Why Is Team Vitality Fined in the LEC 2023 Winter Split?

The LEC 2023 Winter Split kicked off on 21st January and fans were treated to exciting best-of-one (BO1) matches featuring Europe’s top talent. However, on the first day, Team Vitality was on the receiving end of a fine by the League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) authorities. Notably, Team Vitality played against Fnatic on 21st January and won the matchup. League of Legends Esports EMEA director Maximilian Peter Schmidt took to Twitter to note that Team Vitality will be fined after the team’s mid-laner picked a particular rune on Ryze.

What rune did Team Vitality Perkz pick?

In the opening match against Fnatic, Team Vitality mid laner Luka “Perkz” Perković opted to go for the Waterwalking rune while playing Ryze. Notably, the Waterwalking rune is in the Sorcery tree and with this equipped, players can gain movement speed and ability power (AP) or attack damage (AD), and adaptive power while walking in the river.

On 22nd January, Schmidt wrote, “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.”

While the LEC authorities assessed that Perkz did not gain a major advantage while using the Waterwalking rune, the team did get fined. The rune is currently banned to be used while playing Ryze in pro play due to a game-breaking bug.

This bug is caused between the interaction between Ryze’s Arcane Mastery passive and the Waterwalking rune. Players should note that Arcane Mastery increases Ryze’s total mana by 10 percent per 100 AP, which also affects his current mana pool alongside his maximum mana.

Therefore, when a player with Waterwalking walks in and out of the river near the mid-lane, they can regenerate mana very quickly, by activating both the champion and the Watrerwalking rune’s passive.

This Ryze-Waterwalking bug has been in the game for over a year now.

In a perfect scenario, Ryze with waterwalking equipped can simply spam his abilities endlessly during the laning phase without losing out on mana, thanks to the bug. Given that such a scenario can extensively change the outcome of the game, this Ryze-Waterwalking rune combination has been banned by Riot Games. 

However, fans have been calling out Riot Games for not fixing the bug and how instead it chose to penalize Team Vitality.

The LEC 2023 Winter Split's first week is underway currently and Team Vitality has a scoreline of 2-0.