PBE: Thresh Math Mk. II

Not long after I completed yesterday's math on Thresh's passive a PBE update went out. This removed the Magic Resistance from Thresh's passive (at least in the tooltip), which obviously changes the math.

So with the recent update we must modify our equation for value:

Gold Value = (# of Souls / 2 + 12.75) * (18 + 20) - 1296g

With the factors representing MR removed, this gives us the following numbers:

• 50: 138.5g
• 100: 1088.5g
• 150: 2038.5g
• 200: 2988.5g
• 250: 3938.5g

So the value of Thresh's passive is roughly one-half to two-thirds what it was previously.

Beyond curbing the absurd value of Thresh's passive, this change serves an important function. Before it was incredibly easy for Thresh to become impossible for AP carries to kill. Being able to exceed 100 Magic Resistance without any items or runes was silly. With the Magic Resistance removed from his passive, he'll no longer be the most abusive mid champion since LeBlanc's release.

PBE: Thresh Math

Thresh has hit the PBE, and he brings an interesting new mechanic, soul collection.

Every time a minion or jungle monster dies near Thresh it has a chance to drop a soul, with larger minions/monsters having a near 100% chance. Each soul Thresh collects gives him permanent Armor, Magic Resistance, and Ability Power, and also increases the damage of his auto-attacks through Q. The first handful of souls are worth more than later ones. For most numbers (beyond 30 or so) the math is simple:

Bonus Armor/MR/AP = Souls / 2 + 12.75

At 100 souls Thresh has 62.75 bonus Armor/MR/AP. That's a lot, and as a result Thresh's base Armor and Magic Resistance do not increase with level.

So how valuable is this passive anyway? To understand that we first must understand what Thresh has lost by losing out on level-based Armor and Magic Resistance.

All champions that have scaling Magic Resistance gain 1.25 per level, resulting in an additional 21.25 Magic Resistance at level 18 which Thresh misses out on. Magic Resistance costs 18 gold per point, so we'll have to subtract 382.5 gold when calculating the value of Thresh's passive.

The highest Armor scaling in the game is 4 per level and the lowest is 2.7, meaning 48.6 - 72 Armor that Thresh will not have at level 18. Armor also costs 18 gold per point, so that means another 1296 gold (to make the harshest assumption) subtracted from the value of Thresh's passive.

Finally, Ability Power costs 20 gold per point (based on Needlessly Large Rod). So the math for the gold value of Thresh's passive is fairly simple:

Gold Value = (# of Souls / 2 + 12.75) * (18 + 18 + 20) - 382.5g - 1296g

That gives us the following values at various soul numbers:

• 50: 435.5g
• 100: 1835.5g
• 150: 3235.5g
• 200: 4635.5g
• 250: 6035.5g

Generally speaking, 100 souls is what I would expect an average player performing normally to collect by the mid-game. 200 souls would be fairly typical for the late game. Expert players might collect as many as 150 or 300 souls (or more) at those same points respectively.

As we can see, this passive is worth a ridiculous amount of gold even once we've accounted for the loss of per-level stats, and that's without considering that all of these souls add to the damage of his Q's passive. Thresh gains so much without gold that he makes an ideal support. So long as he carefully times his warding excursions he'll easily stack hundreds of souls and be ridiculously tanky for a support.

Update: PBE Madness

For those who are curious I did not, in fact, have any idea the Season 3 changes would be hitting the PBE last night. My oddly timed post regarding how to prepare for the chaos was a coincidence, and my cryptic twitter message was for a secret personal project the details of which will be revealed in due time.

Now that it's all out there, both reignofgaming.net and surrenderat20.net have good round ups of all the crazy stuff that's on the PBE. You can only sign up for a PBE account at the start of the month, so unfortunately those of you who are without one will have to live vicariously through streams, blogs, and YouTube videos (the queue for the PBE is probably as long as the Great Wall of China anyway).

I'll talk about everything in much greater detail as I have the opportunity to test and digest it all, but for now here are my initial impressions:

• The new jungle is poorly balanced, much in the same way the Season 2 revamp was.
• The new HUD is pretty and clean, but the shop's sounds are unsatisfying.
• Nami is about as "Regal" as Ariel.
• Xypherous wasn't kidding when he said Runaan's Hurricane + Muramasa would drain your mana fast.

From here on I'll be picking out specific topics to discuss. Quite likely the jungle will be the first one, as it's close to my heart and also in the process of being butchered. In the meantime, enjoy your information overload.