Hello and welcome to the guide where sanity is frowned upon, so please leave yours outside and enjoy your stay!

When Thresh was released, I never actually played him support more than a few times, as I felt he had a lot of potential in the branch of Bruiser Top. His great harass and natural Armor and AP gain leaves him in a great position to oppose AD Top champions, Melee and Ranged alike.

But don't get me wrong, I've both felt and played with the power of a Support Thresh, so in no way am I saying it's bad, I just feel isn't just a ranged support with a lot of CC.

Description:

Thresh is a great semi-ranged bruiser/tanky support initiator, that focus on harassment, re- and dispositioning of allies and enemies, and CC.

The reason i call him "semi-ranged" is simply because you'll pretty much be standing ontop of your enemy when you're really comitting to the fight, while otherwise harassing them from afar.

Just by playing, he aquires Armor and Abilty Power over the course of a match, and the better you play (and the luckier you are) the more of both you will have.

With these 2 guides, you should be well on your way to kill people, or help your team do so.





Lore:

Thresh is a twisted reaper whose hungry chains ensnare the souls of the living. A moment's hesitation at the sight of his ghostly visage and there is no escape. He leaves in his wake hollow corpses, their souls ripped loose and trapped in the sickly green light of his lantern. The Chain Warden takes sadistic joy in tormenting his victims, both before and after their deaths. His grim task is never complete, and he stalks the land for ever more resolute spirits to unravel.

Thresh carves careful, deliberate paths through Valoran. He handpicks his targets individually, devoting his full attention to each soul in turn. He isolates and toys with them, gradually eroding their sanity with his twisted, maddening humor. Once Thresh takes an interest in a soul, he does not relent until he possesses it. He then drags those he captures back to the Shadow Isles for an unimaginably dreadful fate. This is his only purpose.

Little is known about the Chain Warden's past, and many of the details live only in nursery rhymes and campfire tales. They tell of a sadistic jailer from centuries past who took great delight in torturing his wards. Patient and brutal, he used a variety of methods to break his victims' minds before their bodies succumbed to his grisly designs. Chains were the jailer's preferred instruments of terror. Their shrill scrape marked his dreadful approach and promised agony to those he visited. His dark reign went unchallenged until his prisoners escaped during a massive riot. They overwhelmed him, and without ceremony or remorse, hanged him from his own chains. Thus began the unlife of the horrible specter known as Thresh, or so the tales go.

Thresh now haunts the land, leaving an aftermath of horror and despair. However, there is a devious purpose behind his dark machinations, and the meager spirits of average men are insufficient. He seeks stronger souls. Only when he has broken the wills of Valoran's most resilient warriors will he finally have what he needs.

''There are few things as invigorating as taking a mind apart, piece by piece.''
-- Thresh

I've felt like these following points should give you an idea how Thresh is in-game.

+ Interesting Team Play + Excellent CC + Great Harass + AD-Tanky By Nature + Easy Farming

- Hard To Master - Requires A Lot Of Team Coordination - Slow Movementspeed - Souls can be risky to get

Now let's jump into Runes and Masteries, and establish an overview of Thresh's spells and what Summoner Spells I use.

As you're jumping into your enemies to really do your thing, you don't want squishiness to catch you by surprise, so going 9/21/0 gives your a small boost to your autoattacks, but focuses on giving you durability. Putting a point in Defender for that moment when you're standing right in the middle of 5 angry enemies, and they switch their focus to you.

You'll be harassing the enemy as much as possible with your auto-attacks, activating Flay's passive, so Pickpocket will be giving you a lot of gold while beating up your enemies. Greed gives you a little extra, but much needed passive income of gold, as you're not getting any minion kills. Other than that, there's Artificer which lowers the cooldown of activated items significantly, letting you get Shurelya's Battlesong and Shard of True Ice going as much as possible.

both Greater Seal of Armor and Greater Glyph of Magic Resist is a pretty standard thing in my runepage, pretty much any champion you'll get paired up against has a combination of physical and magical damage. Greater Seal of Armor also compensates for the early squishiness you have in armor as Thresh, not that it lasts very long ;)

Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage makes it easier to last hit minions, as Thresh only starts out with an embarassing 46 AD, so 7 extra AD not only helps, but also gives you a bit extra damage on your Flay

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration is because your Flay will end up making your enemies stack magic resistance, so MRPen is not a bad choice!
But what is this you ask? "Why not greater mark of armor penetration?"
Because most of your damage will be Magical Damage. You may be building AD, but you're still getting AP, and no matter what you do, your AD will give you magical damage, and your spells will not suddenly change to deal physical damage.

If you're supporting, taking Greater Quintessence of Gold is not a must, but since you're not getting any farm, you're not getting any gold, so the more passive gold income you have, the faster you can get through your build.
Though if you're confident with your skills as Thresh, you trust your AD Carry, and your lane enemies can be engaged on, taking Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage instead, gives you more damage, making it easier to kill your enemies, and in that way gain gold from assists. Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage may also help you in case of objectives, as you'll be doing a few extra points of damage, so i'd definetly go for these if I'm either in a lane-swap, or just generally planning on pushing down the enemy's tower quickly.

Now we get to the fun part, this is a quick explaination of Thresh's passive and abilites, and generally my thoughts on how to use them the best.


Thresh has a unique mechanic to him, in the form of his passive:

• "Thresh can harvest the souls of enemies that die near him, granting him armor and increased spell damage. Siege minions always drop a soul, as do enemy Champions, but caster and melee minions only drop a soul 20% of the time."

Though this mechanic allows Thresh to aquire a lot of Armor and AP, he can also be locked down by it, as you have to get close to the souls to harvest them, unless you want to pay mana to get the souls - I'll get to that.
Keep in mind that each soul you collect, reduces the Armor and AP you get from the next soul you pick up. It starts at 1.0 Armor and AP/soul, and goes down by 0.01 per consequent soul picked up throughout the game. This means that the first soul gives 1.0 Armor+AP/soul, the second gives 0.99 Armor+AP/soul, the third gives 0.98, which goes all the way down to 0.5 Armor and AP/soul, where it stops decending.

• "Active: Thresh throws his scythe, dealing 80/110/140/170/200 (+50% of ability power) magic damage to the first unit hit and dragging them towards him for 1.5 seconds. Additionally, he may re activate the ability to leap to his chained enemy."

Death Sentence is pretty much a 2-n-1 ability, because it's briefly locks down your opponent, and it can be activated again to serve as a gap closer.
Death Sentence alows you to lasso your enemy and pull them behind you, alongside letting you pull yourself to them, to then unleash the rest of your arsenal on the unfortunate victim you caught.
This ability is great for initiating in team fights, or keep enemies from running away.

While in a fight one on one, you wont be using this skill much, unless your enemy decides to turn on their heels and flee, as this will allow you to catch up to them again. Death Sentence is a lot more usefull in a fight where you have an ally with you, as your lock down disables your opponent's ability to do anything besides using cleanse and the like. I've saved both myself and my allies countless times, scoring us a kill as our enemy was slightly overpowering us, but popping Death Sentence on them, without activating it again, let my ally do their damage, and therefore killing the enemy. This is also just in case you want to minimize the damage you're going to take, even though it's a pretty sure kill.

Death Sentence will interupt channeled spells like Fiddlesticks's Bountiful Harvest and the charge time on Crowstorm -- Katarina's Death Lotus -- Galio's Idol of Durand -- or even Karthus' Requiem, and so on.

Champions with dash abilities, like Shen, or the summoner spell Flash can mess you up if you pull yourself to them, as you wont stop pulling yourself to them until you hit them. This means that they can pull you in under their tower, or further into their team. So be prepared!

• "Thresh throws out a lantern that shields nearby allies from damage for 60/90/120/150/180 (+40% of ability power) for 6 seconds. The first ally to click the lantern with be pulled to Thresh. Allies can only receive the shield once per cast.
  
  The lantern collects nearby souls while out.

"

Remember the mana cost for picking up souls that i was talking about? here it is. Dark Passage grants Thresh and all allies in its AOE a decent shield for 6 seconds, while it also works as a long range pull for your allies to escape hairy situations, or in coordinated teams can be used as an initiator alongside Death Sentence.
Now, i've highlighted the key sentence that lets Dark Passage collect souls for you - at a cost.
It's up to each individual player to decide whether or not to use 50 to 70 mana to collect a soul that would otherwise cost you some of your health, maybe even your life. In my own opinion, i think that it's worth it in any situation that's requires me to be somewhere else, that wouldn't need Dark Passage for the next 16 seconds.
This is often when I feel threatened, like when my lane enemy could easily eat a good chunk of my hp, or if I have that feeling that some sneaky little jungling Diana or the midlane missing Morgana is nearby. I would also do this when there's a good bunch of souls in lane, but I don't want to waste time getting them, as an ally might be in trouble in that exact moment and I'm moving in to help them. Just remember that the shield might also save them from that exact situation, either by just shielding, or them clicking the lantern to pull themselves to you, so analyse the situation before making a decision, as it can cost either you, your ally, both, or the enemies their lives, if you make the right or wrong decision.

Max this as fast as possible if you need more survivability for you or an ally.

• "Passive: Thresh deals bonus magic damage on each auto attack. The damage is equal to the number of souls he has collected plus 80/110/140/170/200% of attack damage, based on length of time since last attack.
  
  Active: Thresh sweeps his chain in a line, dealing 65/100/135/170/205 (+.4* AP) magic damage to all enemies hit and pushing them in the direction of the swing. Enemies are then slowed by 20/25/30/35/40% for 1.5 seconds."

Flay's passive is where you get your damage for top. With the decently slow laning phase, you're gonna have fun charging up the passive, and decide whether to take another last hit, or do over 120 damage in one hit to the enemy, right from the start.

Note that the passive needs 10 seconds to fully charge, but you won't notice this too much, unless you have a super aggressive lane enemy that decides to trade with you all the time.

Flay's active is a good AOE-CC ability, slowing 40% at level 5, along with slightly dispositioning enemies caught by your chain, moving them a short distance in the direction you're facing. Flay also gives you extra magic damage on your auto attacks because of it's passive Flay is fixed to Thresh's position, and is easily aimed in the direction you want to use it in, after a bit of practice. Flay is great for chasing enemies, or stopping enemies from chasing you, as it both pushes the enemy back, and slows them down. Other than that, it can be used to quickly push a minion wave midgame, as it deals decent damage to an entire creep wave at once.

Both as a Top and Support Thresh, I usually max this first, as for Top, you want as much damage on your auto attacks as possible, and the slow on Flay is great both for Top and Support.

• "Creates a prison of walls around Thresh, dealing 250/400/450 (+1* AP) magic damage and slows any champion that collides with a wall by 99% for 2 seconds.
  
  Once a champion collides with a wall, the wall is destroyed.
  
  Enemies that hit multiple walls take half damage and have the slow effect reduced by half after the first wall struck."

The Box may feel and look a lot like Jarvan IV's Cataclysm, but it plays out a lot different. The Box isn't a solid wall that you can't walk through, but instead, it deals an significant amount of damage, along with slowing whomever caught by it, almost stopping them dead in their tracks.

But remember, The Box has a brief activation time, so with good enough reactiontime, your enemies can dodge it before it activates
With 400 damage and 99% slow ready to be unleashed, it's great for stopping an enemy from escaping, or enemies from chasing you. In a team fight, popping The Box after you initiate with Death Sentence can weaken your enemy a lot, and with a bit of quick reaction, you can almost instantly kill the enemy AD or AP Carry.

These are the two spells i use on solo top Thresh.

Flash can not only be used to escape harsh situations, but it can also be used in many combinations with your abilities. Imagine you're chasing someone JUST out of range of Death Sentence, you only need to hit that Death Sentence and you can kill that enemy, you Flash and get the kill.
Or this: you're in a team fight, and you land a Death Sentence on the tank that's way up in front of his allies. You pull yourself to him, flash and pop your ult and Flay, and you just initiated the team fight.
Or this: you and your ally is being chased by their whole team, but your Dark Passage wouldnt be enough to save your ally. So you Flash right after throwing your lantern, and your teammate pulls himself to you.

Now for Teleport. Teleport is a great spell for getting around the map, and since Thresh has so much damage by himself, you can leave out Ignite. Teleport also lets you wait a bit if you just need 50 gold for that item you're building, as you're not really wasting time standing around.

• Exhaust might in some cases help you, but i haven't found any use for it in Solo Top, though it's my choice of summoner spell when i support, as you don't absolutely need to be in the lane at all times, like in top, so you don't have to pick Teleport for that.
• Barrier or Heal might work if you know that you're going to get bursted late game, when you try to initiate in a team fight.
• Ghost is also a great choice for Thresh, but i just feel that Flash works so much better with his abilities.

Needless to say, you should always level your ultimate ability, The Box, up as soon as possible, as it gives you a lot more damage for a single level up, than another 30% of your physical damage.

Death Sentence is what give you your damage as AD Thresh, so maxing this as fast as possible is what you want. You'll have a good pokability, as you can slowly wear down whomever you're laning against, unless their sustain outweighs your simple harass. If that's the case, sit back and farm as much as possible and try to engage your enemy when they come in to farm. If you can't harass them down, burst them down.

Dark Passage and Flay is situational, and entirely up to you to decide whether you need more shield ( Dark Passage) when harassing or engaging your enemy or more slow+damage ( Flay) to keep your enemy in place. Just keep in mind, that leveling up your Dark Passage increases it manacost, so you'll have to pay more mana when farming souls with it.

Both Boots + 3 Health Potion and Cloth Armor + 5 Health Potion are viable start items for solo top Thresh, and you should pick whatever start that fits the champion you're laning against.

See the Encounters section if you want to see my recommendations.







Earlygame, you want some durability and sustainability, that's why i go with Wriggle's Lantern as my first item. It gives 30 Armor, 15 AD, 10% Lifesteal, easier farming, and on top of that, a free ward! You no longer have to use 75 gold every time you go back to buy a ward, you can now have a constant ward watching over river.

After that, you should go straight for Bloodthirster, as with a few minion kills (should be absolutely no problem for Thresh) you've just upgraded your Physical Damage by 100, your lifesteal by 18%, and your Magical Damage by 170.







Mercury's Treads: Teir 2 Movement Speed (+45 movespeed), 25 Magic Resistance, 35% Tenacity.

• These boots gives you MR and much wanted Tenacity, as you're jumping into the enemy team later, you don't want CC to kill you, so you'll find yourself buying these almost every game.

Ninja Tabi: Teir 2 Movement Speed (+45 movespeed), 25 Armor, Blocks 10% of Basic Attack Damage.

• The only time i would buy Ninja Tabi over Merc Treads, is if they barely have any CC at all AND has a lot of AD-based champions.

Enchantment: Homeguard: Instant recovery at fountain. +200% Movement speed when at the fountain - NOT the stairs - that decays over 8 seconds after leaving the fountain, or when entering combat.

• Homeguard is the most used Enchantment for many people, and it's a great enchantment too, if you need to get back to the frontline FAST, or have to contest an objective, or the like. When you attack, or get attacked by an enemy, be it a minion or a champion, you're marked as "In Combat", after which the movespeed buff is deactivated. You have to be out of combat for 8 seconds, for the buff to be re-activateable, which matches the channeling time of an un-buffed Recall time.
  
  Enchantment: Alacrity: +15 Movement Speed.
  • This gives you +15 movespeed, it's always nice to have a small extra movespeed. "But why not Enchantment: Furor, it gives even more movementspeed than Alacrity!!" - Unless your team is ultra fed, and you can take a big amount of punishment and STILL have enough HP to survive another wave of damage, you're not going to use Enchantment: Furor to it's max, and along with that, you don't have that much attackspeed that you're going to keep it at max all the time. Also, when chasing, either you're close enough to catch and engage them, where you wont need it, or you're too far away to activate Enchantment: Furor.
  
  Enchantment: Captain: +8% Movement Speed to allied champions running towards you.
  • This is nice for your team to catch up when you initiate into the lot of your enemy. The faster your team can react on your initiate, the higher the chance is for you surviving, and your team getting kills.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Completing the build

  
  Maw of Malmortius: Not only does it give you extra AD for your arsenal, it also gives you a good amount of MR, and it synergizes with your kamikazi-like playstyle, as you're jumping into the enemy and take a lot of damage. The lower your HP is, the more damage you do, and if the burst gets too intense, it has a 300 Magic Damage shield, so it should, along with the earlier Giant's Belt, keep those frisky AP bursters from killing you with the last few abilities.
  
  Warmog's Armor, Sunfire Aegis or Frozen Mallet: now upgrade your Giant's Belt to either of these, depending on your situation. Either item helps a lot in their own way, Sunfire Cape gives you a great Threat-boost when you kamikaze your enemies, as the passive burns the enemies around you for a lot of magical damage, whilst giving you some HP and some Armor to survive their retaliation. Warmog's Armor isn't as good for Thresh as it could be, but it lets you have a poke-fight with a lot of enemies, because of your large health pool. Frozen Mallet is a great health item too, and it gives you a slow too, in case The Box and Flay wasn't enough.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "Trinity Force, Infinity Edge, Crit chance... what??"

  
  Trinity Force: I've been playing around a bit with Trinity Force, and it CAN be used by Thresh for his 1 attack-burst, even though it doesn't stack with Death Sentence's Magic Damage, it does add +150% damage to your Physical Damage.
  If you can't live a sane life without Triforce in your build, switch out Wit's End with Trinity Force. This would shift your durabilty around a bit though, as you lose some MR, but gain some HP, along with Physical Damage and crit chance, which helps your lifesteal.
  
  Infinity Edge: Infinity Edge in combination with Trinity Force and some luck will give you a HUGE single-hit damage. Whilst Flay's passive only scales on the amount of AD you have, and not the actual damage you do, a Crit with Spellblade activated at the time, can do a TON of damage with a fully charged Flay Passive.
  
  Though I prefer not to rely on crit, since you're not attacking very quickly, nor very often, and I don't feel Trinity Force gives Thresh much else than a 200% AD Spellblade, I tend to avoid both of these items.
  
  If you want to have a bit of fun, though, feel free to try these 2 items together and see yourself almost insta-killing a squishy target on a lucky hit.

Dark Passage: As i've already explained in the ability section itself, i max this as fast as possible to give my ADC as much room as possible, as 200 shield in level 9 is great. Many times has the shield saved both me and my ADC when being ganked, or just simply getting engaged by the enemy support and ADC. The 200 shield pretty much works as a little extra breathing room for the ADC to wait for a Taric Stun to wear off, and the shield along with it's extra feature of pulling the champion to safety is great for getting out of a Leona CC-Combo, with little health to spare, yet enough to survive.

Flay: As you want to help your ADC survive as much as possible, plus a little beyond that, along with getting them as many kills as possible, the slow from Flay really does the trick along with the rest of your combo. It's got a decent duration for a slow, along with the slight displacement Flay does when activated, and it doesn't take long to get the hang of how long it takes for Flay to reach from one end to another, so you can hit a chasing champion at absolutely maximum range with ease, just don't take chances. Better be a little closer than max range, and hit them, than miss them entirely.

Death Sentence: This ability doesn't do much for the survival of your ADC, so with 1 point at level 1, and maxing it last, you've got a small, yet decent harass, to really make people think twice. I've had games where ive single-hit harassed at the same effeciency as the enemy ADC, resulting in them getting lower and lower while i regen my health with Philosopher's Stone

Now that you've been through these guides, you should have an idea of how to play Thresh now, so go out there and collect the souls of your enemies!!

Feel free to rate and comment with any thoughts you have.

And most of all

HAVE FUN!!!! :D


Also, thanks to JhoiJhoi's guide, i've been able to atleast have some order in my guide. xD

[October 2nd - 2013] I'm currently reading through my own guide, correcting, removing, and adding information to the topics, so if you're reading something you know is wrong, I'll probably be editing that topic hopefully tomorrow. If you find something before "Early Game - Solo Top" that you think is completely wrong, feel free to write a comment with your thoughts.

[May 16th - 2013]