before Pantheon burns through his corrupting flask. If their sustain mechanic requires them to be within range of Pantheon (anything that requires them to hit Pantheon or minions to get their sustain, such as Maokai, Fiora, Irelia, Olaf, Renekton, Tryndamere, Warwick, Nasus, etc.) will take more damage than they will be able to sustain by being within the range of Spear Shot. The "counterplay" to this ability is knowing that you're going to be against Pantheon and picking one of a small group that can deal with this better than most other champions, hoping that Pantheon is somehow bad enough at League of Legends to be unable to manage mana in any way, putting yourself at a disadvantage by using a full rune page of flat armor and maybe some health regen, and/or staying out of range and denying yourself large amounts of CS (unless you're a ranged champion that still may have problems which I address below, or someone with a low/no cost, low cooldown ability that you can use to farm from safety, such as Mundo). This ability leads to either easy kills against opponents who try to CS or easy denial of gold and experience through the sheer threat of poke when combined with the additional power of Deathfire Touch and Spear Shot's interaction with Pantheon's Heartseeker Strike, which grants Spear Shot 100% critical chance when the opponent is at 15% health or below. Furthermore, because this ability has a 140% bonus AD ratio, Pantheon can often use a lead over an enemy to make the situation worse faster than his opponent can get items to help them deal with him.

• Zoning ability and limited opportunity for opponents to retaliate or trade effectively. I've often seen Pantheon called the "win lane" champion because he's so effective at winning a lane against almost any opponent, assuming zero jungle influence. I believe this is largely because he's very difficult to trade with effectively. Pantheon has extremely effective and potentially lethal poke as discussed above, giving him strong zoning capabilities. He also has the passive ability to block not only champion auto-attacks (including any on-hit effect from abilities, such as Jax W, Fiora Q and vital procs, Darius W, Nasus Q, etc.) but also turret shots. This refreshes on every four auto-attacks and ability casts. Additionally, he can instantly refresh this block with a gap-closing, point-and-click, near instant stun from his W, Aegis of Zeonia. Like Spear Shot, the passive and W would not be much of a problem on their own. However, in the context of Pantheon's potent poke power, the ability to stop an auto-attack or tower shot and then stun someone and block another auto-attack/tower shot becomes a huge deterrent to attempting to fight him at all.

• Spear Shot is used to chunk the opponent down from afar as soon as they walk into range and will be up in a matter of seconds. If the opponent is melee and wants to try to trade back with Pantheon, they will need to close the distance (no big deal in most cases, but not all have gap-closers), go through Pantheon's passive before they can start getting any auto-attack damage, get stunned, take another Spear Shot and maybe Heartseeker Strike, and will have to go through his passive again before they can get another auto-attack off. Most champions will have lost the trade by this point unless they are already ahead, had a better/faster CC combo paired with a lot of damage, parried the stun as Fiora, picked Garen, or are receiving a gank from their teammates.

• Most importantly, however, is that most melee opponents can and will be zoned away from Pantheon due to the damage of Spear Shot, meaning he can easily get his passive back up any time it's down--he has free reign over minions and only needs to last hit four of them to get it back. Furthermore, trading with him in lane is extremely risky unless you are already significantly ahead because, much like Garen, it matters little how close your trade is--when you reach a certain health threshold (15%, in this case), he will be almost guaranteed to kill you before you can kill him (or escape, if you realized your mistake far too late).

• Additionally, Spear Shot has a range of 600, near or greater than the auto-attack range of many ranged champions. While ranged champions will have a better time farming, they will also be relatively squishy. This only makes Spear Shot stronger as it does not take many Spear Shots before Pantheon can move in for the stun and kill. This means ranged champions shouldn't fare much better against Pantheon unless they have greater range and very effective abilities for keeping Pantheon away (I'm thinking of Quinn, though I'm not sure her E could save her from continued Spear Shots if her blind is down). Also notable here: Pantheon is one of two champions, along with Master Yi, with a base movement speed of 355, the highest in the game. This is important for ranged champions as they often have lower base movement speeds. Pantheon will have a much easier time walking up enough to get in range for Spear Shot poke even if they're walking away to stay out of range because of this, particular early on.

• This ability to zone with minimal opportunity for his opponents to retaliate means that Pantheon can farm relatively freely while his opponents will often struggle to pick up last hits without taking a disproportionate amount of damage. He also has a very easy time last-hitting due to the 100% critical chance on enemies at 15% health combined with being an AD champion, so his kit can even help mitigate poor CS skills that might otherwise hold back a lesser player.

• Lack of exploitable weaknesses This essentially goes hand in hand with the point about Pantheon’s lane opponents having limited ability to trade effectively with Pantheon, but it is necessary to address the opposite perspective when making any argument, and so I must address Pantheon’s weaknesses specifically. Like every champion, Pantheon does indeed have weaknesses. However, his weaknesses are very well covered by his strengths or are not something that can be taken advantage of by a lane opponent. One of Pantheon’s weak areas that I’ve seen cited is in his mana usage. The argument was that if you push hard early, Pantheon will have to burn mana to wave-clear. I would respond to this argument by simply pointing out that while most champions try to push the wave early, Pantheon can Spear Shot them several times, either pushing them away from the minions or getting them dangerously low if they really commit to it. At that point there’s no real reason for him to spend mana on wave-clear unless he’s just really bad at League of Legends—he can just last-hit under tower, especially once he gets the Heartseeker Strike passive. He doesn’t have to push the wave, especially because his opponent now has to come to him at a vulnerable position in the lane if they want gold and experience, making it even easier for Pantheon to deny them gold and experience with his poking and zoning capabilities. The main weakness I would personally cite on Pantheon’s part is mobility—he has nothing to escape a gank without Flash unless the lane/jungle don’t have the hard cc to stop his ult or the damage to kill him before it goes off. The problem with this weakness on any champion is that if the only way to win your lane is to hope for some good ganks from random players you don’t know or trust, that’s not a very useful weakness. That’s not a weakness you can exploit by playing more skillfully than your opponent. This can be especially problematic against a character that does as much damage as Pantheon, as if his lane opponent is low then they will not be able to participate in the gank without dying, and if the jungler doesn’t realize how much damage Pantheon does and comes in at low health before they can be told otherwise, Pantheon can probably kill them. Once Pantheon gets his ultimate and some ward coverage, he can see a gank coming and ult out before it has a chance to go off. His other weaknesses are things like falling off late-game (I’ve addressed this below), and being kind of terrible if he falls behind early, which honestly shouldn’t happen unless he’s in a very rare “bad matchup” or he was well ganked.

• Heavy early game strength can mean there is no late game. Pantheon is often considered an early game champion, and he does indeed fall off compared to many opponents... Eventually. While it's not bad for a champion to have an identity as an "early game" champion, it seems to me that it's a poor idea to have a champion that can win lanes against a large number of his likely opponents simply because he can do so much to his opponent and go unpunished while they can do so little to him without severe punishment. Furthermore, in a meta where snowballing happens quickly and readily, Pantheon can snowball very hard early by building damage and armor penetration, completely shutting down his lane, and controlling the map through long-range gank pressure and roaming with his ultimate. If he doesn't snowball hard and should his team need it, he can transition into a bruiser/tanky build and still be effective due to the utility of his low cooldown stun and his map mobility. Also, 100% crit chance on a ranged ability on targets that get low is always pretty good, even without damage. A half-decent Pantheon player can have a huge effect on the map should he/she get a kill or two early due to the mobility that Pantheon's ultimate provides and the fairly insane AD ratios on his abilities (again, Spear Shot has a 140% bonus AD ratio, while Heartseeker Strike is effectively 78-279 + 300% bonus AD over .75 seconds). If Pantheon starts getting ahead (and he should in most matchups) with an item or two under his belt before anyone else he, can do a lot to help snowball other lanes and take control of objectives unless his team was feeding out of control already. Even if the player can't pull that off, Pantheon can often have the effect of slowing the enemy laner's scaling by ten or more minutes unless he's ganked early, often, and effectively.

Now then, on to the actual suggestions.

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The goals that I'm looking to address with my suggested changes to Pantheon are as follows:

• Maintain/emphasize existing strengths that match the character's paradigm and lore
• Introduce clear weaknesses/openings in Pantheon's laning play patterns
• Provide incentives for Pantheon to interact with his lane opponent with more commitment than simply tossing spears at them whenever possible
• Create more meaningful decisions in when and how Pantheon uses his abilities without increasing the required mechanical skill of the player or simply gating his abilities behind higher mana costs or cooldowns
• Pantheon should appropriately feel more like a powerful melee combatant rather than a fighter playing at being a ranged caster who is afraid to move in until he's sure he can win
• Accomplish the goals above without really changing the basic nature of Pantheon's abilities--he would feel similar and familiar, but more would go into playing him than "If enemy in spear range, then press q"

Keep in mind that my suggestions are purely mechanical and would likely require damage numbers to be reconsidered according to how these changes would affect Pantheon's playstyle and success cases.

• Q - Spear Shot/Spear of Targon
• Spear Shot Range: 600
• Spear Shot Cooldown: 8 seconds ACTIVE - Pantheon throws the Spear of Targon at the target enemy, Impaling them and dealing physical damage. He cannot throw his spear again until he retrieves it from the enemy by auto-attacking them or until Impaled Spear Shot's cooldown has refreshed. Impaled lasts 4 seconds.
• Spear of Targon Range: 200
• Spear of Targon Cooldown: 3 seconds ACTIVE: When Spear Shot is cast on a target within 200 range, Spear of Targon is cast instead, a powerful spear thrust that benefits from the passive effect of Heartseeker Strike but does not inflict the Impaled debuff. Spear of Targon costs half the mana of Spear Shot.
• Pantheon's Spear Shot and Spear of Targon cooldown are refreshed upon retrieving his spear from the Impaled by auto-attacking them or by using Aegis of Zeonia.

1. • Spear of Targon might also serve as an auto-attack reset.
2. • Spear Shot and Spear of Targon have different cooldowns, which means that if you Spear Shot and let Impale wear off of the target, Spear Shot would be up in 8 seconds, while Spear of Targon would be available in 3 seconds.
3. • According to the lore, Pantheon only really has one spear, the Spear of Targon. This spear is an important relic as the weapon of the Targonian Aspect of War and it's utterly silly that Pantheon throws spears like candy, especially because that's technically his only weapon--he's not carrying more spears, he's not pulling ghost spears out of vengeance like Kalista. It should be an important decision to throw his sacred primary weapon at someone, not just something he does every four seconds because he can.
4. • Using Spear Shot would not take away his ability to auto-attack other targets before without retrieving his spear. That would be stupid. It would be very cool to see a visually updated version of Pantheon with this iteration of Spear Shot where his auto-attack animation changed when his enemy was Impaled. He could either pull out a sword (it wouldn’t be that weird for his Roman archetype to have a backup gladius) or attacks with his bare hands (he is the Aspect of War, after all, his whole body might as well be a weapon) until he gets his spear back. Or he would just use the shield, that would be cool too.

• W - Aegis of Zeonia

• Range: 600

• Cooldown: 10/9/8/7/6

• Mana Cost: 65 ACTIVE - Pantheon dashes to the target and bashes them with his shield dealing physical damage. If the target of Aegis of Zeonia had the Impaled debuff applied to them, Pantheon rips his spear from the target, refreshing the cooldown on Spear Shot/Spear of Targon and empowering his next Spear of Targon or Heartseeker Strike.

• Empowered Spear of Targon deals an additional 6/7/8/9/10% of the targets missing health in damage. This damage is affected by Heartseeker Strike's Sudden Death passive.

• Empowered Heartseeker Strike shreds enemy armor by 15/20/25/30/35% for 4 seconds in addition to its normal effects.

• E - Heartseeker Strike

• Cooldown: 13/12/11/10/9

• Mana Cost: 45/50/55/60/65

• PASSIVE - Certain Death: Pantheon critically strikes all enemies below 15% of their maximum health with his basic attacks and close-range Spear Shot.

• ACTIVE - Pantheon strikes out with blinding speed, stunning and dealing physical damage to all enemies in a cone in front of him. Enemies are stunned for 1.5 seconds to .75 seconds, with closer enemies being stunned longer than more distant enemies.

1. • This gives Pantheon an AoE stun which can help his team as the game goes on, especially if used when it's empowered, allowing Pantheon to AoE stun and shred a good amount of armor from his enemies.
2. • The change to this ability would obviously require some alterations to the damage numbers and ratios from the old Heartseeker Strike. This should be compensated by placing more damage onto Aegis of Zeonia, which will now also scale with AD.

• R - Grand Skyfall
• Grand Skyfall applies Grounded to enemies hit by the impact damage.
• Using Aegis of Zeonia immediately following Grand Skyfall causes Aegis of Zeonia to act as if the target had been afflicted with the Impale debuff.

1. • This gives Pantheon the opportunity to use his Ultimate->Stun combo, which should be more powerful now as he will not only now have an AoE stun, but also should get the empowered Heartseeker Strike, allowing him to shred armor of anyone he catches with this combination.

Overall, these changes should decrease the effectiveness of Pantheon’s ranged poke, increase opportunities for enemies to retaliate against his poke, and make him more focused as a champion of melee combat as is befitting the Aspect of War. The Impale debuff gives a clear window for both himself and his opponent indicating when it would be opportune for Pantheon to go in with Aegis of Zeonia. His opponents will have a chance to punish Pantheon should he use his spear without retrieving it as his Spear Shot will be on cooldown for longer than usual, but he will still be able to defend himself with Spear of Targon. Furthermore, he should want to go into melee range to recover his spear for the shorter cooldown, even if he doesn’t yet have or doesn’t want to use Aegis of Zeonia, giving an opportunity for his opponent to respond to the ranged poke.

If you read all of this astoundingly long post, let me know what you think of these changes. Possibly upvote if you like/agree with them. I doubt it would get implemented and in truth I’m hoping that Riot is planning on changing Pantheon entirely into something way more fun and interesting, but I would still like to see what people think. I do think that these changes, at least in some form, would significantly improve Pantheon’s gameplay for everyone involved.
[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

EDIT: Made some updates based on feedback.