League of Legends players have zeroed in on Locke’s ultimate as one of the most efficient kill-credit tools the game has ever seen, with the ability quietly funneling teamfight kills onto his scoreboard whether he deals the damage or not.
The mechanic is simple but brutal. Locke’s ultimate marks every enemy champion caught in its area. Once a marked target drops below a set health threshold, they get executed and Locke gets the kill. The catch is that it doesn’t matter who actually does the damage. If a teammate hits the target low enough, Locke still gets credited.
That single quirk turns Locke into a kill vacuum. Players have described setting up entire teamfights, burning cooldowns, and dealing most of the damage, only for Locke to tag the enemy team with his R and walk away with a triple or quadra.
Because the ultimate so reliably grabs kills, players are recommending Mejai’s Soulstealer as a near-mandatory pickup. The snowball AP item rewards takedowns with stacks, and kills give more stacks than assists. A champion that converts assists into kills on demand stacks Mejai’s faster than almost anyone else in the roster.
One player reported reaching 22 stacks in a single game after building it on Locke. Another claimed they ulted at the start of a fight, died on the spot, and still got a pentakill from beyond the grave once their team cleaned up the marked enemies.
The Rell combo has also become a flashpoint. Rell’s ultimate pulls multiple enemies into one spot, which is essentially a gift-wrapped setup for Locke’s AoE execute. One pentakill was credited entirely to a clean Rell engage feeding Locke a full team mark.
Players are comparing the interaction to Pyke, Urgot, and Smolder. The Pyke comparison stings the most. Pyke’s execute at least shares bonus gold with the assisting ally through Your Cut. Locke’s ultimate has no such consolation prize for the teammate who actually did the damage. Smolder came up too, with players pointing out that Riot already had to walk back similar scaling execute behavior in the past.
Some defenders argue this is mostly an ego problem. The team still wins. Kills on an assassin still translate into pressure. Counterplay exists in the form of spreading out, dodging the projectile, and locking Locke down with champions like Maokai, Alistar, Akali, or Katarina before he can set up.
Others aren’t buying it. Kill credit decides item spikes, bounty values, and who carries the midgame. When one ability decides all of that automatically, the math gets uncomfortable.
Riot hasn’t commented on whether the interaction will be touched in an upcoming patch.
