Welcome to crazy zone. It's Jungle Thresh. Thresh jungle sounds either like the most ambitious ganker ever or the worst idea you've ever heard. To be honest with you, it's a bit of both. There are better junglers who can achieve similar ganks, similar scaling, similar damage, and plenty who can do better. So if you're doing Jungle Thresh, you're not doing it because it's the META. You're doing it because it's Jungle Thresh. Let's have a pros and cons section for our Jungle Thresh boi:
Pros:
[*] Powerful CC leads to powerful lockdown for ganks.
[*] Able to farm a LOT of souls from jungle camps like Krugs and Razorbeaks.
[*] Can scale well with certain builds. Lot's of builds to choose from.
[*] Did I mention he ganks hard?
[*] Surprisingly healthy clears done right.
Cons:
[*] SLOW clears early.
[*] Squishy, vulnerable to invades.
[*] Slow clears means slow counter-jungling.
[*] Weak damage means slow objective-taking.
[*] Long cooldowns and skillshots mean missing abilities ruins the whole gank.
[*] Stealing Thresh from perfectly functioning support lanes.
[*] Though he is very versatile, other champions specialise in any of these areas at like 500% efficiency compared to Thresh.
He's definitely risky, but at this point, you don't care. You just want to play Jungle Thresh. I get that. So let's talk build.
| Bami's Cinder is the way to go, no other item will give you good clears. These days, you don't have to rush to finish Sunfire Aegis. Unfortunately, all the useful DPS items with waveclear like Statikk Shiv, Titanic Hydra, and Runaan's Hurricane are fairly expensive and other than Hydra, don't provide much versatility. |
While you can still buy Sunfire Aegis, it may finally be time for the other damage type to show up.
Riftmaker is an AP item, but purely because Jungle Thresh, the Jungle, Jungle Items, and Thresh's scalings have changed a lot since adding the Jungle section to an AD Thresh guide, back during a time when AP was heresy, I'll allow it here. Now that Flay has an actually good AP Ratio, buying something like Nashor's Tooth or Riftmaker grant DPS and some waveclear for the jungle monsters, and with the up front burst damage of AP, are a bit more appropriate for ganks. Leeching Leer's sustain is also nice enough to sustain while clearing alongside Dark Passage shielding.
I'll keep this short and sweet. Here's the optimal route:
Red > Wolves > Blue > Gromp/Crab/Gank > Gank > Recall whenever also Gank
Red > Mid > Blue > Gromp > Crab/Gank > Gank
Blue > Gromp > Wolves > Red > Crab/Gank
Red Side
Blue > Wolves > Red > Gank/Crab > Gank > Recall whenever
Red > Wolves > Blue > Gromp/Crab/Gank > Gank > Recall
I put gank twice usually because you'd gank after doing crab, but if you want to do two ganks in a row, go for it.
These may not be optimal clears by most standards, and you can even cut more camps out of it and go for Level 2 ganks, as you'll be betting on ganking a lot anyway.
How to Jungle Clear
Naturally, jungle clearing with Thresh can be messy if you don't know what you're doing. I'm going to explain the key things you need to do for a healthy clear:
Lantern Pathing Block
Against monsters particularly, the Lantern can block their movement, giving many extra seconds of free attacks (i.e. the camp isn't attacking you cos they're walking around the lantern). This is easiest to do on Krugs and Blue Buff, weakest on Gromp.
Lantern Shield
In jungle we take W second for the shield and pathing block. The shield will help you absorb some extra damage, since you can't kite forever. You'll either be leaving leash range or they'll catch up with you. If they catch up after the lantern pathing block, this is where the shield comes in.
The shield should also be used when they're GOING to attack you, such as when you leave Blue Buff's leash range, and you have to cross past him again.
Proper Kiting
Against almost all jungle monsters, and as all jungle champions, you should aim to kite every three auto attacks. So you go three auto attacks, walk back, and repeat. This way, the jungle monster's attacks are so slow that they do two attacks, and you do three.
Against Gromp, you want to kite between every attack that so when Gromp has its increased attack speed buff for the first few attacks, Gromp only does one attack for every one of yours. When you kite Gromp, you lower its attack speed by doing this (this also works against attack speed melee champions, but they (sometimes) are smarter than Gromp).
However, as a ranged jungler, things are a little different. You want to have the above concepts in your head still, but you SHOULD kite after every attack since there's many attacks you can get for free by using your range. However, when you leave leash range and have to walk past them, you should REVERT to the melee kiting method of 3:2 of your attacks:monster attacks for optimal clearing and healthiness.
Souls
In order to scale, we want to farm the jungle a lot in order to gain a TON of souls. Since Thresh is a slow-clearing jungler, we want to make sure we get Hunter's Talisman first, then quickly get Bami's Cinder to increase clear speed dramatically. This way, Krugs and Razorbeaks are actually viable to take.
Be sure to carefully take crabs as well, as they will give even more sustain, and of course, a guaranteed soul. Using Death Sentence or Flay to stun the crab, then full combo it during that time with a 100% charged autoattack will bring it's hp down quickly, just careful to not get it stolen. You burst it at first, then devolve to weak auto-attacks to finish it off. Best to save Smite for Crabs.
Given enough time, you'll have the armor and on-hit damage to take on anyone, especially squishy AD champions.
Ganking
This is the real strength of Jungle Thresh, but on it's own it's nothing special. That's why we have that whole section on souls and building damage and scaling. Master farming that so you have something to fall back on if ganks don't work out or aren't available for whatever reason.
I've been ganking from the jungle with Thresh since his release. Jungle Thresh was the first thing I did with him. So I've got some experience as how to go about ganking. Where and when to gank is a whole other world.
General Ganking Combo
Approach from river > Flay[E] > Death Sentence [Q] > The Box [R] (If available)
You might be thinking, why not hook first?. Hooking first invites enemies to Flash out unscathed, or just juke you without it. Starting with E will slow your enemy down, making your Q almost impossible to juke without a dash, and even then, the slow is enough for your laner to catch up and help with the beatdown. If they Flash before you hook... Well then. You can of course predict their Flash as well to try and look cool.
Combo 2
Approach from behind enemy (Tribush) > Auto attack > Flay [E] > Death Sentence [Q] > The Box (If available)
Why auto attack? Because that may apply Red Buff if available. Also, when approaching from behind, enemies have to move through you. Even if they Flash over you, you'll likely still catch them easily with Flay, and that leads to an easy catch with Q while they're slowed.
Combo 3
Approach from river > Death Sentence [Q] > The Box [R] > Flay [E]
Starting with Death Sentence is more common before you get Mobility Boots to get in range for just straight up Flaying them. Sometimes enemies burn flash first so you'll be forced to hook anyway. That's what starting hook is good for. Additionally, you can see we do The Box straight after Hook, not after Flay. When Death sentence is in the air, before and after landing, you can use Ult. Once you've confirmed the hit on your hook, cast R. This way, you will pull them towards you, and as soon as the 1.5s stun is up, use Flay to pull them further into your Box walls for damage and insane slow, guaranteeing the Box to land. This is a general combo and I'm gonna copy paste this description to the ability combo section I need to do. One more example:
Combo 4
Approach from behind tower > Enter lane brushes undetected >
From here you can either:
Exit brush > Flay immediately > Death Sentence > The Box
OR:
Death Sentence FROM brush > The Box > Flay
The latter combo is the same as Combo 3, but from a brush, undetected, which means the enemy cannot aim to juke you, and it's your own aim and prediction that will decide if it hits. Anyway, that's enough examples, the rest you can work out yourself from experience.
The first of these two is more guaranteed, but less likely to hit from within the brush. Usually, you'll have to step out at the right time.
When and where to gank?
First gank strategy can be used to think of what jungle pathing you're going to take. However, you usually start on bot side and make your way towards top as you clear, so typically, you'll be ganking top or mid lane first. After that, you can just walk down river, with or without taking crab, and gank mid, then again to bot. You can also camp enemies effectively if you deny vision with an early sweeper trinket and control wards. Aim to gank from behind lanes (Tribush in top/bot, side entrances behind the river in mid) when you can to easily burn Flash and land easy Flays. When Dragons and Heralds are spawning, you can use them to decide where to gank, if viable. When Dragon is about to spawn, enlisting the help of your bot lane by ganking them can be a good idea. You could also gank mid lane, then ask them to help you 4 man gank bot lane, then take dragon. Additionally, with careful planning, aim to countergank the enemy jungler, then use their death to spell out a Dragon or Herald. Typically, ganking top lane can lead to getting a Herald. Sometimes, you might just want to go for Turret platings, and the Demolish rune helps a lot if you had space for it. Camping a single lane and just shredding platings can be extremely effective if they're a snowbally champion, and can actually outvalue early dragons sometimes if that laner proceeds to carry. If they proceed to give up shutdown bonus and feed, then your team will blame you for losing dragons and being terrible, not blame the feeding teammate. Ah well. Point is, be careful with your planning. This goes beyond Jungle Thresh now, jungling is just a big brain task.
