Pantheon is an snowbally AD Bruiser who is versatile and can be played depending on the situation both as a diver who tries to burst carries or a frontlining bruiser.

He wants to use his extremely strong pre 6 laning to get a lead. Throughout the mid- late game Pantheon should be trying to push in sidelanes and use Grand Starfall to force fights with numbers while enemies catch the waves you've shoved in.

Pantheon falling off a cliff late game is just a myth. Old Pantheon lacked an ability to survive teamfights without Aegis Assault, and had no armor pen so his damage fell off as well. It's from level 6 until 2 items where he struggles most. At level 6 if you haven't managed to get a lead pre 6, many toplaners like Tryndamere, Trundle, or Wukong that can run you down and massively outstat you can be extremely difficult to deal with.

Finishing 2 items and getting level 11 for more armor pen from Grand Starfall will finish this. At 3 items and level 16, you are a strong teamfighter and beat probably 75 percent of toplaners in the sidelane.

While he doesn't fall off, he struggles badly from behind. He has no mobility to escape ganks or teams collapsing on him in the sidelane, or just stronger enemy toplaner all ins, and so if he isn't strong enough to control the sidelane he will struggle to get gold and xp to scale. When fights roll around, as a jack of all trades champ he is able to do everything when ahead and nothing when behind. From ahead he can win 1v1 in the sidelane, pressure the map with R, 100 to 0 squishy carries, or just fight front to back if necessary.

Press the Attack and Conqueror are the two options for Pantheon. It used to be more nuanced and up to personal preference, but after 14.10 giving Press the Attack damage amp to all targets instead of just the target you procced it on, it became the go to option in 95 percent of games. Only take Conqueror vs very tanky teams where you don't plan on building even an Eclipse for burst damage.

Regardless of whether you have Conqueror or Press the Attack you will be in the precision tree.

Presence of Mind is the best option to fix your mana problems in one place since the mana cost reductions.

Legend: Alacrity is the way to go in this set. Pantheon is by no means an auto attacker, but a little bit of Attack Speed makes your combos much smoother and strenghtens your dueling a lot. If you are planning on building Blade of the Ruined King, Legend: Alacrity is overkill and you can take Legend: Haste instead.

Finally, Coup de Grace is what I prefer to run in the last row. It is a little bit redundant with Comet Spear execute, but the extra damage on low HP often surprises people in lane for a Flash- Shield Vault kill or a solo dive. It fits Pantheon's gameplan to force an early kill too well to pass up even though Cut Down provides good damage as well.

The meta secondary tree is generally Sorcery. Scorch helps to be able to force the early kill via increased poke damage. From there, you go Transcendence which scales well into teamfights.

However, especially after the nerfs to all t2 boots, I prefer going Inspiration tree with Magical Footwear and Time Warp Tonic. With these runes you start Longsword with refillable potion and Time Warp Tonic gives 40 bonus healing to each of your refillable potions. With this, you have more effective health than you would with Doran's Blade and a health potion and also get to your item spikes 400g faster. Magical Footwear gets you to your items faster as well which is incredibly important on this champion. This setup gives a little less pressure early with the lack of Scorch, but the longsword refillable start synergy with timewarp is very strong and well worth it. IMPORTANT: Be careful of taking this setup vs a champion like Tryndamere where you may need early tier 2 boots to lane effectively. Either swap out Magical Footwear for Cosmic Insight or just take the Sorcery page.

Some players prefer the Resolve tree and run things like Bone Plating and Second Wind. However, especially before level 6 you should be winning hard enough to where you don't need defensive stats or runes to survive. Of course with defensive runes you can win fights you wouldn't otherwise, but in general the aggressive Sorcery setup will net you more early leads and the Inspiration setup will snowball you much faster towards items

For the minor shards, double adaptive and flat hp give maximum early pressure. Scaling HP or attack speed shard will kneecap your ability to get a lead during Pantheon's strongest point in the game

One important thing that I think many people don't understand is how armor penetration works. Let's take a target with 100 armor vs a level 16 Pantheon with a build like Eclipse, Black Cleaver, Death's Dance. Pantheon has 0 lethality,30 percent armor pen from Grand Starfall passive, and 30 percent from Black Cleaver after a combo. So that should leave the target with 100-60=40 armor, right? Wrong. Percentage pen stacks multiplacatively, so really it's 100(1-.3)(1-.3)=49. Now let's replace the Death's Dance with an Edge of Nightwith 15 lethality. Flat pen(lethality) is calculated after percent pen. So (100(1-.3)(1-.3))-15=34. So because Pantheon gets a bunch of free percent pen from Grand Starfall and uses Black Cleaver really well, more percent pen is inefficient. Lethality has increased efficiency on the other hand because since armor gives diminishing returns, taking a target from 10 armor to 0 armor adds more damage than taking a target from 100 to 90.

Therefore, you really want to be picking up one lethality item on Pantheon despite him being a bruiser. Edge of Night gives 15 lethality and also a passive that goes really well with Grand Starfall where you drop into the enemy team and can't be immediately locked down with CC before you can combo. This is the go to third item in almost every game and you will feel a big spike in burst damage to squishies when you build this.

Eclipse is the go to rush item for Pantheon and has been since its release. It has a strong build path with lots of pure AD to enable your strong early game and get solokills, is a cheap spike, and gives the 3 things Pantheon needs on a first item: Big damage, ability haste, and a little survivability. This should be your first item at least 80 percent of games and can be 100 percent if you don't want to think about it.

Second we either go Black Cleaver or Sundered Sky. Vs tanky teams that will have multiple champions that buy armor/HP and cant be 100-0ed in one rotation of spells, go Black Cleaver, otherwise go Sundered Sky. Third you go Edge of Night most games, this is explained in the armor pen section. On 4th item if you went the Sundered Sky build, pick up Serylda's Grudge and you will have big damage vs squishies. Serylda's Grudge will do more damage in this slot than a pure lethlity item like Youmuu's Ghostblade even to a champion not building armor, so stick with grudge. Otherwise, fill in your build with the situationals,those are pretty self explanatory.

For boots, Mercury's Treads and Plated Steelcaps have been overnerfed and are only worth building in a really good situation, like steelcaps vs a team with 3 ad autoattackers. Generally you want to wait until youve completed at least 2 items and then get Boots of Swiftness. These boots give no stats and are pretty useless in lane , so never build them early and you can delay until after 3 or 4 items if you want.

In 14.10 and 14.11 the oneshot build was nerfed and is simply not as strong as the standard Eclipse-(Cleaver/Sundered Sky) builds. The problem is that it just doesn't do that much more burst damage than the standard builds. If you really want to play assassin Pantheon its much better on midlane and the build is above. That is the highest damage first 3 items you can buy, and Edge of Night gives a huge protection against CC, and on last item Eclipse is again the highest damage option. IMPORTANT: Don't build 5 lethality items, with this build and Grand Starfall passive you will deal true damage to squishies already, more lethality is a wasted stat. Eclipse last gives the most AD and also a little survivability and haste which you are otherwise lacking.

Run Flash Ignite every single game. Pantheon has early kill pressure into every single toplaner . Against many champs like Fiora, Irelia, or Wukong that get a strong dueling ult that also lets them gapclose, he needs all the help he can get to get a lead pre 6 or he just gets run down post 6. Additionally, Grand Starfall covers for Teleport in the mid and late game. Your ultimate is better for flanking fights than Teleport and so when I've run Teleport I find myself going to a sidelane with TP up and then ulting to the fight anyways because theres no TP spot that can get me to the enemy carries like my R can.

Most bruisers will beat Pantheon in a straight up all in the laning phase, especially after level 6. Your goal is generally to whittle them down with Comet Spears and you can then win an all in. Keep your spacing and don't let them walk inside your Comet Spear range. Obviously most bruisers can close this gap with an ability, but it is important that you force them to use it to close the gap and not for damage/to gapclose again. Of course, the specifics depend more on the exact matchups and those are all written out.

Against ranged toplaners, it's pretty simple and Pantheon does pretty well into most. Wait for your level 3 without getting poked out(give a few cs if you have to), then look to engage and dump your full combo. You dont need to all in necessarily as you have long cooldowns early. Empowered Shield Vault> Comet Spear>AA>Empowered Aegis Assault and with the bonus move speed either run away for a one sided trade or chase for an all in.

Against tanks, consider Conqueror if there is other tanks/bruisers on the enemy team as well. It depends on the specific enemy champion, but you generally will win extended trades against tanks. With levels into Grand Starfall and Black Cleaver you will melt tanks later in the game. However, if you can't kill them early and they come to lane after first back with a Warden's Mail and Plated Steelcaps, you will just be tickling them.

Yes, it gets its own section. Do not empowered Shield Vault if the enemy has Bone Plating up. It treats Empowered Shield Vault as three separate attacks and so it does almost no damage. You need to land a Comet Spear before you can engage someone with Bone Plating.

In the laning phase, there's a few things you can use it for:

In your own lane, if you catch your laner lacking going for platings or overextending after you reset, ult on their head. Don't feel bad about using it to catch a big wave either, especially if you're already behind.

Ulting to mid: This is always a good option if you are able to shove in your wave toplane and their midlaner looks gankable. Grand Starfall on their head, hopefully get a kill, and you can usually get back to top without missing more than a few minions

Ulting to bot: Obviously more risky, as you will likely miss at least one wave and give up at least a plating top. In my opinion it's usually not worth it except for 2 situations: 1. You are way behind to the point of no return toplane(in this case try to leave your adc the kills if possible since you won't be doing anything with them topside) 2. Your team is way behind and their botlane has shutdowns. You need to make a play and get the shutdowns or your team will just lose regardless of you winning toplane.

Rotating mid or bot is more rewarding when a dragon is spawning soon, as even if you don't kill you create priority for your laners to go to dragon

Pantheon is very versatile and can fill a number of roles. He can ult into the backline and try to burst carries when ahead, he can frontline with a tankier build as shown in the builds and kill enemy frontline with his team, or he can stay backline and hold Shield Vault to shut down something like a fed Master Yi or Katarina. Which one you should do just depends on the game and what is needed, one isn't right for every game.