This Rell and Taric armor glitch broke League of Legends

Nicholas James Published 10/02/2023

Two supports isn’t what you expect when unkillable juggernauts are mentioned, but this Rell and Taric glitch makes them nearly invincible.

Rell and Taric are two relatively low-damage supports, each focusing on providing value to their team in other ways. So combining the two together to try and tower dive enemies carries isn’t something that should work, but that’s exactly what’s been happening in some ranked games. There’s an unintended interaction that causes the two of them to become an unstoppable force the likes of which League of Legends has rarely seen. Here’s what’s behind the Rell and Taric glitch that took over League of Legends.

Rell and Taric glitch gives unbelievable armor

Both Rell and Taric have similar systems on their abilities that accidentally fed into a constant loop, granting both of them a ridiculous armor total. The key lies in each of them having an ability that shares armor with an ally and a quirk in the code that processed it. These are the abilities that allowed Rell and Taric to repeatedly grant each other a level of armor that simply shouldn’t be possible in League of Legends.

https://youtu.be/I1HaFzlkw00

Rell’s E is Attract and Repel, an ability whose first cast tethers Rell to a single target ally and grants that ally a percentage of her armor and magic resistance. Rell can also reactivate the ability to stun enemies around her, her tethered ally, and a line in between them. The important portion of this ability for the glitch is the part that grants the ally her armor.

Taric’s W is Bastion, and is very similar to Rell’s Attract and Repel. Bastion passively grants Taric a percentage of his armor as bonus armor. When he casts Bastion, Taric also grants that bonus armor to his chosen ally and mimics his abilities from them as well as him when cast. These two incredibly similar abilities ended up causing a completely game-breaking interaction in the code.

How does the Rell and Taric glitch work?

The glitch happened if Rell used Attract and Repel to bond with a Taric who had already selected her for Bastion. The armor Taric was giving Rell would count for Rell’s armor total when giving the Taric a percentage of her armor.

This means that Taric would end up giving Rell even more armor every time he casts Bastion, and Rell would give Taric an ever-multiplying amount of armor whenever she re-tethered to him with Attract and Repel. This interaction was partially ridiculous because Taric’s passive allows his auto-attacks to do more damage scaling with his armor. The bug has been known for over a month but recently got attention from League of Legends’ most-respected bug expert, Vandiril.

https://youtu.be/5oAj_FUggyc

In Vandiril’s video, Taric gets all the way up to 226 million armor in a fight on the enemy team’s Nexus. Hopefully, this won’t be a problem when Rell’s possible rework hits later this year.

Nicholas James

About Nicholas James

Nicholas James is a gaming writer with a passion for all things geekdom, as well as live theater. Nicholas is best known for covering League of Legends and other top MOBA titles, but his expertise covers numerous games across multiple genres. When not watching the LCS or playing the latest new release, Nicholas can be found doing some tabletop gaming and painting his favorite miniatures. Nicholas has also published with Hotspawn, TheGamer, Dexerto, Esports.gg and other industry outlets.

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