The Rift Heralds were literally making the Summoner's Rift rumble.
A game-breaking exploit with the mechanized Yordle, Rumble, has caused League of Legends (LoL) developer Riot Games to temporarily disable the champion from the game. Rumble’s win rate had recently been soaring before he was disabled, and not because of nerfs and buffs from the devs.
Popular content creator and bug finder Vandiril was able to capture all the bugs related to Rumble that allowed the champion’s win rate to soar from 50.88 to 53.73 in just under three days, according to LoLalytics.
One of the minor bugs is a bit specific. When players take the Precision tree and eventually go for the Triumph rune, which gets triggered after a takedown, it gives them 20 gold and some HP.
The exploit allowed you to constantly increase your HP and stack gold by using the electric harpoon ability to score a kill or assist when their heat is in yellow or orange. In order to annoy their opponent in the lane or just to maintain the heat ready for unleashing their enhanced abilities, Rumble players are already used to generating their harpoon. The Triumph bug ends once overheat finishes.
While that bug already gives Rumble players a huge advantage, it doesn’t break the game entirely. However, the second one discovered could be described as quite chaotic.
Players also exploited Rumble by creating an endless number of Rift Heralds. Through this bug, players may produce as many Rift Heralds as they want if it spawned during the period after they charged their heat to yellow after removing the Herald. As long as overheat is on, Rumble can continue to spawn an infinite number of Rift Heralds on the Summoner’s Rift.
This of course would cause a huge problem. One of the clips Vandiril captured from Ranked showed at least eight Rift Heralds charging marching down the lanes and just headbutting towers no problem. Even if the team composition involves all of the best damage dealers, it would be impossible to take down all Rift Heralds before these monsters destroy the turret. And in the clip, the opposing team lost because of the exploit, simply because of the sheer number of Rift Heralds overwhelming the enemy Nexus.
Riot gave players a notice in-game, saying that Rumble was disabled “due to a serious vulnerability” that “affects game experience.” Riot also ensured that the mechanized menace will return to the roster after the bug has been fixed.
