Pantheon

[Kageh]

Did anybody try this guy out for some serious stomping? I did a few matches with him last night, he plays quite cool, although I'm not sure how to build the items best yet. Good harrassing Q/W abilities for early game, a bit of range ability, apparently decent farming at later stages with Heartseeker, and a very cool looking - albeit very easy to avoid and long-casting - ultimate. Downsides: no "Oh shit" ability (the 1 sec stun on W is not long enough to matter defensively, other than an interrupt) and the ulti takes too long, no CC counters.

My main problem was that building for attack speed/crit didn't scale that well mid-game, and building exclusively for damage (I found a popular guide on leaguecraft suggesting 2x BFSword as first purchases) is sloooooow. Playing with a few decent Yi/Kat, or even Jax players (comparable melee assassins), those took off way faster than me.

End-game though, with Boots of Swiftness and 2xBloodthirster, I was quite a killing machine.

[schild]

He's not bad, survivability is a bit low. I really like his skillset and will probably play him a lot once I get my act together with him.

[Astorax]

I honestly have yet to see a good one.

The only time I've seen them become dangerous is if they're fed early (a la Evelyn) by a bad.  Otherwise, there's no real synnergy with their abilities, and most of them are easily avoidable and he seems to be WAY squishier than the other melee carry heroes.

[schild]

Otherwise, there's no real synnergy with their abilities, and most of them are easily avoidable and he seems to be WAY squishier than the other melee carry heroes.

This, I question. Between his stun, ult, etc, he's got decent synergy if you're relatively communicative. The ult is best used like CMs imo, or to clear out a creep wave that has reached a tower. It also stops backdooring instantly. His hit point and armor growth seems to be roughly the same as the likes of Warwick and such, he just has no heal, which makes it a little rough. His stun is pretty money though. I just need more practice with him. The W, E, Q combo is disgustingly powerful.

[Astorax]

Otherwise, there's no real synnergy with their abilities, and most of them are easily avoidable and he seems to be WAY squishier than the other melee carry heroes.

This, I question. Between his stun, ult, etc, he's got decent synergy if you're relatively communicative. The ult is best used like CMs imo, or to clear out a creep wave that has reached a tower. It also stops backdooring instantly. His hit point and armor growth seems to be roughly the same as the likes of Warwick and such, he just has no heal, which makes it a little rough. His stun is pretty money though. I just need more practice with him. The W, E, Q combo is disgustingly powerful.

His ult is a glorified teleport with no synergy.  CM's teleport is a) not his ult, and b) synergizes BEAUTIFULLY with his ult to basically mean a kill when used appropriately every single time it's used by a good CM against a team that isn't really well organized.  Pantheon's ult takes too long to hit, even if it's centrally targeted on someone, every single character can get out of its way if they move quickly and not get hit, making the slow/dmg part of it almost totally useless.

His health IS on par with Warwick's...which is the problem. Warwick's entire being centers around the ability to gain MASSIVE amounts of health back while he's beating the shit out of something...Pantheon has no such protection meaning you don't even have to stun him to outlast him.  Warwick at least the only way to go toe to toe is with a disable/stun of some sort...otherwise, he'll likely outheal the dmg you do to him (all things being equal level-item-wise).

Even being communicative, his stun is SORT of good, but he himself is a dps character...his stun should be enough for HIM to defeat you without some kind of intervention, not, I can help stun so that two of us can take you down, type thing.  The W E Q combo is...well ,frankly, it's okay.  I would not say it's disgusting by any stretch though.  If he's decently fed, yes, it'll do good damage, granted, but the cooldowns are long enough that he can't do it frequently, so it's not nearly as dangerous as pretty much any of the other dps carries.

Like I said, in a pub stomp game where he gets fed by some bads early, he's a decent character, but in organized games, he just doesn't bring anything to the party that would make me want to take him over a different dps carry other than the ability to shut down backdoors, but really, that happens so rarely that it's not really a great selling point.

[Hoax]

You don't understand his ult.

Team:
Sivir
Pantheon
TF
<fill these 2 with standard tryhard picks>

Pantheon can push a lane hard then ult to the fight, even if the other team initiates it because you can't really stand in his ult or it really hurts.  He's not amazing but its not his ult that is the problem.  I think his QWE lack synergy with each other and are rather boring, especially the spear toss and would like to see them reworked.  Pantheon should hit 18 early, be well farmed and a pushing machine.  I think teams with him and Sivir could really fuck up normal games where its not 5-man gank from L6 on.

[Kageh]

I practiced a bit with him tonight, and so far my best games with him start with locating a few melee champs early game and harrassing the heck out of them with Q spam and WEQ when it becomes available. If you're on a lane with a competent partner that can intervene for the likes of Alistar headbutting you, you're quite a menace.

For now I try building Chalice -> Boots of Speed -> Brutalizer -> Berserker Boots and then BF Sword going for Bloodthirster.

You need to dance a lot and steal killing blows though, otherwise you starve for gold while harrassing the enemy.

Best ult usage so far is Teleport to some hotspot, which is somehow disappointing. I think the only champ I managed to get a hit on was some AFK guy. Even waiting for some epic clusterfuck so that people don't notice your big circle of DOOM, the fight tends to drift away and disperse by the time I land.

I did take countless arrpee opportunities of shouting "FOR TONIGHT, WE DINE IN HELL!" in global though!