Thresh, one of the more prominent supports in League of Legends, has one of the most synergized and versatile kits in the game. Thresh's passive and abilities work incredibly well together, and even offer options to turn the tide of a fight based on specific interactions with enemy champions, as well as friendly ones. Within this article, I'll provide you with examples of those specific interactions that I just mentioned, go in-depth on the mechanics of each of his abilities and the interesting play opportunities they provide, and close by speaking a bit about my personal playstyle with Thresh during the laning phase.

Passive - Damnation

One of the more important things to note here is that Thresh's passive has 1900 range. This means that you can be in the river dropping wards and still have souls drop in the lane, within a reasonable distance. Don't be afraid to advance your vision coverage, as you don't need to fear missing any souls. However, the key mechanic with this passive is that you have to physically walk over the souls to collect them. I say this because there is currently a bug in the game where when a soul despawns, it will float towards Thresh and visually seem like he collected it, but if you're paying attention to your soul counter when this happens, you'll notice that the number doesn't actually increase. That being said, there will be times where picking up a soul might be too risky, as it would put you out of position or cause you to potentially take a lot of damage. In these scenarios, you can actually use Thresh's Dark Passage (we'll talk more about this later) to collect souls. Think of the lantern as a physical extension of Thresh's body. As long as the lantern's clickable area lands on the souls, it will gather them for you from a safe distance.

Q - Death Sentence

Although primarily seen as a crowd control skill with pick potential, Thresh's "hook", as it's commonly called, can also serve as a valuable repositioning tool. When you hook a champion, you must wait for 0.5 seconds before reactivating the ability, pulling you towards whomever you hooked. Many players don't realize that not only can you hook minions and monsters, but the reactivation also has no delay on those targets, meaning you can instantly pull yourself the moment it connects. This has a few useful applications. First, if you're desperately trying to run away from someone who's about to kill you, particularly in the jungle, just hook a monster inside a camp and fly away to safety by going over a wall. Due to the instant reactivation, you can quickly put a lot of distance between yourself and your pursuer. In laning, you can use this mechanic to surprise your enemies by using the hook in an unorthodox way: purposely hook a minion in order to quickly put yourself within melee range, then follow it up with a Flay and/or your ultimate, The Box.

If you're queued as a duo bot or you trust your ADC, you can also surprise people with hooks in another way. Pay attention to which minions are about to die, and whether your lane opponents are standing behind one of these minions. Right as the minion is about to go down, throw out your Death Sentence. If they weren't paying attention, your opponents can suddenly find themselves hooked when they thought they were safe behind a minion. While there are even more intricate mechanics behind Death Sentence, the ones mentioned here should help to kickstart your efforts towards improving your skills with Thresh.

W - Dark Passage

There's a lot of interesting mechanics behind Thresh's lantern as well. By this point, it probably goes without saying that the lantern brings allies to Thresh when they click it, but I'll mention it here just to be thorough. This gave rise to the "lantern ganks," where Thresh will walk forward in lane after tossing his lantern behind him, and then SURPRISE, the jungler comes flying in on the Thresh Express. You can use this concept to fake out your opponents, making them think someone is coming to support you when in reality, there may not be anyone there. This can help you alleviate pressure on your lane if you're being pushed in consistently, but it can also lull your opponents into a false sense of security. Do the lantern fakeout too many times, and eventually they'll stop believing it. This is the prime time to call for a gank and ensure that someone is behind the lantern next time.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there. As I mentioned earlier, one important aspect of Dark Passage is its ability to pick up souls for you from a safe distance. That being said, there's another mechanic involving the lantern that some players don't utilize. While serving as a good repositioning tool for allies, the lantern also provides a shield. This is where the screenshot above becomes important. Between Thresh and his lantern, you'll notice a blue-white tether line. This basically helps you to know exactly where your lantern is, and where allies will approach from if they use the lantern. Now, look a bit farther out. See that pale white circle? That circle represents the full range that Thresh can walk away from his lantern before it snaps back to him. Step over that line, and the lantern disappears from the ground, immediately placing the shield on Thresh. Seems simple enough, right? This is where a cool mechanic comes into play. If you do the above, while the shield persists on Thresh, the shield will also propagate onto the first ally you physically touch.

This allows you to essentially walk your shield to people in instances where you timed your lantern incorrectly or placed it somewhere out of reach for someone who might need it. Depending on the exact positioning of everyone in such a situation, you can give the endangered ally your shield by running over to them, potentially saving their life even after a bad lantern throw. To top things off, Dark Passage can also be used in combination with Death Sentence, allowing your ally to travel even farther distances, although this requires very precise timing to work properly. When done properly, your ally will travel from the lantern's location all the way to the champion, minion, or monster that Thresh is traveling towards.

E - Flay

For this ability, keeping track of your current cursor location is paramount. Flay will knock enemies towards your mouse location. Want to knock enemies away? Want to pull them back towards you? Both are possible, but only with the proper cursor positioning. Now for the cool parts. Flay will interrupt the animations of champions using any kind of movement ability, such as Tristana's Rocket Jump, Leona's Zenith Blade, or Shyvana's Dragon's Descent. When timed properly, you can knock enemies out of their travel path. In the case of Tristana's Rocket Jump, you pretty much just secured a kill on the enemy ADC, as instead of being far away from danger, she's now right next to you and slowed by a considerable amount. With Leona and Shyvana, Flay becomes a great disengage tool. For my specific examples, this keeps Shyvana from being able to jump into your team or Leona from locking you down with a follow-up stun. While you would still receive the root effect of Leona's Zenith Blade, the duration is short enough that she isn't able to close the gap and stun you, or anyone who may have been lined up behind you, with her Shield of Daybreak. This effectively shuts down a large part of Leona's engage for the next few seconds. With Flay mechanics in particular, timing is everything.

Image credit to PrincessKilvas

R - The Box

Thresh's ultimate is what makes his kit so synergized, due to the fact that each of the five walls can apply damage and the massive 99% slow, although it is important to note that a champion will only be damaged the first time they hit one of The Box's walls. The slow will still reapply, albeit for a shorter duration. But what makes his ultimate synergize his kit so well, you ask? The interplay with Thresh's Death Sentence and Flay. Depending on positioning, you can Flay multiple people into The Box. While only one enemy champion will receive the damage and slow, the chances of the others running into a wall afterwards are quite high. Additionally, you can pull enemies into one of the walls with Death Sentence. While The Box is a static object on the ground, Thresh's ability to use the rest of his kit in a way that maximizes the effect of his ultimate puts him on a higher tier than several other supports in the game.

My Personal Laning Style

I play a very aggressive Thresh during laning. My goal from the start is to secure that first blood, by any means necessary. I do this by utilizing mostly utility masteries, running flat attack damage runes, and always taking Ignite. Why do I do this? I like to maximize on the passive provided by Thresh's Flay. This causes his next auto attack to do additional magical damage based on how long he waits between auto attacks. As soon as the color indicator turns red, I go up for an auto on an enemy champion. This allows me to do large chunks of damage through auto attack harassment, and once they reach the THRESHold (see what I did there?) of about 50% HP, one good hook and an Ignite will get myself or the ADC that first blood we're after. My target preference will change depending on the duo matchup. If it's a shorter range ADC like Vayne or Graves, I'll focus my autos on them. On the other hand, if it's a melee support who has no chance to return any harass, then they become my target for constant attacks.

This particular playstyle, along with using the mechanics that I described in this article, have allowed me to not only become very comfortable playing Thresh, but has also caused my ladder rank to increase. I firmly believe that if you're looking to increase your elo, Thresh is a very solid support choice for that purpose. For those who agree with me, I hope that you've found this article educational in some way, and that you can turn this knowledge into positive results. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you on Summoner's Rift!

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