New Dark Harvest Variant: Unfun & No Mastery Curve

I tried it on the PBE and it's just terrible for junglers now. It was one of the few scaling options from the jungle (even worse on melee APs) and more importantly, there was actually outplay potential with the stacking game. It was the perfect rune design. It tested macro thinking (being at the right fights and pathing efficiently), as well as your micro. Playing a DH user well meant knowing exactly where stacks would fall and how to maximize that to get the most applications for every teamfight or skirmish (sometimes even involving smiting a cannon or monster during the fight). It was also visually pleasing and made you feel like there was something to aspire to if your team was behind. This was great for reducing tilt since you could pick up souls from dead teammates.

Was it too strong? I have no idea but that's about numbers not design. It'll also tend to appear stronger than it actually is because it shines the most when you're snowballing. In that scenario, your burst is already insane even without it. The new rune is totally devoid of any interesting gameplay decisions and for me, sucks the fun out of my favorite keystone. It's clunky and scales far worse than the current DH (even the ratios are worse despite all these requirements + far fewer procs in most scenarios). It's just horrible and not even fun to use or play around.

I understand that the new one can satisfy champions who wouldn't have had it as an option before but it does so at the expense of many of the core users existing right now. It's great you can play Dark Harvest Xerath (maybe not for opponents) but not when you ruin it for others in the process (both as a scaling threat and as an outlet for demonstrating mastery). DH is now essentially a ranged rune and if it's balanced for them, it will be weak on melees. I don't care if they want this type of rune in the game, but do not replace a functional rune with something which isn't even in the same ballpark. The similarities are extremely shallow. It's just a brand new rune and a straight deletion of the current one. It is not a replacement.

Bring back the original DH for S9! Tweak numbers as appropriate but don't throw away my favorite rune and give me this generic "substitute".

BTW: Without a scaling threat from the jungle for burstier champions, the meta will probably be skewed to bruisers and tanks. Most burst champions already fell off with time and DH was just a way for them to stay relevant late game.