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Riot, Death Sentence lacks clarity and is a bad game experience for those on the opposite end.

Water Breathing·9/12/2015, 9:05:34 PM·137 votes·8,296 views

I wanted to bring up this topic again because the previous one is inundated with comments and is really messy, so I would rather establish all of the points I have neatly.

Thresh's Q is an unfair skill for those on the other end. For those of you that are not aware, Thresh does not face the direction of his hook until it is actually in the air. Every ability with a cast time longer than .25s faces the direction of their ability during said cast time. Even the majority of .25 second cast times (or less) have to face the direction of their skillshot. This means:

Caitlyn Q - When she is preparing her rifle, she faces the direction it will go in.

Lucian Q - He has to line up his shot, and there is a line telling you the AoE

Jinx W - She lines up her gun and shows you the warning before, all while facing that direction

Cassiopeia R - She gasps for .65sec and the sound tells you to turn away from her because she is facing the direction she is using it

Gnar W (Mega) - longer cast time but is always facing the direction of it and the AoE marker appears.

Ezreal R - When he winds up his Ult, he is facing the direction he is going to send it.

Lux R - She faces the direction of the AoE, plus the red line appears.

TahmKench Q - An outline of his tongue appears telling you the direction

Nami R - She has a small cast time on her ult, but she will always face the direction of the wave

I made two of the abilities above into gifs, so you can see what I'm talking about:

http://i.imgur.com/9YviXjf.gif

http://i.imgur.com/33Jr085.gif

All of the champions above walk backwards, but when hey cast their ability, they turn around to face the direction of the skill shot for the entire cast time.

Compare those abilities to Thresh's Q, death sentence:

http://i.imgur.com/DthBtxa.gif

As you can see, Thresh does not face the direction of his skill shot until the blue bar disappears (i.e. when the cast time is over). This means you don't know where the hook is going until it is actually in the air, which is a very big problem and gives this ability a very subtle but HUGE advantage during laning and sieging. Higher elo Thresh players WILL abuse this technique for their advantage and do it often because it makes his Q a lot harder to dodge. None of the abilities above can do this. When they are winding up, you know exactly where they are going during that blue bar.

Now, you possibly are thinking that Blitz and Naut can do this too, and it is not unique to Thresh. HOWEVER, even Blitz and Naut must face the direction of their hook for their cast time (.25s for both). So during that .25 seconds, they are facing the direction of the skill shot. An example of Blitz can be found here:

http://i.imgur.com/ftYzgX1.gif

What does this mean? Well first of all, this creates a very confusing and frustrating game experience for those against Thresh because no other champion can do this with their cast time. This creates a guessing game when Thresh winds up his hook. If he does not face the direction of it, there is no possible way fro you to know where it is going until it is actually flying at you, which is usually too late unless you have a dash or flash. Therefore, Thresh's Q is not balanced on reaction time, but rather if you guess where he throws it correctly. This is a very problematic situation because if you do not happen to guess correctly, you (the player getting hooked) didn't really misplay or do anything wrong. You just....guessed wrong.

Now, the champion designer of Thresh commented about this here, he said:

Death Sentence brings a subtle, but unique mechanic to the league: Thresh doesn't face the exact position toward which he is casting until the end of the cast. As such, the spell is balanced not around opponent reaction time, but around your ability as the Thresh player to anticipate the direction the opponent will try to move in response to the wind up. In turn, the enemy's counterplay is to vary their movement and win the dodging mind game. Try psyching people out by consciously casting it from an initial facing direction slightly off from where you are actually directing the spell.

There are 2 problems with this statement. He tries to justify Death Sentence but he does not realize that:

  1. If Thresh has his back toward you it does not give you any inclination or clue as to where it might be heading; this leaves you high and dry.

  2. "Mind game" is just a euphemism for guessing game. Varying movement is counter play to any skillshot, and you have to GUESS where Thresh is going to throw it when he winds up. If you get hit, you guessed wrong. If you don't, you guessed right.

Further more, this mechanic of Thresh is not found anywhere except for 3rd party sites (barring the fourms). It is not on Thresh's tooltips, it is not on the League of Legends site, it is not on the client, there is no loading tip, and there is no mention of it in his spotlight.

Now, you might argue that:

Thresh's Q would be easy to dodge if they made him face it

I personally don't buy this, because Cait Q and Jinx W are pretty fair in terms of counterplay, but Thresh can always receive compensation if the hook turns out too weak. They can increase the cooldown refund, alter the cooldown itself, adjust the speed, width, and even the cast time. Just make him face the direction and go from there.

The whole point is to instill "fear" or "terror" in the opponent

I don't particularly feel terrified when Thresh hooks someone (including me), and this doesn't make the the other side feel fear but rather confusion and frustration, particularly if it is their first experience with a Thresh player that knows how to do this.

BUT again, there can be compensation. If they want the fear and terror flavor so badly, why not add this effect:

When Thresh performs Death Leap (Q2) he fears all nearby minions and monsters throughout his dash

OR, as more as a direct buff:

If Thresh activates Death Leap, his next basic attack within X seconds slows for X% for X amount of time.

Varus Xerath Vi can charge while moving!

These champions channel. Thresh does not channel his hook. You can interrupt Varus, Xerath, and Vi with hard CC or a silence yet nothing will stop Thresh from launching his hook except his own death.

Besides, these champions must channel far more than a mere .5 seconds for the full effect of their ability

Stay Behind Minions

You won't always be around minions for the entire game. It isn't that practical. A lot of times staying behind your small wave when a larger wave is pushing toward you will mean you are out of position. Not to mention in the jungle, or in just plain open lanes, or the river, there are no minions you can hide behind. Besides, I'm not saying that Thresh's Q is impossible to dodge or anything. I'm saying that Thresh's Q, from the way it is setup now, is just a bad experience for players. It's very frustrating to get hooked when Thresh was not looking at the direction of his skill shot like any other long cast time ability is supposed to. It does not add to his fantasy in any particular way, so why not remove it and compensate if it needs to be?

160 Comments

KVbqbFsC8e9/12/2015, 9:07:55 PM78 votes

Not even gonna mention the insanely broken hitbox?

The Yetii Rider9/13/2015, 1:39:35 AM15 votes

Wow I had no idea this was intentional. Damnit CertainlyT. I agree this needs to be changed.

Hullabaloo9079/12/2015, 10:57:23 PM11 votes

This does make sense, even if thresh might need a compensation buff afterwards.

Tails Doll9/12/2015, 11:32:20 PM10 votes

"Thresh from launching his hook except his own death."

Lies. Even if he dies the hook still goes off.

SwapShadows9/12/2015, 10:02:05 PM8 votes

[deleted]

Bread Bee9/13/2015, 12:56:07 AM6 votes

I agree with this 100%. Thresh needs nerfs

Jungle Lux God9/13/2015, 6:52:27 PM5 votes

For the sake of clarity and counterplay, Thresh should definitely face the direction he is using his Death Sentence in.

brad9/14/2015, 12:43:31 AM4 votes

god fucking bless you for making this thread

Mirgle9/13/2015, 6:26:45 AM4 votes

I disagree, the "guessing game," is your last chance to dodge if you are caught out. You should be playing around the idea that if there is a line between you and him, you can and will be hooked. It has a delay as a warning that he will hook so that you can get behind minions, get ready to dash, or take a guess: left, right, or straight away. The delay is not so that you can just sidestep the hook every time.

I'm okay with trade offs, but is it really a tradeoff when Thresh can potentially benefit from his cast time?

The delay could never be an advantage to Thresh, barring VERY specific cases (i.e hooking a Warwick that ulted you during your windup). Imagine a circle around Thresh the range of his hook with his target on the circumference. Based on your movespeed and/or dash availability is how far along the circumference you can move before the hook reaches max range (your maximum angular velocity) . In ANY case, that arc that you can move on would be bigger with the delay than without. This means you have a bigger range at which you can be in when the hook launches and thus a smaller chance of Thresh's hook being at the same point on the arc as you are. Any advantage he gets from the delay is purely mental, especially since his target direction is chosen before the cast.

Granted, in a real game you usually don't have full access to this arc. In the Jung for example, you have to deal with terrain. Vision can also play into this. However, in a real game you also get other advantages from this delay: You can get behind another unit, outrange it, or juke past him (tho this is difficult without a dash).

As a final note, there is nothing wrong with Thresh having the best/easiest hook to land in the game; remember the overall kits are supposed to be balanced, not individual abilities.

Only Play Darius9/12/2015, 10:19:25 PM3 votes

Blitzcrank

WutsKraken9/13/2015, 2:01:29 AM3 votes

I think the point is because it requires a windup, has the slowest of the hook travel times, and it's supposed to add to his theme of striking terror in the enemy. You don't know who he's gonna hook

High59/12/2015, 10:44:10 PM3 votes

Long post to complain about a pull that is easy to dodge. If you can't dodge it, use the winions. It's far from an unfair ability. It takes forever to windup too, so it's not that easy to hit a moving target.

Wannabe Dunkey9/13/2015, 2:50:22 AM2 votes

Abilities have trade-offs. The cast time is longer, so he has some advantages that other skillshots might not.