Night Harvester Guide

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Stefan Stevanovic

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Night Harvester is a powerful mythic item that is especially good on champions who rely on abilities for effectiveness. Not only does the base item provide ability haste, but any addition of legendary items will further boost this stat.

However, the weapon is ideal for mages and assassins. As it provides extra movement speed, it can be great for team fights positioning, or it could help you make a hasty escape. Unfortunately, at this current moment, Night Harvester feels rather lackluster, and players often buy Hextech Rocketbelt instead.

As if that wasn’t enough, until recently, the weapon was plagued by a debilitating bug that would disable its passive. Hopefully, the developers will improve the item so that it becomes more popular. In this Night Harvester guide, I will review the mythic talk about its stats, history of changes, and optimal builds.

Key Info Up Front

Night Harvester is an item that boosts your health, ability power, and ability haste. It has a strong passive called Soulred that would increase your mobility upon damaging enemies. The unique passive also empowers your attacks and spells with extra magic damage.

Night Harvester Basic Info

This item has several similarities to Hextech Rocketbelt. In fact, the two are often interchangeable. Night Harvester also has some common traits with Shadowflame and Horizon Focus. Although the item was really strong upon its introduction in 2020, it has fizzled out after a few nerfs. Soulrend was especially affected by these alterations, and now, the item has a measly pick rate of 0.9%.

Regardless, you can still utilize this mythic for various champions who require low cooldown and high ability power. Furthermore, its base stats have a gold efficiency of 98.67%, which is nothing to scoff at.

Night Harvester costs 3,200 gold and can be sold for 2,240 gold. The weapon formula includes Blasting Wand at 850 gold, Amplifying Tome for 435 gold, Hextech Alternator at 1,050 gold (Ruby Crystal for 400 gold, Amplifying Tome for 435 gold, and a 215-gold recipe), as well as Night Harvester recipe for 865 gold.

Night Harvester Stats and Uniques

This mythic item will give the wearer 300 health, 90 ability power, and 15 ability haste. What’s even better, its mythic passive will provide additional 5 ability haste per legendary. As for its unique passive called Soulrend, this ability will infuse all your basic attacks and spells with extra 125 magic damage plus 15% ability power magic damage.

You will also gain 25% more movement speed during a 1.5-second span. The effect can be prolonged with every following strike. Keep in mind that Soulrend has a 40-second cooldown. However, this cooldown pertains to each unique champion.

In other words, it will activate once on a champion, and then, the character cannot be affected by this damage for another 40 seconds. However, you can still dish Soulrend damage to its allies (once per 40 seconds, of course). So, the ability is much better on AOE spells as it allows instantaneous procing on several opponents at once.

How to use Night Harvester and Soulrend?

The weapon is especially powerful on assassins and nuking mages. Soulrend unique passive empowers all your offensive actions, adding nice bonus damage to them. Due to the fact that Soulrend can be activated once per champion, you can utilize it to quickly nuke one opponent and then proceed with the next person.

Soulrend doesn’t scale well into the late game. Although it gets better with your ability power, it cannot compare to some other effects. Upon its introduction, it did scale with levels, but developers decided to remove this feature leading to a quick drop in popularity. So, if you wish to purchase the item, it is much better to rush it.

Soulrend effect is categorized as default damage, and like other effects, it cannot be prevented by spell shield, nor will it trigger spell effects. If your opponent manages to block the initial burst, the Soulrend damage will be blocked as well. As mentioned, the passive unique can affect several opponents at once, but it will be placed on a cooldown for each one of them.

Although the effect is not very strong in terms of the damage, it gets better with ability haste. The 40-second cooldown can be reduced by the stats on Night Harvester. So, if we suppose that you have 5 legendries in your inventory, reducing ability haste by 25, you would have a total of 40 ability haste. This would reduce Soulrend cooldown by 28%, allowing you to trigger the effect every 29 seconds.

Night Harvester History of Changes

Night Harvester is a new mythic introduced with a 10.23 patch. Unlike many other mythics, it didn’t have a predecessor. Instead, Riot wanted to create an item from scratch, giving mages and assassins a new offensive weapon.

The first version of Night Harvester was especially potent. Its Soulrend was pretty devastating, causing from 175 to 250 magic damage based on the champion’s level plus 15% ability power. It was especially strong on lower levels, allowing wearers to quickly nuke just about anything.

As for the formula, it had almost the same recipe requiring Ruby Crystal, Blasting Wand, and Hextech Alternator for a 3,200-gold total. The first iteration of the weapon gave users 250 health, 15 ability haste, and 80 ability power.

Of course, Riot also introduced Ornn’s version of the item. It is called Vesperdie, and it gives champions 20 ability haste, 350 health, and 110 ability power.

Patch 10.24 Nerf

Unfortunately, the item was quickly nerfed, which basically threw it into oblivion. Instead of doing 175 to 250 base magic damage, Soulrend would now dish from 125 to 200 magic damage (the 15% ability power component remained the same. This had a major impact on the item, exponentially decreasing its nuking power. In patch 10.25, developers fixed a bug that interfered with the movement effect visual.

In patch 11.1, the item’s ability power was increased from 80 to 90, while the health gain was boosted from 250 to 300. Unfortunately, Soulrend was once against nerfed, which made the item almost useless. Instead of 125 to 200 per level damage, it would now deal a static 125.

Although Night Harvester was still strong on early levels, it would become rather weak towards mid and especially late game (especially compared to some other items you could buy).

Vepertide’s Soulrend was also affected by this change. Like Night Harvester, this weapon also gained a minor buff to base stats. It would now give users 120 ability power and 400 health, instead of the previous 110 ability power and 350 health.

Patch 11.19 Bug Fix

In 11.19, Riot removed a nasty bug that would make Soulrend useless. Basically, if one of the enemies entered statis before you purchased Night Harvester, it would prevent Soulrend from triggering for the rest of the game. In other words, if anyone used Zhonya’s Hourglass beforehand, the passive would no longer work. Luckily, the developers remedied the issue as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, the fix hasn’t increased the item’s popularity as it remained weak compared to the alternatives. The last update occurred in version 11.23 when the previous formula was changed to include Amplifying Tome instead of Ruby Crystal.

The Most Common Night Harvester Users

As mentioned, this item is very unpopular right now. Besides the fact it has a very low pick rate, its win rate is also lackluster at 51.09%. However, the weapon is somewhat flexible, and you can build it on 21 different champions.

Night Harvester is much better at the start of the game. The 125 magic damage bonus is still solid in the early portions of the match, which is why most players buy Night Harvester as the first item (in 88.14% of cases). When bought as the first item, it provides a win rate of 50.92%. In 10.37% of cases, players get it as the second pickup. It is much better in such situations providing a win rate of 52.63%.

Some Shyvana players like to purchase it as the third item. This is a very rare occurrence that happens in 0.2% of Night Harvester-featured games. However, in such situations, the Night Harvester users have a 57.83%-win rate. So, while this might sound counterintuitive, the item can actually provide higher win rates when you buy it in the later stages of the match. Keep in mind that this is a small sample size, though.

The item is most commonly purchased by Elise. The champion purchases Night Harvester in 62.24% of her games and has a nice win rate of 51.85% when wielding it. The second most common user is Nidalee, with 37.3% purchase frequency. Rumble gets the item in 30.43% of his games, while Shyvana buys it in 29.67% of situations.

Night Harvester is most effective on Aurelion Sol. It gives the champion a 57.05% chance of winning the game. Diana has a 53.23%-win rate when purchasing the weapon, while Vel’Koz has 52.99%.

The Most Popular Builds Featuring Night Harvester

Night Harvester doesn’t scale with any item in particular. Of course, given that this is a mage item, you will most commonly see it paired with Sorcerer’s Shoes. It is also popular with Lich Bane, as the item combination increases overall nuking power. Of course, people also purchase Rabadon’s Deathcap to further boost its AP potential.

Here are some of the most common builds featuring Night Harvester:

• Elise (Night Harvester, Sorcerer’s Shoes, Lich Bane, Morellonomicon, Void Staff, Zhonya’s Hourglass)
• Evelynn (Night Harvester, Void Staff, Sorcerer’s Shoes, Lich Bane, Rabadon’s Deathcap, Mejai’s Soulstealer)
• Katarina (Night Harvester, Zhonya’s Hourglass, Sorcerer’s Shoes, Lich Bane, Rabadon’s Deathcap, Nashor’s Tooth)
• Nidalee (Night Harvester, Sorcerer’s Shoes, Horizon Focus, Zhonya’s Hourglass, Lich Bane, Rabadon’s Deathcap)
• Shyvana (Night Harvester, Blade of the Ruined King, Morellonomicon, Sorcerer’s Shoes, Lich Bane, Rabadon’s Deathcap)

Funny enough, given that the item doesn’t scale with anything (if we exclude 15% Soulrend AP boost), you can experiment a lot with its build. Furthermore, it allows players to focus on some other items)

Lich Bane has very similar types of stats as Night Harvester. It provides 75 ability haste, 8% movement speed, and 15 ability haste. Together, they will give a champion a lot of mobility, ability power, and haste. Lich Bane’s Spellblade can benefit a lot from 90 ability power that Night Harvester provides.

Rabadon’s Deathcap goes well with all AP builds. It is commonly bought as one of the last items when you have enough ability power to scale its passive. Adding Rabadon’s Deathcap to your mage and assassin builds is a rather generic solution, but at the same time, a very reliable choice.

FAQs

Night Harvester Guide: Last Consideration

Hopefully, Night Harvester will regain some of its shine that it lost during 2021. Simply put, most players are reluctant to buy this weapon as they can get much more from Hextech Rocketbelt. If you need movement speed, you can also go with some other items such as Lich Bane.

The item is really nice on champions such as Katarina, Elise, Shyvana, and Aurelion Sol. Despite the fact its passive is weak, the base stats are still solid. Night Harvester is especially potent during the early game, as 125 Soulrend magic damage can exponentially increase your nuking power.