[Champion] Pantheon - Page 19

Hello all, I think it's probably safe to say that we are all on a similar page with Pantheon. He's weak, with no roll in a competitive team because TF fills his role better.

Pantheon's early game has been repeatedly nerfed. He is a mere shadow of his former self. While I understand the reasoning behind this, it still makes me sad to see one of the strongest early game champions get hit so hard with the nerfstick, especially when I hear things from Riot that really don't make sense to me.

Things I've heard:

* The issue is his global ult + CC. If this truly was the main issue then why does TF still have a global ult and a stun?
* He's just not fun to lane against. Has anyone laned against Urgot? He presses E and then does 2/3 of your life for free. If you're a melee champ against him you've lost (maybe with the exception of Morde).
* He does too much damage. Yes, because if he doesn't do a significant amount of damage he is useless. He really has almost zero utility later on in the game in teamfights.

The changes that have taken place have moved him from a viable pick to a bad version of Twisted Fate. Here is the thing about Pantheon, either he kills you, or he dies, there really isn't much middle ground with him. He has no escape mechanism, and after all the changes he doesn't even have the damage to 1v1 people anymore. Late in the game he falls apart because he has 2 moves that have no utility, only damage. Heartseeker is at no point worth using in the game because it's too unreliable and does very little damage and isn't worth putting points into because of this. Maxing his Spear Shot is still the only way to really effectively play him, and he's just worse than he was pre-season 1.

So here are the issues:

* Global Ult
* Stun
* A lot of Damage

With his skill set now he is mediocre up to 30 min and relatively weak after.

Here are some proposed changes

* Q: Leave this as it is for now.
* W: Convert the stun to a silence and convert this move to physical damage with a small damage ratio. This means that when Panth jumps on people they can still cast most summoners (except flash) and simply run away. For instance, you jump on someone, and they simply ghost away, or exhaust you and run, etc... The silence duration might want to be changed to 1 second at lvl 1 to make this stronger early on in the game. The change to physical damage means that it actually does significant damage at early levels with armor pen runes. So now with the change to heartseeker (weaker early game because he has no stun) his Aegis at least will make up for the damage lost.
* E: Allow E to apply on-hit effects for each hit. This is the biggest change, and in my mind the most versatile. This change allows Panth to itemize differently depending on who he is facing. Tiamat for big AoE teamfight heartseeker damage, Frozen Mallet/Phage for keeping people in your heartseeker after you silence them, BlackCleaver for big AoE armor reduction, wit's end for big AoE mana burn, Madred's for big %Magic Damage against a team. Imagine Jungle Pantheon with this change, he would be a very strong jungler. Grab Lizard and gank with the slow + silence combo, or big lifesteal with bloodthirster. I really feel that this change would make Pantheon way more itemize-able for the end game and gives him a pretty unique skill. Again, it is still a 2.5 second channeling move. Numbers may need to be changed but overall this would be a very fun change in my eyes.
* R: Leave how it is for now, I know you guys want globals to be nerfed so of course I assume this will be changed soon anyway.

With these changes his W-E combo only becomes potent as he gets items, but it should hopefully become quite strong later on in the game as Panth gets big on-hit effect items.

Note: This might require some testing to see just how effective certain items are on Panth with these changes. I could see some items just being too strong on him (bloodthirster lifesteal possibly being too strong, madred's making his heartseeker do too much damage, etc.).