This is a guide to improve your Thresh game.

Thresh is such a good support that some consider that even if he had 0 damage on his autoattacks or abilities, he would still be viable due to the nature of his kit. His ability to peel for his carry, secure picks and make some flashy plays make him one of the most played supports every meta. I am a level 7 Thresh (EUW: Limit) and I enjoy playing Thresh a lot because he is just so fun to play, due to his skillshots and his Death Sentence being so satisfying to land, especially when you get that blind Q onto a Teemo hidden in a brush, those are the moments you play for.

Ability Overview

As Thresh support, we want to be peeling for the carry and securing picks. First of all, what is peeling? Peeling is the concept of keeping other champions away from your carry, usually through hard CC. Thresh is one of the best supports to peel within the game, as three of his four abilities are Crowd Control and the other one gives a shield and can act like a free flash. Let's have a look at how these abilities are used to peel and secure picks on the enemy team. 

Passive - Damnation

Thresh doesn't gain armor per level like other champions, instead he gains armor from collecting souls dropped when Champions, Large minions or Epic monsters (Drake, Baron). He also gains ability power from collecting these souls. This means that Thresh has infinitely scaling armor and ability power. This makes him very tanky late game, and allows him to do extra damage because of his E passive scaling with this passive.

Tip: You can throw your lantern to souls which you cant reach due to the enemy's position, and the lantern will take the souls.

Q - Death Sentence

This ability is Thresh's main form of CC, a hook that stops enemy champions doing anything for 1.5 seconds and if reactivated can pull Thresh into the champion. This is a very useful ability for peeling as if an assassin jumps on your carry you can hook them and stop them doing anything, giving your carry time to get away, or get enough damage off to kill them. The most common rotation of abilities to use with Thresh is to hook an enemy, Q again to leap to the enemy and then flay them away or use R. If you land a Q on an enemy champion it reduces the cooldown of Death Sentence by 3 seconds, with 45% CDR this means that Thresh has the potential to Q every 2 seconds.

Tip: If you find yourself running from the enemy team through the jungle and you know a camp is up, Q over the wall to hit the jungle creep, and reactivate to hop over the wall and escape.

W - Dark Passage

Dark Passage is so very important, if used well acts like a free flash. This ability has many uses, it could be used if a team mate positions themselves badly, or needs to get to an objective faster, or to save someone who has been jumped on without backup. The shield it gives is also a lifeline at times, especially in lane where it can be used to swing trades in your favor, negating some of the damage done to yourself and your carry.

Tip: If you are running towards a fight and can see your team are going to get some kills before you get there, throw your lantern onto someone to get some cheeky free assists.

E - Flay

Thresh's other form of Hard CC, and a very underappreciated passive ability. Flay provides a small knockup and knockback, and enemies caught in it's forgiving range also get slowed for a second. Flay is useful for preceding hooks, as the enemies will be easier to Q when slowed, but also useful after hooking, whether flaying away so they don't get to the carry, or in flaying closer to your tower/ your team. I highly recommend starting E at level 1 as it allows early trades to swing in your favor due to the amount of damage Thresh can get off on the enemy ADC because of Flay's passive. If you hide in the brush until your E passive is at max damage, then come out and auto the adc once, it will chunk them hard early game.

Tip: Flay interrupts a lot of important dashes if timed right, including (but not limited to) Leona's E, Lee Sin's reactivated Q, Tristana's W and Jarvan IV's Q.

R - The Box

This ultimate ability has the biggest slow in the game at 99% for 2 seconds, nearly forcing them to stop still. The Box creates a pentagon around Thresh, if one wall is broken it collapses and the others stay up, but only slow for 1 second rather than 2. The key to this ability is forcing the enemy into one of the five walls, as they can flash out making your ult ineffectual, you may have got their flash, but you want the kill(s). I've found the best way to do this is to flay them into the walls as soon as you've pressed R. As it is just a slow, and not hard CC, it will not proc the Courage of the Colossus keystone mastery unlike the E (knockup/knockback) and Q (stun).

Tip: If someone on the enemy team is in statis from Guardian Angel, position yourself and use The Box so that when they exit status they will instantly hit a wall and recieve the slow, usually guaranteeing the kill.

Skill Leveling

R > Q > W > E

As with the majority of League of Legends champions, we want to max our ultimate ability first (R). This will make the walls do more damage and reduce the cooldown of the ability per level.

With this build I like to max Q second to reduce the cooldown of Death Sentence, thus creating more opportunities to catch out the enemy team.

Thirdly I max W, as the escapes and ganks it can provide are invaluable. Levelling this ability reduces it's cooldown and increases the size of the shield it gives.

Although I start E at level one (for the early poke in lane) I max it last as I find myself using Q and W more, and therefore is better to have those on cooldown sooner. Levelling up this ability gives extra damage on Thresh's auto attacks and reduces the cooldown of it's active.

Runes

3 x Armor Quintessences providing +12.8 Armor
9 x Attack Damage Marks providing +8.5 Attack Damage
9 x Health Seals providing +72 Health
9 x Magic Resist Glyphs providing +12.1 Magic Resist

The Armor Quintessences are useful as the majority of damage you'll be taking in lane is from the ADC, armor will reduce the damage you take from them.

The Health Seals allow you to stay a bit longer in lane, tank a bit more damage and use less health potions.

The Magic Resist Glyphs are pretty standard glyphs to go, just in case the jungler or mid laner ganks your lane, and later on in teamfights you have that bit extra resistance.

The Attack Damage Marks are the ones probably raising a few eyebrows, but they are so useful on Thresh, as his auto attacks are actually ranged, so you'll have more opportunities to auto attack the enemy ADC or support than if you were a melee support. These marks, in addition to Thresh's E passive, allow Thresh to inflict a decent chunk of damage with each auto attack.

Masteries

I'll go over some of the Masteries I've chosen, explaining why I think they're important. Remember you can personalise them, this is just my recommended Mastery Page. 0/12/18

For the Keystone mastery I go with Courage of the Colossus (CoC). This is very strong because 2 of Thresh's abilities can proc (activate) it, his E and his Q (knockup/knockback and stun respectively). CoC currently gives a shield of 10 +10 per level +7% of your maximum health for each nearby enemy for 4 seconds when your hard CC an enemy champion. In English, you get a shield for hard CCing a champion, which is bigger the more enemy champions are nearby. It should be noted that it does have a 30 second cooldown, so watch out for that if you're re-engaging quickly.

Bandit in the Cunning tree gives a little extra gold, which is pretty standard as a support as you don't get kills/CS.

At the second level of the Resolve tree i've gone for Siegemaster, this helps when you've been shoved under your own turret and/or are defending, giving you a bit of extra armor and MR to help you if the enemy team dive you. With the amount of CC you have in combination with this mastery you should be able to at least get a kill if an enemy champion dives you.

Insight (4th level Resolve tree) gives you a 15% reduction on Summoner spells, meaning you can go for that flash Q 15% faster and get even more ignites off on their carries.

Summoner Spells

The Summoner Spells I'd take are Ignite and Flash.

Flash is an obvious choice and nearly mandatory on most champions in the game. With Thresh, Flash can also be used to try and surprise the enemy team by flashing then using your abilities, whether flashing away and throwing back your lantern to save your teammate a flash or flashing into the enemy team to set up the perfect R.

I take Ignite over exhaust for the kill pressure in lane, them amount of damage you can do early is made even more by ignite, and makes sure those 10hp survivors don't survive. Ignite also reduces healing on the ignited target, so if you use in on the adc before they heal or their support heals them, they'll heal for less than what they were anticipating.

Core Items

In my opinion Thresh does best with Cooldown Reduction (CDR) items. The maximum CDR you can get is 45% with 5 points in the Intelligence mastery in the Cunning tree, but with how strong the Courage of the Colossus keystone is, it means that unfortunately we won't be getting that extra 5%, as we can't go that far down the Cunning tree. Below i'm going to give some examples of what I like to build on Thresh as of right now (6.23), these are subject to change following later patches and people have their different preferences, but these are my ideas for what works well with the Chain Warden.

Relic Shield (into Face of the Mountain)

Always been strong with Thresh, but be careful, as Thresh's auto attacks count as ranged attacks and therefore it's slightly harder to get your stacks off on minions. Face of the Mountain provides yet another shield that can be used on yourself and an ally to give you a lifeline and possibly enough time to escape.

Kindlegem first back

I like to get this as a first back item, as it's only 800g and gives you more health and, most importantly, 10% CDR. More CDR = More Qs = More dead Teemos Enemies.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity > Mobility boots

Rush these after you've got Kindlegem, as they provide another 10% CDR which in my opinion, is a little more useful than the out of combat move speed. You can take Mobis if you're building Frozen Heart though. Getting Ionian Boots and Kindlegem for 1700g is a very cheap and early way to get 20% early CDR.

Sightstone

3 wards, 4 when you upgrade to Ruby Sightstone. Essential on supports, not much else to say. I usually get after Ionian boots, as the warding trinket usually works well for me until then. When you buy this item, swap out your yellow trinket ward for Sweeping Lens as you can only place 3 wards at a time anyway, and then upgrade that at level 9.

Control Ward

The new pink ward, necessary at all times as a support. If you have 75g and space in your inventory you should have at least one of these wards in there.

Final Item Choices

Redemption.

A new item and currently a very strong item on any support, Thresh isn't exempt. The passive increases Thresh's shielding by 10% and the active gives Thresh the ability to heal! Of course also gives a cool 10% CDR, think you guys are getting the theme.

Banner of command? or Frozen Heart.

Banner of command is a nice item i sometimes get when i don't need the extra CDR from Frozen Heart, as it would be a waste of gold. It's active allows you to 'Supercharge' a non Super Minion making them stronger and do more damage. Use the active on a Cannon Minion in either top or bot lane whilst everyone is grouped in mid and it'll slowly push the wave. It also builds out of glacial shroud which is a good item to get on Thresh after or before Sightstone, depending on your situation. Banner of Command gives another 10% CDR, adding up to the max of 40% with this item, Redemption, Face of the Mountain (Kindlegem) and Ionian boots.

Frozen Heart is still a very good item on Thresh, especially if you have a build with not much CDR in as it gives 20% on it's own. Frozen Heart gives a nice bit of Armor and Mana, and it's passive slows the attack speed of nearby champions by 15% which is good against most ADCs but other champions too, such as Tryndamere and Xin Zhao.

Knight's Vow

Another new support item and another strong item on Thresh. At this point money would be wasted going into items that contain more CDR, and this item's stats and passive synergise well with Thresh as it provides Health, Armor and Base Health Regeneration. Knight's Vows active ability 'connects' you to an ally of your choosing, "If your Partner is nearby, heal for 12% of the damage your Partner deals to champions and redirect 12% of the damage your Partner takes from champions (after reductions) to you as true damage.". It also grants 40 armor when near your partner, as well as 15% bonus movespeed when moving towards them. As Thresh is naturally tanky, this item synergises very well with him.

Ruby Sightstone

You don't have to upgrade Sightstone into Ruby Sightstone until you feel like you need the extra ward and passive of Ruby Sightstone. The passive reduces cooldowns of active items, which would affect Redemption, Banner of Command and Face of the Mountain.

Control Ward

Yes I did put control ward twice. If you have inventory space it should have these in.

Example Full build:

Here we have a 40% CDR full build of Redemption, Ruby Sightstone, Banner of Command, Face of the Mountain, Ionian boots and Knight's Vow with the Oracle Alteration Trinket for clearing wards.

Laning

In lane as Thresh, I would recommend being aggressive. As Thresh's auto attacks are ranged, you should be able to poke the enemy ADC when they come up to farm and/or the support when they get into range. This is why I recommend starting E, as it's passive will give your auto attacks a bit more punch to chunk the enemy ADC/Support, and the flay will give you and your adc more time to get a few more auto attacks in. Try and stay in the brushes, if they aren't warded the enemy won't be able to see the wind-up of your Q, making it harder for them to dodge.

Ganking a lane with Thresh on is extra useful, as he can use his W to bring you a free dash into the fight and/or you can tower dive knowing his W is ready to pull you back to safety. You won't be gaining any armor per level, so try your best to collect the souls that the minions drop to gain that extra .75 Armor and AP; If you can't reach the souls without taking free damage then throw your lantern near to a clump of them to collect them from a distance. You can also use your W to facecheck, as it provides vision in it's radius.

When trading, make sure to pop ignite on the ADC early, so if they try and heal, or their support tries to heal them, the heals will be reduced and if they flash away with low hp you may just get the kill. You can drop the Lantern on yourself and your ADC when trading to negate some of the incoming damage for a second or too, making it hard for the enemy laners to actually win the trade.

Try to roam whenever you can, Thresh's Q and W allow for great ganks on mid lane, as a landed Death Sentence usually results in a secured kill. Your Lantern can be used to bring along your Jungler too.

Teamfighting

In teamfights you can stick by your carry, saving your abilities to peel for them and get your team out of sticky scrapes. A more proactive alternative I like to do, and you may be forced to do if your team has no engage, is to hook a high priority target (ADC, Mid Laner), follow the hook to the centre of their team and use The Box to keep the team in place (this is of course subjective your your/their team composition). Once you've used your ultimate and Flay, i recommend backing out towards your carry so you can protect and peel for them. Backing off also allows you to aid your team by throwing in your lantern to shield/get your allies to safety.

Conclusion

Thresh is the support that got me into playing supports; From being able to set up picks and peel for my team to landing that max range Q, he's just such a fun champion to play! I hope this guide convinced you to give him a try and maybe even try other supports too.

Just remember, Max CDR Thresh = Best Thresh.

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