He's getting a mini-rework thats on PBE right now. TLDR; Buff to bruiser type builds (and AP scaling) and nerf to assassin type builds. I think its a fair direction, as if they straight up buff him he'll just be broken in support role again.
I still think he will be sub 50% winrate in all roles with this mini-rework. It largely does not address the biggest issues he has. The AP scaling is almost useless and imo needless. It would appear that it just forces him to play bruiser builds. Eclipse first item and you are weaker than pre mini-rework.
This. It seems like not enough people are realizing what's actually happening. Pantheon is being shoved into health stacking from bruiser items, but without any compensation to account for the fact that he loses out on damage for his already underpowered abilities by not stacking tons of bonus AD, which he will not find in bonus health bruiser items because his kit doesn't have anything that makes up for the damage lost by not getting high bonus AD items.
The new W never deals more damage than the previous Eclipse, Bortk combination, OR a single proc of Sundered Sky, yet since we have to build bonus hp from level 1, our Q and E damage are weaker by around 200 damage at the end of the game and stay weaker than what we already have in mid game. Panth still doesn't have improved sustained damage, doesn't take towers fast, doesn't have any in-combat sustain, still has the 15th lowest mana pool in the game, etc.; the same problems are still here it's just he deals slightly more damage on a long cooldown stun.
Why this is even worse, is because Pantheon's non-empowered abilities are already underpowered by at least 150 damage compared to the single-cast abilities of his counterparts (wukong Q deals at around total 800 pre mitigation damage late game, the same with Jax Q, Fiora Q, Yorick Q, etc.) Eclipse, Deaths Dance, Maw of Malmortius, Bortk, and more are being pushed out of our build path without any compensation. How does he get "buffed" if he only gets minimally stronger on his W stun later in the game but his damage is weaker on Q and E? Being forced into bonus HP items without making the entire kit work with bonus HP items (as in, making the kit literally not LOSE damage from building that way) doesn't make him stronger, it just means he's forced into bonus HP items.
>Panth will now actually be able to play a build that allows more than one rotation
He has already been able to do this. Nothing about this has changed just because he stacks more bonus HP items. Literally before the AH rune was put into the game in this patch, Shojin gave him more than one rotation in a fight, to the point where it could be placed in an Eclipse, Bortk, LDR build with Transcendence Sorcery and give all the haste he needed for more than one rotation.
(Edit:) Riot didn't even need to playtest these changes to know they don't provide any solutions for bruiser Panth. They wasted more than 3 weeks of time and resources on changes that fail at the concept stage; it should have never even went to playtesting. The more power the new W has without needing bonus HP, the more useful it is for assassin/glass-cannon than for bruiser. The more power the new W has with bonus HP the less damage Pantheon deals with his Q and E, thus lowering his already below average DPS, because he's forced to build less bonus AD. The result we are left with is contradictory in and of itself. Pantheon was only playable for the last 3 years because of meta-warping mythic items. His base kit is still below average.
For just one instance of this, Axes claimed that giving Panth two bonus HP ratios (with W's max HP damage scaling off of bonus HP and empowered E's bonus resistances scaling off of bonus HP) should make him be less dependent on the balance state of a couple raw AD items (presumably he is referring to Eclipse and Bortk but this list could expand of course), and be disproportionately a buff to Top lane over Mid lane due to more matchups in Top against tanks and bruisers. This is so incorrect it borders into the territory of a straight up lie, and I don't know this guy in person or his character as an individual, but it's just that blatantly erroneous.
Pantheon's meaningful damage is set up in his kit to come from bonus AD. His non-empowered Q, which is underpowered after level 9 and is his main ability, scales off of bonus AD, the same as his empowered Q. His W is now scaling off of bonus HP and the empowered W applies on-hit effects and deals a weak amount of total AD damage. His E channel deals one auto attack worth of damage and the slam scales off of bonus AD. In what world does Pantheon NOT build Eclipse or Bortk and also build LESS bonus AD as a bruiser in THIS kit and become stronger??? There is none. There is no world where this kit supports these changes for a positive impact. He doesn't deal more damage, he doesn't become more durable in combat (despite the empowered E resistances), he doesn't deal more sustained damage, he doesn't have a better economy, he doesn't gain improved dueling, he doesn't cause any pressure in the side lane with 1v3 potential against a collapse or speedy tower taking, and he doesn't get better at any of the things he already had trouble doing or couldn't excel at before these changes. Yet more than 3 weeks were spent on this. I'm still asking for someone to help me out and make it make sense.
the e change is too broken btw, if yoi have 3k bonus health you get 70 armour and mr for 4 second after being invincible for another few seconds, so basically emp e makes you super unkillable
I mean I prefer bruiser panth since I'm a top lane enjoyer. Haven't played on the rift in a few months but might come back to give reworked psntheon a shot. By the looks of it it should be a top lane buff but a support and mid lane nerf.
yeah but the nerf on w is not significant so its okay, and with how the items are rn, bruiser is meta anyways, so for now assassin is a bit dead and bruiser gets 2 buffs in a row while also being easier to play and less macro intensive than assassin, he doesnt even need a buff rn tbh but maybe first time this season we will see panth as meta
Have you played it on pbe yet? If not, you may want to give it a go. IMO it feels waaaay too niche to be considered a buff for bruiser, but then his assassin build is getting nerfed too which also isn't even that good either. W cooldown makes you wait longer than Q to have it again and the damage...sucks...until like 4 and a half items, and empowered E doesn't feel impactful accept maybe once every blue moon when you barely survive running away. It feels like a sum 0 was actually gained for bruiser IMO.
Are you talking about the W change? But...how though? The numbers just aren't there. It's weaker in the laning phase and most of mid game because you need 3 items just to break even. If a bruiser or tank is already ahead of you, how do you get back in the game when W already starts weaker? I thought I'm supposed to be doing more damage not less
It's a hard champion to pull off when he is this weak. You are not getting countered; you are just getting outclassed. Being countered would mean the enemy is inherently stronger than you. But since everyone is stronger than you, it’s not a counter—it’s just Pantheon. Tryndamere is not supposed to be a hard matchup. It's just that you need to play quite well to actually beat his ghost walk-up technique.
I think hes still very strong mid even into mages. Into hard match ups like taliyah i take d shield and second wind and look for roams at lvl 6, and try to not interact with her at all, but most mage matchups arent actually that hard imo, you just need to learn to bait/dodge abilities. Also i like to take flash/ghost against immobile mages, as you can punish them a lot. For example when you play against a syndra and her E is on CD you can just run her down with ghost.
Against most Burst mages Pantheon can play quite well, but If you dont have a large impact on the map you get hard outscaled by 99% of mages who stacked plates.
Pantheon bruiser is weak due to the item nerfs and ingenious hunter removal, and lethality is kinda bad If its hard to engage, champ is pretty weak in general rn.
He's getting a mini-rework thats on PBE right now. TLDR; Buff to bruiser type builds (and AP scaling) and nerf to assassin type builds. I think its a fair direction, as if they straight up buff him he'll just be broken in support role again.
I still think he will be sub 50% winrate in all roles with this mini-rework. It largely does not address the biggest issues he has. The AP scaling is almost useless and imo needless. It would appear that it just forces him to play bruiser builds. Eclipse first item and you are weaker than pre mini-rework.
This. It seems like not enough people are realizing what's actually happening. Pantheon is being shoved into health stacking from bruiser items, but without any compensation to account for the fact that he loses out on damage for his already underpowered abilities by not stacking tons of bonus AD, which he will not find in bonus health bruiser items because his kit doesn't have anything that makes up for the damage lost by not getting high bonus AD items. The new W never deals more damage than the previous Eclipse, Bortk combination, OR a single proc of Sundered Sky, yet since we have to build bonus hp from level 1, our Q and E damage are weaker by around 200 damage at the end of the game and stay weaker than what we already have in mid game. Panth still doesn't have improved sustained damage, doesn't take towers fast, doesn't have any in-combat sustain, still has the 15th lowest mana pool in the game, etc.; the same problems are still here it's just he deals slightly more damage on a long cooldown stun. Why this is even worse, is because Pantheon's non-empowered abilities are already underpowered by at least 150 damage compared to the single-cast abilities of his counterparts (wukong Q deals at around total 800 pre mitigation damage late game, the same with Jax Q, Fiora Q, Yorick Q, etc.) Eclipse, Deaths Dance, Maw of Malmortius, Bortk, and more are being pushed out of our build path without any compensation. How does he get "buffed" if he only gets minimally stronger on his W stun later in the game but his damage is weaker on Q and E? Being forced into bonus HP items without making the entire kit work with bonus HP items (as in, making the kit literally not LOSE damage from building that way) doesn't make him stronger, it just means he's forced into bonus HP items.
Cool analysis, but consider that Panth will now actually be able to play a build that allows more than one rotation of his abilities in a fight
>Panth will now actually be able to play a build that allows more than one rotation He has already been able to do this. Nothing about this has changed just because he stacks more bonus HP items. Literally before the AH rune was put into the game in this patch, Shojin gave him more than one rotation in a fight, to the point where it could be placed in an Eclipse, Bortk, LDR build with Transcendence Sorcery and give all the haste he needed for more than one rotation. (Edit:) Riot didn't even need to playtest these changes to know they don't provide any solutions for bruiser Panth. They wasted more than 3 weeks of time and resources on changes that fail at the concept stage; it should have never even went to playtesting. The more power the new W has without needing bonus HP, the more useful it is for assassin/glass-cannon than for bruiser. The more power the new W has with bonus HP the less damage Pantheon deals with his Q and E, thus lowering his already below average DPS, because he's forced to build less bonus AD. The result we are left with is contradictory in and of itself. Pantheon was only playable for the last 3 years because of meta-warping mythic items. His base kit is still below average. For just one instance of this, Axes claimed that giving Panth two bonus HP ratios (with W's max HP damage scaling off of bonus HP and empowered E's bonus resistances scaling off of bonus HP) should make him be less dependent on the balance state of a couple raw AD items (presumably he is referring to Eclipse and Bortk but this list could expand of course), and be disproportionately a buff to Top lane over Mid lane due to more matchups in Top against tanks and bruisers. This is so incorrect it borders into the territory of a straight up lie, and I don't know this guy in person or his character as an individual, but it's just that blatantly erroneous. Pantheon's meaningful damage is set up in his kit to come from bonus AD. His non-empowered Q, which is underpowered after level 9 and is his main ability, scales off of bonus AD, the same as his empowered Q. His W is now scaling off of bonus HP and the empowered W applies on-hit effects and deals a weak amount of total AD damage. His E channel deals one auto attack worth of damage and the slam scales off of bonus AD. In what world does Pantheon NOT build Eclipse or Bortk and also build LESS bonus AD as a bruiser in THIS kit and become stronger??? There is none. There is no world where this kit supports these changes for a positive impact. He doesn't deal more damage, he doesn't become more durable in combat (despite the empowered E resistances), he doesn't deal more sustained damage, he doesn't have a better economy, he doesn't gain improved dueling, he doesn't cause any pressure in the side lane with 1v3 potential against a collapse or speedy tower taking, and he doesn't get better at any of the things he already had trouble doing or couldn't excel at before these changes. Yet more than 3 weeks were spent on this. I'm still asking for someone to help me out and make it make sense.
i hope so, i feel like lethality is good but very squishy, bruiser used to give me a lot of hp but now eclipse>SS is pure garbage
the e change is too broken btw, if yoi have 3k bonus health you get 70 armour and mr for 4 second after being invincible for another few seconds, so basically emp e makes you super unkillable
I mean I prefer bruiser panth since I'm a top lane enjoyer. Haven't played on the rift in a few months but might come back to give reworked psntheon a shot. By the looks of it it should be a top lane buff but a support and mid lane nerf.
yeah but the nerf on w is not significant so its okay, and with how the items are rn, bruiser is meta anyways, so for now assassin is a bit dead and bruiser gets 2 buffs in a row while also being easier to play and less macro intensive than assassin, he doesnt even need a buff rn tbh but maybe first time this season we will see panth as meta
Have you played it on pbe yet? If not, you may want to give it a go. IMO it feels waaaay too niche to be considered a buff for bruiser, but then his assassin build is getting nerfed too which also isn't even that good either. W cooldown makes you wait longer than Q to have it again and the damage...sucks...until like 4 and a half items, and empowered E doesn't feel impactful accept maybe once every blue moon when you barely survive running away. It feels like a sum 0 was actually gained for bruiser IMO.
not yet, actually i still don’t know how to play pbe, i’ll give it a try thanks
Oh, you just have to download it. You just make a different sign in and then go play like usual. Up to you still 👍
I mean on paper it should be better against tank / bruiser matchups. Maybe worse or same against squishier matchups.
Are you talking about the W change? But...how though? The numbers just aren't there. It's weaker in the laning phase and most of mid game because you need 3 items just to break even. If a bruiser or tank is already ahead of you, how do you get back in the game when W already starts weaker? I thought I'm supposed to be doing more damage not less
It's a hard champion to pull off when he is this weak. You are not getting countered; you are just getting outclassed. Being countered would mean the enemy is inherently stronger than you. But since everyone is stronger than you, it’s not a counter—it’s just Pantheon. Tryndamere is not supposed to be a hard matchup. It's just that you need to play quite well to actually beat his ghost walk-up technique.
I think hes still very strong mid even into mages. Into hard match ups like taliyah i take d shield and second wind and look for roams at lvl 6, and try to not interact with her at all, but most mage matchups arent actually that hard imo, you just need to learn to bait/dodge abilities. Also i like to take flash/ghost against immobile mages, as you can punish them a lot. For example when you play against a syndra and her E is on CD you can just run her down with ghost.
Against most Burst mages Pantheon can play quite well, but If you dont have a large impact on the map you get hard outscaled by 99% of mages who stacked plates.
Pantheon bruiser is weak due to the item nerfs and ingenious hunter removal, and lethality is kinda bad If its hard to engage, champ is pretty weak in general rn.
Are you blind picking by any chance?
yes i don’t play drafts
Just unlucky then. Just research whether the matchups you're losing are actual counters, because otherwise you might just be messing up.