Thresh Support

Thresh support has always been selected in the professional scene as he offers many forms of peels, escapes, and CC. Thresh has a very high skill cap, as a player has to learn animation timings, predicting enemy movements, and those of teammates. With the nerfs to thresh (Patch 4.13), mainly affecting his team fight phase, he can still dominate in lane.

Even though the most recent patch (4.13) hit thresh, he’s still viable in the current meta due to his utility and what he offers to his bot lane as well as his team.

Image courtesy of inkinesss

Patch 4.13 and how it affected Thresh

The two main nerfs/changes to Thresh in patch 4.13 were to his Dark Passage (Lantern) and his ultimate “The Box”. The change to Dark Passage means that it only shields one ally as well as Thresh himself. This means that Thresh can no longer provide a large shield over 200 hp to each ally, as its limited to only one. The changes to his ultimate “The Box” mean that the total damage output possible from Thresh have been decreased. Damage is only dealt with the first wall of “The Box” being broken. Coupled with the fact the extra walls also only provide 50% slow duration also hurts Thresh a little as it reduces the time to easily catch out enemies.

To play a successful thresh support, a player needs to understand how each of his abilities work and use them to his/her advantage. All of his abilities offer some means of CC or method of escaping a bad fight.

A closer look at his abilities

Death Sentence/Death Leap

Thresh’s Q ability is Death Sentence/Death leap. This is his primary catch ability allowing for a team to easily follow up as well as setting up an easy Q-E combo to keep an enemy champion CC’d making for an easy kill. A player must learn the animation travel time for this ability, as there is a slight delay from cast time (0.5s) to time the animation starts. This can make it a very difficult skillshot to land due to the time difference and the ability for an enemy to simply move out of the way.

This is where a Thresh player must learn to predict movements. If the hook lands, the player should take a step back as it will drag the enemy champion closer as well as stunning them. To top it off, the player can then re-activate the ability to travel to the “hooked” champion. This early guarantees an easy flay to apply even more CC to the enemy.

Dark Passage

Thresh’s W ability is Dark Passage. This is where he can either make big offensive plays as well as provide a defensive escape for his team. This ability can also be used to collect souls but personally I believe this is a waste as the cool down for it is quite long starting at 22 seconds at level 1. This abilities allows the movement of an allied champion to effectively jump to thresh within a 1500 unit area from the center of the lantern.

Offensively this can allow a jungler to quickly enter a fight and on the defensive side, it can allow an ally to escape a bad situation by teleporting them 1500 units away from the enemy. (This includes getting through walls to escape). A secondary trait of this is to offer a shield to one teammate. This can easily tilt the tide of a 2v2 battle in bot lane as any shield is better than no shield.

Flay

This ability is one of the most important abilities on thresh as you can choose the direction of this ability either push enemies towards or away from you. This ability allows a thresh player to push someone towards them or even push enemies off an ally. Flay is one of the best tools to peel enemies off your ADC as it also applies a 1 second slow. Flay is also paired with Q in either order. If Death Sentence lands, and is activated a follow up Flay can also deal more damage as well as push an enemy closer to your team.

If used first, it can make landing a death sentence much easier nearly guaranteeing a stun/catch on the enemy. Many challenger tier thresh players will often flash flay enemies, and immediately follow up with a Q for the CC. The passive ability of flay applies more damage to Thresh’s auto attacks when not attacking enemies for extended amounts of time. If used correctly it can also disrupt dashes and other escape abilities that may be used by enemies.

The Box

Thresh’s ultimate ability is another form of solid crowd control as the first enemy to touch the walls of “The Box” are slowed for 99% for 2 seconds, while if other enemies break the other walls will be sowed for 50%. This ability has both great offensive and defensive capabilities. Offensively it can trap people inside as they don’t want to take damage/be slowed or allow for easy follow up from your team/yourself with CC. Defensively it can often force the enemy to disengage as the slow will allow you and you team to escape.

In Conclusion:

The key to playing a good Thresh is practicing a lot and being able to predict enemy movements. He has a very high skill cap as timing is everything with him. Some things to keep in mind is that Thresh’s flay increases his auto attack damage when he does not auto attack for extended periods of time. This makes it a great ability to harass with. It also allows for plays to be made during the early laning phase such as a quick level 2 engage with a Death Sentence/Flay combo. Some other tips to thresh, is to work on good lantern placement by thinking where is my ally going to be by the time I cast it.

Tip: Many people in the heat of the battle forget what lantern can do, so reminding them at the start of the match and before big engages can be helpful.

Late game landing your Death Sentence is crucial as it will probably be your team’s primary source of engage.

With a kit designed for catching enemies, and allowing for easy follow up, thresh is a very potent support that is a force to be reckoned with. If played well, he has the potentially to carry games by making big plays, whether it assisting your jungler in getting that sneaky Baron steal, or even just dominating in lane with an all in style of play. The best tip I can offer to players looking to get good at Thresh, is to play him a lot to learn his animations, and watch the pros play him.
Best of luck on the Fields of Justice