From the moment I understood the weakness of Support, it disgusted me.

I craved the strength and adrenaline of the carries.

I aspired to the purity of the Old Shotgun.

Your kind clings to your ADC's as if they will not troll and fail you.

One day the builds you call meta will be nerfed and you will beg for me to save you.

But I am already saved,

For the Shotgun is immortal...

That section is currently empty on purpose. You cannot really gather info on possible counters if you make a guide about an off-meta build you came up with, can you?

I know that I mentioned and will mention "bad matchups" a few times, so I'll give you a rule of thumb. In most cases, the futher from you the enemy wants to stay the worse for you. Bruisers on mid aren't usually that bad in lane, but suck in late if you don't bully them into oblivion.
Thresh likes when enemies make mistakes, however it means nothing if they are too far from you to punish them.

The build might look very random at first, but I swear, it will make sense once I explain the logic behind it.
Additionally I find a 13/4/15 Thresh with bruiser, adc, mage and assasin items really funny.

Firstly, starting items. You always want a shield, it's just better. Your range isn't as big as to poke without the chance of losing hp and boy, you will poke a lot(playstyle will be explained after items).

Next, time for the first item. Sundered Sky is very important to the build as it will not only allow you to heal, which is helpful as you are basically melee in fights and build no survivality with the exception of this item and boots. The more important part however, is the 8s per champion guaranteed crit. The old shotgun Thresh doesn't really work anymore because there's not enough crit items that work on him, so we fix that with a guaranteed crit.

Lich bane is a simple damage boost. We will usually engage with abilities anyway, so it works well with Thresh. If you want to maximize your damage you can even go Q->aa->E/W->aa->E/W->aa. You can buy this item first if you really need damage, but Sky's healing helps at trading in-lane. If you do so, remember to buy Sky next.

Boots are going to be defensive, based on the enemy team. You cannot kill anyone if you die before getting close.

After that you go for Infinity Edge for a few reasons. Fisrtly it gives a lot of AD which is very valuable for our bonk as it not only affects the aa itself, but also our E's charged passive. Secondly because we already have a guaranteed crit on our bonk, so it can increase that even futher. It also synergizes well with our next item:

Shadowflame. I personally love this item, because on Vel criting true damage is a wet dream, but I swear that it's here for reasons other than that. To start it gives nice stats, all of our abilities and Lich's Bane scale off AP and most of our damage is gonna be magic so the magic pen definitely helps, but we're here mainly for the passive. As a Shotgun Thresh, new or old, your biggest bonk is always going to be in magical damage and with Shadowflame, it can crit now. Lovely, I know. IE's crit damage boost also increases the damage here, even if it increases only the bonus damage.

The last item is based purely on what you need and what champions the enemy team has. They have range? Firecannon. Tanks? Voidstaff. Do you want to push better? Shiv. Or maybe an even bigger bonk? Cyclosword. There are obviously even more items you can build depending on the circumnstances, so at this point just build whathever you seem fit.

I don't have much to say on these two so one chapter for them. Abilities first.

You max E first, ALWAYS. Its passive damage is the one and only reason this and all other weird aa Thresh builds even exist. You don't max e? Go play support.

On level 2 you want to take Q to say nuh uh to any "dive at 2" champions and you probably want to max it 2nd too, unless you are againts something very poke'y and/or REALLY don't want to get close. In that case you can max W so that you can more efficiently collect souls from afar and have shield up more often.

For spells, most times you want Flash Ignite for the extra damage, both early and late. Early you have no damage at all and late the enemy may have some hp left after your bonk. Grevious wounds also help.

Teleport can also be taken if you don't want to fight your laner and prefer farming and roaming bot. I did not really test this one with the new shotgun, but it does work like that on every single weird Thresh build I tried and boy, I tried a few.

Ghost can also be used to help chase people down, but firstly you have to be scary enough that people run away from you and not having Ignite or Teleport will make it harder

I'll explain what I can about the Way of the New Shotgun here, but I never made any league guides before, so if I forget something, please tell me and I'll update.

Okay, then firstly, farming.

Farming with Thresh is an art you have to master to effectively play him as anything other than support(and we don't do that here).

You have realistically no pushing power while following the Way of the New Shotgun, but you don't need it and won't use it anyway. While on lane, you want the wave to be as close to the tower as possible, but perfectly not in its range. The turret is your best friend early, jungler is the second best, so you want be close enough to it to always be able to retreat and for your enemy to be gankable.

Perfectly you want the wave frozen on your half of the lane, but do not panic if the enemy pushes it under the tower. Thresh with his E passive and active can get the majority of minions even there and not let the enemy hit the tower, but we'll be back to that after I explain farming itself.

As you probably know, the longer you don't aa, the more damage it will deal. Thanks to that, Thresh is really good at last-hitting creeps, so you can let the wave be close to your turret all you want. You can also use your E to last-hit many minions at once, but use it wisely as it is both your main defensive and offensive tool.

Another very important thing on Thresh mid is vision and map control. Many midlaners like to roam and you aren't exactly stopping them with all the freezing under your turret either. That's why you have to control where your laner is and where they can be and communicate about it clearly. Ping a lot, even if your laner is only gone for a few seconds and later it turns out that they were under their turret. If your bot gets ambushed by your laner while you're farming, they will die, your laner will get fed and it will be your fault.
Use the map, use wards, use pings, maybe even chat(tho many people have that muted), don't let the enemy snowball or you lose.

As mentioned earlier, we love our turret and jungler here. Early Thresh has only two ways of killing his enemies.

First is trading and poking until your enemy is low enough of you to kill them in one rotation. Many players are going to underesteminate you and stay even when low, but if they don't, that's fine, they need to back and you can farm and/or roam. You benefit greatly from cs'ing so should opt to lose as few creeps as possible

Second is exploiting them overextending. With your E and Q you can effectively punish them if they get to close to your turret. The turret doesn't necessarily have to hit them, the threat of that and of an easy gank is enough for many players to choose retreating instead of trading. You don't really have to depend on your jungler to win the lane, any build could win with a good enough jungler, however Thresh has, suprise suprise, many supportive options, so if your jungler decides to help you can ensure that the gank will be succesful.

Thresh can severely punish overextending, however he can be punished just as easily, so don't do it. Can't utilize all 3 attacks from HoB safely? Then don't. Patience and bullying and punishing the enemy are your greatest weapons early. Remember, you are a champion most deem a support and yet, you put the enemy in a stalemate. How do you think does that feel to them? When your greatest strength is exploiting mistakes, you cannot wait for errors, you have to cause them.
Don't fear to use Q. Poke them all the time. Do not rage, do not panic. Make them feel like you have the control. Make them try to break the stalemate and if they do, that's when you get them.

Remember, you are weak early. You cannot win with most laners head-on, however it's not bad. If you cannot gain the kill, make them give it to you.

At this point you should've collected many souls and have around 1,5-2 items. The way you want to fight is starting with either Q or E if you can for the damage and Lich's Bane proc, then you bonk. If they are still alive(unfortunately, they most likely will be, the New Shotgun has more spread out damage) you use the cc you didn't use, aa, w, aa. They SHOULD die at this point unless they are tanky and if they are you are picking the wrong battles.

In teamfights you want to focus on bonking different people, especially if you have IE, so that you can crit as many people as possible, both for damage and survivability.

If you have neither souls nor items, so you either lost lane or the big fight is happening very early, you should try focusing on your supportive side. Thresh has great utility even if behind, so even if you lose lane, you can still greatly help your team win.

Through you won't bonk and will make people think that the New Shotgun is trolling. You want to bonk and I want to spread the Way of the New Shotgun, so we both don't want you to lose.

I made this in-depth guide with tips and tricks how to play the New Shotgun Thresh and made the advice really tryhardy, because I wanted people to undestand how to play him, however all that loses its meaning if it makes the game unfun for you.

I, kid you not, actually play this game for fun and created this build for that purpose only.
The New Shotgun is not strong, it's not unfair, it's not going to grant you free LP, however that all doesn't matter to me, because I find it fun.
I loved the Old Shotgun and that's why when it was basically deleted, I made it my mission to recreate it and play it once again.
I think that I succeed and hope that you all think the same.

Now, pick the Shotgun up and go traumatize some ADC's!
For the Shotgun is immortal!