Orb lightning also has a fairly short range (not melee-close, but you have to risk the mages a bit) I think. Nothing you have to worry about too much with good placement though.
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I'm still learning that myself but here's what I'm thinking after taking a quick look at LA Pan.
Dormant Titan of War and Wisdom
Dom6 order-3, production-2, growth-2, misfortune-1.
A4E4S3
She can search, cast rituals, cast in battle, fight and provides a shroud bless for your pans.
A4E4 is a pretty good mage bless. It's worth pointing out that LA Pan's only sacred mage is actually pretty crappy for that kind of a bless. BUT! You can forge sacred shrouds (armour slot) with your S1 mages, which you can then give to your pans to have them autobless themselves. That might be worth it.
A4 gives the titan a lot of good selfbuffs if she needs to fight. You also get good access to some battlespells and can forge A boosters.
E4 likewise gives you rock solid selfbuffs for fighting and good battle spells. For forging you have E2 (+1 with boots) pans.
S3 alone gives you an S booster and paired with E lets you forge another S booster. They will be handy to hand out to some of your S1's. S3 risks your pretender to mind duel, and S1's seem to be pretty common in LA. That's a risk worth keeping in mind. Combatwise S3 gives you some decent self buffs and you can communion her with centaur sages to cast some bigger S magic.
If you want to drop the S, you can instead pick Titan of Heaven A4E4 which will net you an additional point of dominion and another scale. Your pretender lacks the achille's heel of S3, but also can't forge any S boosters. Neither can your nation. I'd probably go with the War&Wisdom chick because of that.
Or you can just read an up to date guide for LA Pan written by someone who actually rocks at this game:
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=2057