Out of all the abilities to play around in the bot lane, supports that can stun you or your allies are some of the most feared in ranked League of Legends games. Blitzcrank is one of those enemies, thanks to his Rocket Grab ability both stunning and pulling players into bad positions.
Normally, outplaying a Blitzcrank grab is easy, thanks to the movement of the champion and the windup of the grab, but sometimes the grab works when it shouldn’t. One of the classic bugs in League history is still around, where avoiding the grab doesn’t matter. Despite using Flash or some other ability to move out of the way of a grab, it can still hit, leading to a moment like this that was highlighted on Reddit on June 21.
It looks even worse in slow-motion: The grab misses its target by a mile and the game lets it hit anyway. The replay shows exactly how this redditor, playing the Thresh, used Flash to dodge the grab and got snagged by it anyway. It wasn’t like they flashed away and still remained close to the grab; they went as far away as possible to the bottom right.
The clip brings this issue to light, but it also reveals why you don’t see it happen on champions who have displacement abilities. For example, Ezreal’s Arcane Shift does what a Flash does, but when Blitzcrank hits a similarly close shot to a teleported Ezreal, he breaks the grab. In this case, Flash doesn’t, mainly because it’s not an ability like Ezreal’s is.
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Those moments are the ones that you just throw your hands up in disbelief, and the comments in the thread echoed that. One comment by D1ssar jokingly mentioned that this grab from Blitzcrank was inevitable: “There was no way to dodge it without breaking the space-time continuum.” Hard to argue with that when such a clear dodge ends up as a free kill for Blitzcrank.
Another comment by Kuromajo brings up an issue for League esports fans: “Imagine this happening in pro play.” If this were to happen in an official LCS game, for example, there would be an uprising of fans calling for this bug to be fixed.
One final comment sums up the whole play into a poignant phrase: “He started to believe.” The moment gave the Thresh just enough time to believe he had avoided the grab, using his Flash at a perfect time. But, Blitzcrank grabbed him anyway, pulling him to his doom and a popular post on Reddit.
