Zeke's Harbinger is 2017 LUL

Gekkii··8 votes·2,089 views

So, as we know, supports right now are a moderately fun role. I've mained the role casually since season 4, and I've enjoyed the ups and downs throughout the years. Zeke's Herald was usually a last item buy on Thresh, if only for the CDR and aura giving my teammates lifesteal. Interesting item at the time, however, now it has become almost ridiculously bad.

> item 3050 > +30 armor > +250 mana > +50 ability power > +10% cooldown reduction > > UNIQUE: When within 1000-units of each other, you and your Conduit will generate 1 charge every second, up to 100, with a bonus 4 / 2 charges whenever you or your ally attack, and 8 / 4 on spell cast. > At 100 charge, dealing damage grants you and your Conduit 20% increased AP and +50% flat critical strike chance for 8 seconds. > All current charge is lost if you move further than 1000-units apart or hold onto 100 charge for longer than 5 seconds.

So, TLDR; this item gives 30 Armor, 250 Mana, 50 Ability Power, 10% CDR, and when bound to an ally you both get 20% Increased AP and 50% Crit chance. What?

On what planet would you want all of those stats, and in addition, why would you ever want 20% increased AP and 50% crit chance? I've tried to mess with this item in the past, but needless to say I have no idea what the goal of it, ESPECIALLY with the newly released item 3109 a few patches ago.

"So what should we do to Zeke's Harbinger?"

Honestly, I think we should make in a tank MR item with CDR. I'm loving all of the mage supports and utility supports this season, but when the support items got reworked (I'm looking at you Locket of the Iron Solari) tank support itemization more or less got shafted and overshadowed by Redemption.

Tank Supports shouldn't have to struggle to reach their CDR cap, and if we changed Harbinger to an MR+CDR item, it would definitely help itemization quite a bit.

"What about the Active?"

The big meme of 2017 is the fact ADC is so weak. What if we made it an active that gave the ADC resistances for a brief period of time, even for 3 seconds so they have enough time to try and lifesteal, or kite their way out of a fight before getting the classic Rengar 1-shot. :^)

Thank you for reading, and I hope this post has some sort of discussion involving Zeke's Harbinger.

13 Comments

chipndip15 votes
  • Knight's Vow sucks anyway. At least it does in comparison to Locket and Redemption. With that said, don't feel bad. Zeke's sucked regardless of Knight's Vow existing to begin with.

  • Knight's Vow was said to be the defensive Zeke's. We're going to accomplish this by making Zeke's...a defensive item?

  • Zeke's primarily suffers from being windowed, but operated between 2 people. That shit is a bad gimmick. If Riot isn't willing to do something about that first and foremost, scrap Zeke's.

Gekkii1 votes

Yeah you're totally right, Knight's Vow isn't like the NEXT BIG THING! When it comes to items, but when comparing the two items meant to "bind to the ADC" I would literally never in my entire life pick Harbinger over Vow. I just really have no idea what kind of champion Riot is trying to make Zeke's pander to. It doesn't work for the big 3 being Tanks, Utility and Mage supports, so they might as well either rework it, giving it Tank Stats, or making it another Mage/Utility support item. This awful "in the middle" thing isn't cutting it. And you're right, items like Shiv and RFC are windowed, but they're also not windowed for 5 seconds having to stand on top of your ADC to build it up for stats neither of you even want.

Its honestly just such a trash item and I wish they would rework it or something.

chipndip11 votes

Most of support is filled with trash items. No one notices or cares. Honestly, I'm halfway sick of it. Just let the role be this way.

Golden Tager X3 votes

Just give me back Stark's fervor, then I will be happy.

Gekkii1 votes

That's the dream my son......... That's the dream..........

boggletap2 votes

honestly the biggest problem with zekes seem to be that by the time you finish building it, it becomes pretty pointless since your adc will have over 50% crit anyway. by lategame the adc has close to 100% crit already so the zeke just becomes useless.

zekes just comes too late. supports upgrade their support item at elast one stage and needs to buy sight stone and boots first (+ pinks). they already have low gold to work with, so by the time you finish a zekes, it has a very small window to be relevant before it becomes pointless since your adc has all the crit they need by themselves already

a way to make zeke's proc be relevant lategame could be something like: if your partner already has over 90% crit chance, when zekes procs it also increases their crit damage by 10% or something.

Gekkii1 votes

I definitely think the "Increase crit damage" is a SUPER interesting idea, and I think that would bring crit champions and hypercarries back into the meta imo. I don't think it should be 90%, but probably around 50%. I really hope Riot looks into changing the item soon.

AlienPrimate1 votes

I don't understand why more people aren't building it with the uprising of lethality builds. Putting crit on a full lethality ADC gives them a massive increase in DPS. If an ADC already has a lot of crit it is just wasted stats but if they aren't building any crit the gold value of the link is quite high.

Gekkii1 votes

I think mostly because the "big 3" right now are Jhin, Varus, and Miss Fortune and none of them really care about crit. They're all casters who build full lethality so their abilities do more damage, rather than their auto's.

AlienPrimate1 votes

With that in mind then why haven't people been playing

Urgot item 3004 item 3142 item 3147 item 3814 item 3071

Gekkii1 votes

People have been, it's because without the lock-on, urgot is super short ranged, and why play around that when you can land a varus Q instead and do more damage

ZephyrDrake1 votes

the entire point of the item was to give your ADC (or anyone who likes crit) an extra 50% crit chance while giving you more AP but now that you can get ridiculous amounts of crit there is no need for the item anymore... and there are way better items for supports now than before as well so it further reduces the effectiveness of the item

Gekkii1 votes

Yeah that is the big problem, AD itemization doesn't need the additional 50% crit, and every other support item is a better use of space than Zeke's.

More from Gameplay

More by Gekkii