Alternative Thresh Changes

To start, let's look at the changes that are on the PBE right now for Thresh.

• Death Sentence's ( Q ) passive has been moved to Flay ( E ).

Now, while moving the AA passive from Thresh's Q to his E might reduce his laning pressure to a degree, there are some major issues with relying on this change to effectively "nerf" him.

For one, his damage in a full on engage won't go down at all as long as he maxes E instead of Q.  In fact, E scales, damage wise, more strongly than Q does.  So, by forcing Thresh to max his E, he will actually do More in a full on engage than he did before, not to mention having a stronger slow.

His poke with AAs will also not change.  By maxing E his damage will be exactly that same in that respect.

The only difference this will make is that he will no longer be able to max Q and get his passive, meaning his Q will effectively have a longer CD and do less damage but his E will do more damage and have a stronger slow.  Not exactly much of a nerf, and in some cases almost a buff since his CC early game will get stronger.

My alternative change is this:

Lower the ratio of souls to passive AA damage.  If you want to keep AD thresh strong, increase the scaling on the AD to compensate.

This will effectively lower Thresh's damage as a support while keeping other aspects of him alive and strong.  And it makes sense as well.  There's no real reason that a champion with a strong kit like Thresh needs so much damage on his AAs too.

He will still retain everything that makes him interesting, he will still have stronger AAs than most supports, he can still max the spell that really makes him what he is, and his laning power will be lowered.

Now, this might not be enough, but one thing I really like about Riot and LoL is that they try to make small changes, and many of them, rather than big ones.  So, if this isn't a strong enough nerf, Riot can look at the problem again and possibly make more changes.