[By The Numbers] Thresh Is the Only Champion With 0 Armor Growth — the Only One Whose MR Beats Armor at 18

Defensive stats hide a few surprises once you dig into them. I've covered attack speed and HP growth before — this time it's armor and magic resist (MR). Checking the per-level growth of all 173 champions turned up exactly one rule-breaker.

Thresh Is the Only Champion Whose Armor Never Grows

Line up every champion's armor growth per level and Thresh is the only one sitting at 0. His armor is 33 at level 1 and still 33 at level 18. Every other one of the 172 champions gets at least a little tankier with levels — Thresh just stays exactly the same number the whole game, which honestly surprised me.

His MR grows normally (30 to 56.4), so by level 18 his magic resist is actually higher than his armor. He's the only champion in the whole roster where that happens. His hook-and-punish power apparently isn't meant to scale with level — only the resistance protecting his allies through the lantern does (fitting, for a support, if you think about it).

Highest Base Armor

Base armor, highest	Value
Leona	43
Alistar	40
Malphite	40
Pantheon	40
Taric	40

Top spot goes to Leona (43), which checks out for a classic tank support. At the bottom sit Cassiopeia, Malzahar, Taliyah and Veigar (all 18) — squishy from level 1 the moment anyone gets close.

Lowest Base MR: Surprisingly, Kayle

Base MR, lowest	Value
Kayle	22
Yuumi	25
Orianna	26

Last place is Kayle (22). She looks armored in that angelic form, but her base MR is the lowest in the game. At the top sits Akali (37) — an assassin with the single highest base MR in the game, which is its own little reversal.

Supports Get Tough Against Physical Damage, Stay Squishy to Magic

Comparing armor to MR at level 18, Bard, Nami, Soraka, Kennen, and Karma come out on top of the gap.

Level 18 armor minus MR	Value
Bard	+66.9
Nami	+65.3
Soraka	+64.9

Bard hits 119 armor at level 18 against just 52.1 MR. His armor growth alone is tank-tier, while his MR sits at the standard support baseline the whole game. Nami and Soraka follow the same pattern — surprisingly durable against auto attacks, gone in one AP burst.

Takeaway

Items can override any of this, but how a champion's base stats grow says something about how they were designed. Thresh's fixed armor is probably a deliberate call to keep his hook threat from scaling with level. The support armor bias looks like the flip side of a role that rarely gets to build MR.

I had no idea Thresh's armor sat at exactly 33 from level 1 to 18. His hooks hit just as hard the whole game, but he never gets any tougher for it — kind of a bittersweet stat.