Continue reading for his full post, including Riot's intentions for the new champion and a warning that Thresh may be a little unpolished...
Here is CertainlyT's full post:
"Hey PBEers, CertainlyT here. I bring a late Snowdown gift for you – our latest champion, Thresh, the Chain Warden. Thresh is here to harvest the souls of Valoran’s greatest champions to fuel the armies of the Shadow Isles.
Thresh is a supportive champion, a total baddass male champion in fact, who brings exceptional crowd control to his team and a very unique form of utility to his allies. If chained properly, he can lock down a single opponent for a delightfully wicked amount of time or trap an entire team of enemies within his cage. Thresh’s strength is the ability to displace his enemies and provide burst mobility to his allies. He has some clear weaknesses: relatively low mobility, skillshot reliance, and a dependence on his team to capitalize on the moments of power he creates.
Beyond support, Thresh can function top lane and jungle. His kit naturally favors being in an environment in which you can interact with your allies, so as a top laner he is most effective at harassing to soften his opponents and then supporting some pretty brutal ganks. As a jungler, he brings enough CC and allied mobility to burn down all but the tankiest opponents (just don’t expect a fast jungle clear).
Thresh’s signature ability is his Lantern, which he can throw out to a location. If an ally right clicks on the Lantern, Thresh will pull the ally to him (the ally is dashed toward him). We’ve had some fun times in playtests pulling Skarner into the midst of the enemy team, giving Vayne an over-the-wall lifeline, and bailing out Gypsylord on Tristana (he always Rocket Jumps in…. always).
I’ll give a brief explanation of the rest of his kit:
Thresh’s passive is a soul collection game. Enemies that die around him sometimes drop souls (the bigger they are, the more probable they are to leave a soul). Thresh gains no mitigation per level; he can only access that through collecting souls to fuel his rise to power.
Thresh’s Q is a skillshot grab that stuns and pulls an enemy a fixed distance toward him. He can reactivate it to pull himself to the enemy.
Thresh’s E is a small directional knock that Thresh has the power to shape the movement on – he can push enemies in a line away, pull enemies in a line toward him, or anything in between.
Thresh’s ultimate lets him create a prison around him – a set of 5 destructible walls. If an enemy walks through a wall they break a hole for their allies to walk through but take tons of damage and a strong slow themselves.
Here’s the kind of player we hope will find Thresh most fun:
Players who like communicating with their team to build a feeling of cooperation and coordination over the course of a game – Don’t expect to maximize Thresh’s Lantern without putting in the effort to build a rapport with your teammates;
Players who like a high intensity experience – unlike a lot of our supports, Thresh can’t chill in the brush for 30 seconds without paying a substantial cost to his stat progression, is reliant on his basic attack for harassment (a 475 range whip that can deal bonus magic damage!), and has to combine his abilities dynamically, rather than habituating himself to one cast order;
Players who appreciate controlling a lane, a fight, and a game through the threat of their abilities – he has some relatively long cooldowns that are best used judiciously.
Currently, Thresh is in the midst of our live balance passes. Don’t expect this version to be completely balanced… yet. We should have a better understanding of his game presence by the middle of next week (in fact, the build you are playing is a day behind our iteration cycle). Further, the version of Thresh we are putting on PBE is ready for your testing, but he is still being polished. He doesn’t have final icons yet, his skillshot indicators are not yet final, and a couple of particles are temp or not yet fully implemented. Nonetheless, he’s already a lot of fun, so we hope you’ll enjoy helping us to identify any remaining bugs on him. A big thanks in advance to everyone on the PBE who will help us make Thresh the kind of polished release you’ve come to expect!"
For more information, as well as a summary of the other PBE content in the "Thresh PBE Patch", click here.
