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Thresh is one of the best carry supports in League of Legends. He’s a support that punishes immobile champions, such as Senna, Aphelios, Lux, and Karma—all of which are champions that lack dashes. He can hook them on cooldown and force flashes or get a kill if the opposing champions have already used their flash.
As with all League champions, specific items are going to be more effective depending on the situation. But there are certain items that are effective on Thresh in all games. These core items are going to ensure that you have the best possible experience with this champion.
Here’s the best build for Thresh in League season 10.
Runes
Resolve
Aftershock: This is the best keystone to make you deceptively tanky. It allows you to safely engage onto enemies with your hook or flay and survive the encounter. The bonus armor and magic resistance will ensure you survive the trade and get away with a healthy amount of resources without getting blown up.
Font of Life: Due to the amount of crowd control in your kit, taking this rune is optimal to give some additional sustain to both your duo lane partner and your other teammates over the course of the game.
Bone Plating: This is a basic rune to grant you more tankiness early on and in the mid-game. You aren’t going to survive a lot as a melee support, especially early on.
Your goal is to hook enemies into you so having some extra damage reduction is always welcome. This scales well into the mid-game, giving you some extra effective health to the initial burst of enemies. It can be the difference between life and death as the game goes on.
Overgrowth: This rune is perfect on a melee support. The longer the game goes, the more health you’ll get. It is easy to stack; all you have to do is stick close to minions dying and you’ll get
Inspiration
Biscuit Delivery: This is a must-have rune for melee supports considering how easily you’ll get poked early on. It allows you to regain back some health and mana and stay in the laning phase for longer. Also, it will solve mana issues due to you spamming your hooks early on.
Cosmic Insight: This is a great rune to ensure that you can use your abilities and summoner spells more often. If you will feel the need to purchase a Gargoyle Stoneplate early on, however, get Perfect Timing to get a free stopwatch.
Bonuses: +10-percent cooldown reduction, +6 armor, +15-90 health
Starting items
Steel Shoulderguards
Having the extra AD early on is crucial for you. Steel Shoulderguards grants you the AD you need for favorable trades and a great passive to help you sustain your AD using minions. This support item scales freely with the gold income generated by it. After earning 500 gold you’ll get better stats and the ability to place wards, which refill when you back.
Health potion
During the farming phase, you’re going to take damage from enemy champions. Health potions heal back 150 health over 15 seconds and will give you extra time before having to recall.
Core items
Mobility Boots
These are one of the best boot options for supports. They allow you to cover huge distances over a small period of time, which is perfect in this roam-heavy meta. Thanks to your W ability, you can help your jungler cover a lot of distance for an unexpected gank, or be in time to save your ally from a gank instead.
Zeke’s Convergence
Zeke’s Convergence is the cheapest support item, and it’s easy to rush to increase you and your bottom laner’s power. You can make use of the effect quite often thanks to the low cooldown on your ultimate. The stats from the item are useful, granting your everything you’d need in armor, magic resist, and cooldown reduction—so get it as soon as possible.
Oracle Lens
Once you upgrade your starting support item, you won’t be needing the yellow trinket ward anymore. Swap to an Oracle Lens once you’ve earned 500 gold to upgrade your support item for free wards and use it to deny vision from the enemy. You can set up a gank by using it before your jungler arrives or use it near the dragon or Baron to clear vision so that the enemy has no idea that you’re taking the objective.
One of the best usages of it can be to set up a death bush when you’re far behind. Clearing all of the vision around you and waiting patiently for that lone wolf from the opposing team can turn the tides of battle.
Control Ward
Always buy two of these bad boys when you can. While the Oracle Lens has a cooldown and can be countered by the enemy team with wards after it expires, the Control Ward remains in place and ensures that no vision is being allowed in the area you’re using it. As a support, you want to make sure that you have one on the map at all times and one in your inventory for backup, especially if you intend to do objectives.
While purchasing the core items in this guide is important, Control Wards are just as valuable. Always invest in vision, so don’t leave the base without having purchased one or two Control Wards. Purchase them before items if you want to be a good support.
Late-game items
Locket of the Iron Solari
This is the best utility-oriented support item in the game. It scales with bonus health, making it very valuable as the game goes by. While the item itself grants you only armor and magic resist, the effect can win you the game during a teamfight.
You can deny heavy AoE damage from the enemy composition and give your team enough time to counter-attack. Focus on acquiring it as soon as possible versus compositions that rely on a lot of AoE damage.
Redemption
Redemption is the second-best utility-oriented support item in the game following Locket of the Iron Solari. It grants you valuable stats in health and mana regeneration and an AoE effect that heals allies and is usable even while dead. It can help your team significantly in teamfights by restoring a portion of their health or finishing the low-health members of the opposing team instead.
If your bot laner isn’t doing so well, going for Redemption first to influence other lanes instead of Zeke’s is much more useful.
Gargoyle Stoneplate
Gargoyle Stoneplate is a great tank item, giving you solid armor and magic resist on top of an effect to increase your effective health. It can be a huge difference in teamfights when you are surrounded. If you engage and pop the item, enemies can use their abilities but they’ll all be absorbed by your bonus health. Just remember not to pop it instantly, otherwise enemies will wait the effect out and then you’ll be left out to dry.
If you are being targeted early on, you can rush this item to ensure that you don’t die too much and give away gold while also losing valuable experience.
Knight’s Vow
Knight’s Vow is another cheap and good utility-oriented item to support your carry, regardless of which lane they are a part of. The item grants you armor and movement speed while also transferring some damage taken by them to you. This ensures that they will effectively have a bit more health, while you are tankier near them.
This is a great alternative to a Zeke’s Convergence rush if you want to make your partner more resilient.
Situational
Swiftness Boots
Swiftness Boots are a good, reliable alternative to Mobility Boots if the enemy has a lot of slow movement speed effects. It grants you a lot of movement speed, even more than Mobility Boots in combat. But the out-of-combat movement speed will be much lower.
They’ve become much more popular recently due to the prevalence of movement-slowing champions.
Ninja Tabi
This is a great item against heavy AD-oriented compositions that rely on auto-attacks. It helps you avoid plenty of their auto-attack damage while also granting you a good amount of armor to reduce the overall physical damage from their kit on top of that.
You can rush these boots against a double AD bottom lane to ensure you get an easier time.
Mercury’s Treads
If you’re facing a lot of crowd control and ability power-oriented compositions, then getting this item can make your early game much easier. With more mages becoming popular in the bottom lane, this item is perfect to counter them early on.
The tenacity is valuable and the more you have, the easier it is to move around a teamfight. If the enemy is running a lot of crowd control, look into getting Legend: Tenacity as well.
Randuin’s Omen
Randuin’s is a valuable item if you want to become tankier. It grants you health, armor, and attack speed reduction debuff for enemies, and an AoE slow to allow you to kite even better. If you are the main target for enemy AD champions and need a bit more survival, then this item is perfect for you.
Shurelya’s Reverie
This is a cheap support item to improve your team’s mobility. If you’re facing compositions who poke or instead want to run you down as soon as possible, then this item should be on your priority list.
On a 90-second cooldown, it grants you and nearby allies 40 percent more movement speed for three seconds. It allows you to either engage or disengage quickly and then reposition yourself for another teamfight. You can rush it as a second item if you need the mobility.
