I just played my first game with Pantheon today and did not think he was very good at all. The spear harass was good at the beginning and I did get 1st blood with his full combo.

However, as the game progressed, I just saw him getting weaker and weaker. The spear and strike abilities seemed to do little to no damage. Same with his ult. It takes a while to channel and in that time, champs always moved out of the way even if I seemed to lead them properly. Even when I got a good hit, it never seemed to do much. His jump stun was good and got me a few assists but that was about it.

My item build was Longsword, Sword of the Occult, Brutalizer, Boots of Swiftness, and I never got past my first BFS. I picked SotO mainly because it stacks and builds nicely off the longsword opener (around 10 stacks by end of game due to deaths and such). Brutalizer for CDR, and BFS's for flat damage. Should I get rid of SotO and go straight for brutalizer into BFS's (after boots)? Are there any other items / openers better suited?

My main questions are: Did i play Pantheon incorrectly? Is he not supposed to be a AD? Is he in need of a few buffs?

Any tips, tricks, or opinions would be great. Thanks!

Pantheon is like this - he is really quite powerful at level 3, but if he doesn't feed *a lot* early, he will likely be in a lot of later in the game.

Just a few opinions. Pantheon right now is an UP champ and doesn't have a good mid or late game generally unless you are fed A LOT. And unless you have a really good early game or it seems like your team is doing solid don't get Sword of the Occult or any of the snowballs for that matter on any character. If you are having a bad early game don't bother with snowball items.

All of pantheons bread and butter abilities scale with physical damage. I don't see anything wrong with your build, but you can't rely on ganking and champion kills for income. This is especially true for an item dependant champion like Pantheon. Honestly, it sounds like your underlying problem is learning how to farm minion kills so you can buy those big game winning items (Infinity Edge, Bloodthirsters..). I recommend trying a Manamune over a sword of the occult for your early game.

You can start with the same longsword if you want, and it's much more reliable for building and keeping damage. The utility of a Manamune is increased even more if you pick up Strength of Spirit from the Defensive tree.

Sometimes, I see Pantheons grab (improved) revive for a summoner spell, so that if they die early in a team fight, they can grand skyfall quickly back into the fray and hopefully sway the fight into your teams favor. Don't neglect the power an Elixir of Fortitude and Improved Revive can give you.

Addressing another observation of yours, I agree that Pantheons early game is much stronger than his late game. We probably won't see any buffs to Pantheon (he was nerfed appropriately after being a FoTM pick). If there are any buffs to Pantheon incoming, it's to his late game spear (maybe scaling, or cooldowns), with the rest of his abilities being fairly balanced. Remember that Pantheon doesn't excel at 1v1 situations, so don't play the lone wolf hoping to steamroll your opponents without team cohesion. If you have a good friend who wants to play Janna, you should definitely try out the lane combination.

Hey,
Pantheon is an excellent melee carry (yes, Pantheon is a melee carry IMO) and pusher. Your build is the typical mobafire top build and it should work well. Your early game (assuming your using the moba build, which it appears) would have your skills going something like Q,W,E,E,E,R. Holy **** that just spelt qweeer. Anyway, I find this a much more reasonable approach, as heartseeker is not crucial until you have about 200 att dammy. Q,W,E,E,Q,R, This greatly benefits your harrassment and keeps your spears hitting roughly 1/5 their hp at level 5. You should be harrassing CONSTANTLY with spear throw early game and at level 6 bp for your occult and brutalizer (if you have 2 kills you will have enough money, you should have 2 kills). From bank you should be ulting into the other lane (either top or bottom) and be picking up atleast 2 easy assists. As for your ult, its a matter of reading whats going on and what they might be thinking, but casting it behind them is never a bad idea since they are ****ed wherever they go. After that you should have atleast 2 stacks (you have level 2 spear throw, that means you should be killshotting with spear and pick up 2 kills tbh). From there you push your lane no more than 60-70% of the time realisitically, your typical W,E,Q,Q,Q,Q,Q,W,Q etc combo is now a ganking rape machine, especially since you have a good 40 attack damage bonus atleast.

Item build:
The mobafire item build is kind of ****ed because if you have 3 thirsters and occult stacks, you will be melting faces but if you die your screwed. Heres my rule of thumb: If you are doing really well early game (10ish stacks on occult at level 8-9-10) and noone on the other team is giving you real trouble, buy a thornmail instead of your first thirster. This will help you so much you wont even believe. Your stacks will easily reach 20 then you can work on your thirsters. Alternatively, If your doing kind of ****ty, get your first thirster then go for thornmail (or guardian angel if its appropriate at the time). There are magnitudes i could say for pantheon buy goodluck with this.

P.S: Masteries: flash/clarity, teleport/clarity. These are pretty much nonnegotiable.

P.P.S: Using your ult behind an enemy turret completely in the fog of war when they are low health and bping is a ****ing GREAT idea and is pretty much the most satisfying thing in the game.

Source: 100+ games with pantheon

Lost most of my reply sadly but I'll try to sum it up:

Most of what's said here isn't that really good of a way to build Panth. The best way is to build how you want to play Panth, as either a pusher/carry/whatever.

Here's a 29 minute match of how I tend to roll: http://i51.tinypic.com/ng5bih.jpg

Panth is brutual. You can dive turrets better than almost any champion in the game, ESPECIALLY early game. If you can rack up a couple kills while holding mid (which I usually do especially well) your gold supply will be fine.

For one, Manamune is interesting. The way it works though makes it take WAY too long for it to become useful (getting to mid/endgame areas). Stay away from it.

Meki's Pendant to start with 2 HP pots or a ward. You should be able to stay in any lane no matter what until level 6.

Meki's --> R1 Boots --> Chalice --> Rank 2 boots --> HP Pots --> BF Sword

Yeah, that's right, you really want to save money for the sword. Your last hitting ability with Spear Shot (SS) is very capable especially when lane'in by yourself.

There are a lot more details and ins and outs of his playing ability, but I need to go to class soon so I can't cover everything I want to, so I'll make some points of how I worked Panth.

I saved up for Pantheon as my first character until level 12, hit 12, bought him, was extremely disappointed (This is when he was OP, btw), and quit for a while. I recently came back playing a relatively good amount, and have fallen in love with the champion. He rocks.

- He takes a bit amount of skill and keenness to play to the highest extext
- I recommend flash and ghost. Ignite is okay but it doesnt work with my playstyle.

Your build should consist of always putting a point in Spear Shot whenever you can unless you can put it in jump. It should look something like this:

Your abilities should ALWAYS be this priority:

Ultimate/R (Skyfall)
Spear Shot/Q
Shield Bash Stun/W
Heartseeker Strike/E

Obviously since you don't get your ulti until 6, get SS first. It should go something like:
Q,W,Q,Q,W,R,Q,Q,W,Q,W,R ... something along those lines.

YOU SHOULDN'T GET HEARTSEEKER STRIKE UNTIL ITS THE LAST ABILITY YOU CAN PUT POINTS INTO.

Obviously those are kind of the basics, I can get into so much more but that's pretty much it.

GL, he's a hard champion to get used to but he's the unsung hero of most teams.

Also as an important note is the combo of which is use his abilities

Q, W, E, Q

Always start off an attack with Q followed by W. This will allow your Spear Shot to take out a small chunk and get on cooldown. Using Shield Bash immediately after closes the distance and gives you at least one free stab or use of you Heartseeker Strike. ONLY use HHS if you have both the mana to support it and a decent amount of AD to deal damage with it. Once the enemy gets off stun and likely starts running away, throw another Spear Shot while you give chase. This will hopefully tear off enough health that you can activate whatever summoner spell you have to finish them off.

This combo also applies after you have used Grand Skyfall on someone. It really helps if you utilize the smart spells (shift+ability shortcut I believe?) so you can get the combo down lightning fast. Definitely something to try in practice until you get the proper feel for it.

I tried the manamune substitution and it worked great! I just stacked BFS's after merc boots and had some really great games today with panth. Still gotta get used to his ult tho.

Thanks a lot guys!

Pantheon is actually a good champion, nothing compared to what he was pre nerfed but he can do alot. His ultimate actually does an incredible amount of damage and is global. you can use it to engage team fights or to catch an enemy. I get lots of kills with my ult simply because i teleport ontop of a guy that is trying to run away with low hp.
Always get spear shot as your first spell. then upgrade your 5 spear thingie to full first. you only need 1 lvl up in stun that you should get that at lvl 3

First item i get is advarice blade, then you can just forget about it, it actually gives quite a fair amount of gold by the end of the game.