FOTM Report: Dark Harvest BROKEN In Patch 8.23

Huge Changes to Dark Harvest in Patch 8.23 

Making Dark Harvest one of the most overpowered runes in the game, Riot's 8.23 buffs have made it more consistent and snowball prone than ever before. Not only is it more consistent now, but it also greatly buffs champions with executes.

It's not quite as good on champions who rely on the initial burst damage, but for champions that specialize in destroying low health champions it's absolutely INSANE.

Changelog

Now only procs on low-health targets but no longer requires a soul to have recently been collected. Cooldown partially resets on takedowns. No longer stacks off minions and monsters.

We like Dark Harvest's infinite-scaling fantasy, but haven't been thrilled with how often it leads to a single, super-loaded basic attack deciding fights before they even begin. We're reworking it to be an execute-focused keystone that only stacks via champion combat, with a reset system to make all-out brawls even more rewarding and a broader proc model to widen the pool of potential users.

Damaging a low-health champion deals bonus damage and harvests their soul, permanently increasing the damage of future procs.

• PROC THRESHOLD - Dark Harvest procs against enemy champions below 50% health
• PROCS ON - Basic attacks ⇒ Any damage
• DAMAGE - 50-80 (lv 1-18) (+0.25 bonus attack damage)(+0.15 ability power) + 8 damage per harvested soul
• ARAM - Souls increase Dark Harvest's damage by 4 on ARAM, rather than 8
• COOLDOWN - 45 seconds, reset to 1.5 seconds on champion takedown
• REMOVED MINION & MONSTER SOULS - Minions and monsters no longer grant souls

Who Is Dark Harvest Good or Bad On?

Think anybody with either an execute or just happens to specialize in beating down low health champions. Examples include:

• Akali
• Karthus
• Lee Sin
• Nidalee
• Pantheon
• Veigar
• Zed

Meanwhile, some other champions that you might think would do well with Dark Harvest may want to stick with some more traditional Electrocute runes instead, such as:

• Leblanc
• Kassadin (Fleet footwork still preferred)

How Strong is Dark Harvest?

At its base, Dark Harvest deals 50 to 80 damage plus 8 damage per dark harvest stack compared to 60 to 180 for Predator, largely considered to be one of the strongest burst damage runes in the game. When you stack this up with a potential takedown reset, it's easy to see how this might end up incredibly overpowered.

What other champions do you think are incredibly strong with Dark Harvest? Comment below!