How Thresh Changed League of Legends

What’s up guys it’s me Jeremy!
Real quick before we start this video is going to be sponsored by GGEsports.com.
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It might seem strange to think about for those of you that started playing League of Legends
within the last couple of years, but there was once a time where it was pretty normal
for Riot to release two, or sometimes even three champions in under a month.
Looking back through the champion release timeline, it’s quite clear that this trend
started to change after the release of one champion in particular - Thresh.
The release of Thresh not only lead to changes in Riot’s development schedule, but it also
changed the way they designed the support role, and champions entirely.
Thresh was released on the 23rd of January 2013, making him the last champion to be released
before the start of Season 3.
His designer CertainlyT put him together using a cancelled, scythe-wielding tank champion
called Komachi as a big inspiration for the theme.
The interesting part about this is that Thresh was originally never designed to be a support,
despite the fact that he’s now one of the most popular supports in the game.
Thanks to his aggressive design concept, CertainlyT initially had Thresh as a solo top laner or
jungler, at least in early development cycle of him.
Before this point, supports were chosen for their defensive capabilities - like buffing,
healing or peeling for teammates, and an aggressive playmaking style of support was pretty much
nonexistant.
A comment in passing from Riot Zileas sparked a change for what eventually led to Thresh
being re-designed for the support role, only with a twist - he’d still maintain the awesome
playmaking abilities that were given to him to make him a viable solo laner and jungler
initially, along with the addition of his lantern ability to add yet another tool to
his playmaking arsenal.
Thresh was one of the most well received champions that Riot has ever created, and his impact
on the game was massive.
He not only brought a new badass aesthetic to the traditionally feminine support role,
but he brought the potential to actively carry the game as well.
In the past, supports did exactly what you would expect from the name - they supported
the carries, the stars that took the credit for every victory.
The release of Thresh shook this idea to it’s core - suddenly it was possibly to be both
the support AND the key playmaker of the team, a privilege that was usually reserved for
top laners and junglers.
Never before had a relevant support champion been so involved in the game.
Instead of existing as a ward and healbot, Thresh was stealing the limelight and spawning
an entire new playstyle; the playmaking support.
This change didn’t come without growing pains, Riot had never designed such an aggressive
character for the support role before, so he needed some pretty severe nerfs to bring
him into a more balanced state.
Once the nerfs had concluded, Thresh remained prominent though, showing Riot that the success
was down to his design and the way that it challenged preconceived notions about how
each role should function.
His creation not only introduced a proactive and fun champion for the existing support
players, but it made the support role more widely appealing to the average player.
It’s pretty clear that Thresh paved the way for Riot’s new support designs, but
the aftershocks of his release actually ran a lot deeper.
Thresh proved to Riot that new champions are a compelling way for them to introduce new
playstyles and strategies.
Thresh’s success showed them that one amazing champion could have a more positive impact
on the game than five mediocre ones, proving that quality beat quantity by a huge margin
in terms of new champion releases.
And from there it sparked them to explore new archetypes and attempt to redefine roles
other than support through the release of new champions.
The previous release schedule of one or two champions a month started to collapse immediately
following Thresh’s release.
Suddenly the gaps between champion launches grew to 4-6 weeks, eventually progressing
to be further and further apart.
Instead of each new champion being composed of mechanics from previous releases, they
would introduce new mechanics to the game, or have more clearly defined and unique characteristics.
The level of polish improved in equal measure, instead of throwing a concept together in
the span of a few weeks, each champion would have upwards of 9 months of development time
on average.
Champions now had defined personalities, more varied appearances and interesting gameplay
to match - and as a result, players felt more connected with champions they loved, and it
gave Riot time to build the hype for new releases with the knowledge that every single new champion
had the potential to shake up the game and keep things fresh for the community.
Thresh pioneered these changes to League of Legends - he introduced the playmaking support
playstyle to the game and revolutionized the support role and how Riot develops champions
in the process.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much better things are now, especially when we’re feeling
impatient about the next champion release.
To put things into perspective, only 26 champions have been released in the 4 years since the
launch of Thresh, which is almost the same number that were released in Season 2 alone.
However, one thing remains true - newer champions today are of significantly higher quality,
and just far more enjoyable to play overall, and it’s largely in part all thanks to Thresh.
Thanks for watching.
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How Thresh Changed League of Legends

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