Upcoming League Champ: Thresh

It was actually only recently that we got the first hint of an upcoming male support champion for League of Legends, and he’s already showing up in the Public Beta Environment for testing.

Introducing Thresh

Thresh is intended as a support or top lane champion, possessing a great deal of displacement capability.

His passive ability causes enemies that die near him to occasionally drop souls. Collecting those souls increases his armor, magic resistance, and his base spell damage.  What those numbers are and what their maximum scaling is are currently unknown.

His q is called Shackle and throws out his hooked chain.  If it hits an enemy champion Thresh will spend the next second and a half pulling the champion towards himself.  If he activates it again while pulling, he will stop and instead pull himself to his target.  The ability also applies a passive that causes his auto-attacks to do additional magic damage that increases over time between attacks, at max rank getting up to 200% of his attack damage.

Thresh’s w is what Riot is calling his signature ability.  Lantern Toss (appropriately) throws out his lantern to target area, and it provides a shield to any ally who approaches near it.  If an ally clicks on the lantern, they will pick it up and instantly jump to Thresh, ending the ability.  A given ally can only receive the shield from the ability once.

Sweep is his e ability.  It is a short ranged skillshot that extends out in two directions doing damage.  Cast targeted in front of Thresh, it will begin behind him and push enemies away. Cast targeted behind, it will begin in front and pull them.

Thresh’s ultimate ability is called The Box.  Thresh creates a pentagon-shaped series of walls surrounding his current position.  Enemies caught within these walls are slowed.  If they touch one of them (including by being pulled into one by one of Thresh’s abilities) they take damage and are slowed.  After one wall has been touched, the rest deal reduced damage and slow when touched.

The culmination of these abilities give Thresh an unprecedented amount of control over the positioning of other champions, hinting at some extremely dangerous potential in capable hands.  He does look to have a high skill ceiling, however, so if you’re planning on picking him up, be sure to get plenty of practice in on League of Legends before taking him into tougher games.