@Riot, Are There Any Plans for Dark Harvest? If Not I Have Some Ideas to Make it Healthier.
Dark Harvest seems to be in a terrible spot, it's rather feast or famine on the select few that can use it 
and otherwise virtually inaccessible to other champions that would potentially it well, especially those who aren't junglers. If you can manage to get to 150+ stacks before the game is decided/over, it is incredibly powerful, but if you can't get to that point, it's essentially useless. Additionally, this keystone is incredibly overpowered on ARAM, thanks to how many souls get dropped throughout the game, even after it was specifically nerfed on ARAM.
There are quite a few champions I'd love to be able to take this on, but it's in such a bad spot that it just isn't viable to use it. Some of these champions are:
- I'd love to be able to bully the enemy hard during cannon waves.
- Would make it a bit more difficult to bully her pre-6, and help her stay relevant later in the game.
- He can't really take advantage of the precision keystones, and Electrocute falls off later in the game.
- Could make excellent use of Dark Harvest thanks to his Q.
The underlying problems with this rune are numerous:
- It has pitiful uptime before you reach 150 stacks. Before you reach this point, it lasts for 20 seconds, which is a tiny window of opportunity. However, once you've reached 150 stacks, it essentially has a 100% uptime with it lasting for 5 minutes. This is incredibly binary and is in general bad design.
- Souls are almost non-existent for laners, as you only get souls from cannon waves and kills / assists. This punishes laners that want to have stronger trades through their keystone.
- Souls get dropped for ally deaths. This makes no sense, why should you be rewarded for the other team killing your teammates or minions.
- It has low AD/AP scaling but has infinite stacking damage. This reinforces how binary this keystone is, if you get a lot of stacks, it does a ton of damage regardless of whether you're actually building damage items. On the other hand, if you don't get a lot of stacks, it does pitiful damage regardless of how much damage you've built. This is one of the key reasons why it is so strong on ARAM, you're pretty much guaranteed to get a lot of stacks, which allows tanky oriented champions to do a lot more damage without having to build damage items.
I believe a mini rework is best suited for this Keystone, with a goal of increasing accessibility while reducing how powerful it becomes:
- Give non cannon minions and lesser jungle monsters "mini/weak/faint souls." These souls only give one soul stack, and do not activate the on hit effect. Additionally, these souls are only gained by killing said minions/monsters. This allows laners to have a lot more access to Dark Harvest, without giving them essentially 100% uptime.
- Add additional check points that extend the time Dark Harvest is available. At 25/50/100/150/300 stacks, Dark harvest lasts for 30/45/60/90/120 seconds respectively. This would give junglers a much better window of opportunity for ganks, while also reducing the absurd uptime it has at 150 stacks.
- Increase the AD/AP scaling to .4 Bonus AD/.3 AP, decrease the damage bonus of stacks by 50%. This would reduce the feast famine aspect of the rune by reducing how much infinite scaling damage it has, while rewarding those who build damage and limiting tank's access to the rune.
- Remove souls from ally deaths and neutral monsters killed by the enemy. Pretty straightforward, you should not be rewarded for things that benefit the enemy. A possible exception for this could be that ally cannon minions drop a soul if it is not killed by an enemy champion, but only if you are within 1000 units of an enemy champion. This would reward you for denying the enemy from killing cannon minions.
- Add large souls to Epic monsters that are worth 10-15 souls, these would only drop if you kill or assist in killing the epic monster. This would reward you for good objective play.
- ARAM specific: Reduce/remove the ability for Dark Harvest to damage structures. Damage from stacks is reduced further to 25%. This would reduce how
OPpowerful Dark Harvest is on ARAM.
All in all, I think these changes would make Dark Harvest much more accessible to champions that would want to take it, without making it too powerful on everyone. This also would give certain champions a good alternative or counter to Kleptomancy, which is currently an incredibly passive Keystone. The numbers might not be perfect, but I believe the general ideas I've listed would help push Dark Harvest into a much healthier direction.
).