Hello everyone, and welcome to one more guide, this time for Thresh. I'm DSM Aubery (ig name), I am a Platinum jungle and support main (EUW), who has been playing League of Legends since the beginning of season 5, and ranked since the end of it. Ever since I started playing ranked intensively, I've always hit at least gold. This is the first season I attained Platinum in soloqueue.

Furthermore I'm a business engineering student at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). I'm a big fan of eSports, watching it ever since I started playing competitive League. I'm supporting King-Zone DragonX.

Why did I decide to spend a couple of hours writing a guide for Thresh I hear you asking yourself? And it's a good question indeed. Thresh is one of the most played supports, has always been, and will most likely always be. Eventhough tons of people are playing him, he really isn't the most easy going support in the support pool. Both on a mechanical level, and a macro gaming level he is rather difficult to play. I decided to help starting Thresh players a bit, so I wanted to write a guide to help you guys in your development process.

DSM Aubery

Pros → Pick potential → Saving power with lantern → high amount of cc → Flexible building patern → A lot of roaming potential

Cons → High skill cap → No real escaping tools → Most banned support → High cooldowns

Main rune tree Resolve: In general, this has always been the main rune tree for Thresh. I think I haven’t ever seen anyone else using an other main tree. You can debate about the major rune, but no doubt about the resolve tree! Major rune Aftershock: In general, Aftershock is the best option for Thresh. You can proc it by crowd controlling with your Death Sentence, and deal extra damage to harass the opponent. Some people might tend to go for Guardian, which is always a fairly safe option. You might wanna grab up this one in heavy bully matchups, such as Caitlyn & Karma or Dravenand Lux. First minor rune Demolish: During laning phase, as a Thresh player, your main job is to create picks and try to harass your lane opponent. By creating this pressure over the enemy duo, you’ll be able to pressure in the tower. You have a very strong 2vs2 aswell, because of on the one hand his high cc, and on the other hand is relative high damage output early. When you force the other laners out of lane, you can get free plates with Demolish. Getting yourself as far ahead as possible early is a key strategy in succeeding, atleast in this meta. Ask that to Fnatic or G2. Second minor rune Bone Plating: To be fair, not that much to say about this rune, it’s just standard on botlane. It reduces next basic attacks taken by the enemy adcarry after he hit you, just always take this as a support with Resolve. Third minor Rune Unflinching: Thresh has low mobility, so he’d wanna use his summoner spells as effective as possible, that’s why we take Unflinching. So people tend to op tinto Revitalize, but in general I think Unflinching is the better option for Thresh.

Tree Inspiration: For the secondary tree, people tend to opt into Inspiration in general, and I agree with this style. Inspiration will allow you to stay in lane longer, and have more pressure over the opponent duo. No doubt about this pick up. First rune Biscuit Delivery: As a first pick up inside the Inspiration tree, I preffer to take the Biscuits. Especially when you are new on Thresh, this is a good option, because when you fail to execute your combo, the enemy duo has easy harass on you. The biscuits will give you a little bit more lane sustain, which is really welcome. Even when you’ve mained Thresh for a long time, this is a good pick up. With Ancient Coin you’ll get a lot of mana back, the biscuits give you hp back, which is great to stay in lane longe rand keep playing agressive! Magical Footwear is an option aswell! Second Rune Cosmic Insight: Last but not least, Cosmic Insight! This is a nice pick up, because Thresh has quite some long cooldowns early. Getting a little bit of these CD’s reduced, is a great option. It’s pretty basic stuff, and it works most of the time!

When playing Thresh, you mainly have 3 different genres of items. You can go peel oriented items, utility oriented, and/or tankiness oriented. Every specific game might require a diffirent build patern. For example, when you are playing with a self-peeling adcarry such as Lucian or Xayah, and you don’t have any tank on your team, you might wanna get yourself some tanky items so atleast you have someone in your team who can tank up some damage.

Early itemisation
On special request from moderator Jovy, I added a paragraph about benefits from Relic Shield on the one hand, and Ancient Coin on the other hand. I'll start of with Relic Shield. Relic shield used to be the best option for Thresh back in the days, but since it got nerfed on ranged attackers, it ain't longer the best option for Thresh. This doesn't mean you can't build it anymore on Thresh, it just moved from priority pick towards a situational item. When you play with a Vayne or a Kog'Maw, and you're thinking about playing safe and trying to punish opponent's mistakes, you might wanna opt into the Relic Shield, because this will give your passive laner some additional safety, and because you won't play agressive, you don't really need the additional mana. The reason it isn't a prio item anymore, is the fact it takes a very long time to unlock the warding stone, which isn't quite handy when playing a support in ranked.

That said, it's time to talk about the prio item in Ancient Coin. This item is no.1 for Thresh at the moment, because most Thresh players are trying to play very agressive, so the mana is quite handy. Apart from that, Ancient Coin allows a support to unlock wards very early in the game. The quickest I've unlocked my wards was at around 7min into the game, just to give you an indication about the speed... I'd suggest you picking up the ancient coin item in most of your games, because most often when picking Thresh, you don't want to be the sitting duck next to your adcarry, you want to be the playmaker such as Mata, BunnyFufu or Madlife, if you want to play passive you can take a Janna or a Sorakaright? But in case things turn out this way, you can always opt into the Relic Shield.

Peeling oriented itemisation
The peeling oriented items are most frequently used on Thresh. Rushing Zeke's Convergence is a great option in most of the games, but you can also opt into a Knight's Vow. Peeling oriented items are really strong, given assasins are played frequently in soloqueue, and they are quite strong, so you’d wanna get your adcarry some tankiness buffs, so he can survive longer in the fights. Remember, the longer your adcarry can stay in the fight, the more damage he can deal, the more chance you’ll win the fight!

• Zeke’s is one of the most frequently build items on Thresh. It builds from a Aegis of the Legion and a Glacial Shroud. It gives mr, armor, mana and cdr, which is litteraly everything Thresh might ask for early. The passive from Zeke’s will slow opponents, and will deal a slim margin of magic damage to them, when you use your ultimate. In general , this is an item worth rushing.
  
• Knight’s Vow is another great peeling oriented item, especially against heavy ad comps. For example, when playing against a Draven, Yasuo and Talon, this is a must pick first or second item! The passive will give your adcarry 20 additional armor and some movement speed, which is quite handy in the fights, when he might get dove by the two assasins. The item will get yourself a smooth 40 armor, 10% cd rand 250 health, which is everything Thresh needs against these kinds of comps.
  
• The very famous Redemption is another smooth item to pick on Thresh. Allthough it might not have the same effect as on a Janna or on a Lulu, it’s still a nice item to pick up. Personally, I don’t pick it up all that often because there are better items to take in my opinion, such as the two above or some extra tankiness item, yet it’s a good item on Thresh, it’s just not really “my thing”.
  
  

Tankiness oriented items
In general, tankiness oriented items are quite common on Thresh. People these days don’t tend to build them first item, because they want their adcarry to have some additional protection, but a tanky item is a great choice for a fourth or fifth item, when heavy teamfighting will kick in! Especially when your team doesn’t really have a big tank, it’s always smart and solid to opt into one of the items below.

• The Dead Man’s Plate is one of the best items to build on Thresh. It gives you 425 health and 60 armor, which is always a great option because the opponents will have atleast one physical damage dealer. The passive gives you stacks, which increase your movement speed. These come in very handy, when trying to get deeper wards. You don’t want enemies to catch you and kill you, so you want this additional movement speed, so you can put out wards without getting caught out.
  
• Abyssal Mask is a very popular item on Nautilus, and can be build on Thresh aswell. You don’t see that many people building it, but when you’re against a very heavy ability power comp, this might be a good option. Especially when you’re playing a heavy fighting game, when you’ll need a lot of mana. In general, Thresh isn’t that mana hungry, but when you play a very intense game, your mana might drain fairly quickly, which makes it a good option to go fort he Abyssal Mask.
  
• The Adaptive helm is another good item when playing against very heavy AP comps. The benefit with this item, compared tot he Abyssal Mask is the 100% base hp regen. When playing long fights where you have to tank a lot of damage, this might come in handy. Healing some of the damage taken, so you can re-enter the fight a bit later on. Situational item soso.
  
• The Randuins Omen is recommended when playing against heavy crit comps. When, for example, playing against a Twitch Yasuo compostion, the crit reduction and attack speed (on attacker) reduction will be a big benefit.
  
  

Utility Oriented itemisation

• Locket of the Iron Solari is a great item, no matter what kind of game you’re having. It gives you armor and magic resist, and a big shield to protect your allies. I build this in 90% of my games. I wouldn’t really suggest first building it, but it’s a great second item (after your boots and sightstone item). It might be worth rushing this item when playing against burst heavy enemy champions, such as Fizz, Zed and Talon.
  
• The Righteous Glory used to be a very famous first item pick up for Thresh. Back in the day, this was the big item for supports like Thresh, players like Yellowstar and Gorilla would just always rush it, because of the engage heavy passive. It’s still a great item, and for me, I tend to rush it quite often. When having “run down” games, it might help you running it down a bit faster.
  

Choice of boots
When talking about boots, your average choice will bet he Mobility Boots. This allows Thresh to start roaming very effectively and very early on in the game. Some people just rush them, so they can’t go for unexpected level 4 ganks in midlane. Apart from that, Ninja Tabi is another good pick up, against AD heavy comps. You might wanna grab up the Mercury's Treads when playing against heavy AP comps, or against CC heavy comps.

PASSIVE ABILITY

Damnation (Passive): Enemies dying near Thresh will drop souls for 8 seconds, collectable for 8 seconds. Each soul collection will grant 0.75 bonus ap and 0.75 armor, on a permantent base. Beside the armor for tankiness, it will buff shielding power from Dark Passage and the strength from Flay.

Q

Death sentence (Q): The main reason why people start playing Thresh is for his hook, officially called Death Sentence. After a short delay, Thresh will throw out his hook in an attempt to grab the enemy. Thresh can recast his Q, if hit, to travel towards the hooked enemy. This ability is great in terms of cc’ing an opponent, and making sure you can harass them. Practise on landing your hooks on a consistent base, this is the main target for new Thresh players!

W

Dark Passage (W):Thresh' Lantern, officially called the Dark Passage is his W. This ability is very usefull to get your allies out of dangerous situations, such as being trapped by the enemies in the Baron pit, or when your adcarry is overextending, you can step a little bit back so you can Lantern him when you get ganked. The Dark Passage might seem something weak and not really special, but once you start playing Thresh on a competitive level, you'll see the value of this ability! Check out the video below from Meiko!

E

Flay (E): Thresh' E is another fighting related ability. When Flaying an enemy, you'll sweep all opponent enemies inside your flay range to the direction you cast it. It slows the enemies aswell, scaling with Flay's level. (20%-40%) When trying to harass lane opponents, try to get your Flay down first for the slow, and follow it up with a guaranteed Death Sentence.

R

The Box (R): Thresh' ultimate ability is called The Box, because it litteraly is a box! The Box places a pentagon around Thresh, which slows enemies upon being hit. The box deals magic damage so it gets buffed by Thresh' passive aswell. Enemies hit by one of the sides of the pentagon, are slowed for 99% for 2 seconds. Think about combining your Death Sentence, The Box and Flaying someone inside the box to make sure he's slowed enough. This is a frequently used combo, both in soloq and proplay!

Thresh' main purpose in lane is playing agressive and creating kill opportunities, while keeping his adcarry as safe as possible. You can achieve kills in general in 2 different ways: you can opt into playing hard agro, or you can play passive and try to punish their mispositioning, the former most often used in lower elo, the latter in higher elo. I'll talk you trough both of them in this paragraph.

Laning phase agression
Most Thresh players like to play very agressive, walking around minion waves, ccing opponent with Death Sentence and Flaying them backwards for big damage outputs. This is the main reason why people start playing Thresh, the hard laning phase agression and the joy in landing the tricky yet fun hooks. The main job you'll have is to watch for opportunities, because enemy laners, except when they are iron, will try to hide behind their own minions. So your main job is to try to look for opportunities to throw out your hook, and ofcourse when you start climbing the ladder, fewer and fewer opportunities will pop up, so you'll have to train your skills so you land the hooks when possible. Another way to secure a hook is to step forward when they position agressive, Flay them backwards into a free Death Sentence, this should get you free 2-3sec cc onto the enemies. The fact enemies can kite you before you flay them, makes this strategy a bit risky and more beneficial when you're already ahead.

Punishing their mistakes
Because I'm situated in Platinum at the moment, I personally preffer this strategy. When you start climbing the ladder, adcarries will get better and it won't be that easy anymore for you to land your hook, so what you'll wanna do is save some mana, before throwing out your hook when enemy laners are mispotitioned quite hard so you have a guarenteed hook! For example when they are trying to harass you towards your own tower, watch for the one wrong step from them to throw out the Death Sentence and Flay them under tower!

In general, midgame is where Thresh really starts shining. This is the point where he usually picked up his Mobility Boots, and his Remnant of the Ascended. Once Thresh has picked up these items, he's free to start roaming and creating picks to get his other laners ahead. He can start putting deep vision down so the team gets more vision and jungle controll. Especially when the enemies have a low mobility midlaner, it's a good idea to start roaming quickly, so you can get your own midlaner onto a snowball as soon as possible. Make sure you bring Control Ward and a Sweeping Lens so you won't get spotted by your enemies! Getting your allies ahead is fairly important on Thresh, because he has a great toolkit to do so!

As everyone knows, it's very important in League of Legends to keep strong vision control over the map. When you want to siege, you need wards to avoid a flank, when you want to sneak Baron, you need vision around the pit so you know where the enemies are located,... In this paragraph, I'll explain the main ideas of how to ward under certain circumstances. How do you ward when you are ahead and want to snowball? How do you ward when you are behind? Which are critical places for warding? I'll explain it in this piece!

Warding when ahead/snowballing
When you are trying to snowball around the 10min mark, it's very important to work together on an efficient base with your jungler. Deep warding the enemy jungle is a good trick to abuse your jungler's advantage. Making sure you can spot out the enemy jungler, and his camps is crucial. Remember, the idea is to track the enemy jungler so he doesn't have ganking opportunities, but at the same time you're jungler can go and steal camps away, so he's left with nothing, no ganks, no camps, so he'll fall behind significantly! Great job! When playing the red side, you should ward the triangle of bushes around the enemy red buff. This will track an incredible amount of movement from the enemy jungler, and it will give your jungler track on when the enemy red is spawning.

Warding when falling behind early
When you're falling behind early, you won't place deep wards into the enemy jungle, because you'll be easily picked when they spot you out. Because the enemy lines will be pushed in, they'll be a lot quicker to respond and they might have a chance to kill you or blow your Flash, just for nothing. So when behind, you'll want to guarantee your own jungler to atleast have his own camps, so make sure you ward jungle entries such as the tribush with a Control Ward, and the jungle entrance between the jungle pit and midlane. When you are playing redside, it's a very smart idea to place a Control Ward in the bush between blue buff and midlane, this will spot out a lot of movement. At the entrance near to the blue buff, should also be a ward, junglers will seek to invade this spot a lot when they're ahead, espcially junglers with easy escaping tools such as Hecarim or Sejuani.

Critical spots to put wards
When we are talking about key spots for warding, we're talking about spots were junglers pass a lot, but can't ever be seen without the wards. Good examples are the 2 bushes at the raptor camps (one on red side, one on blue side), the river entrances at midlane, when coming from red buff, and many more. They'll be indicated on the pictures down bellow.

Warding as blueside:Warding as redside:


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