How to design a good balanced champion in league of legends: Thresh.

Hello everyone,

I just wanna take a moment and talk about one of my favorite champions in the game: and how his design should be adopted, by whoever is working at Riot Games, as a reference for good champion design, as he's been stable for more than 3 years now!

**Disclaimer: This is my opinion. As you can see, it's a very BIG opinion. If you're allergic to opinions and get butthurt and triggered fast by a different opinion than yours, then you should turn back and leave this place. This thread is not for you. Constructive criticism and new ideas are welcomed. **

With that out of the way, let's begin!

First of all, , in my opinion, is the best, most unique and balanced champion in the game, period! Let's investigate why?!

• Overall, the champion is so satisfying to play. Every ability is so satisfying to use and the sound effects are just spot on! That sound of the hook landing on the target is so satisfying to hear and every time I throw my Q, I'm just waiting for that sound to play.

• Passive: Thresh is not able to gain armor per level. Instead, you collect the souls of the dead around you, which in turn, gives you more armor and AP. This is a very neat mechanic since it emphasize the fact that you need to be near the fights to be able to get your souls, otherwise, no souls for you, mate! Nothing too fancy here, I just think it's cool how this has a mechanic where if you decide to be near the action and actually be useful, you're rewarded, if you're jerking off away from the action, however, you get nothing. And Thresh is all about decision making,as you will see later.

• Q: You wind up and throw your scythe, hooking someone. Seems simple at first, right? But wait! Now what do you do?! Do you go in right when the hook land? Do you wanna wait for one pull then go in? Do you wanna wait for two pulls then go in? Or maybe you just don't wanna go in at all?! Maybe you need to hook a jungle camp and escape with your life? So many decisions to make depending on the situation you're in and you know what? I just LOVE this! In one spell, you'll have different outcomes depending on your decision making! If you land your hook, you're rewarded with multiple choices that allows you to be more flexible in various fights. And the best part is: you can actually move while an enemy is hooked! But If you take too long to decide, or you take the wrong decision, you're heavily punished! THIS, right here, is what risk vs reward is all about, my friends. Oh and if you're the enemy, don't worry, Thresh's Q is telegraphed and can easily be avoided if you see him wind up. Is that fair enough?

• W: You have a lantern that collect souls for you, from a distance. Isn't that useful? But wait, There is more! This lantern can shield you and one other enemy (lowest HP). Isn't that cool? But wait, there is more! Your teammates can actually click on the lantern and dash towards your location, making for a very useful escape tool. But wait, there is more! You can use the lantern offensively too. Hook someone, go back, throw lantern to bring in a friend, take the hook and fly away to victory... or death, depending on how good your decisions are! But wait, isn't that too OP of a spell to have? This must be obnoxious to play against, right? Well, Enemies can actually stand on the lantern, or put a ward on top of it to block your teammates from taking the lantern. Is that fair enough for you? Moving on.

• E: Passively, it grants you an empowered auto attack the longer you wait before attacking, which scales of the souls you collect as well (AD Thresh, anyone?). You flay enemies in any direction you want and slow them. This seems simple, right? But wait. You can use this in so many different ways: Pull in high priority targets, push back annoying enemy champions, interrupt some channeled abilities, interrupt dashes, set up your own combos,etc. It all depends, once again, on which decision you make and how do you wanna use the flay mechanic.

• R: Probably the most disappointing thing about Thresh, tbh. You pull out a pentagon shaped cage which walls deal damage and slow enemies by a lot. You can use it to trap someone inside or just to zone out enemies . Not enough options here! 6/10! I kinda wish they rework his ult to be more thematically appropriate, because his current R doesn't fit his theme very well, imho.

So yeah, here you have it guys. As you can see, Thresh's full kit is balanced around decision making, and skill, of course. He is a champion that is not OP by any means and is ok to play against. He never feels too oppressive to the point where you think there is no counter play to him at all. His kit never feels overloaded despite all the options it offers you and all the decisions that you can make every game!

I've played hundreds, if not thousands of games with Thresh, across all my accounts, and not even once I got bored of him. You never feel like you're playing on autopilot with him. There is always, actively, something to do, decisions to take, skillshots to land properly on the right targets,etc. And what's even better is that he doesn't have a million dashes, 1k HP shields, Heals, insane tankiness or absurdly insane damage output. He's just " perfect ". And this is why Thresh, imho, is the best,most unique and balanced champion, in the whole game, and Riot should go back and relearn how to design actual good balanced champions like this.

The game, atm, is just not as fun as it used to be. Too much damage, too much mobility, too much heals, shields, CC... The game is just too overloaded man... Just relax Riot... just breath and remember Thresh... and Ekko! (I was gonna include Ekko too here but this thread is already too long. Maybe another time :p)

EDIT: I never said Thresh was perfectly balanced since day 1. Of course he had some bug fixes and some numbers tweaked here and there. But even then, he was never OP, per say.

The latest big change thresh received in a patch was in June 29th, 2016, in patch 6.13:

Dark Passage

• REMOVED: AP ratio.
• NEW EFFECT: Shield strength increases by 1 for each collected Damnation soul.
• REMOVED: Thresh walking into range when targeting beyond maximum cast range.
• NEW EFFECT: Casting beyond maximum range during Death Sentence makes the lantern land at maximum range in the target direction.
• NEW EFFECT: Lantern remains for a short duration if Thresh slightly exceeds maximum leash range by moving towards Death Sentence Death Sentence's tethered target.

This started the famous Bunnyfufu engage, with the Q1 + flash + lantern + Q2 combo.

Before that, the biggest change he got is in patch 3.8 where they removed the flash + Q combo. Before that, in patch 3.12, they added in the 3 sec refund mechanic to his Q, if you land it.

Otherwise, the champion has been stable since patch 6.13 (and even before that) and had no other big changes that affected his playstyle. During these last 3 years, he got some minor bug fixes and got some mana cost changes and cooldown changes to go with all the new items and runes added to the game.

For 3 years now Thresh has been consistent, fun to play, far from OP, not overloaded and actually fair to play against. That's due to his abilities being a well designed overall kit with no overload of any kind, if that makes sense.

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]