LoL micropatch hotfixes strange interactions with Graves, Karthus, and Twisted Fate

Though most issues in League of Legends are resolved when new patches arrive every other week, there are some instances the developers can’t simply sit and wait on—much like with what happened today.

Right before the second major League patch of the year welcomed much-needed changes to a handful of champions and even more items, Riot Games stepped in to fix some potentially game-breaking bugs with Karthus, Graves, and Twisted Fate that made them much weaker than they should be. Today’s micropatch has been added to League’s live servers and the issues are not expected to persist further.

An unintended interaction was discovered with Karthus’ W, Wall of Pain, where, when passed through by enemy players, they would suddenly gain an immense amount of magic resists, effectively preventing Karthus from doing any further damage to them.

A similar instant stat-increase exploit was found with Graves’ W, Smoke Screen—one of the only abilities in the game that can decrease the visibility of enemies it makes contact with. Here, players found that upon walking in his W, they would suddenly obtain near-infinite stats, turning what is supposed to be a powerful debuff into the largest buff the game can offer and, just like with Karthus, render Graves’ plans futile. But this interaction only occurred if the player walking in the Smoke Screen had the Unflinching rune.

Twisted Fate was the only other target of this micropatch, with a fix being implemented specifically for his W Red Card, which previously was not slowing the primary target, just those around them. This champion has been the subject of ample discussion within the League community over the past several weeks due to a handful of changes being tested on the PBE aimed at making his crit build more viable, though nothing in regard to that has been patched to the live servers just yet.

Riot recently announced nearly 530 employees had been laid off from the company in various roles in what was referred to as a move that’s “critical for the future of Riot.” Among the areas affected by the layoffs was the shutdown of the entire Riot Forge initiative, as well as a re-evaluation of the future of Legends of Runeterra, with various core members of the League, VALORANT, and League of Legends: Wild Rift teams also having been impacted.