On October 21, the assistant coach of the Golden Guardians Academy team tweeted a very surprising post. Specifically, the coach pointed out that in the tiebreaker between Gen.G and Team Liquid at Worlds 2021, Clid’s Smite was faulty and recovered much faster than usual.
In the early stages of the match, fans also noticed a bug that granted the Korean jungler Clid an additional Smite charge. Croissant added that the NA side should ask Riot Games to review the results of that match.
Smite bug at Worlds
As we all know, Smite has a max charge of 2. The recovery period between two usages of this when there are two charges is 15 seconds. If you use Smite routinely (not enough to build up), the cooldown will be around 70-75 seconds. Clid’s Smite, on the other hand, had just 15 seconds to recover, despite the fact that he had not used any of the prior stacks.
This bug could allow him to obtain his upgraded Smite far faster than TL Santorin did, which is significant because it increases his Smite damage from 450 to 900.
Thinking this was a one-time bug, Rogue’s Inspired player reported that he experienced this issue up to three times during bootcamp for Worlds 2021. He also mentioned that if you smite the enemies’ jungle camps when you invade at 2:46, this summoner spell will occasionally be already ready at 3 minutes mark.
The above findings, however, demonstrate that bugs in League can even occur at large events like Worlds 2021.
True, it had little influence on the match between Gen.G and TL, but in another case, it might be a factor that determines the outcome. Hopefully, Riot Games will soon intervene and solve this problem so that Worlds 2021 is not affected.