Hey everyone, my name is Kaleido. I am a Master Tier support who plays a ton of Thresh. I began playing League of Legends back in Season 4. Back then, I was just playing with a bunch of friends and found myself filling as support. I took that opportunity to see what the role had to offer and I am glad I did. Ever since I discovered Thresh I have continued to play him and expand my knowledge of what I feel is one of the highest skill expressive champions in the support role. I have tried to capture everything that learned over the past several years of playing this champion in this guide. I hope that you will find my guide helpful, intuitive and overall a good source of everything Thresh. That being said, lets dive into his abilities!

One last thing. I have done my best to include everything that I have to offer in regards to Thresh but in case I missed something, please feel free to check out the socials below:

✦ My Twitch where I will be streaming educational content regarding Thresh and other supports.
✦ My Discord server where I am available to answer all questions and listen to your soloq adventures and discuss brain dead ADCs
✦ My Youtube channel where I will be uploading education content and highlights.

PASSIVE ABILITY

Damnation ✦ Champions, Large Minions ( Siege minions and Super minions), Large Monsters ( Red Brambleback, Blue Sentinel, Gromp, Rift Scuttler, Etc.) all will drop a soul that Thresh can collect. Epic Monsters such as Baron will drop 2 souls and all other Minions and Monsters have a 33% chance of dropping 1 soul. ✦ Thresh can simply walk by the soul or throw his Dark Passage ability next to the souls to collect them. Since thresh does not gain armor per level, these souls provide thresh with 0.75 armor and 0.75 AP per soul. These add up quickly so be sure to collect as many as you can throughout the game.

Q

Death Sentence ✦ Thresh will throw out his scythe in a straight line based on the cast direction. If the ability connects with a target, it will stun the target for a total of 1.5 seconds. Thresh will tug on his chain pulling the target towards him. During this tugging animation, the ability can be recast to bring Thresh to the his hooked target. ✦ It is important to note that landing a hook will reduce the ability's cooldown by 3 seconds. In addition you can cast your Flay and Dark Passage abilities mid flight. You cannot cast The Box until you have reached your target and the animation is complete. ✦ His hook is one of the primary engage tools of Thresh's kit. It is important to note that not every engagement however needs to start with this ability, nor should this ability be thrown out all the time. I will mention more about this later on in the guide under the Tips and Tricks section.

W

Dark Passage ✦ Thresh will throw out his lantern to a target location. His lantern will provide a shield to the closest ally that it comes in contact with and the lantern and collect all souls within the nearby radius. The lantern can be clicked by any ally and will bring that ally back to Thresh. Thresh will gain the shield from his lantern when he enters the radius for the first time. This include casting it on himself, walking into its radius or bringing an ally back to his location. He can only gain his shield once. ✦ Two important things to note is that the lantern gives vision in a small radius which allows you to use it to check bushes prior to walking into unknown territory and that the shield it provides scales based on the number of souls you collect. This ability is hands down the most powerful ability in his kit and should be treated as such. The ability to "yoink" someone out of a fight from an incredible distance or relocate a carry from danger is what makes this ability insanely strong.

E

Flay ✦ Flay has both an active and a passive element. The passive element will grant bonus magic damage to Thresh's auto attacks. The bonus magic damage done will increase the longer that Thresh has gone without attacking an enemy. This bonus magic damage caps out after a total of 10 seconds of not attacking. ✦ The active element of Flay causes thresh to scrape and rake his scythe and chains towards the targeted location dragging any enemy it comes in contact with. This will knock them up and apply a slow for 1 second. ✦ Two things that I want to mention regarding his Flay. Sometimes in order to get an engagement rolling, it can be as simple as walking up into Flay range of your opponent alleviating the hassle of landing a Death Sentence. It is important to note that Flay will always start from the opposite direction that your cursor is located. The reason that is this so important is that you can somewhat manipulate at which point the flay will contact your target. I will go into detail why this important later on in the guide.

R

The Box ✦ Upon activation, Thresh places down walls down in the shape of a pentagon around his location. The first wall to be broken deals magic damage and slows the target by 99% for 2 seconds. ✦ Each subsequent wall broken after the first wall deals no magic damage and slows the target who broke the wall by 99% for a total of 1 second. ✦ This ability can easily be used as a great tool for bursting down an enemy by positioning it right but can also be used in a more strategic way to prevent certain paths being taken in a team fight. We will take a look at this later on down the road.

One of the things that makes Thresh so unique is that the champion's kit can be tailored to fit any circumstance in any game. What do I mean by that? I mean that you have quite a large amount of freedom when it comes to selecting your abilities. For instance, you have the option to play a more defensive build that is geared around diving and manipulating your teammates positioning, or one that is more geared towards peeling and picking enemy champions from the map. As you continue to play Thresh, you will start to get a grasp of which build is going to be most appropriate for each game.

There are two major keystone runes that should primarily be considered when playing Thresh. These two keystone runes are Aftershock and Guardian. As it stands many people default to Aftershock which might not always the best keystone in many circumstances. I find that Aftershock excels heavily into melee support matchups where procing Aftershock will not be an issue. As a rule of thumb, I like to take Guardian into most ranged matchups as it will be much more difficult to activate Aftershock. It addition, it is also beneficial to take Guardian into match ups that have a large amounts of burst/true damage that will affect both you and your bot lane carry. I have laid out some matchups above that you can use to determine which keystone you will most likely want to take. Keep in mind that in the end, these are suggestions and runes can be selected based on an entire team composition or overall build you plan on playing in your game.

As we move forward, you will need to select your lesser runes to finish out your resolve tree. I will break these up into slot 1, slot 2, and slot 3 runes.

Demolish Consider taking this rune when you will have priority in lane and shoving with the goal of taking as many plates as possible. For example, this rune combos well with champions like Tristana. Keep in mind that the only reliable way you will get to use this rune safely is when your opponent is either already dead or almost dead. Since your range is quite short, if your opponent is alive and healthy it difficult to use this rune without taking some sort of heavy repercussion.

Font of Life This is probably the most common and best rune to use in this row if you are unsure when the others will benefit you. This default rune is a great for early trades and requires little thought to make it work. I highly recommend this rune for a majority of situations and matchups.

Shield Bash This rune is not too useful on Thresh. Although it might seem promising to take this rune due to the increased damage you will do while using your Dark Passage, I would not recommend taking this rune. The rune becomes too hard to use efficiently since you will have to use Dark Passage at inopportune times in order to utilize the effect.

Conditioning This rune combos very nicely with your kit. In addition to giving flat armor and magic resist after being in game for 12 minutes, it also gives a 5% bonus to those stats. This in conjunction with your Damnation passive grants a nice bonus to your armor value as the game goes on, however the benefit of this rune is currently outshined by the other runes.

Second Wind This rune is more beneficial into enchanter matchups where poke is more constant. I would recommend taking this into a lane where you might not be dealing with direct burst but more along the lines of continuous poke. For instance, try taking this into an enchanter matchup such as Lulu or Nami.

Bone Plating This is by far the most popular rune in this tier. You will often get the most benefit from this rune when playing against rapid succession burst and auto attacks. For instance, this rune works well into many burst AD carrys that take Hail of Blades such as Kai'Sa and Tristana. This rune helps provide a bit of tankiness and strength to your laning phase and helps to reduce the amount of damage you might incur during early trading.

Overgrowth This rune is meant to help provide you additional HP to help scale into the mid and late game. If you are planning to take more of a frontline position against an enemy team that does not have a large amount of crowd control, this rune is probably going to be a good option. However, you should consider the amount of crowd control that your enemies have before ultimately making the decision between this rune and Unflinching.

Revitalize With the way the current meta stands, maxing your Dark Passage has become quite popular. If you do decide to go that path, this rune is essential to your success. The value of you shield however was nerfed in patch 11.7. This rune will be required if you are planning on maxing your Dark Passage and go for a more enchanter style build.

Unflinching When choosing this rune it is important to think ahead into the game and whether or not you will be encountering a large amount of crowd controlling abilities. Since you realistically will only have two options to gain tenacity through your games (This rune Unflinching and Mercury's Treads), it is important to know when taking this rune will be of more benefit to you rather than Overgrowth.

Now that we have had a look at all of our options in the primary Resolve rune tree, lets take a look at our secondary rune options for Thresh. We will always be taking our secondary lesser runes from the Inspiration rune tree since they provide us with the ability to handle many different situations.

"Hexflash" Hextech Flashtraption, also known as "Hexflash" is a rune that I will take when I know I will not need either Biscuit Delivery or Perfect Timing. This rune can be used in a variety of ways. One of the most common uses is using Hextech Flashtraption as a secondary form of engage. In addition, this rune can be used as a way to traverse terrain in order to create different pathing to avoid wards and help establish vision. Dont forget that this can work well with you Dark Passage to bring your teammates with you. The posibilities of this rune are quite endless. Just remember that there is a small channel time prior to being able to flash.

Magical Footwear Although this rune is quite decent on a variety of supports, I feel that this rune is left behind when consdiering the other rune choices that Thresh has. Although it may provide you with Slightly Magical Boots and an additional 10 movement speed, it can set you back depending on the playstyle of your game. Since Thresh has some of the best early game roaming potential and taking this rune prevents you from buying tier one boots, the delay in obtaining your early game movement speed will ultimately be setting you behind.

Perfect Timing Another very common rune for Thresh. I usually find myself taking this rune in high burst matchups and team comps. For example, one support that I will frequently take Perfect Timing into is Pyke. By using Stopwatch at the opportune time, you can completely negate Pyke's ultimate. Another matchup example where this would be beneficial is against Lux. The Stopwatch plays the same role of helping you to avoid a large amount of burst damage or crowd control that would most likely kill you.

Future's Market With the way support currently stands, income for supports is already quite limited. Support must rely on taking objectives and assists once they hit the mid game. Once completed, your support item will only continue to generate passive gold and you will no longer have the active element. I personally do not take this rune due to our low income. I would personally rather spend my gold as I obtain it rather than paying it back through this rune.

Minion Dematerializer This item can be used as an alternative method in lane to activate your Spoils of War passive from the Steel Shoulderguards or Relic Shield support items. I do not recommend taking this rune and it is one of the least common runes currently used on Thresh. You will ultimately gain more benefit from other runes available in the Inspiration rune tree.

Biscuit Delivery Biscuit Delivery is a great rune to take to help sustain a little longer in lane. I highly recommend taking this into a heavier poke matchup. The key thing to remember is that these biscuits replenish based on missing health and mana percentages meaning you will get more value the lower you are. More importantly, each biscuit consumed will grant you an additional 50 max mana to your manapool. This rune also is great when combined with Time Warp Tonic as the biscuits and other potions will provide you with a small burst of movement speed which can be used to help start an engagement or disengage accordingly.

Cosmic Insight This is considered one of the go-to runes for Thresh. I find that in 80% of my games I will always take Cosmic Insight. The summoner spell haste and ability haste are some of the most valuable attributes that can be recieved from your runes.

Approach Velocity The whole purpose of this rune is to gain movement speed towards enemies or allies with impared movement speed. Chances are you will never need this rune. Thresh already has the tools in his kit such as Death Sentence and Dark Passage to combat most situations. With correct positioning, you will not need this rune. This rune statistically is the least used rune in the Inspiration tree.

Time Warp Tonic This rune combos pretty well with Biscuit Delivery. By using the additional biscuits along with health potions, you will gain a burst of movement speed which can be used to help engage or disengage. This could be quite useful in a matchup where you will want to walk up and flay to start an engagement. I highly recommend buying a refillable potion when taking this rune as it allows you to benefit from it for the entire game. Feel free to experiment with this rune over something like Cosmic Insight.

Finally we have reached the rune shards. The way it is setup, you will pick one offensive, one defensive and one flex rune. What you take here will be entirely dependent on your matchup. Against a more AD heavy bot lane, I might find myself taking two armor rune shards with a adaptive rune shard. Against a heavy AP poke lane, I might consider taking double magic resist rune shards with a haste rune shard. I highly recommend taking at least 1 adaptive rune in matchups that you are confident you can get a kill in. I would even recommend two if you are a heavy all in-lane. Against a lane that you will find yourself trying to roam or sustain in, I would recommend double resistance. All in all, choose what you feel comfortable with and feel free to test out different combinations and see what works best for your playstyle. For some example rune pages, refer to the top of the page. I have listed two rune pages for two different playstyles to get you started. As you become more familiar, you will learn to adapt to each game and modify your runes to allow for the best chance of success in your games.

Lucidity Boots Ionian Boots of Lucidity are one of the best boot options available for Thresh. The ability haste that these boots offer for such a cheap price makes them very gold efficient. In addition, they also provide you with summoner spell haste which synergizes with Cosmic Insight quite nicely. When you take both Cosmic Insight and buy Ionian Boots of Lucidity you will reduce the cooldown of your flash by a little over a minute! These boots may not be the fastest, but will definitely make up for it in haste. Reducing the cooldown your summoner spells and of your abilities will ultimately help to provide your team with the utility they need to win the game. I highly recommend giving these boots a try.

Mobility Boots Mobility Boots a will provide you with the fastest movement speed from any boot in the entire game with one catch. You will only gain the 115 movement speed bonus while not in combat. If you find yourself in combat, you will only receive a 25 movement speed bonus. Regardless of the values, these boots are a great way to quickly traverse the map and play a much more roaming style. They can be used to help catch your opponent off guard in lane since you will be moving incredibly fast. You can use these boots to easily get in Flay range or even ferry a teammate in with Dark Passage for a gank. Overall these are the most common boot taken on Thresh.

Swiftness Boots Boots of Swiftness can be seen as a very middle ground type of boot. They offer a decent amount of movement speed (60 movement speed) all for a relatively cheap price and also provide you with a 25% resistance all slowing abilities. These boots do not help protect you against stuns and other hard crowd controlling abilities. I would recommend that you take this into team that is equipped with a lot of abilities that can slow you. Some examples include Miss Fortune, Ashe, Sona and Nami.

Plated Steelcaps Plated Steelcaps are tied with Mercury's Treads for the most expensive pair of boots in the game at 1100 gold. Overall, I feel that you will get a much greater benefit out of the other previously mentioned boots above. The only time I could ever justify taking this would be into an entirely AD dependent team with multiple champions that will deal a majority of their damage by hitting you with their basic attacks. Even with this justification, I still believe that you will be able to get more done with the previously mentioned boots. It is important to remember that as a support that we will get less money than every other role in the game so it is crucial to save our gold and make smart purchases where we can. That being said, try and avoid these as much as possible.

Mercury's Treads Mercury's Treads share the same high price of 1100 gold with Plated Steelcaps. Similar to the previous, you will definitely get a much greater benefit out of the previously mentioned boots above. These boots can help reduce the duration of crowd controlling abilities because they will provide you with 30 tenacity. The thing is, if this is something that you are concerned about, you can always spec into Unflinching in the resolve tree which will help to alleviate some of this issue. By using the tools that are built into our kit as well as the proper rune selections, we can almost avoid these boots all together. Again as previously mentioned, it is important to remember that as a support that we will get less money than every other role in the game so it is crucial to save our gold and make smart purchases where we can. That being said, try and avoid these as much as possible.

Locket of The Iron Solari

VS.

Shurelya's Battlesong

Locket of the Iron Solari is an overall great mythic item for Thresh. It can be used to block a large amount of incoming damage with the click of a button. This in conjunction with maxing your Dark Passage ability and Revitalize provides an incredible amount of shielding for your team. When building Locket of the Iron Solari, I also like to build Redemption as it provides an additional 20% bonus to healing and shielding abilities. As the game progresses, you will only continue to shield your teammates for more due to the way that Locket of the Iron Solari and Dark Passage scale. This is currently one of the best item combinations for Thresh at all levels of play.

I find myself building Shurelya's Battlesong when I think my team will need the additional pick potential with the extra movement speed and bonus magic damage that it provides. In addition, I will often building this when I am planning on roaming the map due to the items mythic passive of 2.5% bonus movement speed. I think this item might feel intimidating to most and may not feel as useful, but the truth is that this item is extremely underrated. I highly encourage everyone to give it a try. Even though it yields a much higher winrate, it is still sitting in the shadow of Locket of the Iron Solari.

A frequently asked question I get is "Why did you exclude Turbo Chemtank in the choice for mythic legendaries?". The truth is that the item itself has an awkward build path and is more expensive than the previously mentioned mythic items. I also feel that thresh excels strongly when not placed in a main tank role. Finally, it will be hard to fully utilize the sunfire passive built into Turbo Chemtank. I feel the combination of these reasons is the reason why you should shy away from taking Turbo Chemtank.

Once you have completed your mythic item and your boots, you have quite a few options available for additional item choices. The items that you build will be tailored to your specific team composition and role. I have done my best to list the items in somewhat of a more common order. That being said, let us have a look the additional item choices.

Redemption Redemption is one of Thresh's best item choices. The additional 20% shielding and healing bonus in conjunction with the bonus from Revitalize can help to keep your teammates alive in many situations. I would highly consider getting this with Locket of the Iron Solari since the shield will benefit from the 20% increased shielding passive. In addition, this item also is equipped with 10% max health damage which will be applied as true damage if the active hits an enemy. This item is great when teams will be grouping up and getting on top of each other. Most games will provide you will easy use cases and this item will always be worth its value. I really cannot recommend this item enough in the current meta.

Knight's Vow Knight's Vow is another extremely common item on Thresh. In order to gain any benefit from this item, you must tether with an ally. Once tethered, 15% of the damage your ally takes will be redirected at you while you are above 30% health. This item will definitely help to keep your ADC alive especially if they are constantly being pressured in the back line. I think that the efficiency of this item goes up the later the game goes on since you will have more survivability as a whole. Also if you buy this item as a 3rd choice, you will most likely have another item such as Redemption in your inventory, and you will be able to heal back some of the damage taken by both you and your tethered partner. Usually you will want to tether to your ADC, but there are certain occasions where this may not be the case. Just use your best judgement and tether to the person who your team will benefit most from. Also remember when the person you are tethered to dies, you will want to rebind to someone else mid team fight to gain the full benefit from this item.

Zeke's Convergence Zeke's Convergence is similar to Knight's Vow in the sense that you will have to designate an ally to tether to that will ultimately benefit from the items passive. When tethered, after you immobilize an enemy, your designated ally will have additional bonus magic damage applied to their attacks and abilities for the next 8 seconds. This item pairs nicely with both mythic items. I usually find myself picking up this item when I have a strong hyper carry or one that utilizes the on-hit passive quite effectively. This item in combination with Shurelya's Battlesong can be a great way to add magic damage to a team that is somewhat lacking. This item is overall a great pickup and is a definite contender for 2nd or 3rd item depending on the game and situation. Also remember when the person you are tethered to dies, you will want to rebind to someone else mid team fight to gain the full benefit from this item.

Thornmail Thornmail is a great way to add additional health and armor to your kit. It also comes in handy if you also need to work a source of grievous wounds into your team. The reason this item works well with Thresh is due to the bonus armor that he gets from the souls he collects. These bonus souls help contribute to the total magic damage that someone will inflict upon themselves when attacking you while this item is in your inventory. Do also keep in mind that the 40% grievous wounds benefit from this item is only applied when you are attacked; However all immobilizing crowd control abilities that you land will apply the full 60% grievous wounds debuff. I find myself building this more when I taking Aftershock due to the fact that I am already assuming that I will be in close combat at some point during the game.

Mikael's Crucible Mikael's Blessing can be a great item to buy if they a large amount of long lasting crowd control abilities in addition to having a lot of magic damage. I see this item commonly built into champions such as Morgana or Ashe which both have CC abilities that feel like they last an eternity. The item also additionally provides you with a 20% buff to shielding and healing power, as well as ability haste making it a great buy in certain situations. I understand that this item may feel intimidating to some newer players but that shouldn't be the case. Just make sure that you remember to use it active portion of this item when you buy it or you will be defeating the purpose of the purchase in the first place.

Dead Man's Plate Dead Man's Plate is quite the expensive item. I honestly can only see buying this item in the case where you are required to be somewhat of a front line engagement for your team where you achieve this by running at the enemy. You will gain an additional 5% movement speed, but also you will build momentum stacks from running around. These stacks only will disappear when you auto attack another enemy. Keep in mind you will have a diminished use since Thresh is considered a ranged champion.

Abyssal Mask Abyssal Mask will provide your team with an extra 10% damage on targets that are immobilized by your abilities. Overall it is not a bad item especially if you want to add some personal survivability to your champion. The health and magic resist that this item provides is a great way to do so. I would consider buying this item if they are a very magic damage oriented team and if my team needs a little extra "oomf" when it comes to taking them down.

Force of Nature Force of Nature is another expensive item. I would only buy this is the case where there team is primarily magic damage and similarly to Dead Man's Plate I will need to be a source of engagement for my team. The additional movement speed initially will hopefully be enough to help you get into a fight to use your abilites. This item also has some benefit if you are being chased as the additional movement speeed and magic resist from being hit will make it harder to pin you down for the kill.

Randuin's Omen Randuin's Omen is a great item if you are more of a frontline position. It is increible at reducing basic attacks and critical strike damage from anyone that you manage to get the items active ability on. The only issue is getting in range of the enemy to use the item active. I would buy this only if the enemy team had several crit based champions who are reliant on auto attacks to deal a majority of their damage and I felt confident enough that I could get close enough to a target to benefit from the active.

Gargoyle Stoneplate Gargoyle Stoneplate is incredibly expensive. As a matter of fact, it is the most expensive item on this list. It will provide you will a shield based on your bonus health and will also grant you an additional 5% bonus armor and magic resist when hit by enemy champions up to a total of 25%. However, due to the cost and use case of this item, I strongly think that you will get a great value out of your gold somewhere else. I recommend staying away from this item.

Spirit Visage There is nothing really special when it comes to Spirit Visage. It is an item that will provide you with a decent amount of magic resist and a decent amount of health. I would really only consider building this if their team is stacked with magic damage. You will find more use of your gold elsewhere.

Frozen Heart Frozen Heart can be a decent buy especially when the enemy team has champions that rely on a lot of auto-attacks in order to deal a bulk of their damage. The radius of this item is 700 units which is a 50 units larger than Caitlyn's auto attack range. Chances are if you are getting hit by the person who you are trying to target, they are in range and will be effected by this item's passive. As mentioned previously, I would only consider this item if the opponent team was equipped with champions that heavily relied on auto-attacks for a bulk of their damage.

Vigilant Wardstone Vigilant Wardstone is a true late game item. It will provide you with an incredible amount of ability haste and will also provide you with an additional Control Ward slot allowing you to hold up to 3 Control Wards in addition to increasing your ward caps by 1 for each type. This item is an insane item, since so much of the late game is reliant on vision control in order to make safe plays. The issue is that you do not unlock this item until you are level 13 and since you already will not have the strongest income chances are you will never get the opportunity to buy the item. Even if I am going to buy this item, it will most likely be the 6th and final item.

If played correctly Thresh can be considered to be one of the most threatening supports in the game. In order to achieve this status, we must first take a look at where Thresh excels by taking a look at what I believe are the 4 major power spikes of his laning phase. These power spikes are as follows:

✦ Level 1
✦ Level 2
✦ Level 3
✦ Level 6

Lets take a look at each one individually and examine why this is the case:



Level one allows us to be abusive in two cases. The first case is provided that the enemy support has extremely poor trading capabilities level 1. The second is if the ADC has shorter range or has very little priority to push the wave level 1. By being a ranged champion, it allows us to auto attack any melee support who steps up to the wave to use their stacks from
Relic Shield & Steel Shoulderguards. When facing against double ranged bot lanes, you can do your best to work around their ability cooldowns to get your empowered auto attack off from Flay's passive to get a favorable trade. It takes a little practice but the more HP that you can reduce, the better chance that you will have looking for a stronger attack at level 2. The important thing to note is that you always want to be attempting to hit level 2 first in the lane. In order to hit level 2, you will need experience from a total of 6 melee minions and 3 caster minions. If you do not miss any experience you will hit level 2 on the 2nd wave. Depending on which team hits level 2 first, it will heavily dictate which team will gain or lose a lot of priority (the ability to control the wave state). Overall, it is a fine balance at level 1. You want to go about taking favorable trades so that you do not lose too much health but also be aggressive enough to ensure that you will be getting level 2 first in the lane. Try using the stacks from Steel Shoulderguards on the melee minions of the 2nd wave to take your enemy by surprise on when you will hit level two. Lets take a quick look of an extreme case of trading at level 1.



Here we see Seraphine walk up just a little too far which subjects her to a ton of harassment. She loses a majority of her health bar to a few auto attacks and a Flay. What makes this possible is the fact that she walked into melee range and used her only ability early. In addition to this, Ezreal is in no position to trade back making this a huge win in our favor. Now that we have covered the level 1 basics, lets take a look at level 2.



In my opinion, level 2 is by far one of the most important levels for Thresh in the game. This is the point when he unlocks the all-in potential from his kit. However, depending on your ADC and the matchup it will heavily depend on whether you will be ideally looking for such a play. With champions like Draven or Tristana it becomes possible to look for these high percentage all in plays resulting in early kills. There are two ways you can go about doing so. Provided you are going to hit level two first, you can begin to threaten the wave and walk up past the minions timing it so that you are getting on the opposite side of the wave exactly when the last creep will die providing you with a level 2 advantage. Once you are on the other side of the wave, while your lane opponents are still level 1 you have the option to start a favorable trade or commit right away to an all-in. Take the following video as an example.



In this clip we can recognize that both Nautilus & Tristana are behind when it comes to pushing the wave for their level 2. Once we recognized this, we can immediately choose to take an engagement. Here I opted for using my Flash since both enemy laners where stacked making my Flay easily hit both targets. I immediately throw my Death Sentence trying to catch Tristana off guard. This works out here, but be careful because most initial responses from players are to flash immediately as soon as you commit with Flash and Flay. Do not be surprised if your enemy flashes and you miss the follow up hook. You will have to have some sort of prediction if you think this is going to happen. If they do Flash your Death Sentence you will trade Flash for Flash which will make them an easy target for the next 5 minutes. Here is another example of a level 2 all-in.



As we can see in this clip, similar to what I mentioned in the level 1 portion above, we use our auto attacks along with Flay to punish the Alistar as he walks up looking to use his Relic Shield. He takes a large amount of damage which allows me to walk past the wave a send a Death Sentence flying in his direction. Take note how the Tristana flashes as a natural response to seeing the hook fly towards her direction. Since the hook landed it is an easy kill that allows us to control the remainder of the laning phase. Unfortunately if you are not able to hit level 2 first, you will simply just have to back off and wait for the wave to shove until you are both on even footing again and at the same level as your opponent. Try not to make the mistake of fighting too early or overstaying your welcome in these early lanes. One final important thought before we move on. I would like to touch on bush control. It is vital to gain and maintain bush control in most matchups. This is because having bush control puts out the constant fear and threat of an engagement from you. Most times, I find myself grabbing Oracle Lens on my first back or even placing a ward early and recalling to swap out trinkets before the game even begins. Now that we have covered level 2, lets briefly take a look at level 3.



Level 3 it becomes possible to make a variety of plays since you will now have access to 75% of your kit. You can use your Dark Passage ability to protect, relocate or ferry in additional allies to turn a fight in your favor. Here are some small example clips where we use our entire kit to close a gap.



Here in this clip we see that we are going to hit level 3 before the enemy Draven & Pantheon. As soon as we hit level 3, we decide to commit to the all-in since pantheon is extremely out of position. We have the upper hand which leads to a quick kill for Aphelios. Let's take a look at another example below.




Here in this clip we throw our Dark Passage behind us allowing us to ferry the Graves directly in melee range of the Lucian which nets us a quick kill. I'll admit this clip is quite sloppy but hopefully it gets the point across. Your Dark Passage opens up so many possibilities so be on the lookout from level 3 onward in order to make the most of your kit. Lets now take a look at his level 6.



Thresh's ultimate, The Box is a great source of damage and a great tool for zoning out enemies from getting to their target. Lets take a quick look at these two use cases provided in the clips below.



In this first clip, we use The Box when Lucian gets greedy and overextended forward looking to punish Kai'Sa. With the combination of our Flay and ultimate ability, we are able to burst Lucian down before Soraka can even think about healing him. Now lets take a look at the second clip.



In this clip we can see that Tristana has her sights firmly set on Garen. Since she is chasing him through a choke point, this is a perfect oppporunity to chain our Death Sentence into The Box. This will not only hit her for a large portion of damage, but will also prevent her advance towards Garen. We will see another example of a good ultimate later on in the "Tips and Tricks" section. Remember to be on the look out for good locations to place your ultimate. As you continue to play Thresh, you will get a feel for how wide your ultimate is and where you will get the most value from dropping the The Box.

Now that we have taken a look at Thresh's laning phase, we can take a look more specifically into his team fighting. One of the major keys to being a good team fighter is the ability to properly assess critical situations in a short amount of time and formulate the best possible response with our abilities and items. Thresh's kit allows us to play multiple styles and adapt to many situations that we may encounter on the rift. Below is an example team fight that we will examine in further detail.




A few common concepts and terms that are thrown around when talking about team fighting are peeling for our backline and playing a team fight front to back. When we talk about peeling, we are talking about using our abilities in order to do our best to protect and in a sense "peel" the enemies off our our vital carries. In this clip we can see that our main carry is
Aphelios. In order win this team fight, we will need to do out best to keep him alive and enable him to do all the damage he possibly can. As the clip begins we can see that we use our Death Sentence to grab a quick hook on Rek'Sai and immediately use The Box. We do this in order to isolate Rek'Sai and make it more difficult for her teammates follow up on the engagement. Initially we are able to kill her and activate her Guardian Angel. At this point, her teammates have the option to respond, or let her die and end their push. In this scenario they choose to respond. Galio uses his ultimate, Hero's Entrance in order to get into the fight and help assist. As his ultimate lands, the remainder of the enemy team begins to trickle in. Malphite and Kai'Sa both use their ultimate abilities to quickly dive on top of our Aphelios. It is here that we use our Death Sentence and Flay in order to peel off the Galio and Malphite from our carry. From here we do our best to provide any support we can as our cooldowns come back up. We ultimately win the team fight which allows us to use teleport to quickly get to the enemy nexus and end the game. Now that we have taken a brief overview of the team fight and how we used our abilities, let us take a look how we used our items to make the most of this situation.

When the enemy Rek'Sai initially ulted, we used our Locket of the Iron Solari to provide a shield to our allies. This shield was vital to winning the enemy team fight. If you notice, by the time Rek'Sai had used all her abilities, our Gnar lived with just a little over 100 health. This 100 health was just enough for use to react to use our Dark Passage and Redemption to ensure that Gnar would survive long enough to get into his mega form.



Once Gnar had reached his mega form, he was able to use his GNAR! ability to further peel the Malphite and Galio away from Aphelios. This is a large reason why the fight was won. The final point I would like to mention about this example is the value here of Knight's Vow. After reviewing the replay, Knight's Vow prevented a grand total of over 500 damage.

Finally we can talk about some of the cool things about Thresh's kit that make him the monster he is. Take Thresh's
Flay ability for example. This ability can be used to stop a variety of dash and engage abilities. Lets have a look at a couple of examples below.




As previously mentioned in the matchups above, Thresh's Flay can be used to stop the engagement of Leona's Zenith Blade. It takes a little practice but is pretty easy once you get a hang of the timing. Above is an example of the interaction from a recent solo queue game.




Similar to the above, Flay can also be used as a method to prevent Nautilus from approaching with his Dredge Line. The important thing is to remember is that if you use Flay too early, you will miss. If you use the ability too late, he will be close enough to auto attack you and get his passive off and root you. The timing for this is much tighter than Leona's Zenith Blade, but with a little practice it can be mastered.




Just another example of how your Flay can be used to interrupt dashes. Here in this clip, I use flash to take Camille by surprise and stop the 2nd half of her Hookshot ability. This allows us to net a quick kill and push for top tower.




This clip has two major things to take note of. The first thing is that this clip has good placement of Thresh's ultimate ability, The Box. Secondly, this clip demonstrates the important of holding your abilities and not just blowing everything you have in your kit immediately. After we hook with our Death Sentence, we hold our Flay since it will yield no immediate benefit to us. As we walk forward we look for an ideal opportunity to drop The Box and use our Flay. Here we manage to flay Kai'Sa out of her ultimate, Killer Instinct, and prevent her from dashing over the wall for an escape.




In order to protect your bot laner, one thing you can do is intentionally take the hook. As soon as you see the starting animation for Rocket Grab, immediately use your Death Sentence towards Blitzcrank. This does two things for you, it will proc Aftershock and it will also stun him. If you immediately Flay at the end of your Death Sentence, it will prevent him from landing his Power Fist ability. This one takes a little bit of practice, so grab a friend and give it a couple of tries in a custom lobby.




As mentioned before, Dark Passage is the most useful ability in your kit. It has quite a variety of creative uses. Sometimes it is better to run from an engagement rather than tackle it head on. Take this clip for example where Thresh and Lucian split up to mislead the enemy only to be reunited and escape the jungle gank.




Here in this clip, we see that we can use a combination of our abilities to take a fight that we normally would not be able to take without using Flash. By using our Death Sentence and Dark Passage abilities together, we are able to traverse the terrain and start a fight. Remember that in order to take your ally with you, it is required that you do not start the second portion of your Death Sentence active until your ally is already in motion from clicking the lantern. If you do it too soon, you will simply leave your ally behind stranded on the wrong side of the wall.




If you do not have to leash your jungler, you have the option of pulling the wave to deny a melee minion. The reason that this is important is because it will delay your opponents level 2. To do this, gather all 3 melee minions of the first incoming wave and hold them, making sure that all 3 are attacking you. Once the wave gets close enough, drop aggro in the nearby bush. If done correctly, they should all focus the first melee minion, nuking it down and denying a single minion. This can be incredibly frustrating to play against and ultimately put your opponent behind from the very start.





Sometimes things do not go as planned. Just remember with every play you run the risk of your teammate not paying attention. Sometimes it happens, but you can have a good laugh about it later on when you look back. Special thanks to Koog for adjusting his chair.

If you have made it this far in my guide, I thank you for taking the time to read it. It honestly ended up being longer than I expected and I still have more information that I want to add to help perfect it. There was a huge amount of time and effort that went into this so I hope you were able to learn something beneficial from my guide. If you have any questions or if any of the information that I expressed in this guide was unclear, please do not be a stranger and come ask me you questions at my Stream or Discord

Thanks again~
Kaleido


Special thanks to Koog for the encouragement to make this guide. He also has made a guide himself about Aphelios. Check him and his guide out below. He has a discord where you will surely find a good Aphelios duo. =]

Koog's Complete Aphelios Guide




Parts to be added at a later date:

-Expand matchups to include mages
-Expand matchups into a more graphically pleasing section
-Add additional example to team fighting
-Mid Game Ideas and Goals
-Late Game Ideas and Goals
-Bush control
-When to roam
-What makes a GOOD Thresh vs. a BAD Thresh


Change Log:

-v1.0.0 Initial Release (4/6/2021)
-v1.0.1 Added Team Fighting Section (4/7/2021)