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[GAMEPLAY] Easily exploitable Kindred passive stacking bug

FlashnFuse··122 votes·12,131 views

Steps to recreate this bug:

  1. Wait for wolf to mark either krugs or gromp when the enemy's corresponding nearby buff is alive
  2. Kite the enemy's buff (red or blue) closer to the camp that has wolf's mark on it (krugs or gromp)
  3. Kill the enemy's buff camp while its in close proximity to the marked smaller camp and get a free stack of Kindred's passive
  4. Kill the camp that is actually marked (krugs or gromp) and get another stack of Kindred's passive

Easily reproduce-able bug. Easy to exploit if your enemy hasn't grabbed their buff quickly enough. I discovered this in a live game, then I recreated it twice in empty custom games. Video below.

https://youtu.be/MwDtqIqjOAQ

EDIT 1: If you leave the marked camp alive, you can wait for the buff to respawn and get additional stacks for kiting the buff towards the marked camp again

EDIT 2: If you kill the marked camp first, then kite the big camp near the dead camp before the kindred icon disappears from the minimap. You can still get a stack from the other camp. Tested with blue buff and gromp (killing gromp first).

You can also kite the blue buff down to the rift scuttler and get a stack from killing blue buff in the river, tested and working on both sides.

I tested kiting dragon out and killing it while rift scuttler was marked but couldn't get a stack from dragon that way, I imagine its possible but I just need to kite dragon out further. I will try the free dragon stack again then upload a video of all these bugs. New theory: I'm also going to see if you can kite a marked camp out far enough that you don't get a stack from killing it.

EDIT 3: You can't kite a marked camp far enough away from home to deny yourself a passive stack. You can kite blue buff down to rift scuttler to get a passive stack from it on both sides. You can kill a marked camp and kite another camp towards the dead camp to get a second stack as long as the Kindred icon stays on the minimap. I couldn't get a stack from killing dragon while rift scuttler was marked by wolf. Video below.

https://youtu.be/31pQV9b-wFs

EDIT 4: If you have an ally that can carry monsters around, e.g. Syndra, they can transfer monsters from far away camps to the marked one and if you kill them before they run home you get a passive stack. Video below.

https://youtu.be/H0n2tRmqYe8

46 Comments

Tribbles Foxfolk18 votes

I think it's the way that the Mark of the Kindred is programmed. Might be programmed to be "If the creatures in this CAMP die, give the Kindred a mark" instead of "If the NATIVE MONSTERS of this camp die, give the Kindred a mark". Spaghetti code maybe?

FlashnFuse25 votes

Ya that's a logical conclusion. I'm really surprised that it isn't "if this monster with the debuff dies, give stack".

Kitsuki052 votes

if it was a debuff on the monster, it would disappear from the mini-map as soon as the monster was slain, effectively giving the team not responsible for slaying the camp extra information. Though overall I agree that it's handled rather poorly. The fact that kindred's mark covers up the information about whether that camp is alive or not, even when you should have that information (ie, it's warded or someone on your team check) is also really annoying to deal with.

PaperMache72 votes

Not true, it's entirely based on how you program it.

brad1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Eevee Girl Alex,realm=NA,application-id=LqLKtMpN,discussion-id=GnLuPmk7,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2015-10-18T08:54:31.972+0000)

I think it's the way that the Mark of the Kindred is programmed. Might be programmed to be "If the creatures in this CAMP die, give the Kindred a mark" instead of "If the NATIVE MONSTERS of this camp die, give the Kindred a mark". Spaghetti code maybe?

i feel like they ran into a bug where they couldnt assign specific jungle monsters to be marked so they just made an aoe around the camp that triggers when large jungle monsters die in it

lazy ass work around if u ask me

Jingerbeardman1 votes

another part of it likely has to do with the mark remaining on the minimap as well for a period of time after the camp dies.

TheLastShadow4514 votes

100% can replicate. I just did it.

FlashnFuse2 votes

yup, unbelievably easy to pull off. Somewhat unlikely to pull off organically.

TheLastShadow453 votes

I never would have noticed this until I saw the post. but ya it was way to easy to do.

Milky Star1 votes

i had it happen with a dragon and scuttle crab.

Ludovico13 votes

Yea Rito change Morde!!

...wait what? This is about something else? Oh... then fix the bug Rito!

Troll for Trump2 votes

Yeah, this needs to be upvoted..

lofi n chillhop2 votes

what if you drag the marked camp away from their cosy do you fail to get the passive stack?

FlashnFuse1 votes

So far I've tested this with krugs and gromp, I managed to get the passive stacks even though I kited them very far away.

Gubaguy2 votes

Heres another funny bug: If you reach 6 stacks, but already have a marked cmap on the map, it stays marked for a long period of time and you can gain multiple stacks off a camp AFTER reaching 6 (the point where wolf stops marking camps)

I abused this bug myself... but only in normals, havnt played any ranked since kindred came out.

Icestar11861 votes

Were all 6 from Wolf? Stacks from champions don't make Wolf stop marking monsters.

Gubaguy1 votes

"Wolf - Enemy Monsters: Wolf periodically selects a random monster camp within the enemy's jungle, excluding epic monsters, and highlights the camp to both teams, starting at 2:30. This ends upon acquiring 6 stacks.The mark is removed upon the monster camp's death even if Kindred are not involved."

ends upon aquiring 6 stacks, no mention of wolf OR lamb in that, jsut 6 stacks.

Icestar11861 votes

I think that's a mistake in the tooltip, then. I'm pretty sure you have to get 6 stacks specifically from monsters for Wolf to stop marking camps. I'll look back over the reveal/spotlight though.

Battlecast Sona1 votes

Nope, 6 stacks total. It's to prevent you from getting a ton of scaling from jungle monsters - you can only get up to 6 (which is still a pretty big boost of damage). It's important to note that Wolf just stops marking at 6 - if he's already marked a camp and you get a gank for 6 stacks his mark stays up and can still give you a passive stack.

For Carthage1 votes

On the single upside, you usually won't get a shot at this past 6 stacks.

Celeste Benal1 votes

So long as the camp stays a live, it will stay marked. As such, you can abuse the hell out of this. Ofc, since its always on the enemy side, the odds of it staying alive are pretty narrow.

For Carthage1 votes

It's also only possible through buff monsters.

So... possible once every 5 minutes, and that's assuming you're able to nab the buff monsters each time.

FlashnFuse1 votes

Well its technically possible on any monster (hence the syndra throwing monsters towards the spot on the map). It just becomes a matter of how far you can kite a monster. You could theoretically kite wolves and blue buff towards gromp when he has the marker on him, since wolves can travel that far before leaving. Considering how powerful Kindred's passive is, thats a lot of power that they are not intended to have for free.

Technomancer1 votes

This happened to me although I was unaware that this was how it happened at the time!

Fefnil1 votes

What if you let the gromp/krugs live, wait for blue/red to respawn, and repeat the process? Will you be able to go past the 6 stacks limit for wolf?

Gentzer2 votes

Dear god...I'm jumping into a custom now, gonna test that

EDIT: Test complete, yes you can potentially get several free stacks by leaving the marked camp alive and constantly leashing the buffs near the camp, even if you have already done it before. HOWEVER! Wolf changes his target after several minutes so you can only get 2 bonus stacks per instance via the bug because buffs have 5 minute respawn timers. Also remeber that Wolf will not re-mark after 6 stacks.

Milky Star1 votes

what if you added syndra blitz or tahm to the mix

FlashnFuse1 votes

I just tried this and the results are hilariously overpowered, processing a video for it now.

FlashnFuse1 votes

I'm not surprised, I thought about testing this but didn't want to wait the 5 minutes after testing things several ways. That would definitely never happen in a real game (unless your enemies have no jungler/ a really bad jungler) but I'm linking to this comment in the main post.

Milky Star1 votes

do you think it would be possible to pull camps from your jungle or the enemy's into the river i don't think it's a viable strat but getting an extra 7-8 stacks off the jungle, i know dragon can proc an extra stack it happened in game(at the time i didnt know about the glitch) it also makes me wonder if some pets could proc it though thats a stretch. i may test it

FlashnFuse1 votes

Ya I tested with syndra pulling jungle camps to middle of river to get stacks off them. I strongly doubt it works on pets, unless they're coded as jungle minions; it would be worth testing though. I couldn't get a stack from dragon (and i tried a lot), but I believe it's possible.

Milky Star1 votes

I'll see if i can get a video of it and i'll test pets too

Dengeden1 votes

Hot damn, that's weird, kinda like when TK kills the wolf camp on the other half of the map. It's not exactly easy to invade with Kindred, though.

GrReaper961 votes

Noob question here how do u "have" wolf mark those camps. I thought his marking was random?

DucksGoMooful2 votes

It is random, but it's only possible to do this when those camps are marked so if you want to replicate it you have to wait until one of them is marked.

FlashnFuse1 votes

Correct ^

Ravenstiker1 votes

{quoted}

Noob question here how do u "have" wolf mark those camps. I thought his marking was random?

it is

ModCaptainMårvelous1 votes

Nice catch. It's really weird that someone found something like this. It really doesn't strike me as something you'd think of trying.

Still, have a +1 for your clever manipulation!

20Seven1 votes

People do this all the time with Red Buff on Red side. Red dies in the brush many times, so this was just a matter of time before it was found.

Kagemyth1 votes

i love this champs a lot and wanna keep playing them but bug free is the way to be :D even if it has a potential exploit

AbyssionKnight1 votes

Would be funny to have Syndra and Tahm Kench on your team. Have them just transport the marked camp around while you go to each jungle camp to constantly gain stacks. :P

Obviously would never be practical in a real game, but the thought of possibly getting 6 stacks in the time it takes to do one rotation of the jungle would be just too funny to watch.

FlashnFuse1 votes

I think the bug has to due with being in the area of the mark on the minimap, since the marked camp doesn't even have to be alive to get stacks from killing something near it.

MetalGearTeemu1 votes

How something like this gets past is beyond me. when you have a testing setup where you're looking at a single champion with a set number of skills, why would they not provide the internal mechanics of a skill to their testers as part of bugfinding? Back in the RoC Dota Days Eul would give the skinny on how a skill was made in the editor and what skills it was originally made from. Venomancers original Decomp was Unholy Frenzy castable on anything, with no bonus damage but huge HP per Second penalty to turn what was originally a unit buff into a dot back when the map was first being made.

We used that knowledge to test skills for functionality. If the testing team knew how the mark applied to jungle camps and how it wasn't unit specific I have little doubt this would be caught well in advance.

They don't need code, but they need to understand how a skill functions with in the game. ESPECIALLY for a clear hackjack like how is implemented.

This seems like a really obvious test scenario for their team, perhaps it came about due to that patch delaying bug they had on kindred and the rushed job to fix it?

FlashnFuse1 votes

Well to be fair, I had a mastery level of 5 on Kindred before I noticed this happening...

MetalGearTeemu1 votes

to be fair you're not paid to test the mechanics of his skills and don't have access to the developers and thus the internal mechanics of the skill for bugtesting purposes either.

For someone who did brew testing for cellphone games for years, and gave balance input on dota's original reign of chaos incarnation this really irks me.

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