Thresh is usially played as support due to his amazing CC skills. However, these can be just as useful (if not more) at absolutely dominating top lane.

Thresh is ranged, which already puts him ahead of most tops. Moreover, his E makes him absurdly powerful against melee champions. It interrupts their dashes and slows them making it impossible to even reach you, while you can deny them all day long. Your Q is a great threat and while not used much, it gives your opponent two options: Go all-in or hug my turret.

When he hits lvl6 Thresh becomes quite resilient to ganks, when the jungler jumps on you just R->E and walk away like nothing happened.

Thresh needs both farm and souls, that is why I chose Teleport.

As Thresh, you want to dominate your lane early. Get your last hits, smack your enemy mercilessly every time he comes around, just don't dive into minions too deeply. Use your E whenever he decides to engage and punish him with a few autos before going back. Don't overextend because before lvl6 you are quite vulnerable to ganks.

Why AP over AD? Reasons are two. First one is scaling, even as poor as Thresh's, he scales off AP and he deals magic damage. Especially his ultimate, when built AP, does an awful load of damage. Going AP also makes penetration much more useful. The second reason is more subtle. Most of the time, it is adc who is the most feared/focused by enemies. And tanks are likely to build armor over magic resist.

Thresh's main damage source is his E's passive. Not the windup part, but the soul-reliant part, which is 1.0 soul->on-hit magic damage scaling. We want to capitalize on that, building attack speed. So basically, what you want to do is Q R E and aa them until they die.

In teamfights you are one of the frontliners, land your hook, dash into them, ult, E and start smacking whoever comes around. A good tactic is to drop your W where you stand and then dash with another tank/bruiser for good initiation.

By late game, you should be really tanky and your damage output one of the highest thanks to your soul stack. If you were mediocre before, now you will start wrecking people. If you ever had more than 150 souls with Thresh you know what I mean.

Pros:
- dominates top lane easily
- good scaling
- amazing cc

Cons:
- heavily farm-reliant
- requires good reflexes to use E effectively
- may be called troll pick

Happy Threshing!