User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Item Concept) Retuning Zeke's Herald/@comment-24549025-20150126191733

" If you and your selected ally attack the same enemy champion within 2 seconds, the target takes 5 + (2. 5  × level) additional magic damage ." Does it consider the holder's level, or the tagged champion's level? Or does it rely on the level of the attacker that triggers the bonus damage vs. the level of the attacker that sets up the proc?

This sounds like it would be very powerful on Kalista and any poke-oriented/-capable support, especially Sona (Power Chord Staccato with an early Lich Bane + Zeke's Herald + Soul-Marked proc = boom), Zyra (powerful lock-down that already lets Zyra make easy procs for Soul-Marked and thus chunking), Orianna (Clockwork Windup is pain forever and ever), Annie (Q stuns become even more of a nightmare), Lux (similar issue as Sona thanks to Illumination)…

Kalista is strong with disruptors and tanks she can hurl into fights without having to worry too much about their survival as a result of said hurling, but she's not at any disadvantage from having a harass support that can let her reliably activate Soul-Marked, especially given its %HP damage. This item would be likely become go-to for anyone teamed up with Kalista, and would not only benefit both poke and tank supports, but be a massive amplification for the former — especially those that can also make use of, say, Ardent Censer and Lich Bane (of which there are enough to make it worth consideration). Those little extra ticks of damage can rack up fast during the early-to-mid game where Kalista and her support will almost always be sticking together, especially since, unlike the Soul-Marked passive itself, this proposed rework has no delay between successive activations apart from changing the target of the item active. I can see some silliness with ranged supports getting Runaan's Hurricane along with Kalista and mowing down several targets at once.

Additionally, this would take some of what makes Kalista so unique and place it in an item available to everyone; considering that dependency on elevated teamwork and communication is 90% of  what defines her as a marksmen, I'm not sure I agree with that notion, ignoring the fact that it's an almost-direct buff to a champion's mechanic that (in my opinion, at least) does not need further strengthening of this sort.

All that being said, I think this is an interesting proposal; I'm just the sort to always raise points about whether something could go one way or the other. As it stands, Zeke's Herald occupies an odd spot as being viable for supports that: 1) have a marksman with an advantage, as to help said marksman snowball; 2) benefit from most if not all of the stats in tandem with their marksman (as several supports potentially can, namely Kayle, because it's Kayle); 3) urgently need one or more of the stats in a cheap item that's not 100% selfish to pick up early on. It's not an ideal choice in the vast majority of situations, but then again, having items that are pretty much always ideal is something that Riot seems solidly against having anymore. (Goodbye, Deathfire Grasp.) I think the item could definitely use some retuning to make it a bit less one-in-a-hundred though, and this is a way to go about it that I hadn't thought of.