New Champion Thresh Support

 

Introduction

Hello everyone. This is a day one Thresh guide and I am going to archive it later. Riot's official Thresh champion spotlight is very good for learning how to play the character as a support. It's a great learning tool because it actually shows him being effective and also gives you a plethora of ways to use Dark Passage. This "guide" is intended to compliment the official spotlight by explaining some finer details that Riot doesn't really talk about in the champion spotlight and also give item suggestions.
Please be sure to watch the champion spotlight first before reading the rest of the guide as the guide will refer to it multiple times.

Runes Explained

Because of Damnation, Thresh gets 0 armor per level. If you don't have additional armor when laning versus an AD carry bottom lane, you're gonna have a bad time. Flat magic resist is to reduce damage from enemy supports who do magic damage. Flat is better than scaling 99% of the time because flat is stronger than scaling at level 6, which is when people will get their ultimates and try to make plays / kill you. GP10 quints are just for additional income since you're a support and you aren't farming minions.

Masteries Explained

13 in Defense is to get Unyielding and Block to help make up for your lack of armor per level. You can do 1 point in Summoner's Wrath for Exhaust and 16 in Utility, or 17 in Utility to get Pickpocket . The points in Utility are for more gold generation and higher starting gold, plus other benefits like the mini-ward and the cookie. Pickpocket is optional - you're encouraged to use it at least 1 per 5 seconds, but Death Sentence's passive will do max damage after 10 seconds. Your choice.

Skill Notes

These are just some quick notes about his skills that aren't mentioned in the spotlight. •1. Soul Range: Damnation makes souls spawn as long as you're within 1900 range of minions. Enemies can see them too, but not if they don't see you. •2. Death Sentence Passive Indicator: Thresh gains a passive that's colored light green which indicates that his next attack will do bonus damage. After 5 seconds, it turns yellow. After another 5 seconds, it turns red, indicating Death Sentence's passive will do max damage. •3. Death Sentence Hook: Hitting Q again to pull yourself toward whatever you latched onto will also pull you through walls. •4. Lantern Range: The lantern has 2 ranges. Super big range = Leash range. If you walk out of that circle, the lantern will fly to you and shield you. Smaller range = Vision/soul range. You get vision of that area and your lantern will collect souls in that area for you. •5. Soul Collection: Your lantern will pick up souls, but the cooldown is very long. Don't use it only for soul collection. •6. Aiming Flay: Enemies near your mouse direction will be pushed away, and enemies away from your mouse will be sucked in. Move your mouse around while holding E down to watch the arrows change direction.

Lantern Range Visual

Flay Visual

Skill Order Explained

In the spotlight, Riot recommends maxing R when available, W by 9, Q by 13, then E last. It's very easy to see why. Dark Passage is easily your most supportive and functional skill for laning. Maxing Death Sentence will improve your autoattack harass damage since it scales with the skill level. Both of those skills also have ridiculously long cooldowns that go down per level. You could level Flay second, but I think having lower cooldown on Death Sentence is more powerful than Flay's slow.

Item Suggestions

This is gonna be the longest section cause Riot really doesn't talk about items in the spotlight.
Basically, Thresh needs tanky support items. Start with some Sight Wards and Health Potions for laning. You can also buy a Vision Ward vs stealth or in organized play. Since he has good HP scaling (92 per level) but no armor outside of his souls, I recommend Sightstone for the wards and HP, Emblem of Valor for the armor/regen and Boots of Speed during early game. Another possible early item is Kindlegem. If you'd like, there's also Philosopher's Stone and Kage's Lucky Pick. If you don't want anything they build into, I recommend against buying them - Having a completed item will be more useful during mid game, while having GP10 will make some of your items later cost less. If you are expecting a very long game, obviously GP10 will be better than rushing a completed item.
During mid game, work on Ruby Sightstone, Aegis of the Legion and Ionian Boots of Lucidity - more tanky stats, and cooldown reduction. Since you now have magic res from Aegis of the Legion, you can get something like Locket of the Iron Solari for more CDR. Later on, Shurelya's Reverie is useful for initiating or escaping. If the enemy team has a lot of mages, you can upgrade Aegis of the Legion to Runic Bulwark. For enchants, Enchantment: Captain is supportive, and Enchantment: Homeguard is useful if you're being sieged at your base.
There are many more items that can "work". Melee range tank / debuff items like Abyssal Scepter, Frozen Heart and Randuin's Omen can all work because his kit encourages you to pull people right into melee range and you will presumably take some damage back. Iceborn Gauntlet can work too if you have a lot of cooldown reduction already, but it's fairly expensive. There are also more normal support items like Zeke's Herald if your team has a ton of AD champs, Mikael's Crucible versus obnoxious crowd control teams, or Twin Shadows for slowing people before using Death Sentence on them.

Gameplay

I have like... practically nothing to say about his gameplay. The champion spotlight does an excellent job of showing laning behavior, how to use your skills to setup kills, helping your jungler gank, team work, and various skill combos. There's only two things I would add: •1. Death Sentence and Flay double as interrupts. This was kind of obvious though. •2. When you hook a champion with Death Sentence, then hit the button again to jump toward them, you end up standing behind them. You can actually see this in the spotlight around 3:05 with the Soraka. With this swap, using Flay after Death Sentence can further separate someone from their team. This can also be used to force someone / knock someone into the walls of The Box. (They seemingly try to show this with Varus in the segment after, but Varus's Flash messes it up.)