League of Legends Hotfix Buffs Pantheon's Crowd Control

Riot Games released a small hotfix for League of Legends’ latest champion rework to buff [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Riot Games released a small hotfix for League of Legends' latest champion rework to buff Pantheon when the warrior is against champions who have dashes. Pantheon's new version of his Shield Vault which was previously a point-and-click stun can still stun enemies, but some counterplay was added to it to make it so that it was dodgeable. Riot found that it was being dodged too often though, so a change has been made to make it so that champions are still stunned in a way similar to how the old Pantheon would stun them.

The notes for Patch 9.16 now include the mid-patch change which was applied to Pantheon on August 16th. Those notes say that the area of effect for Shield Vault "now matches legacy Pantheon's stun range" which means even dashes and Flashes won't be able to avoid it. There are still some exceptions to the logic behind the stun which will let some champions avoid it though.

Providing the reasoning for the change, Riot said the stun was being avoided much more than intended.

"Reworked Pantheon's W stun was intentionally made to be dodgeable as a counterplay measure at very high skill play and sometimes, on low ping," Riot said. "However, it's happening much more than intended at all levels of play and at average ping. We're reverting this change so that the stun applies similarly to how it did with legacy Pantheon."

Lead gameplay designer Mark "Riot Scruffy" Yetter previewed the hotfix's release on Twitter before it went live and clarified that so long as an enemy champion is within 800 units of the spot where the dash ends, the stun will land.

This is the second buff for Pantheon which was released after the latest patch launched his rework. The first of those went live on August 15th and buffed the champion's power in the jungle. It removed the damage reduction against monsters which was previously on his Comet Spear and lowered the damage reduction against non-epic monsters. Riot said that Pantheon's primary role was still intended to be in the top but that the secondary role in the jungle wasn't performing as strongly as hoped.

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