In the 2023 season, since some old items were adjusted and reintroduced to League of Legends (LoL), they have caused quite a bit of trouble. The most notable example is the Statikk Shiv – an item considered extremely powerful for champions with magical power. Among them, the Statikk Shiv playstyle with LeBlanc once caused Riot to quickly reduce the power of this item in recent updates.
However, not only does Statikk Shiv provide overwhelming power, but it also caused a bug that directly affected professional tournaments. Specifically, Statikk Shiv was discovered to deal damage to allied minions as well. That is, when users employed Statikk Shiv to clear minions, both allied minions would be taken down. At that time, Riot had to ban this item from tournaments, leading to Aiming and the KT Rolster (KT) team facing penalties when this AD carry mistakenly purchased the item.
Recently, another incident involving Statikk Shiv occurred, but this time it wasn’t Riot’s fault or the item itself. Specifically, in the match between Gen.G and OK BRION (OKBRO), Doran playing Quinn decided to build Statikk Shiv. However, when he cleared minions, he didn’t see any effect, so Doran requested to pause the game. Only later did everyone realize that: Statikk Shiv had no effect simply because Doran hadn’t purchased the item.
After the incident was discovered, many jokes were directed at Doran, suggesting that the player was too “obsessed” with the bug of Statikk Shiv that he immediately requested to pause the game when he sensed an issue. Even Riot was “caught in the crossfire” when many fans claimed that the “200 years of experience” in game development by Riot led to such a situation. However, most feedback was cheerful and positive. Even the LCK organizers found Doran’s reason to pause the game “adorable.”
As of now, Statikk Shiv has been the cause of three game pauses in the LCK Summer 2023. Currently, Statikk Shiv has been adjusted and allowed to be used again, but clearly, players and audiences are on high alert and ready to react immediately if any issues with this item arise again.