Zeke's Harbinger

Zeke's Harbinger Edit
Recipe
Cost	Special
Sell	No Sell
Code	N/A

Cost Analysis

Base Statistical Value

• 30 armor = 600
• 250 mana = 350
• 50 ability power = 1088
• 10% cooldown reduction = 266.67
  • Total Gold Value = 2304.67

Statistical Value per Passive Charge

• 10 ability power (from passive) = 218
• 50% critical strike chance = 2000
  • Total Gold Value = 2218

Total Stat Value (With Passive) = 4522.67

Gold efficiency

• Zeke's Harbinger is 102.43% gold efficient without its passive and its active.
• At 100 charges, this item grants 20% increased ability power and +50% critical strike chance to both the wielder and an allied champion. This is worth at least 2218 for the wielder, and 2000 for the allied champion, making the item 289.9% gold efficient.

Similar Items

Ardent Censer

Iceborn Gauntlet

The Black Spear

Strategy

• Zeke's Harbinger is made for duo lane, with the support having this item. It provides stats that are useful for this role:
  • Cooldown reduction, ability power, mana, and armor.
• While nearby, the Conduit and the support will both generate charges. Upon reaching 100 charges, you can activate the passive to grant the both of you 20% increased AP and 50% critical strike chance for 5 seconds.
  • Conduit gains 4 charges per attack.
  • Conduit gains 8 charges per ability.
• In most cases, the increased AP will mostly be useful on the support, granting additional damage and/or better shield / heal. And the critical strike chance will mostly be useful to the ADC, even though 50% critical strike chance on a support might be useful somehow.

Development

File:EffectZekesHarbinger.png

The Conduit is denoted by the pair of arrows underneath Sona and Miss Fortune.

In trying to balance auras, not only do you have to account for the super-strong case (five friends stacked up together) but, on the flip side, you've also got to be thinking about the times when it's just you and a buddy. Keeping an aura balanced for both cases is often a difficult challenge and, even if we can solve for that, usually leaves us wondering how to add satisfying gameplay beyond... an aura. This was the first reason we decided to take on a Zeke's Herald remodel when bringing more support itemization to the scene.

We wanted to build a high-impact “let's get some hurt in the mix" item that still identified itself as a support tool. Like how Mikael's is the item you buy when you know there's one mate you need to protect, Zeke's Harbinger should be the aggressive counterpart for when you want to smack some faces. As an additional goal here, we really wanted to amp up the satisfaction for the support – something that the old Zeke's Herald suffered from (unless you really liked auras, we won't deny that).

File:EffectZekesHarbinger2.png

An activated Conduit is shown with both champions glowing bright gold.

Why not just make a new item and leave Zeke's in? We very lightly poked this topic with Runeglaive but might as well address it now. Beyond the issue of leaving an extremely difficult to balance item in the game (particularly one that is relatively weak until the "right" team comp taps into it [and then it becomes very, very strong]), when something becomes so niche in its optimal use it can quickly become a trap item for players believing all items (and item premiums) were created equal. We do want to support the ability for players to make smart, contextualized decisions based on the state of the game, but can't do so by leaving really specialized things lying around. Instead, our hope is to either focus an item so that it becomes a clear choice for a broad enough set of champions (see: Black Cleaver) or we can normalize and push out a wider swathe of options that are actually supportive of Good Decisions (see: our ability power item changes).

Patch History

V5.18:

• Armor reduced to 30 from 35.
• Timer before charge is lost reduced to 5 seconds from 8. Buff duration unchanged.

V5.17:

• Fixed a bug where it was granting 250 health.

V5.15:

• Buff duration increased to 8 seconds from 6 seconds.
• Charge per attack reduced to 4 from 6.
• Charge per cast reduced to 8 from 12.
• New Effect: Your conduit now generates half as much charge on their attacks and abilities.
• New Effect: You retain the current stacks if you change conduit, rather than the current stacks reseting.
• Bug Fix: Fixed a bug where triggering Zeke's empowerment effect wasn't granting assists.

V5.14:

• Added to the game.
• Replaces Zeke's Herald.

References

List of Items

Starter items

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Potions and Consumables

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Trinkets

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Boots

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Basic items

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Epic items

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Legendary items

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Ornn's item upgrades

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Champion exclusive items

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Minion and Turret items

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Special Game Mode Items

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