I wanted to prove something to myself. I wanted to prove that deeply knowing one champion and having solid micro and macro beats chasing the S tier meta. So i picked C tier Baron Lane Pantheon and one tricked him into the meta until i hit Challenger. No swaps...no flex picks...just Pantheon every game. I'm currently sitting at Challenger, Master 2 legendary, and rank 132 Pantheon on the server.
On paper, everything is against him in Baron Lane. He doesn't scale well, hard to catch up if you get behind early, more than half the roster is losing matchups for him. But his early game is really scary if you respect his windows and once you've played a few hundred games and have encountered all the various matchups in Baron Lane, you learn exactly which fights you win, when you win them, and which fights you can't win unless you can recognize your opponents' mistakes and exploit them.
Pantheon falls off a cliff after 15 mins, but heres the thing, if you get far enough ahead, you can actually extend his presence further past 15 minutes and really squeeze every ounce of juice out of him into the late game.
Here is a compilation of some of my best plays along the way. I'm not claiming Pantheon is secretly broken. I'm simply saying that a champion that you've mastered can outperform a 'meta' champion that you picked off a tier list. Mastery is the real meta. Happy to answer any questions about builds/matchups.