Dark Harvest

Woodakoodashooda··1 votes·1,103 views

Dark Harvest is a powerful rune ...when stacked.

And to stack it requires quite a bit of farming, making it a mid to late game rune as a result.

What, exactly, is it and what does it do?

Imagine if any champion could have Nasus Q built into their kit. Only thing is that you have to have been near a large minion, a monster, or an enemy champion when they die to gain a stack and to refresh the cooldown on it.

Dark Harvest stacks infinitely throughout the game much like Nasus Q and has the potential to delete any champion you set your sights on.

At its best, it is optimally used in team fights in which Dark Harvest procs on each of the enemy champions who die in it so that you can tear the next one on your list a new one.

That said, it only proves useful when stacked and, as aforementioned, requires farming.

Is this what Riot intended for this rune? A rune that promotes AFK farming for the first 15 minutes of the game before a champion can be of any use to the team?

3 Comments

Gives No Lux2 votes

Take it on a mage support and start wrecking mid game with all your free stacks from cannons and assists.

zenkai45112 votes

It may seem like it just promotes AFK farming, but for it to be used effectively, you have to get kills and assists ( they give you more stacks than just monsters ). So AFK farming for 15 minutes isn't THAT effective to actually stack this rune.

Daimao1 votes

This is correct. Dark Harvest is highly nuanced. Most notably; not using a proc is a loss in expected value. Utilizing that value requires active involvement outside of just farming siege minions or large monsters. This applies to trading in lane with it, skirmishes/teamfights, and tower busting (it does provide a pseudo Demolish effect).

Dark Harvest increases the skill floor of your gameplay. It introduces siege spawn timings for top laning bruisers/juggernauts, dictating when you can leave your lane to buy/roam/etc. It's the kind of thing that will never be popular to average or below players unless the numbers are overtuned, because they just can't deal with the increased skill floor.

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