Thresh: Is this what balance looks like?

Having only collected souls, basically on accident by walking over them, I found his armor growth to give on par, or even better armor stat that the other champions around me. That's without me ever having to try to get that bonus; like it just happened, without me even thinking about it. And I guess, at level 1, he's at a disadvantage, but I think his base health is pretty high, so he's still tough.

The other character who gets stronger by collecting things, is Bard. I like playing Bard a lot. With Bard, you spend the entire game, thinking about getting chimes, planning out how to get them, putting yourself in harms way to get as many as possible. For all that, you gain an attack that, barely anyone needs to care about--for all that effort.

I played Thresh, I literally didn't think about getting a soul, even one time. At level 10, I had enviable armor, and a base attack that does over 100 ranged damage! I would love to have that much base damage, on any champion! 1/3rd split into magic damage, on every single hit, and sometimes it does way more than that! That makes Bard look like a big pile of poop!

How is this considered "balanced?" I think Thresh should have to work to gain these kind of stats: they shouldn't happen while I'm literally not even thinking about collecting souls. Am I missing something? The enemy was pushing us pretty hard; it's not as though I could walk freely around the battlefield.

Is it because he has only one AD ratio, to put him off accelerating his attack damage? Because his kit can't burst a lot of damage that ratios from AP, so he can't really build offensively? Although obviously attack speed Thresh is really good.

Like, if he didn't get the number of souls as bonus damage for every single hit, I could see something here. But he has low mana costs, too--especially with his Q getting a reduction when it lands, like, he should really be expending his mana to use that. Rationally, he's at a disadvantage, with no natural armor growth: but in reality, he has armor growth. There's nothing bad balancing these things out, that I can see.

The only reason, right now, I can think he's balanced, is that his kit provides numerous strong advantages, that can't really be turned into a super-strong build. Is this it? Is this why he's considered balanced? Because it seems like, like I'm not even trying with Thresh, and I end up with good stats. . Doesn't seem like, a good thing.