Formerly OP #16: Old Pantheon

He didn't out-damage you in lane. He made trading with you impossible.

Old Pantheon spent nine seasons as the champion who could delete a level six carry from across the map, and he barely got nerfed for any of it.

Formerly OP

Old Pantheon

Season 1 – Season 9 · Ended Patch 9.16

He didn't out-damage you in lane. He made trading with you impossible.

Old Pantheon spent nine seasons as the champion who could delete a level six carry from across the map, and he barely got nerfed for any of it.

Picture the worst version of a losing top lane. You're at half health, you've got no jungle help coming, and the enemy Pantheon is standing just inside minion range doing nothing in particular. You step up to auto him once, because one auto is free, and it doesn't land. It just stops. Then a spear arrives, then he's on top of you with a stun you couldn't sidestep, and by the time you're back at the fountain your mid laner is typing because a spear also landed on them, from the sky, from a Pantheon who was in your lane four seconds ago. That was the whole champion, and it stayed the whole champion for most of a decade.

When, And For How Long

Pantheon launched in February 2010 as the Artisan of War, and the kit that made him dreaded arrived properly in Season 1, when Riot rebuilt his damage profile and handed his spear a genuine nuke instead of a chip-damage poke. From there the era just kept going. Riot ended it with a full relaunch in Patch 9.16 (released in August 2019), which puts the close of the story in Season 9.

What makes his run unusual is how quiet it was. Most champions who hold an oppressive identity for years collect a long trail of nerfs on the way, each one shaving off a little. Pantheon's old kit collected almost none. Between that Season 1 power patch and the 9.16 relaunch, the only balance pass that meaningfully took anything away was Patch 6.5, which cut the damage on Heartseeker Strike [E] and raised the cooldown he paid for a canceled Grand Skyfall [R] channel. Everything else went the other way: his spear got stronger in 7.22, his stun got stronger in 8.14, and his base stats got padded out repeatedly. Riot didn't nerf this champion out of the meta. Riot eventually deleted him.

The Old Kit

The icons below are the real archived originals.

Passive: Aegis Protection

Hitting minions charged his passive. Four landed basic attacks or ability casts and the shield came up, and then the next basic attack aimed at him simply didn't happen. It was blocked outright, along with every on-hit effect riding on it. It didn't have to be a champion swinging, either (a large monster counted, and so did a turret shot). That's the part that decided games. Pantheon could walk under your tower, eat the first shot for free, and still be at full health when he landed on you. Patch 4.5 stripped out the damage threshold that had limited what it could eat, and after that no single auto attack in the game was too big for it.

Q: Spear Shot

A targeted spear on a four second cooldown, with no travel to dodge and no skillshot to miss. Modern Pantheon has to charge his and aim it. This one you clicked.

W: Aegis of Zeonia

A targeted leap onto an enemy for a flat one second stun, and it handed him Aegis Protection [Passive] outright, without spending the charge he'd already built. Because it locked onto a unit rather than a spot on the ground, walking out of its range once he'd committed didn't save you. You got stunned anyway.

E: Heartseeker Strike

The active was a short cone channel that hit everything in front of him (six second cooldown at max rank). The part people remember is the passive attached to it (Certain Death), which made his basic attacks and his Spear Shot [Q] critically strike anything under 15% of its maximum health. He didn't need crit chance or an item, and nothing was left to a roll. Under the threshold, you were getting crit.

R: Grand Skyfall

He channeled for two seconds, went untargetable, and reappeared anywhere inside a 5500 unit radius, landing two seconds later across a wide circle and slowing everyone in it. That's most of one side of the map (practically speaking), and he got that reach without spending a summoner slot on Teleport to have it.

Why It Was OP

Blocking one basic attack sounds tiny. Written into a patch note it looks like a rounding error. What it actually did was take the most basic interaction in the game away from the person standing across from him.

He won trades he never took. Laning is a negotiation about who spends resources first. Aegis Protection [Passive] let Pantheon opt out of the negotiation. Step up to auto him and your auto vanished, so the only way to poke him was to give up more than you got back. Against ranged tops it was worse (hitting minions charged his passive, so the block was ready again every time you finally walked forward).

Nothing about him was dodgeable. Spear Shot [Q] was targeted. Aegis of Zeonia [W] was targeted, and it landed even if you ran. Certain Death just applied, with no crit roll. A kit with no aiming requirement and no randomness in it means mechanical skill on the receiving end bought you very little, which is exactly the kind of matchup players find intolerable no matter what the win rate says.

He was never actually somewhere else. Grand Skyfall [R] made map position a suggestion. A Pantheon behind in his own lane was still a live threat to every other lane on the map, so the usual reward for beating him (freedom for your team elsewhere) didn't arrive. Teams played around the whole map being two seconds from a Pantheon.

He needed almost nothing to work. Certain Death handed him an execute without buying crit, and the passive handed him lane sustain without buying defensively. That let him build straight into damage from the first back, which is how a melee bruiser ends up one-shotting carries at level six.

The Fall

Patch 9.16 in August 2019 was a full relaunch. New title, new voice, new lore, new art across every skin, and a kit rebuilt from the ground up. Riot's answer to nine seasons of Pantheon complaints was to stop shipping that champion.

What Changed

Mortal Will [Passive] took the passive slot, and it's a payoff mechanic rather than a defensive one. It stacks up and then supercharges his next basic ability, which is a completely different job from blocking your auto attack. The attack-blocking survived in spirit only, folded into Aegis Assault [E] as a directional window where he braces his shield and ignores damage coming at him from the front, which you can walk around.

Comet Spear [Q] replaced Spear Shot [Q] and now has to be charged and aimed like a real skillshot. Shield Vault [W] is the closest thing to a survivor, still a targeted dash with a one second stun on the end. Grand Starfall [R] kept the global feel but now marks and reveals where he's going to land, so it's an announced play instead of an ambush. Certain Death is gone outright, and nothing in the new kit does what it did.

Where He Stands Now

Modern Pantheon is a real champion with real inputs, and he's a good one. He shows up top, mid, jungle and support depending on the patch, and his early levels are still scary because Comet Spear [Q] and Shield Vault [W] together are an enormous amount of point-and-shoot damage for a level three. The difference is that everything he does now can be answered. You can bait Aegis Assault [E] and walk around it, you can sidestep a charged spear, and you can see Grand Starfall [R] coming and step out of the circle.

That's the trade Riot made, and it was the right one. He's kept his identity as the spear-and-shield diver who punishes you for standing still, and he lost the version of that identity where standing still was the only mistake available to you.

The spear still works from the support slot, and we've written up the version where he sits in bot lane and bullies people out of lane.

Nominate The Next One

Old Pantheon is a strange entry for this series because there's no dramatic nerf patch to point at. He was allowed to be like that for nine years, and then he wasn't a champion any more. Who else got the delete treatment instead of the nerf treatment? Drop your nominations in the comments, and if there's an old kit you're still holding a grudge about, we'd like to hear which one.