Just making that whole thing clear. It seems to me that Riot doesn't want to explicitly say it for whatever reason, but with what they're doing to him it's abundantly clear to me that they don't want him in the support role purely because of pro play.
This is how Tham works in top:
Did you happen to get filled top? yes. Is the opponent picking a melee? yes. Do you know the match-up? no.
Congrats, you can pick Tham and make the lane uninteractive for your opponent and just wait if your team wins by themselves.
Did you won the lane? yes. Congrats. Thats it, you can't actually push. Did you won the lane? no. Congrats. That's it, just slow down any melee trying to split, they can't dive you anyway.
You have no tp? fear not! use your ult. You want to permaslow and invalidate your opponent's dashes? fear not! buy iceborn gauntlet and hit your fast af Q!
He is only fun if your heart is pure rocks and spines and you actually don't care about either win or lose. That's tham.
For the kids reading: it's like Snorlax just sleeping in the middle of the road.
He can still save his carry from CC/burst, he just can't also totally disengage with them in his belly on top of saving them from a bad situation. He's still building Swifties/Phase Rush, and that mitigates the self slow.
Tahm lost the ability to eat his ADC and run the hell away, but he gained better stats, better sustain, better poke, and better CC. He's more well-rounded, which does make him better in other lanes, but also makes him a more consistent support instead of a Devour bot/damage sponge.
We talking Hail of Arrows with Tiamat right?
I'm not sure because they deleted a massive portion of his max health damage and increased W cost and CD vs enemies massively. I think he may have just been season 1 Evelynn'd lol, the most useless character of all time finally has competition.
He's been a top laner for the most part :S.
I'll be honest: I think the ally swallow nerf is soley to combat ally swallowing trolls who eat their allies when they are about to land a kill, make a play, kill an objective, or just prevent CSing.
Top he's always been oppressive, simply because Tongue Lash is so damn low on cooldown. Now it's going to be even lower...... And the fact they took a mana cost away from his shield is nothing short of solo lane broken, since it means he doesn't have to manage mana to stay alive under a turret.....
I was playing him top on occasion but wouldn't now because Riot fucked his damage on his W. Eat shit riot.
good jungle
also support he can still eat people just cant re-position them.
