Discussing the new Dark Harvest change and how to go around it.

Hello. In case you haven't heard, Riot are planning to change the Dark Harvest keystone rune. This is how Dark Harvest functions currently:

• Enemies, allies, cannon minions and monsters drop Soul stacks after dying. After collecting a soul stack, the next basic attack within 20 seconds on an enemy champion deals bonus damage. At 150+ stacks, it becomes within 300 seconds.

This is how Dark Darvest will function after the change:

• Damaging an enemy champion below 50% health deals bonus damage and grants Soul stacks. 40s cooldown, refreshed on kill/assist. Has higher AD/AP scaling than old Dark Harvest.

So, why are they changing it? Well first we know that the rune isn't broken. Could it instead be that the rune promotes afk farming camps and never ganking? Well, no. You get 2 stacks from each camp but 8 stacks merely for walking to a lane at the time of the cannon waves crashing, and 6 for every champ that dies during the gank, friend or foe. The rune heavily rewards ganking and stacking is too slow from just jungle camps.

The real reason why Riot wants to change Dark Harvest is because laners can't use it, only junglers can. The new version makes it so laners can stack it, and the new scaling forgives the lower stacking speed. I think it's great that they want to give laners access to a new rune, but then comes the downside of losing old Dark Harvest.

So whats the solution? As we've discussed, old Dark Harvest has an average winrate, and rewards proactivity, but can't be used by laners. Therefore the best solution is to make it so that if you're using Smite you have old Hark Harvest, and if you're not using Smite you have new Dark Harvest.