Game-breaking Pyke exploit is fully healing LoL support with just one Q

Andrew Amos

A game-breaking Pyke exploit has been found after the Patch 10.9 update that allows the League of Legends support champion to heal for thousands with just one Q.

Spaghetti code is something all League players are familiar with. Fixing one thing in the game can lead to thousands more bugs popping up. While most of these are harmless, some of them are very abusable exploits.

Since Patch 10.9, a new glitch involving Pyke has popped up that allows him to heal for massive amounts. It doesn’t involve his passive like one might think, instead it procs his Q, and it might just be big enough to force Riot to disable him to fix it.

Pyke splash art for League of Legends
A new Pyke exploit is being abused by League players.

The exploit only works under pretty specific conditions, but they can be easily replicated. First of all, you need to take the Aftershock keystone and Manaflow Band rune. Then, you need to buy a Catalyst of Aeons.

It’s not the most meta Pyke build out there, but this combination allows Pyke to fully heal with his Q due to a weird interaction between Catalyst and Manaflow Band.

A fully-charged Q ⁠— not just a quick tap ⁠— will proc both Aftershock and Manaflow at the same time, and mess up how Catalyst’s passive restores health on-cast.

Instead of getting a bit of health back, Pyke will get well over 1000 health. Given Revitalize is a popular rune on Pyke, this can be downright broken in the right situation.

As notorious League bug squasher ‘Vandiril’ demonstrated, it can get you out of a sticky situation quickly. There’s almost no counterplay, as an Ignite or other Grievous Wounds will only stem a portion of the massive heal.

However, in saying this, you can only proc it a few times a game. Given Manaflow Band stops activating after ten stacks, you’ll eventually lose access to this exploit.

Not even Ignite can stop Pyke from healing back all his HP from this exploit.

Riot might be aware of the bug, but there’s no mention of it on the Patch 10.10 preview for now at least. We will have to wait until May 13 to see if it does eventually get fixed in the next update, or if Riot will pull the champ down earlier to patch him up.

Also, as with any exploit, it’s not recommended you do this in matchmade queues. League of Legends players have been banned in the past for abusing exploits like this, including the global Ornn W. Use it at your own risk.