Pantheon is a champion that most players seem to take either jungle or top lane, but he also has the toolset to become a very successful mid lane assassin that can easily snowball games. Here are the reasons you should give the Spartan a go mid lane and some problems you should be aware of when picking him.

Pros

Snowballing Potential

The mid lane gives you complete control of the map when playing Pantheon. Once you hit 6 your ult allows you to drop in anywhere and bring some pain to some poor unexpecting fools sitting in their lane as they blissfully farm. Top lane limits the areas you can drop to easily since the Grand Skyfall isn’t global, but in the mid lane you have more options. Even when you are not ganking, the threat of you can cause people to play scared when you’re not on the map, it’s a very powerful tool to have. When you do drop in, if the laner has any form of cc to speak of you will make short work of most champions besides maybe the ultra tanky top laners. Pantheon’s passive is also the perfect tower dive tool, usually negating at least 2 shots during a gank. All of this combines into a super powerful snowballing kit primed to explode if you use it properly.

Lane Dominance

Pantheon is a fantastic laner, few can stand up to his might. The mid lane is inhabited mostly by mages and this allows Pantheon a lot of kill pressure in many matchups. If anyone is brave enough to enter your w range you can easily take off half of their hp in one trade. This benefit also goes hand in hand with his ultimate because in most matchups no one is able to stop you from ganking other lanes and if they try they’ll simply be killed. Make sure to be careful in some matchups at 6 though, because you don’t get an ultimate that helps in a straight up fight and their ultimates can tip the matchup in a lot of situations.

Mid Game Power

After Pantheon finishes two or three of his core items he is at his strongest. The reason for this is at this time his damage is insane because of a lack of defensive stats, and no carries have the items they need to put you down quickly. He is an assassin that can 100-0 if slightly ahead, and he doesn’t even need an ultimate to do it. If you pick up a few kills ward up the enemy jungle and have a field day whenever someone is confident enough to go somewhere alone. Pick up mobility boots to ensure that no one has a chance of escaping you.

Unpredictability

I can’t stress enough the importance that Pantheon’s ult brings to his playstyle in the mid lane. Whenever any type of small skirmish breaks out on the map, you get to be the first one that shows up to turn the tides of a bad fight. This is especially effective in solo queue as teams are far less coordinated and won’t be able to properly communicate your position, leading to you catching them off guard all the time with your ultimate. Solo queue is mostly decided by the victors of teamfights, and Grand Skyfall ensures that the teamfights are unfair.

Dueling

Come mid game Pantheon can deal with almost any champion in the game effectively in the 1v1. This important for multiple reasons. It gives you the power to confidently move throughout the map without the fear of someone picking you off and secure vision for your team. It also allows you to set up a split push and pull a member or two of the enemy team to your lane. When that happens you can back off and perform a Grand Skyfall on the enemies in the lane that your team is pressuring and then create a 5v4 or maybe even 5v3 fight for your team. Just make sure that you get proper wards up when split pushing or you could go from predator to prey extremely quickly after eating a Morgana binding from a bush.

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Cons

All or Nothing

There can be no hesitation when playing Pantheon. When you go in, there is no way out besides respawning at the fountain. You don’t have any escape mechanisms like Zed or Leblanc, to do damage you need to put yourself at risk to being killed yourself. You need to be sure to pick your fights intelligently and then go all out because if you pick too many bad ones, you could see the game spiral out of your control extremely quickly. This is also one of Pantheon's lane problems as he needs to go very aggressive to win most lanes and this can lead to you being overextended to ganks and your kit really have no real way of dealing with early game pressure.

Scaling

If you decide to play Pantheon mid, be ready to become a workhorse because you need to make plays happen. Pantheon has incredible power early to mid game, but it does not come without a price. If you let the game go more than 40 minutes you’re going to have great difficulty dealing with an enemy team with a solid tank line. Your assassination potential will be all but gone and you’re going to be another body thrown into the meat grinder that is the tank line while all the meta mages poke you and your team down and siege you forever. Be aware that picking Pantheon mid will usually allow the enemy tank line to build a lot of armor without worrying about magic resist, so you indirectly hurt your adc's power by picking Pantheon.

Feast or Famine

Pantheon mid needs to get some gold going, and if you mess that up by misplaying the lane early or dying to some jungle ganks then it’s going to be hard to come back. When you lose control of your lane you lose all of your roaming potential because your opponent will simply push you into tower all day. The only utility Pantheon has to speak of is his stun, so if you don’t have the items to support his abilities your going to have a really tough time accomplishing anything even if you drop into even fights.

Pantheon is a very explosive mid laner that can create fast, chaotic and fun games from the mid lane with the use of Grand Skyfall. Next time you're playing normals give this guy a shot and you might find a new mid laner to add to your pool.