This is absolutely ridiculous and amazing.
Professional League of Legends player Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin pulled off a bonkers baron steal over the weekend, a play so epic it deserves to be written down so that we may remember it—both as an example of crazy luck and a lesson for why you should always use Smite when killing off Baron.
Baron Nashor, in case you don’t know, is a big purple monster who lives in the jungle in Summoner’s Rift—the main map in ludicrously popular online multiplayer game League of Legends. Over the course of a game, both five-person teams try to kill baron in order to gain powerful team-wide buffs that help carry them to victory. There’s always a risk in trying to kill baron, though. Clever opponents will contest the kill by trying to ambush the team attacking baron. Or better yet, one clever opponent will sneak in and snipe the beast for that one last portion of its health bar—reaping all the rewards of the kill and driving the enemy team crazy in the process.
A successful steal usually looks something like this, for a point of reference:
In a League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) game between the North American pro teams Team Liquid and Team SoloMid (TSM) played over the weekend, Team Liquid player Piglet pulled off a similarly triumphant baron steal. The catch? He did so completely blind. Like: he couldn’t see the monster at all. He just took a shot in the dark. Literally.
Holy shit. He couldn’t even see the damn thing! Usually, baron steals have to be perfectly timed, with the prospective thief waiting and watching for just the right moment to jump in and nab the kill from their opponent’s eager grasp.
There was probably a good deal of luck involved in Piglet shooting off his baron-killing rocket at just the right moment. But at the same time, Team SoloMid’s jungler Santorin should have used his powerful “Smite” spell to kill the baron before Piglet even had a chance to attempt such an audacious steal in the first place.
LCS fans understandably lost their shit after seeing such an unpredictable and epic moment unfold.
GG, Piglet. GGWP.
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