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Recommended Items
Runes: Grasp Thresh Top - Standard
+10% Attack Speed
+2% Movement Speed
+10-180 Bonus Health
Spells:
Ghost
Teleport
Items
Ability Order Ability Order
Damnation (PASSIVE)
Thresh Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Rumble
His flames and E give Thresh a headache with his low sustain, and his slows and subsequent all-in with overheat will melt Thresh's pathetic magic resistance. You NEED magic resist runes, Second Wind, and Doran's Shield, and to be VERY careful with your Flay usage. Flayed him before he committed? He'll slow you again, this time with an Ult. Take Mercury Treads first, then Wit's End.
Champion Build Guide
So, I hope the oversimplified build is enough for now, but please check me out on YouTube or Twitch to see how the modern builds are coming along.
With something as alien to most as Thresh Top or AD Thresh (or whatever variant it is you wish to do) is, it's essential to understand why you're building items, how to play this champion in non-support roles, and what he really is in the first place! Therefore, thank you once again. The 'build options' at the top are a very small amount of the variety available to Thresh, just that so I don't throw super-niche build ideas into the heads of people quickly skimming the guide before a game to get a cookie-cutter build. The majority of this guide will focus on Thresh Top played AD. There may be applications and ideas thrown around for Thresh Mid, and Thresh ADC as well, but their playstyles may vary. It's very important to learn the basics first before you start breaking any more rules than we already have done by taking a Support champion into the Top Lane! I hope you enjoy the guide, and the build! Finally, as Season 14 is still VERY recent, I'm starting small with build variety and branching outwards as we play more, and I could change opinions later down the line. I encourage you to also experiment if you think something would work well! |
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Pros + Ranged Top laner + High-burst auto attack + Infinite scaling on-hit effect + Infinite scaling armor + High CC + Potential 100%-0% CC combo (with AP/Auto attack) + Strong early laning phase + Hard to engage on due to ![]() + Supports jungler with ![]() + Does not get countered hard by other ranged tops. + Flex pick, often assumed support rather than anywhere else. + Even from behind, hooks and flays remain useful. + From ahead, high burst potential can snowball. |
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Cons: - Learning curve, very different from support. - High cooldowns means very punishable when misplayed. - Naturally squishy without Souls and Health. - Low range at 450 compared to other ranged champions. - Hybrid damage makes for weak lategame (no penetration options). - Immobile besides hooking enemies/jungle monsters. - Naturally slow. - Infinite scaling. Souls can be denied, teams can hit surrender before you scale up. - Top lane does not impact the rest of the map much, especially with ![]() |
At a glance, it can seem like a lot of cons. I can't lie you to, either, there's quite a few cons, and AD Thresh Top needs some work to get around them. It is not a perfect, easy, freelo build. You play it because you want to.
Not to say it's weak by any means, either. Let's talk about what makes AD Thresh what he is.
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Building Thresh with AD scales the passive of ![]() When fully-charged, which takes 10 seconds of not auto-attacking, the passive deals triple damage as you get 200% Total AD magic damage on top of the 100% Total AD physical damage that is innate to all champions except ![]() Though this can lead to hilarious one shots in some games, being hybrid damage makes it difficult to itemise against as they must build both resistance types, but it is even more difficult to itemise hybrid penetration outside of ![]() Instead, the AD ratio's full power is mostly a early-mid game power spike, I feel. |
However, Thresh still has great scaling into lategame through stacking ![]() The ability power is negligible in most scenarios, but the armor is incredible, turning Thresh into a tank against physical damage if he builds only a little HP to balance the stats and survive other damage types. It is part of the reason I would wager ADC Thresh beats most other ADCs in lategame, provided they don't kite him or otherwise outplay him. The 1.5 on-hit damage leads to crazy on-hit damage throughout the game. It's fair to say that Thresh will gain 100 souls by 25 minutes on average from Top lane, meaning he deals 150 magic damage on-hit. This on-hit effect gives Thresh synergy with attack speed, and items like ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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This happens whether you collect the soul or not, so one of the best things you can do is to collect souls whenever you can get them, and to be around as many dying things as possible to promote soul spawns.
In Top Lane, it's a lot harder to be denied souls by one opponent, as opposed to being denied by two in Bot lane and leaving to ward/roam often. The latter can also be said for Mid lane.
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Flay's passive has already been discussed earlier in this section, and is the core of AD Thresh's identity. The active half of the ability remains one of the best knockbacks in the game, and is instant CC on whoever you ![]() Do not overuse this in lane for waveclear, as you'll run out of mana, and without it you are vulnerable to gapclosers. |
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The Box is Thresh's ultimate ability. It deals 100% AP magic damage to the first enemy champion to walk into a wall. Even without AP, the base damage and slight AP from Souls will help this ability out. Additionally, try landing a ![]() ![]() ![]() |
I've also temporarily removed the "Tier List" item sections since that would involve evaluating every item, and that's a lot of work right now. They'll be added back after more experience with the season.
Here's our first build.



It's high health goes great with









From here you have options.
Hollow Radiance is great waveclear, basically a magic resistance
Sunfire Aegis with more HP and minion-clearing ability.
Kaenic Rookern is THE magic resistance item and should be purchased against high magic damage teams, especially with
Thresh's low base resistance.
Sundered Sky is a more fun option with a guaranteed crit, made more effective when you don't already buy crit chance, with yet more HP and AD. The heal is also welcome.
Unending Despair is a new one with a nice passive that isn't hard for Thresh to use. I have yet to try it myself, but if getting right into the heart of teamfights is your thing, it should be a blast.
Jak'Sho, The Protean is actually losing out to a lot of newcomer tank items here due to Thresh's need for magic resist, but can be added onto a tank build since it multiplying your resistances is still fantastic.
Abyssal Mask is as useful as ever, and though cheap and not as slot efficient as the others, it can be a great help to your magic-damage-dealing team.


It isn't needed in some games where enemies don't build resistances, but even base resistances may require it. If nothing else, it's another strong on-hit item.
Such as:
- Thresh has low range at 450, and so needs improved durability through defense stats and passives to take hits as he comes into range.
- Thresh has poor attack speed windup, but can alleviate this greatly by building some attack speed.
- Thresh has low magic resistance scaling and overall HP, and should build these stats when needed.
- Thresh has powerful utility abilities, but
Flay and
The Box are close range. He should build tankier to allow for riskier plays to maximise utility.
You may notice how some of them stack, and may even have ideas on how to incorporate multiple of them at once.

In fact, how much exactly does


- Grants attack speed, alleviating the windup issue and working well with
Flay passive on-hits.
- Grants an on-hit effect, granting increased synergy with attack speed
- And provides high magic resistance, helping Thresh's non-existent magic resist scalings.
Wonderful. However, this does not make

Though, you might not want to stack too many similar items. Building it together with


A Thresh that is 'too squishy' cannot use their high DPS because they're dead when they walk into attack range. There must be balance, or at least a plan.
Luckily, the inverse is less important. It's a lot harder to have 'too little' damage on Thresh due to how many things being tanky enables. Many tank items provide their own damage or damage boosts, such as


Though at the top of the tank item tier list is

So what does

- Titanic Hydra provides HP, alleviating Thresh's squishiness and promoting close-range abilities, and allowing safer 450 range auto attacks.
- Titanic Hydra provides AD, boosting damage and burst with Thresh's
Flay passive.
- Titanic Hydra provides an on-hit effect, increasing DPS and boosting the value of attack speed.
- Titanic Hydra provides waveclear, something Thresh lacks greatly due to
Flay's high cooldown and fairly mediocre AoE damage.
- Titanic Hydra provides an active that resets your auto attack, allowing further burst,
Press the Attack synergy, and faster on-hits.
Just a


For that, a more sane and grounded suggestion would be

- Provides high AD, increasing burst and damage.
- Provides attack speed to alleviate attack windup, and increase DPS.
- Provides lifesteal, alleviating Thresh's lack of sustain in lane and in fights.
- Provides a strong on-hit and passive.
Finally, as I've alluded to, there is also an 'insane' way to go about building Thresh, such as forgetting everything I just said and stacking as much AD and damage as possible.
For this idea, let's look at

- Provides high AD, increasing burst and damage.
- Provides some attack speed to alleviate attack windup, and increase DPS.
- This burst scales with AD, that you build.
This has downsides, of course. Having an all-important auto attack with only 450 range is a problem, and you're overkilling every minion you attack so farming is a chore. Not to mention every time you last hit a minion, your


Luckily, these other two

Statikk Shiv adds AoE for waveclear, helping farm and splash damage to enemies near minions.
Rapid Firecannon provides 150 bonus attack range, allowing your first auto attack to be much safer and have more reach.
The way these energize items synergize is what turns this goofy build idea into something legitimately scary for squishy enemies. The damage and scaling off AD and AP with



This guide has stayed pure AD, and an AP section may appear at some point, but perhaps using this way of thinking, you could try making an AP Thresh build yourself? Creating builds is fun and I wouldn't want you, who have read this far, to not at least give it a try.
Though I am trying to get you to make your own builds, I understand if you would like to see an example. Examples are available at the top of the guide, but here are some that I use regularly. Just remember to only build what is appropriate, for example, don't build















In the first build,




The second starts with


Under the same idea, it builds

The last build shouldn't need much explanation, but perhaps



Starting


I hope this has given you some ideas for your own Thresh builds! Or, feel free to have fun with mine, just build smart!

The below text is almost 'legacy' due to its age, but still legitimate. If Thresh combos are new to you, it will definitely help.
The first thing we're going to talk about is this:
All too often you'll see Thresh players throw out hopeful Qs that miss, but 20% of the time they land that hook. This is fine if you've maxed Q with 40% CDR like a support, but we aren't doing that. We're maxing E, then W, with Q maxed last.
As a result, your Q cooldown is precious. Sometimes you have no choice but to bet on it, but when you can use Flay instead, USE IT. The slow from Flay will guarantee your enemy cannot dodge the Q stun without a dash or

Additionally, here's another important note:
Combo - Quick Q
I say 'at close range', because the closer you are, the more effective this is. Let me explain how this works.
When Q lands on an enemy, that enemy is stunned for 1.5s. Thresh is locked out of auto attacks for as long as he's got a hook on that enemy. You can recast Q at any time to jump towards them, ending the Q once you reach them.
HOWEVER, the enemy is STILL stunned for 1.5s. This means that you unlock your own auto-attacks while the enemy is still stunned. You can see this as a 'free-auto' or even 'burst' damage by double-casting Q quickly at close range, meaning that while you can't auto-attack for maybe 0.25-0.5s depending on distance, the enemy can't retaliate for a full second of you being able to attack.
This usually means enough for one auto-attack on AD builds (which will have charge up, and the movement will add Energy to your Energize passives), or two on attack speed builds.
This might SOUND minor, but it's those minor differences in damage that spell victory and defeat.
This might also be unclear, so here's a clip from an OLD video of mine that explains it visually (Timestamped link):
Very old video, wow. Sorry about mic quality. I've improved since then, I promise.
Now let's talk about some other combos.
Combo 2


By using the slow from Stormrazor's auto attack, or Bilgewater/BOTRK's active, you can easily walk up and land a Flay, causing another slow to guarantee Death Sentence. Alternatively, particularly with both Stormrazor and

Combo 3
Hook first is risky business as we've mentioned, but sometimes it's the only option and best option available. OR you can combo from

You can see we do The Box straight after Hook, not after Flay. When Death sentence is in the air, before and after landing, you can use Ult. Once you've confirmed the hit on your hook, cast R. This way, you will pull them towards you, and as soon as the 1.5s stun is up, use Flay to pull them further into your Box walls for damage and insane slow, guaranteeing the Box to land. This can be an insane burst of damage that, although I hate this argument, can really surprise opponents.
Landing

Thresh jungle sounds either like the most ambitious ganker ever or the worst idea you've ever heard. To be honest with you, it's a bit of both. There are better junglers who can achieve similar ganks, similar scaling, similar damage, and plenty who can do better. So if you're doing Jungle Thresh, you're not doing it because it's the META. You're doing it because it's Jungle Thresh.
Let's have a pros and cons section for our Jungle Thresh boi:
Pros:
[*] Powerful CC leads to powerful lockdown for ganks.
[*] Able to farm a LOT of souls from jungle camps like Krugs and Razorbeaks.
[*] Can scale well with certain builds. Lot's of builds to choose from.
[*] Did I mention he ganks hard?
[*] Surprisingly healthy clears done right.
Cons:
[*] SLOW clears early.
[*] Squishy, vulnerable to invades.
[*] Slow clears means slow counter-jungling.
[*] Weak damage means slow objective-taking.
[*] Long cooldowns and skillshots mean missing abilities ruins the whole gank.
[*] Stealing Thresh from perfectly functioning support lanes.
[*] Though he is very versatile, other champions specialise in any of these areas at like 500% efficiency compared to Thresh.
He's definitely risky, but at this point, you don't care. You just want to play Jungle Thresh. I get that.
So let's talk build.
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Bami's Cinder is the way to go, no other item will give you good clears. These days, you don't have to rush to finish ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
While you can still buy

Riftmaker is an AP item, but purely because Jungle Thresh, the Jungle, Jungle Items, and Thresh's scalings have changed a lot since adding the Jungle section to an AD Thresh guide, back during a time when AP was heresy, I'll allow it here.
Now that





Jungle Clear Route
Red > Wolves > Blue > Gromp/Crab/Gank > Gank > Recall whenever also Gank
Red > Mid > Blue > Gromp > Crab/Gank > Gank
Blue > Gromp > Wolves > Red > Crab/Gank
Red Side
Blue > Wolves > Red > Gank/Crab > Gank > Recall whenever
Red > Wolves > Blue > Gromp/Crab/Gank > Gank > Recall
I put gank twice usually because you'd gank after doing crab, but if you want to do two ganks in a row, go for it.
These may not be optimal clears by most standards, and you can even cut more camps out of it and go for Level 2 ganks, as you'll be betting on ganking a lot anyway.
How to Jungle Clear
Naturally, jungle clearing with Thresh can be messy if you don't know what you're doing. I'm going to explain the key things you need to do for a healthy clear:
Against monsters particularly, the Lantern can block their movement, giving many extra seconds of free attacks (i.e. the camp isn't attacking you cos they're walking around the lantern). This is easiest to do on Krugs and Blue Buff, weakest on Gromp.
In jungle we take W second for the shield and pathing block. The shield will help you absorb some extra damage, since you can't kite forever. You'll either be leaving leash range or they'll catch up with you. If they catch up after the lantern pathing block, this is where the shield comes in.
The shield should also be used when they're GOING to attack you, such as when you leave Blue Buff's leash range, and you have to cross past him again.
Against almost all jungle monsters, and as all jungle champions, you should aim to kite every three auto attacks. So you go three auto attacks, walk back, and repeat. This way, the jungle monster's attacks are so slow that they do two attacks, and you do three.
Against Gromp, you want to kite between every attack that so when Gromp has its increased attack speed buff for the first few attacks, Gromp only does one attack for every one of yours. When you kite Gromp, you lower its attack speed by doing this (this also works against attack speed melee champions, but they (sometimes) are smarter than Gromp).
However, as a ranged jungler, things are a little different. You want to have the above concepts in your head still, but you SHOULD kite after every attack since there's many attacks you can get for free by using your range. However, when you leave leash range and have to walk past them, you should REVERT to the melee kiting method of 3:2 of your attacks:monster attacks for optimal clearing and healthiness.
In order to scale, we want to farm the jungle a lot in order to gain a TON of souls. Since Thresh is a slow-clearing jungler, we want to make sure we get


Be sure to carefully take crabs as well, as they will give even more sustain, and of course, a guaranteed soul. Using



Given enough time, you'll have the armor and on-hit damage to take on anyone, especially squishy AD champions.
This is the real strength of Jungle Thresh, but on it's own it's nothing special. That's why we have that whole section on souls and building damage and scaling. Master farming that so you have something to fall back on if ganks don't work out or aren't available for whatever reason.
I've been ganking from the jungle with Thresh since his release. Jungle Thresh was the first thing I did with him. So I've got some experience as how to go about ganking. Where and when to gank is a whole other world.
General Ganking Combo
You might be thinking, why not hook first?. Hooking first invites enemies to


Combo 2
Why auto attack? Because that may apply Red Buff if available. Also, when approaching from behind, enemies have to move through you. Even if they

Combo 3
Starting with Death Sentence is more common before you get

Additionally, you can see we do The Box straight after Hook, not after Flay. When Death sentence is in the air, before and after landing, you can use Ult. Once you've confirmed the hit on your hook, cast R. This way, you will pull them towards you, and as soon as the 1.5s stun is up, use Flay to pull them further into your Box walls for damage and insane slow, guaranteeing the Box to land. This is a general combo and I'm gonna copy paste this description to the ability combo section I need to do.
One more example:
Combo 4
From here you can either:
The latter combo is the same as Combo 3, but from a brush, undetected, which means the enemy cannot aim to juke you, and it's your own aim and prediction that will decide if it hits.
The first of these two is more guaranteed, but less likely to hit from within the brush. Usually, you'll have to step out at the right time.
Anyway, that's enough examples, the rest you can work out yourself from experience.
First gank strategy can be used to think of what jungle pathing you're going to take. However, you usually start on bot side and make your way towards top as you clear, so typically, you'll be ganking top or mid lane first.
After that, you can just walk down river, with or without taking crab, and gank mid, then again to bot. You can also camp enemies effectively if you deny vision with an early sweeper trinket and control wards. Aim to gank from behind lanes (Tribush in top/bot, side entrances behind the river in mid) when you can to easily burn

When Dragons and Heralds are spawning, you can use them to decide where to gank, if viable. When Dragon is about to spawn, enlisting the help of your bot lane by ganking them can be a good idea. You could also gank mid lane, then ask them to help you 4 man gank bot lane, then take dragon. Additionally, with careful planning, aim to countergank the enemy jungler, then use their death to spell out a Dragon or Herald. Typically, ganking top lane can lead to getting a Herald.
Sometimes, you might just want to go for Turret platings, and the Demolish rune helps a lot if you had space for it. Camping a single lane and just shredding platings can be extremely effective if they're a snowbally champion, and can actually outvalue early dragons sometimes if that laner proceeds to carry. If they proceed to give up shutdown bonus and feed, then your team will blame you for losing dragons and being terrible, not blame the feeding teammate. Ah well.
Point is, be careful with your planning. This goes beyond Jungle Thresh now, jungling is just a big brain task.
Hope you enjoy, and hope it helps learn this complicated AD boi.
Memetages:
Gameplay:
*Updated for Season as of 23/05/2023
Hope they're insightful, or at least, entertaining!
Over the years, AD Thresh Top stuck with me, experimenting with new items as they release and new combinations to make the most of his kit.
The 200% Total AD Ratio auto attack is what initially caught my eye, but as I grew to understand it, it seemed like an overrated part of the kit. Back then, before Season 6, there was no Rapid Firecannon to extend your range, so you usually either hooked, dashed, and died, or walked into enemy range before they got into yours.
Instead, I tended to focus on the


This meant using attack speed would increase your DPS significantly, scaling greater the more souls you had. Of course, it would apply with


But with only 450 attack range, focusing too hard on either was often a death sentence to

Focusing hard on positioning doesn't help either, as now you're failing to use Thresh's utility abilities.


So a few things slowly became obvious:
- ADC Thresh is hopelessly useless due to range issues and limited ability use.
- You needed to build SOME tankiness.
- AD is built for early-mid game primarily.
- Attack Speed gets better as a game gets longer.
Meaning the ideal

As mentioned in the Introduction, I will primarily focus on AD Thresh Top for the majority of this guide, with the goals outlined above.
Built with high AD, he gains Assassin burst.
Built with high Attack Speed, he gains Carry-like DPS.
Built with high Defense and Ability Haste, he becomes a disruptive Tank.
However, any fed





This fully cements AD Thresh Top's role in League of Legends as a true Jack of All Trades, Master of None.
You can build into one of these as much as you like, but the ideal build, especially for top, will always be a mix.
- Added quick Season 14 build section for "Split Push" Thresh Top.
- Temporarily removed "Item Tier List" section.
- Updated "Ideal Thresh Builds" section for Season 14 quickly.
- More updates coming as I play more of the season.
This was a hasty update, lacking detail that I'd like, but we'll come around to that. It's still more useful than a barely-season13 guide.
23/05/2022
As Crit Burst Thresh revives with the buffs to


I've checked it over a few times, looks fine to me. It's getting late, and think its about time I just hit save and publish those changes. Hope you like the guide's changes!
- Changed Item Build and Item Tier lists
- Updated Item Tier List explanations
- Updated Ideal Item Builds
- Updated Jungle Thresh a bit, it was very old.
- Updated videos section.
- Corrected previous changelog that still said it was 2022 when it clearly meant Jan 2023.
21/01/2023
I will get to more details about why, alternatives, and funny stuff once I get the video guide going, and will update the rest of the guide to reflect it.
16/08/2022
Changes:
- Changed the date of previous changelog to be correct.
-

- Added the alternative


- Updated matchups section heavily. Will be expanded on a later date.
06/06/2022 - Durability and Souls updates, and Ady
I took some time to play the updates a lot, and have arrived at some pretty solid conclusions, supported even by the experimentation of a Challenger player named Ady!
Not directly, of course, but on Ady's League of Graphs page, I saw 14 games of Thresh Top up in Grandmaster and Challenger rank, supporting a lot of my build philosophy's, and proving my other ones wrong, such as how little value I placed on Berserker's Greaves. Reflecting on my own build philosophies and experiences with this in mind, it does all make a lot of sense.
As such, these were changed:
-

-

-

Some of my thoughts, like my pushing of


The Durability Update and the Souls update that improved the armor amount received from



As everyone else is also tankier, it also nerfs 'One-shot' Thresh, so honestly scrap lethality Thresh entirely, and at least build a


In fact, in the light of Ady's games, I think a drain tank Thresh with

Depending on my own experiments with the item, I may or may not add such an item set and playstyle to this guide.
For now, I have a certain Thresh Top guide video to make!
20/12/2021 - Guide is now Season 12 Ready!
Replacing describing every item with walls of text are Tier List-style pools of items for you to build items from. The section following it also gives you some build examples!
Actually as of writing this changelog I still haven't made that section. It's getting late. One more section.
I hope you enjoyed my guide!
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