League of Legends Turrets Are Bugged & May Have Potentially Impacted Pro Games

League of Legends is a game that is often plagued by bugs and game-breaking glitches. Some of them impact gameplay while some are negligible and go unnoticed. However, the League of Legends community is calling out Riot Games to fix an important aspect of the game which has been seemingly bugged for a few weeks. Famous League of Legends content creator, bug reporter, and YouTuber Vandiril took to Twitter to prove that League of Legends turrets or towers in the game have been bugged and that it has already impacted pro play.

On 9th August, Vandiril tweeted, “ALL TURRETS have been BUGGED for at least 8+ days. On Patch 12.14 the Turret shots damage increase happens only once (40%) instead of 3 times (up to 120%). This is absolutely MASSIVE and it already impacted competitive play too.”

Notably, the League of Legends Patch 12.15 update went live today on 10th August (Wednesday) and Vandiril confirmed that the turret bug still exists in the game on Patch 12.15 and it has reportedly made it to the Public Beta Environment (PBE) for the LoL Patch 12.16 cycle.

How are League of Legends turrets bugged?

The way League of Legends turrets or towers work is quite simple. If an enemy unit walks toward it without backup, the turret will shoot down the enemy unit. They are basically heavy fortifications that attack enemy units on sight and are a core component in the gameplay. League of Legends turrets deal damage to enemies and provide vision to the ally team, allowing them to better control the battlefield. Turrets target one unit at a time dealing heavy damage and only upon destroying enemy turrets can a squad push further into the enemy base.

Turrets have an inherent passive in League of Legends where they gain 40% damage each time they hit an enemy champion and can do up to 120% max damage.

According to the tooltip in the game, the damage dealt by turrets increases by 40% each time they hit a champion, up to 120% bonus damage. This effect resets 3 seconds after the last shot hits a champion, but it doesn't reset when switching targets.

For instance, if the first turret shot deals 150 damage to an enemy champion, the next time it should deal 210 damage and it should again increase by 40% for the third shot.

However, this has not been the case. The turret damage increase has been occurring only once and therefore, the champions have been taking only the initial 40% damage increase without it multiplying.

What this essentially means is that players will have an easy time tower-diving enemies under their own turrets without any severe punishment. Tower-diving strats are more common in pro play and are most impactful in League of Legends esports, and this turret bug could have potentially impacted many pro games.

Vandiril used a clip of Weibo Gaming’s top laner Kang “TheShy” Seung-lok killing his lane opponent Gwen (FunPlus Phoenix top-laner) under her tower while tanking turret shots in a pro match on 6th August. The first turret shot does 226 damage to him, the second does 316 damage and the third does 309 damage. The third turret shot would have also done 316 damage to TheShy but since the player leveled up, his stats also increased, thus the lower damage from the turret.

Last week, a Hexflash glitch nearly broke down League of Legends and allowed players to respawn immediately after death and the developers were not sure why it happened. The League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) region experienced this first-hand and following this, Hexflash was disabled in the League of Legends European Championship (LEC), hours before the start of Week 7 in the league.

Teams across all regions are gearing up for the final week of the Summer Split and a bug of this caliber could really play spoilsport in their chances of making it to Worlds. This bug could compromise the competitive integrity of the pro games and Riot Games has to answer the community’s questions and release a bug fix soon.