Counter Guide

How to Beat Pantheon

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

You can't dodge the way Pantheon starts a fight. He picks a target and he's already on them, and everything after that is a question of what you brought.

Most early aggressors give you something to react to. He doesn't. The opener is point and click, and the punish for hitting him back is a shield he can point directly at your damage. Then he leaves, arrives in someone else's lane, and the game is two kills further away than it was. That's a miserable few minutes to play through, and the answer is making the all-in fail (a shopping decision and a positioning decision more than a mechanical one). The solo queue tier list shows the company he keeps.

Matchup Snapshot Pantheon, the Unbreakable Spear

Where You Meet Him Top lane, mid, and a fair amount of support

Damage Type Physical, front-loaded and early

Why He Is Frustrating The engage can't be dodged

Mobility Leaps most of the map on a long cooldown

Biggest Threat Shield Vault [W]

Hardest Counter Gangplank

What a Counter Needs

Armor, earlier than feels reasonable
A way to survive levels two through six
Something that punishes him for the roam

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Pantheon on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Pantheon

Gangplank813 games55.8%
Illaoi650 games55.1%
Ornn436 games55.0%
Malphite1,269 games54.1%
Singed431 games54.1%

Picks Pantheon Beats

Akali709 games44.3%
Vayne400 games45.0%
Fiora658 games45.3%
Aatrox1,328 games45.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the top lane against Pantheon. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 38,121 Pantheon games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Pantheon Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

The opener is point and click. Shield Vault [W] is a targeted dash with a stun on the end. There's no skillshot to sidestep and no window to react in, so the fight starts on his schedule every time.
Hitting him back is difficult by design. Aegis Assault [E] makes him invulnerable to damage from the front while he keeps attacking, so the natural response to being jumped on is the one that does the least.
His early damage is genuinely unfair. Mortal Will [Passive] means the spear he throws every few casts hits far harder than the level suggests, and the levels where that matters most are the ones where nobody has resistances yet.
He doesn't have to be in your lane. Grand Starfall [R] covers thousands of units, and a lane he's winning is usually the setup for a lane somebody else is about to lose.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The shield only faces one way. Aegis Assault [E] covers the front. Damage arriving from behind him (or from a direction he didn't choose) goes straight through it.
Armor blanks most of the kit. His damage is physical and front-loaded, so an early armor item cancels the all-in outright.
He falls off. The kit is built around winning the first ten minutes, and a game where nothing happened in those ten minutes is a game he's losing.
The engage commits him. Once the dash is spent he's a melee champion standing in a fight with no way of leaving it.
Range beats him for free. Everything he has is short. A champion who never lets him inside 600 units is a champion he can't start a fight with at all.

Countering Pantheon

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Pantheon comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Buy armor before you think you need it. His damage is one type and it arrives early (the exact case where a cheap component outperforms anything clever).
Don't trade into the shield. Walk out, wait for it to end, and take the trade in the seconds afterward when he has nothing.
Survive to the mid game. You don't have to beat him. You have to still be there when the part of the game he's good at is over.
Track him when he leaves. The roam is where he converts a lane he's winning into a game he's winning, and a ping is worth more than the wave you'd have to give up for it.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Pantheon Matchup

Stand where the wave protects you rather than where the farm is best. The dash needs a target inside its range (denying him that costs a few minions rather than a kill).

Give up the trade you were owed. The instinct after being stunned is to hit back immediately, and immediately is when his shield is up.

Play for the fifteen minute mark. Every choice in a bad Pantheon lane should be measured against whether it gets you there with a turret and a farm count rather than with a highlight.

Best Pantheon Counters

Blank the damage type, beat him on his own timing, or make the lane a place he can't reach into.

Malphite Armor Makes The Plan Pointless

His whole opening is physical damage delivered in one burst, and Malphite is the champion built to make that specific thing fail. Stacking armor early removes the reason to attempt the all-in at all.

The passive shield handles the poke in between, so even the patient version of the matchup doesn't go anywhere for him.

Renekton Wins The Same Early Game

Pantheon's pitch is that he's the strongest champion on the map for the first few levels, and Renekton is one of the few opponents who can simply say no to that. He sustains through the poke and his own all-in isn't much slower.

He also punishes the commitment. Once the dash is spent, Pantheon is a melee champion in a fight he can't leave (exactly the situation Renekton's kit was designed to exploit).

Gwen Makes Him Come Inside

Hallowed Mist [W] means he has to be standing in it to do anything to her, and standing in it is where he spends the cooldowns he needs to leave with.

The long game is hers too. He's trying to end the matchup before her items arrive, and she only has to survive the part he's good at.

Itemizing Against Pantheon

His damage is physical and it arrives early, so the buys are unusually simple and unusually effective:

A Doran's Shield is the cheapest way to survive the levels where he's at his most frightening, and against a champion whose plan depends on the first few trades it does more than the damage item it replaces. Chain Vest is the one that decides the lane, and buying it earlier than the build order suggests is almost always right here. Plated Steelcaps is the natural home for that armor once the lane settles (a large share of what he does is basic attacks landing while you're held in place). Randuin's Omen is the late answer for whoever he keeps choosing to land on, and by the time it's finished the part of the game he was built for is over anyway.