During the LEC opening weekend, the Waterwalking rune was banned, but Vitality mid laner Luka "Perkz" Perković picked it anyways. Riot has now officially fined Vitality.
Sometimes Riot bans certain runes from competitive play because there are either issues with them, especially together with specific champions. That's why ahead of the opening LEC weekend, it was banned to use the Waterwalking rune along with the champion Ryze.
Due to Ryze's passive, which allows him to get 10% per 100 AP max mana, players can exploit a bug to infinitely stack mana and never run out. That's why the rune was banned at the start of the 2023 LEC season.
Team Vitality Pick Waterwalking And Ryze In LEC Opener
To kick off the LEC 2023 season Team Vitality wanted to start off strong. Mid Laner Perkz picked Ryze and ended up taking the Waterwalking rune. At the time, most people watching didn't even know that the combination of Waterwalking and Ryze was banned from the LEC, but teams had been informed beforehand of the infinite mana bug.
A day after the match, which Vitality won, LoL Esports EMEA director Maximilian Peter Schmidt went to Twitter to explain that the team had investigated the situation, but found that Perkz did not gain a significant advantage in the match thanks to the combo. This means that Perkz will not be getting any repercussions, but Team Vitality will have to pay a fine.
#LEC Update:You may have noticed that Perkz picked Waterwalking on Ryze yesterday which is currently prohibited in pro play.Our Competitive Operations team assessed Perkz did not gain a significant advantage via the rune.Vitality will be fined in line with past precedent.
— Maximilian Peter Schmidt (@RiotMAXtheX) January 22, 2023
With this announcement, it should be noted that teams will be more aware of the ban in upcoming matches and Ryze, alongside Waterwalking, probably won't be picking it by accident again.
Some fans have questioned why the LEC referees did not notice this, especially with the amount of pauses there are in a broadcast and during the games. Some feel that Riot should keep an eye on these things so they can be remedied right away, instead of notifying everyone a day after the incident took place.
This isn't the first time bugs have affected games. During the 2022 League of Legends World Championship, Orianna had to be disabled for a short while, and many fans believed that TES ended up losing due to a huge in-game bug.
Okay but how good are mages right now really? Should you be playing Ryze? ShowMaker says no!