Overview

Being adept at Thresh is a necessary tool for anyone seeking to understand the support role. The pressure he exerts in lane, his ability to easily manipulate teamfights and the unique engage/escape mechanism built into his lantern makes Thresh a powerful presence in the bot lane.

Strengths - There is no point in the game where Thresh does not have the potential to be incredibly influential. From level 1 his Death Sentence (Q) is a great skill locking down and repositioning a single enemy target, making them more vulnerable to assault by your team. Additionally, Thresh can reactivate his Q on a hooked target to use Death Leap (Q), which propels him into his target, ideally positioning him to affect his target with his other abilities. Dark Passage (W) can save a teammate in peril or be used to surprise an enemy by bringing in reinforcements from out of the Fog of War. Flay (E) both provides additional damage on-hit and allows you to frequently disrupt and displace multiple enemies at a time, making Thresh both a teamfight hazard and a difficult target to trade with individually, and The Box (R) creates a massive area hazard, slowing and damaging multiple enemies. True to his character, Thresh excels at tormenting his opponents with damage, crowd control, kill denial and stacking the odds against his opponents. Additionally, because Thresh's power is based in utility rather than damage, there is never an instance, even when behind, where Thresh doesn't have the ability to significantly impact the flow of a game.

Weaknesses - Thresh's greatest drawback is arguably his very high skillfloor. Every aspect of Thresh's kit is a form of skillshot, requiring both precise timing and aim to be effective. If you are not able to consistantly land hooks, execute flays, place lanterns and utilize Boxes AND have the presence of mind to know when doing these things would be the most effective, then it will be hard to find success with Thresh.
Additionally, it is ironic that a champion that is so frontloaded with crowd control of every kind is also so susceptible to it. Thresh is very easy to catch and punish with even a small slow or root, either by making him waste a summoner or another crucial cooldown. While there are a few creative ways around this weakness (to be covered in a later section); because Thresh is most useful assisting his team, when he is alone he is significantly more vulnerable.

Runes

Greater Mark of Armor (9) (+8.2 Armor) - Thresh has 16 base armor (tied for 11th lowest base armor with 11 other champions, all of which are mages) and uniquely gains 0 armor per level. While this is not a problem at later levels due to the bonus stats his passive provides, the early game is harder with the marked lack of defensive stats (At level 1 with no souls/items Thresh is tied with Lux for 3rd lowest total armor, and at level 2 has the lowest of any champion). Because of the significant amount of physical damage you are likely to encounter laning against an ADC, as well as an enemy support who will more than likely harass you with a few autoattacks, an early boost to your armor will make you much sturdier.

Greater Seal of Health (9) (+72 Health) - Thresh seeks to skirmish frequently and at length with the enemy bot lane, creating advantages for his ADC by wearing out the enemy duo lane, bringing them low enough to create kill pressure and eventually snowballing the lane through fear and kills, but to do that you need to be a wall behind which your ADC can deal damage. Early HP allows you to absorb more damage and justify any early resistances you purchase.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist (9) (+27 Magic Resist at level 18) - Thresh passive gains armor and ability power as he collects souls, which gives him a late game advantage when it comes to itemizing against physical damage, but this leaves him relatively vulnerable to magic damage, making magic resist of particular importance. You can exploit a trend in League of Legends that allows you to put off itemization against magical damage because, since most magic damage comes from champion abilities and abilities take levels and therefore time to earn, magic resistance as a stat is a less immediate need. Because of this trend, you can also take advantage of the fact that scaling glyphs yield a higher total amount of magic resist than their flat counterparts.

Greater Quintessence of Health Regeneration (3) (+8.1 Health per 5 seconds) - These runes are mainly a countermeasure to offset the damage you take resulting from the frequent and prolonged skirmishes you initiate to gain early game lane superiority. Increased early game health regen allows you to shrug off both lesser forms of harrass and the damage you incur from trading with your lane opponents.

Masteries

OFFENSE: 0 - While Thresh has a decent amount of damage built into his kit, it is more effiective to emphasize the tank and utility aspects of his kit than it is to try to create a third strength at the cost of the full potential of his two primary strengths.

DEFENSE: 16 - Going about halfway into the Defense tree allows Thresh to play with a more diverse array of defense mechanisms, as well as some bonus stats that will help him throughout the game.
- Block (1/2) - Flat damage reduction early on is a great substitute for the base armor that Thresh lacks. Additionally this particular mastery synergizes well with the passive flat autoattack reduction of Doran's Shield, one of the best starting items for Thresh.
- Recovery (2/2) - Bonus health regeneration increases Thresh's ability to tolerate lane harass and heal off the damage incurred during skirmishes.
- Enchanted Armor (2/2) - In addition to the bonus resistances that Thresh will be building throughout the game to cement his position as a tanky initiator and peeler, the bonus armor collected from the souls Thresh harvests which mean, at 0.75 armor per soul, 1 bonus armor is granted per 27 souls.
- Veteran's Scars (3/3) - EXTRA extra health further justifies the resistances granted by your runes, masteries and the items that you purchase. It also makes you a beefier target.
- Oppression (1/1) - This mastery reduces dealt to Thresh by targets affected by movement impairing crowd control, a type of crowd control that Thresh is loaded with. Additionally, because two of Thresh's crowd control abilities are area-of-effect, he can reap the benefits of this mastery by procing it on multiple targets he initiates on.
- Juggernaut (1/1) - This mastery gives a scaling aspect to the relatively large amounts of health that Thresh will be purchasing.
- Hardiness (3/3) - A fairly simple mastery, this grants more armor to correct the deficiency that Thresh has built into his early game to help you endure laning phase.
- Resistance (3/3) - Similar to the Hardiness mastery, this grants a few extra points of resistances to help

UTILITY: 17 - There are a lot of masteries in the first two thirds of the Utility tree that give Thresh a distinct early game advantage, as well as provide other miscellaneous benefits.
- Phasewalker (1/1) - A full second saved on recalling allows you to return to base faster and get back to lane with new items more quickly. It increases your chances of survival if you are forced to stealth recall in enemy territory.
- Meditation (3/3) - Thresh is very reliant on his abilities to be effective in lane skirmishes. His abilities are relatively expensive when you consider his mana pool, so having some extra mana regeneration will help mitigate the cost of his abilities if you are forced to use them frequently.
- Summoner's Insight (3/3) - A 10% reduction to your summoner spell cooldowns is a huge advantage throughout the game. Considering the very lengthy cooldowns of some of these spells, a 10% reduction shaves off quite a bit of the long wait inbetween uses. For example, 3 points in Summoner's Insight reduces the cooldown of Flash by 30 seconds, granting you an extra use of the spell every 10 minutes (if used immediately off cooldown). Flash and other summoner spells are crucial initiating and teamfighting tools for Thresh, so having them available more often is a benefit that is worth the 3 mastery points..
- Alchemist (1/1) - This mastery increases the active duration of any potions you may use, granting 15 extra health from health potions and 10 extra mana from mana potions (and more if you have a Spirit Visage or Chalice of Harmony (respectively) in your inventory). While the benefits of the mastery itself are relatively meagre to some of the other masteries, spending a single point on this mastery gives you access to the powerful Culinary Master mastery.
- Culinary Master (1/1) - This mastery converts any health potions you purchase into Total Biscuits of Rejuvination, a restoration item that, when consumed, immediately grants 20 hp and 10 mana. This new item, combined with the Alchemist mastery, makes your health potions much more potent.
- Greed (3/3) - In a role that characteristically sacrifices minions (the main source of income for most champions) to his lane partner, it is good to have a backup source of income, which this mastery provides. Thresh is somewhat item reliant; if you plan on wading into teamfights to crowd control groups of enemies it is best if you do so with a number of defensive items to withstand their retaliation. Additionally, this mastery acts as a gate to the beneficial Scavenger mastery.
- Scavenger (1/1) - Even more gold! This mastery is interesting as it scales off of the ability of your lane partner: the better they last hit the richer YOU get! This mastery also synergizes somewhat with the gold generating passive of Ancient Coin items, another good early game item for Thresh, granting you 1 additional gold if an allied champion last hits the minion.
- Wealth (1/1) - 40 extra gold at the start of the game allows you to diversify your starting item choices. The array of options available to you will be covered later on in the guide in depth.

Summoner Spells

Flash - A must-have for Thresh players everywhere, it should not be surprising that the most popular summoner spell in the game is recommended as a necessity for this champion. Flash provides you with an additional escape opportunity if and when it is needed, but it is also a very potent form of initiation. Flash has very powerful interactions with Dark Passage (W) and Flay (E) that will be covered in the"Skill Mastery" sections of the aforementioned abilities.

Exhaust - The usefulness of this summoner spell can not be understated. It is arguably one of the most powerful summoner spells in the game at all phases of the game, and I find that a lot of players understimate its power. It negates AD Carries and is the bane of assassins everywhere and, to a role focused primarily on the protection and facilitation of favorable fights for his team, it is an invaluable tool.
Exhaust reduces the movement speed of its victim by 30%. This makes it a great tool is discouraging pursuers or closing the gap on fleeing enemies. The 30% attack speed reduction allows you to trade on equal or better terms with autoattack based champions like Vayne, Tryndamere or Kayle. The 10 point armor and magic resistance debuff makes every target squishier and more susceptible to damage in the window of time they are affected by exhaust. Additionally, the graphic paints a figurative target on the enemy, indicating to your teammates what targets they should consider paying attention to. Finally, the 40% reduction to all physical and magical damage dealt by this champion (arguably the best feature of this spell) hamstrings assassins, screwing them over particularly well if they self-initiate (Talon, Rengar, Katarina) or if their kit is reliant on dealing a large amount of damage during a specific window of time (Zed, Ahri). This is usually my preferred secondary summoner spell, as it allows me to temporarily remove threats from teamfights that I may not be able to otherwise control.

Ignite - Ignite is the perfect spell to take with you if you think you can use it to get the early game kill advantage. Taking it against weak early game ADC's like Kog'Maw or Vayne or squishy, immobile supports like Sona, Soraka, or Janna is a good idea because getting kills in the early game gives you more than a gold advantage, but also an experience and pressure advantage. Ignite is a great summoner spell for snowballing, but its relative usefulness falls off later in the game.

Skill Order

Each aspect of Thresh's Kit has unique strengths that grow more and more powerful as they are leveled up, making a definitive skill order a difficult thing to recommend. Therefore this section will cover each logical skill order and describe the advantages and disadvantages of each iteration. NOTE: Every iteration assumes you are putting one skill point into The Box (R) at levels 6, 11 and 16.

Max Q by level 9, W by 13, E by 18 with a point in E at level 2 - This is one of the most offensively-based skill orders. This path assumes that you are going to be making frequent, short-lived initiations in lane with Death Sentence (Q) that are followed up with a Flay (E), extending the window for harass from your ADC/Team and then negating any retaliation from the enemy with the shield from Dark Passage (W) as an afterthought. This also allows the cooldowns of Death Sentence (Q) and Dark Passage (W), the two non-ultimate abilities that have their base cooldowns reduced per level, to be at their lowest around the mid game, where many teamfights over objectives will be fought, allowing you to maximize the crowd control you deal during them.

Max Q by level 9, E by 13, W by 18 with a point in E at level 2 - This is another offensively based skill order. This path also allows you to make frequent initiations with Death Sentence (Q) onto the enemy, but increases the damage dealt by your other offensive spell, Flay (E), increasing the overall damage dealt by your initiation combo in exchange for less protection against retaliation. This is one good skill path to take if you want to frequently trade with the enemy duo lane because you are confident that you and your ADC will outtrade them.

Max W by level 9, Q by 13, W by 18 with a point in Q or E at level 1 and the other at level 2 - This is a defensive, conservative skill order that maximizes both the defensive benefits of the shield as quickly as possible and the cooldowns of Death Sentence (Q) and Dark Passage (W). This skill order assumes that you will be trading less often and, in exchange, seeing less frequent but more potent trades with the enemy lane. This skill order is the lowest damage of any skill order, but to make up for it is offers the most protection for your ADC (in the form of shields and lantern rides) and still allows you to have the most hard crowd control available to you as early as possible. THis is also an ideal build if you can anticipate your jungler helping your lane frequently, as having Dark Passage (W) off of cooldown so often allows you to facilitateyour own ganks, a strategy covered later on in the guide.

Max E by level 9, Q by 13, W by 18 with a point in Q/E at level 1 - This is an offensive skill order that maximizes the poke damage provided by Flay (E)'s passive. This maximizes Thresh's potential for sustained damage rather than burst with his initiations, as with every level the AD ratio on the passive increases. This skill order allows you to wear down your opponents without requiring a hard initiation. Simply walking up, autoattacking them, letting your passive recharge and then hitting them again will deal a surprising amount of damage to your foes. This skill order also maximizes the amount of AoE damage Thresh deals, therefore if you anticipate many early teamfights, you may want to consider this skill path.

Skill Mastery: Damnation (Passive)

"Ever seen your soul? Would you like to?"

Thresh's passive Damnation randomly spawns souls on the field on the corpses of fallen enemy minions, jungle camps, epic monsters (Dragon and Baron) and enemy champions that Thresh can walk up to and collect for bonus armor and ability power. Souls are luminescent, floating amorphous blobs, with allied Thresh souls being blue and enemy souls appearing as red. In a mirror matchup, one Thresh cannot collect the souls generated by the passive of the enemy Thresh. Each soul is worth 0.75 armor and ability power. Small minions and the lesser monsters in jungle camps have a 33% soul drop rate, while Seige (cannon) Minions, Super Minions, large jungle monsters, epic monsters and enemy champions always drop a soul on death. Nunu drops two souls on death.

Is important to remember that souls have a brief lifespan of 8 seconds, and that your enemies can see any souls that have dropped as a result of your passive as long as you are also visible to them. Some of your smarter enemies may use this knowledge to predict your movements and funnel harass into that area when you attempt to collect a soul. Because of this, it is important to know how to harvest souls quickly and efficiently, and being mindful enough to not risk your life harvesting a soul that will put you too much in harm's way. Souls have a collection range, meaning that you do not need to walk directly on top of a soul to harvest it. Because of this, you can approach a soul from multiple angles and collect it as long as you are in range of it at some point. Finally, if there is a cluster of souls out of reach that you truly MUST have, you can throw your lantern near them and it will absorb souls in roughly the same AoE that Thresh himself will.

Harvesting souls is both a fun minigame built into Thresh's kit that gives you something to do when not harassing or defending and an integral part of Thresh's kit, as the bonus armor from the souls replaces the armor per level that every other champion gets, and the bonus ap empowers all of his abilities. Therefore you should be dilligent in collecting souls, as their cumulative benefit pays dividends during the mid- and late-game.

Skill Mastery - Death Sentence/Death Leap (Q)

"Going somewhere?"

After a 0.5 second wind-up, Thresh throws out his scythe in a line and forms a tether with the first enemy hit, dealing 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+50% AP) magic damage and stunning it for 1.5 seconds.
Upon hitting an enemy, Death Sentence's current cooldown is reduced by 3 seconds. While the tether persists, Thresh cannot attack and he will periodically tug on the tether, each time pulling the target a short distance toward himself. After 0.5 seconds, or instantly if he hooks a minion or monster, Thresh can reactivate the ability to use Death Leap, pulling himself to the bound enemy. This removes the stun but allows Thresh to attack again. Thresh loses the ability to activate Death Leap when the tether breaks.

Death Sentence is the ability that facilitates the rest of Thresh's kit, and it's design sets it apart from other similar abilities due to it's incredible versatility.
The most obvious use of Death Sentence (Q) is hooking an enemy champion and pulling him towards yourself. This simultaneous stunning and repositioning of an enemy target makes them much easier for your team to initiate on. Reactivating to perform Death Leap (re-Q) also positions yourself in top of your target, making them immediately vulnerable to Flay (E) and placing them at the center of The Box (R).
It is not always necessary to perform Death Leap on every successful Death Sentence. Death Sentence can also be used to discourage pursuit from afar. Landing the 1.5 second stun on an enemy pursuing a teammate will give your ally the chance to escape or retaliate. It can also be cast over a wall onto an enemy, pulling them flush with the wall and setting up champions with terrain-specific abilities like Vayne's Condemn or Poppy's Heroic Charge.

Finally, Death Sentence can act as a lifeline for the otherwise immobile support champion. Wherever you are, consider what jungle camps around you are still live. If you are caught in a bad position and there isn't enough time to recall, cast your Q in the direction of a jungle camp or epic monster and reactivate it immediately to perform Death Leap, pulling you over the wall and making it much harder for your enemies to continue chasing you. This trick is helped by a mechanism build into Death Sentence that allows it to be reactivated immediately when cast on non-champion targets. Use this to your advantage and make a swift escape! This trick has saved my life countless times.

Death Sentence is an incredibly nuanced ability, because much of its power lies outside of the damage and crowd control it inflicts. Having the ability off cooldown, or even acting as though it is, is a great psychological threat to your opponents. As its name implies Death Sentence puts its target in great peril, and your enemies will instinctively go out of their way to avoid it, staying behind their minions or outside of its cast range. You can use this to your advantage by positioning yourself between your minions and them, zoning then and denying them gold or even experience depending on how threatened they are by you. Be careful to not overextend when doing this, however, as you may open yourself up to minion damage, counter-harass, or a gank from the enemy jungler. Measured aggression is key when zoning an enemy with Thresh, because while he is strong, he is by no means immortal.

Another element of Death Sentence you should take advantage of is another mindgame: how you posture yourself when casting the ability. Death Sentence has a half-second cast time: during this windup, Thresh faces the direction he was last walking in, but when he finally casts the spell, Thresh turns to face the direction that the spell was cast. You can use this when fighting multiple enemies to psyche out an unsuspecting target. For example. if you walk towards an enemy Nami and you and your ADC, Ezreal begin attacking her, and the enemy Caitlyn comes to Nami's aid to counter-harass, making herself vulnerable in the process, you can seamlessly segue into an initiation onto Caitlyn by deliberately facing Nami when winding up your hook, but casting it in Caitlyn's direction, surprising her with an ability she may have anticipated was meant for Nami. This is an example of exerting psychological pressure on your opponent, which will slowly break them down and demoralize them, shattering their confidence in every future engagement they have against you. They should expect every move you make to be a threat, and every hook you land to be a literal Death Sentence.

Skill Mastery: Dark Passage (W)

"Poor lost souls."

Thresh throws his lantern to the target location where it remains for up to 6 seconds. For the next 6 seconds, the first ally to come near the lantern (even while Thresh is holding it) gains a shield that absorbs 60 / 100 / 140 / 180 / 220 (+40% AP) damage for up to 4 seconds. If an ally right-clicks the lantern, they will pick it up and will be pulled to Thresh's location. If Thresh moves more than 1500-units away, the lantern will return to him. Allies can only receive the shield once per cast.

When you pick Thresh, you provide your team with a crucial lifeline through Dark Passage. Dark Passage is a two-way street, it requires a competant player on Thresh and educated, aware teammates to be useful, but with a coordinated team it is the ultimate tool for kill denial.

A surprisingly hard aspect to mastering Dark Passage is lantern placement. When throwing a lantern to a teammate in peril, you must consider things like minions, enemy champions, terrain, where they are most likely to be when the lantern falls, and what crowd control, if any, your teammate is under. Be aware that your teammates do NOT have to be standing directly on the lantern to grab it; a teammate that is close enough to the lantern to recieve a shield from it is close enough to grab it and fly to safety. While some changes have been made to make it a solid object of the battlefield and, therefore, harder to block, you must remember that throwing it into a crowd of enemy units just makes it an object among objects, and a fleeing teammate may be too panicked to click it correctly on the first try. You should try as hard as you can to place the lantern in an area where it is a distinct, accessible target for the cursor of your teammate.

While using the lantern to save teammates in peril is the most obvious situation to use such a tool, Dark Passage can also be used to quickly transport perfectly safe teammates from one area to another faster. If you are leaving base and your AD Carry is behind you, toss the lantern to them and return them to lane that much sooner. If your Red Buff has respawned and your jungler just finished the Golem camp, set him up with a lantern ride to his likely next destination (this also benefits you, since the souls from the slain jungle camp will be absorbed by the lantern). Finally, placing a lantern near a teamamate and running in a particular direction is a good nonverbal indicator to your teammate that they should follow you. I have done this many times, using the lantern to rally a stray teammate to help the team take Dragon, for example.

It must be mentioned that when you are offering a lantern ride to a teammate, safe or in peril, you must conside not just where they are, but also where they will end up. The lantern brings your teammates to your current location, which means you might not want to offer your lantern to a low health teammate if there ar enemies, minions or even aggrevated epic monsters nearby.

There are also many uses for the lantern outside of its primary "lantern ride" function. Dark Passage provides vision of wherever it is placed, and the long cast range makes it a prime tool for checking unwarded bushes or over walls. The shield it grants is fairly substantial, and is applied to the allied champion closest to the lantern, therefore it can be used to negate damage to an ally in a pinch, even if they do not necessarily need repositioning. Finally, the lantern is itself a targetable object, meaning that Jax can Leap Strike (Q) to it, Katarina can Shunpo (E) to it, Lee Sin can Safeguard (W) to it, and any champion can target it with teleport.

The incredible utility of Dark Passage is dampened slightly by the long cooldown (22-16 seconds at levels 1 and 5 respectively with 0% cooldown reduction) so it is imperative that the Thresh player know not just how to best use it, but also when, otherwise a crucial moment may arise where a teammate dies and you could have saved him, but Dark Passage was on cooldown. As with his other abilities, discretion is as valuable as mechanical prowess when trying to maximize the value of Dark Passage.

Skill Mastery: Flay (E)

"Round we go!"

PASSIVE: Thresh's basic attacks deal (# of Souls) + up to 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 / 200% AD bonus magic damage on each hit. This value is equal to the total number of Souls collected, plus a percentage of his attack damage based on the amount of time since his last attack.

ACTIVE: Thresh sweeps his chain in a broad line towards a target direction. Enemies hit take 65 / 95 / 125 / 155 / 185 (+40% AP) magic damage, are knocked in the same direction as the chains, and are slowed by 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40% afterwards for 1 second. Cast forward to push; cast backward to pull.

Flay is an ability that takes time to get used to at first, since it has different effects depending on the direction it is cast in, but mastering every aspect of Flay is crucial to getting the most out of Thresh's kit. Because there are two directions in which Flay can be cast, and because their effects differ so much, I will refer to them separately using the position of his target as a reference point: a "forward" Flay starts behind Thresh and moves towards his target, while a "backwards" Flay starts behind Thresh and moves away from his target.

The "forward" Flay differs from its counterpart in two ways: It has a slight windup due to the nature of the animation, and it is used primarily as a disengage tool. The forward Flay, after a delay, pushes enemies backwards while knocking them up and away from Thresh, applying a brief slow once they land. Because of the slight wind-up, this is the harder of the two versions of this ability to land. The upside is that the forward Flay has a great amount of use in interrupting abilities that use the champion themselves as the projectile for the attack. Winding up and landing a forward Flay onto a Leona using Zenith Blade (E) or a Fizz using Urchin Strike (Q) stops the champion dead in their tracks, cancelling the ability entirely. It is possible to interrupt Jarvan IV's E+Q "Flag and Drag" combo by lining up a forward Flay with the destination of the combo, a particularly easy thing to do since Jarvan IV will always finish his combo at his Demacian Standard. A more challenging but possible forward Flay interruption is Alistar's Headbutt (E). With flawless timing you will knock back Alistar mid-charge without being thrown backward by the ability. A forward Flay is one of the best methods of frustrating enemy initiation onto you or your team.

The "backwards" Flay, naturally, has the opposite strengths of it's counterpart: It affects the target instantly and excells at engaging a target or targets. The backwards Flay immediately pulls enemies closer to Thresh, knocking up up and towards Thresh, culminating in a brief slow. Because of the instantaneous nature of this sub-ability, it is great for catching enemies off guard, making them vulnerable to harass and setting them up for Thresh's other abilities. For example, flaying an enemy backwards and then immediately tossing a Death Sentence will greatly increase your chances of hitting the enemy with it. This is also the version of Flay ideal for interrupting channeled abilities like Katarina's Death Lotus (R) or Karthus' Requiem (R) because of how immediately it can stop these abilities in situations where time is of the essence.

A fairly low cooldown spell, Flay should be your main tool for enemy repositioning. Knowing how and when to use Flay correctly can mean the difference between a successful teamfight and an ace for the enemy, or a bad fight for your team and no fight at all.

Skill Mastery - The Box (R)

"No one can save them."

After a 0.75 second delay, Thresh summons 5 spectral walls around him that last up to 5 seconds. Enemy champions that touch a wall take 250 / 400 / 550 (+100% AP) magic damage and are slowed by 99% for 2 seconds, but break the wall. Once one wall is broken, the remaining walls deal no damage and apply half the slow duration. An enemy cannot be affected by multiple walls simultaneously.

The Box creates a massive obstruction around Thresh, damaging and slowing enemies that collide with it. While it has substantial base damage, scaling and slows, it's effect greatly dminishes after the first wall is popped by an enemy. Because the restof Thresh's kit allows Thresh to reposition both himself and his enemies, it is easy for him to maximize the utility of his ult, both before and after it is deployed.

When learning to use The Box effectively, it is important to commit it's deploy range to memory, because one of the most powerful things you can do as Thresh is deploy your ult right onto your enemies. If you are familiar with Veigar, you can compare The Box to Event Horizon (Veigar's E), except cast immediately around you with you at its center. Knowing the cast range, as well as the delay (0.75 seconds for walls to spawn and become active) is crucial to knowing when your ult will and will not end up landing on an enemy. Thresh's ult is potent, but very short range, so if they are not trapped inside of it or significantly cc'd, it can end up missing entirely.

The Box has VERY high base damage and AP scaling for an ability on a support champion even at level 1, therefore using it to start lane skirmishes is a very good ideal in almost all instances as it can take chunks out of the enemy's health bars and simultaneously peels for your adc and prevents your enemy from fleeing. It is very easy to create advantages in lane skirmishes and teamfights by activating The Box on a squishy target.

While The Box is a very strong chunk of damage and crowd control, it is cemented in the area in which it is cast, therefore what is keeping an enemy who has already popped one wall from just walking away from it? The answer is YOU! Using Death Sentence and Flay to push and pull enemies into multiple walls of your ultimate allows you to get more use out of a single cast of The Box.

The Box is not a purely offensive ability, as a large AoE crowd control cage, it has just as many possible defensive uses. If your team is behind or low on health and is being pursued by the enemy, activating The Box in a jungle corridor or in the river creates a massive obstacle that the enemy team must navigate in order to continue pursuit. It is often the job of the support to screen incoming enemies while the rest of the team attempts Dragon or Baron. Placing The Box between the incoming enemy team and your own team greatly discourages an initiation onto your team, or forces them to find another point of ingress.

Thresh's ult does not have a spectacularly long cooldown (150/140/130 seconds) and has the ability to greatly impact the game, therefore you should use it frequently to stack advantages for your team.

Continue reading Part 2 here!