Bug abuse communication

TLDR: We need more clear in-game communication about bug abuse and what behavior is intended

This is a long post, for better argumentation and illustrations.

As a disclaimer, I don't remember having a single player (myself included) in any of my games abuse the GP bug, so I have no horse in this race. I've never had any bans or issues with Riot support.

I have seen many threads/posts/comments/... on people being banned for bug abusing - fair enough! And, as has been commonly discussed, bans for bug abuse are justified, but it's not clear where the line is. Let's focus on the GP bug as an example and I'll play fool (a bit) for quite some while to illustrate this lack of clarity.

This play fool part is important - I'll act innocently naive.

Frontline GP's ability says "Cleanse all negative effects and heal...". Cosmic Rhythm anomaly says "No longer gain Mana but instead cast their Ability every 4 seconds."

Taking things completely literally and, let's say, technically, there is no clear definition of a negative effect. Is "No longer gain mana" a negative effect? Is "... cast their Ability every 4 seconds" a negative effect? From a very technical standpoint, it seems very open to interpretation.

If my 5.00 AS double Shojin user had this anomaly, I'm pretty sure that "no longer gain mana" and "cast their ability every 4 seconds" are detrimental (= negative), since otherwise they would cast more often. If my 0.65 AS 160 mana frontline Elise had these effects, it would be extremely positive. So, using this as a rule of thumb, categorization of "negative effects" is extremely situation-specific, so the rules are blah blah yadda yadda... Even while playing fool I can't be convinced that this categorization changes so dynamically.

So there must be a static (i.e. permanent) categorization of negative effects. In such conditions, one, both or neither of "No longer gain mana" (part "A") and "cast their Ability every 4 seconds" (part "B") are categorized as negative effects. How do we know which? Well, obviously we can test it. Say, I took a GP, gave him Cosmic Rhythm and put him frontline. When he casts, he cleanses "B" and doesn't cleanse "A". Okay, that concludes our discussion - "No longer gain mana" is a positive effect and "cast every 4 seconds" is negative - plus an additional detail - "no longer gain mana" also removes mana values entirely. With max mana set to 0, a character with 0 mana is permanently full and ready to cast.

I'm no longer playing fool.

Is it really clear that this is not intended? From several posts (link, link) it's not really clear and players have been confused. Many in-game interactions are explained nowhere. Should my Maddie's ult proc Guinsoo's? It says attacks, but weirdly it procs every 2nd shot of her ult, which is, reading from the ability and item descriptions, the least logical explanation. Is my Runaan's bugged since its damage doesn't get increased from dmg amp and doesn't heal? Or does it?

Imagine having (ARCANE SPOILER) the upcoming 6-cost Viktor. It is painfully clear that this character is not supposed to cast more often. All mana generation and AS are converted to AP. It is impossible to get any item, trait or augment combination to make them cast faster.

Well, apparently, Cosmic Rhythm allows them to cast every 4 seconds and it is intended so, at least according to devs. HUH? Is a player supposed to know this without accidentally stumbling upon the information? Should one refrain from using this out of fear of bug abuse? Should I stop equipping Guinsoo's on my Maddie?

Imagine being a player just playing the game. You don't have meta-knowledge of how games work and should work. You pick up Cosmic Rhythm for your GP and put him backline. AFAIK, it sucks for him, since he doesn't cast at all (look up ability details). You move him frontline and he casts much more often. This seems pretty strong, right? Maybe you just cooked up a sick new build! You're excited to climb, so you spam your new build a couple of games ---> permaban.

There are many weird and even weirder interactions in the game, some of them are apparently intended. While playing fool, I made an innocently naive technical narrative on why GP's behavior being intended is plausible. Honestly, I could very hardly draft such a narrative for Maddie and Guinsoo's, it's much, much less plausible that this is intended. Wait until you hear what happened when I equipped 3 Tactician's items on the same unit... Ouch!

You shouldn't be held responsible to deduce if an interaction is bugged.

This duty must not be on players, at least until a point is reached where (almost) all behaviour is well documented and works cleanly. Since it's definitely not trivial to reach the latter state, I suggest implementing an official, in-game or in-client communication channel with known bugs. If that is too difficult or doesn't work, I think that, at least for these unclear situations, warnings must be issued first.

As a funny anecdote, I remember a famous TFT streamer Mortdog intentionally abusing a bug last set on PBE and bragging about it (link), but he was never banned.

(joke, PBE + context)