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There's a very significant nerf to thresh on PBE that I don't think anyone's noticed.

MealReadytoEat··150 votes·38,177 views

Edit - Check out the brilliant video, There's a very significant BUFF to Thresh on PBE that I don't think anyone's noticed Zeepy made in reply to this, and my reply to that; There's a slightly significant nerf to Janna on PBE that I don't think anyone's noticed.

Last whisper now only works against bonus Armor, not base, and was made cheaper (only 1300 gold) with powerful upgrades to compensate.

However, unlike everyone else, Thresh doesn't get base armor added per level, but rather gets bonus armor added for every soul he takes.

This effectively makes Last whisper and its upgrades far more effective against him than anyone else.

Lets compare live Last Whisper with its contemporary partner on PBE - Lord Domik's Regards. Both give 40 AD, and effectively cost the same (LDR cost more, but gold income is up about an equal amount), so we can ignore that in our comparison. However, LDR also gives 1.5% damage amplification per 50 hp the target has over you, capping at 15% at 500 hp. Thresh gets that on the new Sight Stone + Targons combo alone.

Assuming Thresh has 90 armor, 16 of which is base, live Last Whisper results in at 90 x .65 = 58.5 effective armor, or 36.9% damage reduction

With LDR, it is 16 + (74 x .6) = 60.4 effective armor, or 37.7% damage reduction; however, the damage is amplified by 15%, for (1 - (1 - .377) x 1.15) = 28.3% damage reduction.

LDR ends up doing (1 - .283) / (1 - .369) = 13.6% increased damage against Thresh vs the Last Whisper on live.

For comparison, lets look at Blitz. Lets say he's level 12 for a base AD 63.8, with a glacial shroud (20 armor) and 9 flat armor from his glyphs armor from runes, for a total of 92.8 armor.

Live Last Whisper results in at 92.8 x .65 = 60.3 effective armor, or 37.6% damage reduction

With LDR, it is 63.8 + (29 x .6) = 81.2 effective armor, or 55.2% damage reduction; however, the damage is amplified by 15%, for (1 - (1 - .552) x 1.15) = 48.5% damage reduction.

LDR ends up doing (1 - .485) / (1 - .376) = 17.5 % LESS damage than of LW on live.

All this second example really shows is that LW on live is a a great damage multiplier, regardless of if your opponent built armor, while the LDR is only useful if your opponent is stacking armor or is Thresh.

Well this post seems to have gotten quite popular. This was just a cute quirk I noted while working on the third of a series of large posts, The State of Marksmen. Part one is about the issues with marksmen on live, and part two is about the issues that the marksmen rework does, doesn't, and needs to address. Part three is about the systematic changes in the preseason, and their effects, with a small note on Thresh.

153 Comments

GhastlyGhoulMan54 votes

Dang... That's actually nasty. They should probably change Thresh's passive to increase base armor instead of adding bonus armor.

Trumps Nipples3 votes

but that takes away his passives real use, collecting souls gives him bonus armor, taking that away takes away a large part of thresh's kit

EndlessSorcerer16 votes

I think they meant that any armor provided by collecting souls should count as base armor, not bonus armor.

Somewhat like how Sterak's Gage increases your base AD, not your bonus AD.

GhastlyGhoulMan3 votes

{quoted}

I think they meant that any armor provided by collecting souls should count as base armor, not bonus armor.

Somewhat like how Sterak's Gage increases your base AD, not your bonus AD.

Exactly.

OnanThaMan34 votes

well maybe it will finally end thresh's dominance of the support role. Like riot said every champ has their time in the spotlight before they rot a bit(Sejuani Sion ). Although knowing Riot's favoritism of some champs he will likely get buffed to keep him around like Lee Sin.

FistOfSharkiesha6 votes

He's really not that dominate or game changing. Braum has a very similar but better engage/disengage role and Leona/Nautilus are hands down better engagers.

rat king9911 votes

He's not but he's popular because he has more potential to carry from support than braum, leona, or naut do because of his play making capabilities he's basically the Zed of support

FistOfSharkiesha2 votes

But with that comes more potential to fall behind. I would say the only support that is more useless than Thresh when behind is Leona because she has no ranged disengage. Imo Leona carries harder while also falling behind a bit harder, but Braum, Janna, Lulu, and more are just as viable as him and don't suffer as much when behind.

OyddAWqJ5r2 votes

What are you talking about? All Thresh is there for is the heavy lockdown hook and flay and area control ult. After that he might as well die. So whether he's fed or not doesn't mean anything.

Fact is, his hook is one of the best if not the best fishing tool in the game. It's 100% luck based when it comes to dodging it since he can cast it in any direction whilst performing the cast animation in any direction as well. And it has 0 punish for hooking the wrong target like Blitz can. If Blitz hooks Amumu ur all screwed. But if Thresh hooks Amumu, Amumu is dragged a bit while being locked in place while Thresh can simply back away from it and try again until he hits what he wants.

Ser Garland80 votes

{quoted}

Dang... That's actually nasty. They should probably change Thresh's passive to increase base armor instead of adding bonus armor.

Or, you know, let him have a weakness.

Zatch Nakarie11 votes

That's not a weakness, thats an unfair exploit within the champions passive and the item's.

manbearswine6 votes

[{quoted}](name=Ser Garland,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=dPhE5qNE,comment-id=00000002,timestamp=2015-11-03T19:28:08.447+0000)

Or, you know, let him have a weakness.

It should be something more...uh...intentional than this.

48983507DEL114 votes

His weakness is supposed to be that he is not the best at any one aspect, but average at all of them. However, he ends up being "good enough" in all those regards that he doesn't need to be overloaded with tools for 1 specific job, like Leona having an overload of engage and Janna having an overload of peel.

Instead of the weakness being tied to a specific item, they need to balance him elsewhere so that he can be acceptable in terms of getting every job done, but there would have been a better pick for whichever job your team needed to be filled the most.

Hard Penetrator6 votes

That sounds really streched, sry. Weknesses are things you can exploit for your advantage, like Malphite mana pool, Sona squishiness, WW usefulness pre 6 or pantheon lack of combat ult for 1v1. You can't say that certain champion have weaknesses just because he isn't as good at peeling as probably best peeling champion in the game.

PDE5 Inhibitors6 votes

Being a jack of all trades but master of none actually can, in theory, be a weakness. All you have to do is pick the area that you are better than Thresh at and expose it. That being said, Thresh is a little too good at things, so master of none doesn't exactly apply like it should.

Cubism1 votes

Wasn't sona also supposed to do that?.....

48983507DEL11 votes

Kind of, but to a different stance. She isn't all about the plays, but more of a buff-bot, kinda like Soraka or Taric.

Chromatic Eagle6 votes

There are weaknesses, and gaping wounds in people.

BakedLotion9 votes

{quoted}

Dang... That's actually nasty. They should probably change Thresh's passive to increase base armor instead of adding bonus armor.

You really have sympathy for this monster of a champion? They should make him have no armor. That's what they should change.

Valor Bot32 votes

http://i.imgur.com/PEB8lG6.jpg"

Matezoide16 votes

You could cut Thresh's damage in half and he would still be useful.

ChaosThief17 votes

You could make him do no damage and he would still be useful.

Sentinel Hydra6 votes

You could make him do damage to his team and he would still be........ useful?

ChaosThief13 votes

He'd be helpful jarvan.

teerav15 votes

Thresh will still be picked regardless of this change.

MealReadytoEat2 votes

Yes, he will. However, other changes in the preseason are going to also hurt him, especially relative to other supports. I'm going to be going in depth into this soon.

Dominick Destine9 votes

That is not a nerf to Thresh.

That is a blanket nerf to anyone with an armor stat buff (Ex: Taric, Garen, Sejuani, etc.).

Lagrange251 votes

NOOOOOO my 6item 3143s Malphite! Best build ever aginst full AD!

Also, what is this item 3460!?

Zhire2 votes

item 3460 new trinket that allow you to teleport to "a battle platform" but can only be used at fountain. I don't know what this battle platform is though.

RasCaelestis3 votes

It was something from the featured game mode "Ascension" a while ago. Not new, but not that old either.

Mistress Madoka1 votes

The Battle platform is the re-purposed Turret Platforms from Dominion Ascension mode used the Crystal Scar map, but they modified it, removing the towers, moving the Shrines, PLacing a Large, Neutral buff "Monster" named Xerath (It was actually Xerath lol)

Mistress Madoka4 votes

I think that's the teleport Trinket from Ascension mode.

4est Tree8 votes

Thresh has been a TOP TIER support since his release. I think a small nerf like this is okay especially since the amount of armor pen each person has on average is also going down

xFrostKnightx2 votes

With the changes, this is a noticable nerf not small. Effectively while another tank would lose 10% eHP thresh can lose 20% eHP if we take 200 armour.

Thresh needs nearly 1.5 more armour to compete with other tank supports for example, Leona (similar kit but more hard cc) Riot might make his souls scale differently so it brings him down to 12-15% eHP loss mid-late game and gives him a chance to have the same eHP as everyone else by 50-60 minutes.

Without this change (even with it) everyone will go back to playing Leona/Blitz again. To be honest, I disliked Laning with these two more than thresh.

TurquoiseYoshi8 votes

https://media.giphy.com/media/YTbZzCkRQCEJa/giphy.gif

Meep Man4 votes

This makes me want to build a Thornmail as Thresh.

ZT Xperimentor7 votes

Too bad thornmail was nerfed harder than the frozen heart.

PiVoRx4 votes

Like somebody will buy LW just to kill tresh lol.

Mistress Madoka4 votes

I'm totally planning to because fuck that guy

Daedalus8713 votes

Let's say I am a level 18 Vi with 200 Armor, 85 of which is base. Live Last Whisper reduces her Armor to 130 or 56.5% damage reduction (meaning she takes 43.5% of the damage).

Lord Dominik's Regards, penetrates 40% of her armor, giving her 154 armor or 60.6% damage reduction. But that's not including 15% damage amp, so it ends up doing (1 - 0.606)1.15 = 45.2% of the damage to her. Thus it ends up doing about 100*(45.2/43.2) = 104% more damage to her.

For comparison, a 200 armor Thresh takes 13.2% increased damage. Dividing 1.132/1.04, we see Thresh takes 8% more damage relative to Vi.

Edit: For clarity and to show my work a bit more.

Zair Umbras3 votes

Your math is horribly wrong, you know that, right? The 15% amp is to the ADC's damage prior to armor being put in, so if an ADC were to do 100 before armor and 40 after it, with the 15%, they'd do 115 before, and 46 after it. The armor affects all physical damage amps so in reality, that 15% just turned into 6% after armor.

But really. ADC's before would have the 6% from masteries and the 35% from LW, which would equate to about 39%. ArP now won't be scaling multiplicative, so the new 7% and the 40% from Lord Dominik's show as additive, as you'll see in game when it's released or you can see it on the PBE like rest of us. So you can get 47% now of BONUS armor.

Now to the actual numbers. That's 115 armor being reduced by 47%. So she'll be left with about 61 armor, totaling 146. Old LW would do about 40% of ALL armor. Which would be a loss of 80, bringing her down to 120. 146 is about 59.3% physical reduction where as 120 is about 54.5% The difference is very subtle at best.

Now for Thresh with 200 armor, he only has a base of 16. Old LW would bring him down to around 120. New LW brings him down to 97ish armor. 97 armor is a little under 50% where as 120 is about 54.5%.

He takes more damage now, obviously, but I'd be less scared of the ADC's with the new LW against poorly ol' Thresh 'cause if he doesn't build armor items early, a quick 1.3k LW for 30% and a Ghostblade for +20 at about 20 minutes in when Thresh only has about 100 souls for 75 bonus armor, he'll get shredded down to only a bonus of 22, meaning he'd be at 38. IF you get 19 from runes, that's dropping him to 19. If you want to add in the mastery for another 5ish around then, that's about 14 armor. He just went from nearly 50% reduction to 12%. lol. That's where Thresh is hit. His mid game pre-big armor items. After armor items, he's fine, but if that Talon or Zed mid see him sitting down at bot lane without an armor item yet? He'll dead quicker than an AP Sona being caught by a Faker Ahri with DFG.

Daedalus8712 votes

OMG, I think I got dumber reading this. That's not good, I have a test today.

[{quoted}](name=Zair Umbras,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=dPhE5qNE,comment-id=00060000,timestamp=2015-11-03T20:05:31.987+0000)

Your math is horribly wrong, you know that, right? The 15% amp is to the ADC's damage prior to armor being put in, so if an ADC were to do 100 before armor and 40 after it, with the 15%, they'd do 115 before, and 46 after it. The armor affects all physical damage amps so in reality, that 15% just turned into 6% after armor.

Your math is horribly wrong, you know that, right? There is something called the Commutativity of Multiplication that says for all real numbers a and b, ab = ba. Now I won't give you too much grief if you can't recite it properly, but it's one of 10 Axiom's of Mathematics, so even if you don't know it, you know it. It means that (1000.4)1.15 = 1.15(1000.4) = 46. Furthermore, to calculate the increase afterwards, we do 100*(46 - 40)/40 = 15%. Amazing, a 15% increase in damage results in a 15% increase of damage, not 6%.

But really. ADC's before would have the 6% from masteries and the 35% from LW, which would equate to about 39%. ArP now won't be scaling multiplicative, so the new 7% and the 40% from Lord Dominik's show as additive, as you'll see in game when it's released or you can see it on the PBE like rest of us. So you can get 47% now of BONUS armor.

There's a lot of variables that could make this very complicated very quick. Thus I picked another tanky champ, held armor constant, assumed no other sources of penetration, and everything else was constant. That seems fair given the OP's argument seemed to be "Last Whisper changes will hurt Thresh more than other tanky champions".

Now to the actual numbers. That's 115 armor being reduced by 47%. So she'll be left with about 61 armor, totaling 146. Old LW would do about 40% of ALL armor. Which would be a loss of 80, bringing her down to 120. 146 is about 59.3% physical reduction where as 120 is about 54.5% The difference is very subtle at best.

Now for Thresh with 200 armor, he only has a base of 16. Old LW would bring him down to around 120. New LW brings him down to 97ish armor. 97 armor is a little under 50% where as 120 is about 54.5%.

I'm not really going to check this because, again, OP's claim seems to be "Last Whisper changes will hurt Thresh more than other tanky champions".

He takes more damage now, obviously, but I'd be less scared of the ADC's with the new LW against poorly ol' Thresh 'cause if he doesn't build armor items early, a quick 1.3k LW for 30% and a Ghostblade for +20 at about 20 minutes in when Thresh only has about 100 souls for 75 bonus armor, he'll get shredded down to only a bonus of 22, meaning he'd be at 38. IF you get 19 from runes, that's dropping him to 19. If you want to add in the mastery for another 5ish around then, that's about 14 armor. He just went from nearly 50% reduction to 12%. lol. That's where Thresh is hit. His mid game pre-big armor items. After armor items, he's fine, but if that Talon or Zed mid see him sitting down at bot lane without an armor item yet? He'll dead quicker than an AP Sona being caught by a Faker Ahri with DFG.

Ok, I didn't look at mid-game (I kind of doubt that Last Whisper will be one of the first 2 items in most cases). Let's change that. Say Vi and Thresh are both level 11 with 100 Armor and that there are no other sources of penetration, and everything else is constant. A level 11 Vi will have 61 base armor and 39 bonus. A Last Whisper reduces this to 65 Armor, or a 39.3% damage reduction. With new last whisper, Vi now will have 84.3 armor, for 45.7% damage reduction. Factoring the LDR damage in, Vi will take 98.9% of the damage she currently does. Thresh on the other hand will have 66.4 Armor, for 39.9% damage reduction, thus taking 113% of the damage he currently does. That's about a 14.6% relative increase over Vi.

Of course, this doesn't look at how often people will buy last whisper mid game. Unless you are under very specific circumstances, I doubt it will happen. Even now, you don't typically see last whisper until a 3rd or 4th item. I don't think we will see the new Last Whisper all that often before the second item.

Lagrange251 votes

The commutativity of the multiplication was also my first thought after reading that post ^^ Thanks for knowing your maths :)

Daedalus8712 votes

Thanks for making knowing the order of subgroups of finite groups easier. :)

Phuc Dat Bich1 votes

thresh is a support while Malphite and jax got nerfed as hard as you say about thresh and riot still dosent care to fix them

Or you forget that jax ulti gives BONUS armor and malphite W gives BONUS armor

And what about rammus? oh yeah...

And you say about thresh? pls...

Timmeh7o76 votes

Malphite, Rammus and Jax all get base armor per level. Thresh does not.

Shroom Junkie1 votes

Thresh needs it.

ARequestOfDeath2 votes

NO HE DOESN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shroom Junkie1 votes

{quoted}

NO HE DOESN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He's the top support with some of the best disengage with his lantern, Flay, and ult, natural tankiness through passive not to mention the extra stacked on, engage with his Q, E, and R, poke with his E, and extra damage with his passive. He needs it.

ARequestOfDeath2 votes

1st of all he ain't that common in most of my games if there is a thresh in my game it is probably me and i don't play him that much. one of the best if your adc isnt a knucklehead when using your w and for his e makes him stay still for a second and his ultimate can be destroyed by item 3009 they are reworking a item that will destroy thresh's passive next patch. his engage is ok if you can land your hook but leona does that job way better and the poke is slightly annoying early game but lulu does the job better and his e only op with a certain build which makes you squishy as hell. he doesn't need it

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