Yesterday afternoon, according to Vietnam time, the highlight match of the LCK took place with a clash between T1 and Afreeca Freecs, two teams currently in the top 4. With Gen.G’s 2-0 victory earlier, T1 had to win to chase down their opponent, while Afreeca Freecs also needed a win to solidify their position in the top 4.
Due to this importance, both teams played extremely cautiously throughout all 3 games. However, by the third game, everything turned extremely bad for T1 as they lost too many elemental dragons to their opponents. Faker and his teammates had to contest the fourth dragon of the game to prevent the Infernal Soul from falling into Afreeca’s hands, which meant they were in a “waiting to lose” situation.
However, at this critical moment, they were “nerfed” hard by Riot when Canna’s crucial ultimate, Call of the Forge God, suddenly flew into the void even though he had aimed it towards the dragon pit. After that, Afreeca easily secured the Infernal Soul and defeated T1 with a score of 2-1. “Bug saint” Vandiril made a video explaining this bug, which is truly serious as it affected the match’s outcome.
This bug occurred as follows: when Ornn used his ultimate for the first time, everything went normally. However, during the time Ornn used his ultimate for the second time to charge the ram, if the mouse was sensitive enough or the player was quick enough to click in another direction, the ram would fly in that direction even if Ornn had charged it towards a previously designated direction. This means Ornn effectively had 2 charges of his ultimate instead of the 1 that Riot designed.
As seen in the match, Canna charged towards the dragon pit, but after charging, he clicked the mouse upwards to find a way down to continue the fight, and Ornn’s ram flew in that direction. In summary, in that final team fight, T1 completely missed Ornn’s ultimate, the most effective initiation tool at that moment, leading to their defeat.
Many people believe that T1 was going to lose anyway, losing gold like that, how could they win? However, the situation was much more complicated; Ornn’s passive gives this champion an incredible “gold hack” ability, as simply reaching level 12 with 2 upgraded items grants him a power equivalent to 3000 gold. Moreover, Canna had also upgraded the Immortal Shieldbow for Teddy, meaning in terms of pure strength, T1 was not behind Afreeca at that moment.
As long as they prevented the opponents from getting the Infernal Soul, T1 could have extended the match and found a way to turn it around. Yet, with just one game bug, the match slipped out of T1’s control. Indeed, this is a painful “nerf” from Riot Games’ “200 years of design experience” that T1 had to endure.