16.3 Protoplasm Harness adjustment

Ability haste increased to 20 from 15.
Lifeline health increased to 200–300 (based on level) bonus health from 200.
Lifeline heal Armor and MR ratio reduced to 175% bonus Armor and MR from 250%.

Overall seems like a small nerf, but nothing too major. Still a very good option if you need to get tankier against burst.

PROS + Very strong early + Good engage and disengage tools + You will have a lot of agency + Very fun to play Thresh has always been present in the support meta and the reason for this is that his kit is flexible and allows multiple different playstyles. If you want to play a support champion that can save teammates, lock down single targets very effectively or control multiple enemies with a 5-man Flay then you should consider learning to play Thresh.

CONS - Very skill dependent - Will struggle with weak adc - Has no sustain - Gets outscaled by enchanters Thresh has a very high skill ceiling. This means that you will need to spend a lot of time learning his kit to be able to pilot him effectively. You also have no sustain in lane so if you're playing against a long range lane it can be difficult to get any action going in the botlane especially if you can't access the bushes.

Passive: Damnation Full Ability Description Innate: Thresh's armor does not increase through growth (per level). Innate: Champions, large minions and large monsters that die near Thresh drop a Soul for 8 seconds. Epic monsters drop 2 Souls while lesser minions and monsters have a 33.3% chance to drop a Soul. Thresh automatically collects Souls near him or a placed Dark Passage. Soul: For each stack, Thresh gains 1 ability power and 1 bonus armor. Thresh doesn't gain any Armor per level, in return enemies dying near him periodically drop souls for him to pick up each giving him 1 AP and 1 Armor. General tips ✦Each soul has a gold value of 40 gold just from the stats. ✦In addition to the stats they also increase the shield from Dark Passage and passive damage from Flay. ✦Aim to get about 5 souls per level to keep up with other champions Armor/level, this gets easier the longer the game goes. ✦You can use your Dark Passage to pick up souls from a safe distance, beware of wasting the CD if you might get ganked though. Q: Death Sentence Full Ability Description Active: Thresh throws out his scythe in the target direction, becoming unable to move or attack while it is in flight. The scythe catches the first enemy hit to deal magic damage, stun and reveal them for 1.5 seconds, as well as reduce Death Sentence's current cooldown by 2 seconds. Thresh will also mark the target Shackled for 1.5 seconds, during which he is unable to declare basic attacks, and is slowed by 20% for 1 second. While the target is stunned, Thresh tugs twice over 0.8 seconds, pulling the target a short distance with each tug. After 0.5 seconds of hitting an enemy or instantly after hitting a minion or monster, Thresh can recast the ability while the target is Shackled, which will cause him to stop tugging. Recast - Deathly Leap: Thresh dashes to the Shackled enemy, becoming able to attack again upon arrival. He can cast Dark Passage and Flay during the dash. Thresh's most iconic spell, the hook. Used for making picks and peeling threats off of your carries. Lowers the cooldown whenever you hit an enemy. When you hit an enemy you tug them in twice before letting them go, but you can recast your Death Sentence to dash towards them instead. General tips ✦If your enemy has Cleanse you should hold your Ignite until after they Cleanse your Death Sentence. This way they don't Cleanse two things at once. ✦Try to pay attention to where the enemy wants to dodge and try to learn the dodging patterns of your enemies. If you notice that the enemy Adc doesn't dodge, but the Support dodges to the left keep that in mind for when you aim the skillshot. W: Dark Passage Full Ability Description Active: Thresh throws his lantern to the target location over 0.5 seconds, lasting for 6 seconds while he remains nearby and granting sight of its surroundings. If Thresh moves too far away from the lantern, it returns back to him immediately. Thresh and the first allied champion to come near the lantern are granted a shield for 4 seconds. An ally can select the lantern while in proximity of it, dashing to Thresh and gaining the shield. An ally cannot select the lantern while immobilized, grounded, or silenced. The lantern will not expire from Thresh moving too far away if he is dashing with Deathly Leap. Probably Thresh's most powerful spell. Can be used to very easily reposition your teammates either for the purposes of peel or for followup on your engage. Also gives a shield that scales off of your souls from Damnation. General tips ✦Place the Dark Passage in the direction your teammate is running. This makes it easier for them to click it and harder for the enemy to block it with a ward. ✦You can use your Dark Passage to check bushes or over walls instead of facechecking. ✦Your Guardian will be active on a teammate when you shield them with Dark Passage from range. ✦ The lantern acts as a unit in the sense that allies can Teleport or jump to it E.G Leap Strike. ✦ It also has unit collision so you can use it to block the enemies path if they're walking between a tower and a wall (can also accidentally block yourself or teammates as well so be carefull). E: Flay Full Ability Description Passive: Thresh's basic attacks are empowered to deal bonus magic damage, with the AD ratio increasing over 10 seconds without basic attacking enemies. Active: Thresh sweeps his chain across the ground in a broad line and a radius around him, starting behind him and towards the target direction. Enemies hit are dealt magic damage and knocked 200 units in the target direction, and then are slowed for 1 second. An incredible tool that will separate the good Thresh players and the great ones. Can be used as a simple knockback for peel or to lock people down for longer or you can utilize it further by cancelling dashes such as Rocket Jump or Elastic Slingshot. It also has a passive that makes your AAs deal more magic damage based on your souls and total AD. General tips ✦If you're playing against a short range botlane you can put one or two more points into Flay and maybe take an extra Adaptive Force so your AA will do some more damage. ✦Hold your Flay for just after your Death Sentence ends against certain champions like Kha'Zix, this way you are more likely to cancel their escape ability which they are most likely spamming while they're CCed. R: The Box Full Ability Description Active: Thresh erects a pentagon of spectral walls around him that each last for 5 seconds. A wall will break upon enemy champion contact, dealing magic damage and slowing them by 99% for 2 seconds. Enemies that break a wall cannot do so again for 1 second. Subsequent walls they break will deal no damage and slow for only 1 second. Thresh summons a pentagon which damages and slows the first enemy hit. Subsequent enemies just gets slowed for half of the duration instead. Can be used to either help burst a squishy target during your CC or to dissuade the enemy from chasing you further. General tips ✦After you hit a Death Sentence you can immediately cast The Box during the CC and then Flay the enemy into one of the walls for a massive slow and a decent chunk of damage on a squishy target.

GUARDIAN Fine into most matchups. GLACIAL AUGMENT Fine vs double ranged or dive.

AFTERSHOCK Necessary against engage support. UNSEALED SPELLBOOK Really flexible & fun rune.

Guardian is great against most matchups as you can fairly easily decide when to proc it as you're ranged and can more easily space with your Adc so it won't get wasted, you can also proc it with your Dark Passage from range. Aftershock is necessary against engage matchups such as Leona or Nautilus as it will allow you to facetank their engage and create space for your Adc. It will also help in later fights to make sure you don't get oneshot as easily. If you're the only tank/frontline on your team you need it even more. Glacial Augment helps in double ranged matchups as you make it harder for them to run away from you when you engage on them and also against dive comps as it will make it easier for your carries to kite them when the divers are slowed. Unsealed Spellbook is a fantastic rune as it allows you to cycle between different summoner spells as the upcoming situation calls for it. As this rune is a little complicated I don't reccomend it for beginners.

RESOLVE

Aftershock makes you tankier after you immobilize an opponent, which will allow you to buy more space in front of your team or more easily survive in lane vs another engage support. Guardian is really effective as it will help you protect a single teammate more and you can easily use it with your Dark Passage from long range.

Font of Life is still the same as before, not great (especially on ranged champions like Thresh), but it's your only choice.

Second Wind is going to be the better option as it will always give you extra sustain and value. Bone Plating might get wasted by random poke like Volley for example. So if you need to go Bone Plating due to the early game trading be mindful of not wasting it.

Overgrowth gives you a considerable amount of health in the late game. Unflinching gives a great amount of Armor and MR at level 1 when you get CCed. This is a great rune if the enemy has CC in their trading patterns. Revitalize is actually really good if you like going Guardian and Locket of the Iron Solari into Redemption.

INSPIRATION

Biscuit Delivery gives you free healing and max HP which will help against more aggressive early games. Cosmic Insight gives you summoner spell haste which allows for more aggression. Hextech Flashtraption is also a good option for catching your enemies off guard.

INSPIRATION

Glacial Augment allows you to catch people even easier thanks to the slow and it also works really well defensively as it reduces damage to your teammates by 15% from those affected. Unsealed Spellbook is a very fun rune which allows you to be much more flexible in every fight. This allows you to make unique plays that the enemy team might not expect. For more information read the section at the bottom of this chapter.

Hextech Flashtraption can catch your enemy off guard and lead to more picks. Stay out of vision while channeling it like in a bush or behind a wall. Magical Footwear is only an option for when you're taking Unsealed Spellbook.

Biscuit Delivery will keep you healthier for free and gives you extra max HP. Use when you're low for more value.

Cosmic Insight will give your summoner spells more haste which will enable more aggression.

RESOLVE

First you have to choose either Second Wind or Bone Plating depending if you're up against poke or engage in lane. (Stay mindful of not wasting Bone Plating from poke.) Overgrowth is the scaling option if you're feeling greedy or the enemy botlane doesn't have any CC in their trading patterns. Unflinching is better for the early lane if the enemy has CC and you will fight early game. Revitalize is a good option if you're planning on buying Locket of the Iron Solari into Redemption.

Solstice Sleigh Default option, always gives good value.

Celestial Opposition Alternative if against heavy engage or burst.

Celestial Opposition does scale better, so do consider swapping after your third or fourth item.
(Selling and buying Bounty of Worlds does NOT remove the wards you've already placed.)

Lucidity boots Great boots that give haste and also allows you to go for more Flash-Hooks.

Swifties Good into a lot of slows while also giving a little more MS.

Merc Treads Fine if against full AP or CC. Steelcaps Fine if against full AD.

Generally you will want to buy Tier 2 boots before your first completed item, but it will depend on how much gold you back with on every reset. If you do have the gold to buy a fully completed item then T2 boots can wait.
If you're planning on buying the tank boots then it's fine to delay them a teeny bit longer if you get an opportunity to complete an item instead.

Locket Incredible default item, always good, never bad.

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Knight's Vow Great into single target damage.

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Redemption Great for slow, front-to-back fights. Bandlepipes If your team has multiple Auto-attackers.

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Bandlepipes Buy the one you didn't before. Redemption Buy the one you didn't before.

Be ready to adapt to the game as you'll have different needs every game. But if you just want a default build to take every game without thinking, then this is what I'd recommend. Take a look at the item section below to get other options for the different situations you might find yourself in.

Frozen Heart If the enemy is Auto-Attack based.

Thornmail If you really need grievous wounds.

Abyssal Mask Cheaper and helps your AP carries deal more DMG.

Kaenic Rookern More expensive and more defensive stats.

Mikael's Blessing If playing against hard CC.

Zeke's Convergence Great stats and very cheap.

Protoplasm harness Allows you to make space.

Roaming is a really important part of Thresh's early game and it's important to know how to do it correctly without putting your ADC in danger or losing out on too much experience and being underleveled.

When you've pushed out the wave into the enemy tower you should have a list of what you can do.

1. Reset if you need to.
2. Hit the tower for plates.
3. Poke or Dive the enemy under tower.
4. Leave the lane and roam.

Reset is self explanatory. Hitting the tower can be good, but try to leave the plate gold to your adc if possible. Or you can throw out a hook and see if you can land some poke or threaten a dive depending on the situation.

If none of these options seem good or your ADC needed to reset then your last option is to go roam and impact the rest of the map.


When your wave crashes under the enemy tower the enemy wave will get stuck under their tower fighting them. This will allow your wave to walk up into the lane which leads to the waves meeting on the enemies side of the lane.
That will mean that the enemies next wave shows up before yours and will start fighting first, inevitably pushing towards your side of the map (unless your ADC walks up and pushes it out).

That will give you around 30-50 seconds to roam and come back, hopefully in time before the wave dies under your tower causing you to miss a lot of experience.

Warding is an important skill for any support player to master, but even more so for a support like Thresh where you thrive in the fog of war, catching enemies when they are unaware of your presence as they're trying to rotate from one lane to another.
These ward maps will help you place wards that will be effective in most games, but do note that when against certain junglers or laners you will need different wards. For example a Zac can gank you from further away over walls while a Shaco can gank over walls while being stealthed. Against these junglers consider placing deeper wards (if it's safe to do so) to spot them when they're clearing their jungle camps.

Remember to consider the terrain changes that will occur when the third drake spawns and later when baron has also spawned.

Early game wards for blue and red side
Mid game wards for mid and river control
Late game wards for objectives
Ward placements
These specific ward spots can take some practice to get them right so I would recommend that you do some "ward drills" in a Practice tool game until you can place them consistently. If you're struggling with the consistency do these drills before you queue up for your games that day as a sort of warm-up. Make sure to have indicators enabled to more easily see where the ward will get placed.

This chapter will have random information and tips regarding that didn't fit into the guide elsewhere.

Runes:

Taking Revitalize may look odd on Thresh as he only has a weak shield on his Dark Passage, but it will also buff your Guardian, Locket of the Iron Solari and your Redemption. The small 5% heal and shield power (+10% extra on targets below 40% HP) may not look like a lot but it will add up over the course of a game.

Assuming you don't miss a single minion death then Overgrowth will give you the 3.5% bonus max HP on the wave that arrives in lane at 10:30. At that point the other part of Overgrowth gives you 45 HP. At this point Damnation will have dropped around 42 Souls giving you 42 armor and AP. Needless to say that in a real game you will be missing some minions either from roaming, recalling or being forced off the wave so realistically this rune will take longer to fully come online.

At what point does Overgrowth outscale Unflinching? If you just look at the gold value then Unflinching is worth 400 Gold when it is active. On the other hand Overgrowth needs to reach 150 HP to give you 400 Gold worth of stats. This happens maybe around 15 minutes.
Granted you don't always use the full gold value from Unflinching if you don't need the MR, but you can't get 75 HP from Overgrowth anyways so it doesn't really matter.

Cosmic Insight lowers the cooldown of Flash by 46 seconds which will give you a large window where you will have it up and the enemy wont if you both use Flash at the same time.
Going Ionian Boots of Lucidity in addition with Cosmic Insight lowers the cooldown by 66 seconds instead.

Thresh's Adaptive Type is AD and will not change to AP no matter how many souls he gets from Damnation. The only way to change Adaptive Force from AD to AP is by buying an item that has AP like Redemption.

Precision secondary
Going Precision runes is fun if your games are very bloody with a lot of action. It's very niche and not something I'd recommend for someone just starting to learn Thresh which is why I'm "hiding" them here.
Legend: Haste quite quickly gives you a lot of extra Haste to become a real menace in teamfights.
Triumph is the only other rune you can take in this tree and it does give some nice healing and extra gold income.


Items:

The damage taken from Knight's Vow cancels your recall even if the damage is only from minions.

When in a fight without your Knight's Vow target (whether they're dead or just not in the fight) you should try to change your mark to another teammate. This way you're still getting value from the passive. Another thing to remember is that the target doesn't have to be your adc. If your adc is super behind while your midlaner is smurfing you should change priorities. Don't get stuck in the mindset of having to support only your adc!

Solstice Sleigh is not a heal it only gives bonus HP, so it is not affected by grievous wounds or heal & shield power. Think of it as a mini Wild Growth.

If you're playing with an Ornn you can decide which item you want to get upgraded by placing it first in your inventory. These are the stats from our core items.
Locket of the Iron Solari/ Bandlepipes gets 8 Haste, 13 Armor, 14 Magic Resist and 90 HP.
Knight's Vow gets 11 Haste, 17 Armor and 125 HP.
Protoplasm Harness gets 16 Haste and 185 HP.
Redemption gets 16 Haste and 25 AP. (Avoid upgrading this one, getting more AP isn't worth it)
It's all about 1000 gold worth of stats. Some stats are rounded up or down from decimals.


Abilities:

How many souls should you aim for from Damnation?
Most supports similar to Thresh get around 5 armor/level, so we want to get around 5 souls every level to kinda keep up with our passive. They also scale the shield on Dark Passage, give AP for the rest of our abilites (which all have pretty good AP scalings) and some extra damage on our Auto attacks from Flays passive. So please remember to pick up your souls!

Generally starting with Flay is best as it gives you more power and allows for both proactive trades and defensive peel, however when playing against a double ranged botlane I like starting Death Sentence as it gives me the opportunity to catch the enemy off guard level 1.

When you hit a Death Sentence on someone don't immediately use Flay. Instead wait for your Death Sentence to tug them in twice and then Flay them right after your Death Sentence ends. This way you can CC them for longer and potentially cancel their dash/jump with your Flay. Most people will be spamming their escape button during your Death Sentence so this way you will be more likely to cancel their Rocket Jump for example. If you're struggling with the timing then spend a few minutes in Practice Tool and you can get it down pretty fast.

If you have any questions please leave them in the comment section, I'd gladly answer any questions you have!

Special thanks to jhoijhoi for their great guide to coding.