Thanatos, Hand of Death (Jungler Guide) Updated For Season 3!

Hi, i'm Dust and this is my guide for Thanatos, Hand of Death. This is my second guide ( my first being for Bakasura ), i'm currently mastery V with him and want to update the guide with new information that i learn by playing him more. Constructive criticism is very welcome! :D

Pros

+ Very good sustain and lifesteal with Harvester of Souls and Death Scythe

+ Outstanding damage and 1v1 potential early game

+ Global execution ultimate ( Hovering Death) and AoE 1.5sec silence ( Soul Reap) gives him a good amount of utility

+ Good chase potential with Scent of Death

Cons

- Most squishy assassin and because of that...

- Can fall off late game

- Depending on build, heavily dependant of Death Scythe early game

- CC can destroy him easily

Main Build

Starter Items: Bumba's Mask is a staple starter for junglers, even with Thanatos built in Bumba's Mask and not having mana problems at all, his passive doesn't have the full exp even when sharing camps with teammates ( and you'll probably do this quite a lot ), so without it he can get behind. Boots so you can get asap your Warrior Tabi and that small movement speed that can be helpful for walking in the jungle and rotating faster. Wards that early are used to invade or to predict an invasion from the enemy team. With that start, you don't really need potions at all but if you want to have even more sustain you can get a Healing Potion.

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Starter Items: Death's Toll can be used because of Thanatos passive that compensates for Bumba's Mask passive, and that +90 hp can help thana with his small health pool, but as said above, without the full exp when sharing camps, Thanatos can fall behind, so it's risky to use death's tool, you must compensate the lost xp with camps by getting some kills with the increased damage and survivability on fights of death's tool. Boots so you can get asap your Warrior Tabi and that small movement speed that can be helpful for walking in the jungle and rotating faster. Wards serve the same purpose as above on the standard start. Potions can be more useful because of the loss of the extra sustain of bumba's and the +10 mp5.

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Warrior Tabi: Good old boots, gives a nice 40+ physical power and movement speed for a cheap price.

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Ninja Tabi: To a more well-rounded build Ninja Tabi can be used to boost attack speed and make Thanatos less ability reliant.

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Jotunn's Wrath: With This one you get a big boost on your damage, survivability and utility ( you will have more Death Scythe's and Soul Reap's to heal and damage, more Hovering Death's to initiate and secure kills and more Scent of Death to escape and chase ).

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Titan's Bane: Thanatos don't need flat penetration because of his Scent of Death that gives 35 pen at max level ( with Jotunn's Wrath, 46 pen ), but Titan's Bane have a percentage penetration, that help Thanatos even more with the damage of his abilities and when attacking tanky enemies.

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Masamune: Gives a nice amount of physical power and movement speed and a passive that is useful if you want power against high hp targets or are behind ( because gods gain hp per level, so if you are 3 levels behind other assassin for example, he will have more hp than you, remembering that Thanatos have a small health pool for a assassin too ) for a relatively small price.

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Stone Cutting Sword: A more late game option, good for boxing with it's passive that steals physical protections for you, serving as a penetration item of sorts too.

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Hydra's Lament: Gives a good boost on your basic attack after you used an ability, useful for finalizing enemies that don't died for your abilities, or you can do like this > Ability - basic attack - other ability - basic attack, but i prefer to use all my abilities then go for a basic attack with Thanatos for faster burst ( or i'm just that lazy :( ).

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Shifter's Shield: Basically it gives a +60 power when above 50% health, and some protections when you need then. Gives both power and protections that make you hit harder and have more survivability.

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Void Shield: This one gives physical power and some protections, and a useful flat pen aura ( that doesn't contribute to overcap your pen because it's a aura ) that helps you and your team too.

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Breastplate of Valor: It can be used in place of Jotunn's Wrath for trading power for physical protections if you need some tankiness early; or with it, for max cooldown reduction.

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Magi's Blessing

Magi's Blessing: With the passive of this item you ain't going to get interrupted when attacking so often ( that can both help you survive and get a kill ) the protections and health help thanatos with his supreme squishyness.

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Spirit Robe: Good amount of protections with some cooldown reduction, having some crowd control reduction too with a passive that increases your tankiness when getting cc'ed (pretty often depending on who you are against ) helping you to survive after and during getting cc'ed.

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Mantle of Discord: A expensive defensive option, with nice hybrid protections and cdr, but what shines in it it's the passive that can get you out of sticky situations and help your team too on team fights with that 1s stun.

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Hide of the Urchin: Another one of the Cloak tree, well-rounded defensive item, with both magical and physical protections and some health and mana, but to have it's full potential you need to get the stacks from it's passive, so try to get it as early as possible if you want to get it ( third or fourth item ), so you can complete those stacks faster. If your team is losing you may want to buy another item because you'll have difficulty to get the stacks.

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Winged Blade: Useful item against heavy slow comps and gods ( Osiris for example ), with some useful stats for more survivability.

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Gauntlet of Thebes: A health item with a nice synergy with Thanatos passive Harvester of Souls and Death Scythe giving their heal a boost that can help to sustain early and to survive in fights.

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Mail of Renewal: Another health item, that serves a very similar purpose to Gauntlet of Thebes, it has a nice synergy with thanatos Harvester of Souls giving a extra heal over time after the heal from the passive itself ( but the passive activates with gods and objectives only, different from thana that works on minions too, this is a point to Gauntlet of Thebes more early in the game because it's passive works on minions too, that sort of makes thebes a better pick earlier and Mail of Renewal a better pick later on the game when you are doing more objectives and focusing less on minions and camps ).

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Asi: Gives you some cheap attack speed, penetration and mainly lifesteal with a passive that can keep you alive and turn the tides of a battle on a bad situation in some duels and sometimes team fights.

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Bloodforge: A expensive option that gives lifesteal that adds to Thanatos 1v1 potential and ( already good ) sustain, and a very big +75 power boost to increase the damage of your basic attacks and abilities, packed with a passive that will help you to get out safely or have more survivability on the fight after killing someone.

4Fun Auto Attack Build

Explaining the items on that build.

Qin's Sais: Some power, attack speed and the passive that makes you deal 4% physical damage equal to 4% percent of the enemy max health, useful to gain an extra damage, specially on high health targets. Qin's Sais gets benefit of penetration ( affects passive, so it does more damage ) and attack speed ( gives you more procs of the passive ).

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Hastened Fatalis: A item used to stick to your targets while autoing, plus giving a good amount of attack speed and movement speed , but you have to compensate it lack of physical power with other items.

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Ichaival: You'll probably buy that one early game, because of it's cheap price and the passive that steals up to 30 physical power ( being a very big amount early on and because of that you may want to sell it late game when the passive becomes quite obsolete) from your target.

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Soul Eater: Another relatively cheap item, with high attack speed and lifesteal but no physical power, and the passive can give you a nice edge with it's heal from the stacks and the heal from Death Scythe.

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The Executioner: This item gives a good boost to your autos with power and attack speed, with a passive that gives the % penetration that Thanatos likes, helping in both AA's and Abilities.

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Heartseeker: A cheap item where it's potential is on the passive, with that +40 physical power buff early game, your abilities will pack a good extra punch, to build those focus stacks easier, you can attack camps or minions before ganking/attacking.

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Stone Cutting Sword: A luxury/expensive item, with high physical power and some movement speed, the passive steals physical defense from your target ( up to 30 defenses ), giving you extra protections and damage against that target.

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Wind Demon

Wind Demon: One of the crit options on that build, with nice amount of power and crit chance, and the passive helps you chase and fight with extra attack speed and movement speed.

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Deathbringer: It will strenghten your crits giving then a 40% boost on damage, and with more crit chance, you have a higher chance of activating wind demon passive. Coming with a +50 power that helps on your overall damage too.

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Malice: Another crit option, the passive benefits from high physical power, possibly giving you more damage per second, compared to Deathbringer that gives you a higher burst damage because the extra damage from it is instantaneous.

Relics

Sprint

Sprint: High movement speed buff, helps on escaping and chasing. You can use it to help teammates too.

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Sunder

Sunder: A useful relic if you want to burst a target down really fast, it is good to use on high protection targets too, so you can reduce 30% of his protections and do decent damage because of it's true damage.

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Purification

Purification: This is a valid item on all assassins, it cleanses CC like Frost Breath and Confound and gives some seconds of CC immunity. Useful for escaping from those CC chains. ( i recommend magi's blessing if you are receiving one CC at a time, but if you are being hit by the crowd control of all the world at the same time, then i recommend purification but it's your choice ( you can even get both if the situation calls it ).

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Curse

Curse: A AoE slow that can be used both to catch up to your enemies and to run away from then. It serves as a counter for healing too, reducing all healing by 50%.

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Sanctuary

Sanctuary: Useful when you are desperatly waiting for a cooldown or when you don't want to be destroyed by high damage attacks like Release The Kraken!, Searing Pain, I'm a Monster, etc. And those world wide ults too ( Fire Shards, World Weaver ).

Start with Scent of Death for the speed boost and penetration ( consenquently increasing the damage of your attacks ), hit the Death Scythe for a lot of damage and use Soul Reap so the enemy don't retaliate or escape your attack right away, if they survive you can go for auto attacks or Hovering Death if they are on the threshold.




Initiate with Hovering Death, use Death Scythe on the stunned enemy and Soul Reap so they don't retaliate/use a escape and lastly activate Scent of Death to pursue someone if needed or to escape/reposition.

Early Game

Buy your starters items and head to movement speed buff ( if you buyed potion of physical might use it a few seconds before the camp spawn ) clear and get it then head to mana buff ( if you buyed Hand of the Gods use it on this camp ) for the solo laner, after clearing it head to lane and farm until level 3, you can try one early kill or two on this mean time on the solo lane, now you go for the mid camps and get then, the mid laner can help you on that too. Now you should clear the camps, give buffs to your allies, help lanes when needed, gank or counter jungle ( for more safety when counter jungling, use Wards ).

Mid Game

You'll continue to jungle, gank, help lanes like in before, but one team fight or more can happen already, specially on the gold fury, it's a good idea to put a Sentry Ward on gold fury now. On team fights, be careful of your positioning, as Thanatos you don't have a efficient escape and if you are caught bad positioned it can mean death ( for you ), if you are feed you can initiate on a enemy or two with Hovering Death but it's more safe to let your team initiate. Mages can be good targets if you can reach then without killing yourself, hunters are important so it's useful to pick then off but they start to get powerful mid-late game so be careful.

Late Game

Almost all fights now are team fights,your abilities damage probably already falled off a bit ( specially if you're not using the full caster build ), now you become a type of hybrid of caster and boxer ( even with full caster build, your basic attack going to be used ). Try to pick off enemies that are alone, use Hovering Death to execute your enemies, Soul Reap can be used as a utility tool because of it's 1.5s AoE silence at max level. Now it's important to have a Sentry Ward on fire giant, the team that gets fire giant have a big advantage ( when the enemy gets fire giant, i defend the lanes until their buff end and walk grouped up with my team to try to pick off a enemy alone ). If you are going to attack someone, the targets should preferably be mages, try to avoid the enemy adc, he can kill you in few crit hits. Repeating what i said before, positioning on team fights as Thanatos is very important because of his lack of a real escape.


Obs.: i don't count Hovering Death as a real or efficient escape on Thanatos because of it's build up time and cooldown.

This is a ctrl+c, ctrl+v from my Bakasura guide with some adjustments, because the way you ward locations are the same, but the way you counter jungle/counter-counter jungle with Thanatos is a bit different.

Warding Locations

:Those are the places that i usually Ward, feel free to ward somewhere else if you think it's needed.Starting on the green pentagons, use those when you going to backdoor and when you don't want to get backdoored respectively;the red pentagons are for counter-counter jungling ( talking more about it on this section );both grey pentagons are supposed to be support/adc work to place but you can do it too anyway;blue pentagons are for prevent ganks on mid lane and to have vision of mid camps;white pentagons are Gold Fury and Fire Giant, both should always be warded with a Sentry Ward mid to late game ( Gold Fury being more important early to mid game becoming kinda irrelevent late game, and Fire Giant is important mid to late game when you can actually kill it ); and the yellow pentagons are used for counter jungling ( more information on it below ).

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Counter Jungling

:Basically, you get the buffs and camps of the other jungler, for it you need fast clean speed, so Hand of the Gods can help on it, preferably and escape and Ward ( in the case Thanatos lack a escape but he has that awesome early game, but even with it you can be caught and killed ). The places that i recommend are the yellow pentagons, your support probably going to put the grey ward, but you can place here too.

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Counter-Counter Jungling

:This is the act of prevent the enemy jungler to counter jungle, putting the Red wards/pentagons so if he enter your jungle, your team or yourself can just finish/surprise him, with you as Thanatos, it's very risky for the enemy jungle to counter jungle you early game( unless he is a early game god too ) because you can kill him fairly easily, but don't get cocky or you can be the one dead. And the Grey ward/pentagon should be support work.

Thanks for reading this guide for Thanatos hand of death, i pretend to maintain this guide updated and as i said in the introduction, constructive criticism is very welcome so i can improve this guide!

24/09/2016: Reworked builds.
26/09/2016: Rework of item area on progress.
28/09/2016: Progressing more on reworking item section; Added Alternative 4Fun Build.
30/09/2016: Finished Items Section.
04/10/2016: Changed Final Build Example on Main Build. Added Final Build Example 2 for both builds. Added Gauntlet of Thebes and Mail of Renewal.