Hello fellow gamer, nice to see you in my guide.This is the first guide I've done so please give some critics or some advice to me thanks a lot,I am willing to learn if you're willing to teach.Now some things about me before we start is that I was a Zed main before I changed into a Thresh main. Honestly I don't regret the change because of how fun it is being a Thresh main.I started playing around mid season 5 and it took my the ending half of season 5 and the start of season 6 to know what I was doing at that time.What I like about Thresh is that he is very easy to pick up and his capabilities can be endless if played correctly.Enough about myself,on to the guide!

Thresh is one of if not the best CC support champions out there.With his kit you could easily engage in a teamfight or turn a 2v2 into a 2v3 and many more possibilities.His kit consists of both CC and mobility for your teammates.In this guide I am going to teach you how to play Thresh like as if he is your main champion and some tips on what to do if you were facing a Thresh on the opposite team.We will start with the abilities and later move onto his play styles.

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Passive: Damnation is Thresh's passive ability.Thresh's basic attacks do not use projectiles and his basic attack wind-up is only reduced by 0.25% per 1% bonus attack speed (compared to the standard 1% per 1%).This meant that building attack speed on Thresh would not be as effective as building attack speed on other champions.One thing good about this passive is that it makes Thresh's auto attack pass through Yasuo's Wind Wall,I have personally tested it out and it works.Another part of his passive ability is that whenever small monsters/normal minions have a 33% chance of dropping a single soul when they die near Thresh.Champions and large enemies(Red,Blue,Gromp etc.) have a guaranteed chance of dropping a single soul.However epic monsters(Cloud Drake,Baron Nashor,Elder Dragon etc. )have a guaranteed chance of dropping 2!Each collected soul permanently grants Thresh 0.75 bonus ability power, 0.75 bonus armor and increases Dark Passage's shield's strength and Flay's minimum bonus magic damage by 1.This meant that every soul is very valuable for late game and is worth trying to get even though you would get poked out.One trick in quickly getting souls and quickly getting out of there is just to remember, Thresh's lantern is the hitbox in which sucks in the souls.This meant that once you see your lantern reach about approx. 0.2mm from the soul,immediately start clicking on the other direction,this is because as long as your hitbox touches the soul,it would no matter what go into your lantern even if it meant going across the whole map.What I like to do in lane is to just keep walking left and right and left and right,this meant that they would have to keep moving in my opposite direction to avoid being in a clear sight in which there are no minions blocking me from landing a single hook onto their adc.If I landed a hook,it would have meant a free kill therefore they had to avoid being infront of me without minions.That would make them concentrate on me rather than their side of the lane and our side of the lane.Resulting in them either focusing on farming or focusing on poking me away from earning a soul.

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Q(First cast): Death Sentence Is Thresh's first ability.It is his primary engage ability and also one of his more important CC abilities.It has a cooldown of 20/18/16/14/12 seconds.With 45% CDR your hook would have a cooldown of 11/9.9/8.8/7.7/6.6 seconds.Having a hook every 6.6 seconds is a huge advantage in team fights.As long as you have a calm state of mind during team fights and you can pinpoint your opponent's each positions you could easily become a pest towards the enemy's back lines.What I like to do is constantly use my Death Sentence and my Flay to push their adc even further back from the fight and let their mid laner and adc focus me while my team eats away at their jungler,top laner,and support.Basically turning a 5v5 into a 4v3 or a 4v2(If their support isn't a tank) and then later a 5v2 or a 5v3.Even if you died in that team fight while trying to distract their adc,mid laner and support,it's still worth as long as your team knows when to back out and when to continue engaging.After a 0.5 seconds delay, Thresh throws out his scythe in the target direction and forms a tether with the first enemy hit, dealing magic damage and stunning them for 1.5 seconds.I would like to emphasize on the fact that it has a delay and it does not cast immediately.It is significantly different from Blitzcrank's Rocket Grab,therefore you would need a little practise before you go out and try to predict where they would walk with your hook.A good way to practise this is by using the Rift Scuttler you would find in the river.The reason why I recommend training your hooks with the Rift Scuttler is because he has his dash ability once he reaches the end of the river and he also has a increase of 100 movement speed once it receives damage.In order to set-up this training practice is quite simple.Simply auto attack the Rift Scuttler once and start making some distance between the Rift Scuttler and you,once you are used to the time Thresh's Death Sentence delays it would be much easier to predict with your hooks.You could also train your Flash hook combo on the Rift Scuttler Hitting an enemy reduces Death Sentence's cooldown by 3 seconds.This meant that in team fights with 45% CDR and a reduced cooldown of 3 seconds, Death Sentence would have a whopping total of 3.3 seconds as it's cooldown.That's quite good if you ask me.One thing you need to note about Thresh is that the usual combo that some champions can have,e.g Ahri's Q> Flash=Extended Immediate Orb of Deception, Jarvan IV's Q> Flash=Extended Immediate Dragon Strike,doesn't work on any of Thresh's abilities.It would be a delayed Flash instead of a immediate Flash.Therefore if your playing Thresh and want to do a Flay or a Death Sentence make sure that you Flash beforehand instead of Flash-ing immediately after you cast your ability. Second Cast:The second cast is basically the Thresh fly-to-the-enemy button.If you cast this immediately it would immediately cancel out the stun that you would have on the enemy you landed your Death Sentence on.Therefore I recommend you to let your champion pull the enemy towards you first then start to fly to him.If you have atleast a Boots you could walk back for 0.2 seconds then start walking towards the enemy and Flay him towards your adc.The option to fly towards the enemy is not always the only way to bring him closer to you.A few situations where you can apply this trick is when you land a hook on a enemy which is in the middle area between the tower and its max range,you apply the trick I told you and you would bring the enemy to the border in which your team can start firing away at the helpless enemy earning you and your team a kill.

The reason I got Aftershock instead of Guardian is because Guardian can be easily countered by making it proc before you go in.With Aftershock,you could both do damage and be tanky whenever you engage in lane. Grasp of the Undying is somewhat of a useless keystone for Thresh support imo, mainly because with my play style I would usually be either roaming or just zoning the enemy team so that my adc can farm in peace.

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The reason behind Font of Life is because it is beneficial for your adc.Since your kit is based around CC,this would work the best out of the three options. Demolish is for those tanks that push the lanes while dominating the enemy at the same time,or it is for the tanks who lack tower pushing capabilities and require more assistance in pushing the lanes. Unflinching is to be honest quite useless as a Thresh support imo because as a Thresh support you would be relying on your skills and not your summoner spells.

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I usually go for this because it is a very good rune in late game. Iron Skin and Mirror Shell only increases 5% Armor and Magic resist respectively,they also increase another 5 percent temporarily when healed but that would make 10% and I repeat,'when healed' while Conditioning gives both flat Armor and Magic resist and 5% of both Armor and Magic resist.

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This is self-explanatory for every tank out there.Stay in lane,get more Health,more Health,more survivability,more survivability,more opportunities to use your kit to it's full potential.

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This rune is really helpful especially to supports.We supports usually have a low source of income therefore having free boots is like giving away free money.Not only do you get free boots with this rune,the boots that they provide you have a increase of 10 movement speed!I bet even Hecarim would drool all over himself when he sees this upgrade.

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This is probably one of the best runes to come out in pre-season 8.It adds 5% max CDR to your stats making the max 45% CDR,not only that, it also gives you free 5% CDR right from the beginning of the game.Summoner spells and Item CDR makes the rune a complete set of goodies.

This will be a long chapter so grab your popcorn or whatever you like while you read this.

The reasoning behind choosing Ancient Coin over Relic Shield is quite simple. Ancient Coin gives you the Gold and Mana you would need to be able to purchase your core items and be able to use more skills to be able to poke or zone in the lane.However,one of the cases where Relic Shield would be more effective is when your up against someone like Zyra, Sona, Morgana or even a Taric.This is because you would need the Health that Relic Shield gives to be able to sustain all the poke damage coming from them.Sometimes there are cases where you would have no choice but to go for Ancient Coin instead of Relic Shield,these cases are when you have a adc like draven which does too much damage for you to proc the Relic Shield's passive therefore resulting in you no being able to complete the Relic Shield's quest and earn the passive shield.It all depends on your opponents and especially the adc that you are supporting.

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Knight's Vow is a very meta tank support item.The passive Armor that it gives your partner is very useful,in addition to that it also gives you 15% movement speed when your moving towards your partner.This is very good as a Thresh support as you need to walk towards your adc to pull him/her out of a sticky situation e.g 5v1 situation,2v1 situation,a teamfight where your adc is getting chased and your being ignored by their team.Who are you supposed to assign your partner in your team? Most of the time it is your adc who becomes your partner, however you still need to watch on how much damage each of your teammate does and how fast your teammates each die.For certain cases where your mid laner is a champion that easily gets his/her Health chunked down,you should make him/her your partner.One example is when your up against a Miss Fortune and your mid laner is a Veigar,when each team is gathered at mid for a teamfight usually Miss Fortune would use her Double Up to hit your Veigar.That's where your 6% damage reduction comes in and redirects it from Veigar to you,effectively reducing the amount of damage Miss Fortune could do to your Veigar.

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eye of the oasiseye of the equinox

Why buy Eye of the Oasis/ Eye of the Equinox and not Talisman of Ascension/ Face of the Mountain? Well that is because vision is a very important part of the game.One could change the tide of the battle with enough vision around the map.With vision you could very well avoid being 5 man ganked or being ganked at all in the first place,you could also enable your team to avoid face checking bushes which might have the whole of the enemy team sitting in it.You could counter gank their jungler as their jungler is just sitting in that bush ready to gank.I am not saying that the items, Talisman of Ascension and Face of the Mountain is bad,I am just saying that with the current meta,having vision is more important than a shield which could easily be broken down with Lethal Tempo or increased movement speed which could be easily slowed with Glacial Augment.With the new runes burning down a shield or two should be easy in the case which their adc has the sufficient items to deal high amounts of damage.

Talisman of ascensionface of the mountain

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Pros

Cons

+Easy to pick up +Packed with displacement abilities +Deals decent damage for a support +Can engage and disengage easily

SPACE

-Heavy reliant on hook to engage -No sustain in lane -Easily poked out of lane -Needs practice to land combos

1/12/2017:Created this guide.Added summoner spells,runes,items,abilities.Chapter on Introduction completed.Chapter on Runes halfway completed.
2/12/2017:Had to restart everything due to unseen circumstances.Published the guide.Chapter on Runes completed.Chapter on Items no where near done.
3/12/2017:Chapter on Items still no where near done but made progress.Seperated Introduction and added a introduction to Thresh.Still working on explaining the abilities of Thresh.Completed Chapter on Pros and Cons
4/12/2017:Started on explaining Thresh's Q, Death Sentence
5/12/2017:Finished up on Thresh's Q, Death Sentence