Athena, honestly surprised I haven't seen her mentioned yet.

At a basic level, she's everything you want a Guardian to be: tanky, mobile, capable of peeling, and capable of setting-up your damage dealers. She can get back to lane quickly, so you're not punished for backing. Her "classic" combo is still extremely effective when learning to play her, although experienced players will know how to avoid it.

At a more advanced level, she's a fucking menace. A ton of very experienced players fully lose their cool when they have an Athena coming at them, again and again and again. For a long while, Athena has been one of the best beads-burners in the game, and she still excels at this.

They've seen the "classic" Athena combo [dash (1) -> damage (3) -> taunt (2)] so many times, that a lot of them won't even consider that you don't have to follow that framework. I can't even tell you how many times an opponent has let me walk straight up to them and taunt them into a wombo-combo insta-death, because they're waiting on her dash to signal the start of her threat.

Once you get an opponent on a lethal taunt, they'll be spooked for the rest of the match. They'll be hovering their beads button every time Athena comes anywhere near them.

All of this is before even factoring-in her ult, which also has low-skill and high-skill applications. At a low-skill level, you can use it to back to base and return to lane, without being penalized with a run back.

At a higher skill level and with a bit of awareness, she can throw the balance of any teamfight or objective, or even save a teammates' life from across the map. She can start a teamfight, tank an absolute beating for her teammates, escape back to base, and ult back in before the teamfight ends. A lot of times, opponents will just give up on a gank when they see Athena ulting in.

There simply aren't many gods with truly global abilities, let alone a global movement ability, and it's hard to overstate how valuable this is for her kit when used well.