League of Legends’ next major champion rework (after the Mordekaiser rework announced earlier this year) will be Pantheon. In a champion roadmap published earlier today, lead champion producer Ryan ‘Reav3’ Mireles revealed that the Artisan of War is next in line for a major overhaul.
Reav3 describes Pantheon as “the last of the pizza-feet champions, which is to say that he hasn’t visually held up very well over time.” The aim of the upcoming visual gameplay update (VGU) is to rebuild the characters’ appearance, and overhaul his abilities, but Reav3 says that his kit won’t be completely re-imagined.
Reav3 says that “for Pantheon’s gameplay, we’re looking to modernize his current kit. We plan on preserving the aggressive, reliable nature of his play pattern while also adding a deeper set of options and decisions for him to play around with. We also want to really sell the hoplite fantasy by making Pantheon’s shield feel more integrated into his kit.” That implies that we’ll be seeing major changes to the character’s passive, and I’d say his point-and-click stun isn’t likely to stay around either.
It looks like Pantheon’s iconic ultimate is likely to stick around, though. The image at the top of this article shows a character with a shield and a cloak flying through the air, which suggests strong similarities with his current ability (although let’s hope that Riot actually puts the ‘Grand’ into ‘Grand Skyfall’ this time around).
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There’s no release date offered for Pantheon’s rework, although I don’t imagine we’ll be seeing him particularly soon. There’s that Mordekaiser rework to come before then, as well as the upcoming “whimsical” support, and a new AD-focused assassin mentioned elsewhere in that roadmap. With all that in mind, the new look Pantheon could show up some time in the late summer.