What's up MobaFire people ?!

After OTGBionicArm released his pr0 Thresh Guide, me and a bunch of people started debating on what were the best Marks for Thresh on his stream. Here are the suggestions that were made:

AD Marks are the best because: It allows him to harass hard during lane phase and since his Flay's passive scales so freaking well with AD, it gives him really good damage, even at late levels
+8.55 Attack Damage

Armor Pen Marks are the best because: they also allow you to harass during lane phase and give more damage on champions than AD marks and also scale better into late game.
11.52 Armor Pen

Magic Pen Marks because even though Flay's passive scales with AD, it still does magic damage (and so does the rest of Thresh's kit). Also, since he has such low base AD, Armor pen of any sort is unnecessary and ineffective.
7.83 Magic Pen

I will calculate the bonus damage you'll get from each Marks.


SO. I'll assume our Thresh is maxing Flay first (so he can get more damage from the passive as soon as possible).

I'm also going to assume the enemy we are attacking has 30 base magic resist and around average Armor (13.7 + 3.33 * level). That enemy also has 9 x Greater Seal of Armor (+12.69 Armor) and 9 x Greater Glyph of Magic Resist (+12.06 MR).


Let's start with Armor Pen marks (because I already they are gonna do bad):

Sadly, the only way Thresh can do physical damage (except items) is with Autoattacks. Thresh's base AD is 46 + (2.2*level) and the enemy has 26.39 + (3.33*level) armor.

I'll compare how much Thresh's autoattack did without Armor pen and with Armor pen so we can see the damage increase. I'll do this for levels from 1 to 11. I won't go any further because at that point enemies will start buying armor items and I can't simply ''assume'' they are going to buy X amount of Armor... the maths are simply not of any use past that point. Also, the laning phase will be pretty much over after level 11 and even if it isn't, your autoattacks won't be half as meaningful as they were before.


Conclusions: 3.62 to 3.28 physical damage increase per autoattack




Now for AD Marks !


So far AD Marks give an increase of 6.59 to 5.25 physical damage per autoattack
Well, AD Marks are already twice as good as Armor Pen Marks... but it's not even over, I only calculated the damage increase on the basic attack, not even for the passive on Flay...

So already, Armor Pen Marks are taken out of the fight because they simply suck :P. Btw, please PM this guy and tell him that he is a nooblord for taking Armor Pen on Thresh :)

I WILL ASSUME THE Thresh PLAYER IS GETTING AN AVERAGE OF 5 SOULS/LEVEL (HE IS DOING REALLY WELL)



SO. AD Marks increases the damage Thresh does with his autoattacks by 6.59 + (0.4815*seconds charged) at level 1 and around 5.25 + (1.204*seconds charged) at level 11

On a fully charged hit, that's 11.405 damage and 17.287 damage.



For Magic Pen now!



Well obviously Magic Pen gives less extra damage on autoattacks than AD Marks but they give more damage on spells (Q, E and R). So AD marks are better for DPS and harass while Mpen is better for burst, nothing special here... but I want to go further.

So, using those calculations I will now find out if AD Marks are better than Mpen marks by comparing the extra damage both give and how much attacks you need to do to make up for the extra burst that Magic Pen gives on spells. (Assuming E and R only hit one person once)



Post's Conclusions: Magic Pen Marks become slowly more effective than AD Marks as the game goes on. Early game, AD Marks are really really better than Mpen.

If you only use Death Sentence + Flay, AD Marks are almost always better because you only need to land 0.278 (level 1) to 1.4 (level 11) fully charged hits to do more damage with AD Marks.

When you use your Q + E + ultimate though, you need 2 to 3 fully charged autoattacks to do more damage with AD Marks. Thresh's ultimate cooldown is 150/140/130 seconds so if you managed to land 2-3 fully charged autoattacks on an enemy during those 150-130 seconds, AD Marks were better.

Soooooooo yeah. As long as you go out and autoattack people, AD Marks are pretty much better ALL the time.

I didn't do Hybrid Pen marks because I know they will be bad. Armor Pen is a terrible idea on Thresh.

Unless your ratio of fully charged autoattacks per landed spell combo is lower than the purple numbers in the last spoiler, AD Marks are the best choice for Thresh!

AD Marks>Magic Pen Marks>Hybrid Pen Marks>Armor Pen Marks

so go upvote OTGBionicArm's Thresh guide or something cause he uses AD Marks like a baws :P