Re-designing Supports to Match Thresh vs. Re-working Thresh to Match Other Supports
In this post I will attempt to rework a champion in an attempt to match Thresh while still remaining unique. 
Nami will be the champion that I touch on. I chose this champion because outside of the pool of OP supports, I consider Nami to be one of my favorites(I am a support main). My goal in this post is to bring this champion up to Thresh's utility level, while still maintaining their own original play style. I will not focus so much on their damage, I fully expect these changes to be relatively overpowered on first glance. But I want to show that it can be done. I think that everybody is in agreement that Thresh is one of(if not) the most entertaining champions to watch and play. It would be extremely disappointing to see this champion get reworked. I don't believe that any of the recent reworks have been real successes, a rework to Thresh may take away one of the only truly unique supports that the game offers.
Thresh
I will leave Thresh's kit here for easy reference. We will avoid reworking Thresh entirely within this post, however, touching on him is definitely worth discussing.
Nami - First we will look at the mermaid currently has. She has always stood out to me as an interesting support. However, she is still not on the level of Thresh. We can begin by looking at what her kit offers:
Strengths
- Soft CC
- Hard CC
- Good peel
- Chain heal or chain damage ability
- Long range
- Good lane harass
Now that we've identified what Nami has in terms of strengths in both lane and teamfights. It might be easier to identify why she is not a very common pick.
- Nami's ultimate has a very long windup/travel time. Unless she casts point blank, it is really hard for her to utilize the long range. There are some very niche uses for the longer range, but ultimately her tidal wave is very underwhelming.
- Her bubble(Q) is extremely powerful when landed. It is her only ability that I feel is worth its difficultly to land. Despite this, I still believe it must be reworked in order to warrant success in bottom lane.
- The chain on her W is just disappointing. When you think chain, you don't imagine a puddle jumping between two people once. Something needs to be done here.
- Her E is simply a point click. Despite this, it is a very strong ability. While providing her passive buff to its target, it allows them to chase targets rather well. It's almost like a Tri-Force and a single target Frozen Gauntlet in one ability. This is the only ability I will not change almost entirely. This ability will also act as the focus of her kit.
Now that I have summarized the problems that I personally have with this champion, we can look at her abilities.
Q: Aqua Prison
ACTIVE: Nami sends a bubble into the air towards a targeted area. When it lands, it deals magic damage to all enemies in the area of impact and suspends them for 1.5 seconds.
Explanation
This ability is going to provide very unreliable but strong AoE hard CC. Landing it in lane or late game is like landing a Blitzcrank hook(almost). It has so much potential as an ability. It seems to fall short in how clunky it feels to me as a support player. Here is how I would change it:
Q: Bubble Breath (Reworked)
Nami Cups her hands and blows aqua bubbles toward her foe as she charges them. Nami stores bubble charges every 10-15(?) seconds. Nami may hold a maximum of 5 bubble charges. Nami can shoot one bubble every 0.75 seconds. Nami's bubbles travel straight in the direction of her cursor. Nami's bubbles(projectiles) leave her hands at a fast speed, slowing down as they encounter air resistance until they dissipate completely. There is no cast time on the bubbles, only a charge time.
Nami's bubbles suffocate her targets in a prison of water for 1/1/1.5/1.5/2 seconds. Targets can not be hit more than once in 12/11/10/9/8 seconds by her bubble breath. Bubble Breath deals damage over time to its targets as it suffocates them beneath the water.
This is single-target, and can hit minions.
Explanation(rework):
What the reworked ability does is allow Nami to have a more reliable form of hard CC, and a somewhat interesting ability despite its similarity to Corki's R. What differentiates this ability from Corki's R is the way it reacts with its environment. Nami's bubble may leave her hands at a speed of say 1000, but as it travels it will lose speed exponentially. It makes this a much more reliable skill while still scaling well. Nami should be no further than say 500 units away in order to be consistently landing these. As distance increases it should be much more difficult to land the ability. It also forces Nami to be in the fight to land these, and the charges don't really grow on trees either. So, she has to be careful with them in extended fights. This also allows her to utilize her passive a bit better. Nami can cast Tidecaller's Blessing(E) on herself and chase using Bubble Breath.
W: Ebb and Flow
ACTIVE: Nami unleashes a stream of water that bounces between allied and enemy champions. This ability can only bounce to each target once and hits up to 3 targets. The damage is modified by –15% + (7.5% per 100 AP) with each bounce.
On ally hits, Ebb and Flow heals the target and bounces towards a nearby enemy champion. On enemy hits, the torrent deals magic damage and bounces towards a nearby allied champion
Explanation
When you think chain, you don't think three total targets(2 if you cast on yourself). This is probably Nami's most underwhelming ability for me.
W: Sparkling Pool or Hydro Chain (toggle)(Reworked)
There will be both a cooldown and cost for toggling this. It is not meant to be repeatedly toggled in a teamfight. The Nami player must use her intuition to choose which ability will be right in any given the scenario.
Sparkling Pool
Nami channels a pool of healing for her allies. Nami can not cast any other abilities while channeling Sparkling Pool. Nami can move within a 1000 unit range of the center of her pool. This pool can be channeled for as long as Nami can provide mana. The cost of this ability will work much like Anivia or Swain's ultimate. The healing ticks from this pool individually will be rather weak(not nearly as strong as Janna's ultimate), but given an extended teamfight, cancelling Nami's channel should be a priority for the enemy team.
All allies within Sparkling Pool gain the buff from Nami's passive constantly. Enemies within the pool are not affected in any way by this pool. Providing enemies with a really small buff from this pool might balance its immense power if the channel is unbroken for a long period of time. Enemies could build up resistance to the pool over time, increasing their armor and magic resist. This makes Nami's pool have an unwanted draw-back, while still providing enough of a reward to warrant pooling in enclosed teamfights.
Hydro Chain
Nami chains her ally with enchanted/holy water. While enchanted, her target receives the bonus movement speed from Nami's passive when they auto-attack, not constant or at the initial cast of the ability. Nami also receives her passive buff when her ally attacks. While enchanted, the ally's auto-attacks produce fast-flowing jets of water that move through their targets. This chain can travel through 5 targets, slowing each target by (35/35/40/45/50 > 5/5/10/10/15 > 0/0/0/0/5 > 0 > 0) as it travels. Each auto-attack by the enchanted ally costs Nami X amount of mana.
This chain is a water tether between Nami and her Ally. The tether's max range can be anywhere ranging from 500-1000(Karma's pre-rework W in mind).
This provides Nami's ally in lane or late game with good self-peel. It essentially adds a chaining red-buff to her ally. The draw back to this ability is that it does not deal damage any more, and it costs mana per auto-attack. This will provide Nami more kit synergy between her W and E. The mechanics of this ability could be discussed immensely.
E: Tidecaller's Blessing
ACTIVE: Empowers an allied champion for 6 seconds or until they have attacked 3 times. During this time, their basic attacks deal bonus magic damage and slow the target hit for 1 second.
Explanation
This is a point-click ability that allows Nami to allow her ally target to chase down enemies or poke them well. It also allows Nami to buff herself or her ally with her passive. I like this ability a lot but it has no drawback, and it's a relatively boring ability to be honest. There is nothing fun about a point click that gives a small buff to an ally.
E: Tidecaller's Blessing(Reworked)
Nami sends a blessing down her hydro chain that provides her ally with a damage buff. The buff deals an initial 75% of the blessing's total damage, then burns the enemy for the last 25% over 2(?) seconds. Nami charges blessings up to a total of 10 charges. Charges generate every 15/13/10/9/7 seconds. Nami MUST be hydro-chained to her ally in order to use Tidecaller's Blessing. Nami may use Tidecaller's Blessing on herself.
Nami can toggle this ability on or off for whether or not she would like to send charges to her hydro-chained ally. When Nami is not chained, she may toggle the charges on/off for herself.
R: Tidal Wave
After reworking Nami's entire kit, this ability now serves well as an ultimate. It will remain untouched, but the numbers on it could definitely use some tweaking just to balance it with the rest of Nami's kit.
I hope this was an interesting read, my first attempt at making/reworking a champion. Here is a link to the Reddit thread.
