Why do people say crit is a wasted stat on bruisers and some assassins?

The Loveless·11/16/2015, 6:42:53 PM·4 votes·696 views

I always thought it was weird for people to say this since you'd land a few basic attacks when fighting anyway, and it didn't hurt to have a random crit pop off if you're a sustained fighter (Wu, Jax, Olaf, Irelia, etc). Like, they removed the crit from Ghostblade, but the active still gives attack speed for basic attacking and people say it's better for bruisers now.

The possible reason I could see people saying it's a wasted stat is because crit takes up "power budget" when bruisers could use other things for durability, but ghostblade (as well as rage blade, bork, ravenous hydra & triforce to an extent) are common first buys for bruisers, yet they don't add durability, and only boost basic attacks.

Hope this gets some replies.

9 Comments

Abyssphere11/16/2015, 7:16:46 PM4 votes

Because it's unreliable for two reasons:

Build path - assassins cannot fully dive into crit itemisation, which means they never get a high crit chance. Old Ghostblade with no other crit items was a tiny amount of crit - you could go a full team fight without getting a crit, meaning the stat is unused.
Playstyle - often people like Talon and Zed just cannot afford to spend a second longer than is necessary in the middle of a fight. They do their combo and get out as quickly as possible, hoping they live. That can mean they don't auto attack, at all, meaning no crits.

Of course crit isn't useless on assassins, but it's not guaranteed to be useful either. And that's not something people want from their itemisation.

redniwediS11/16/2015, 6:48:42 PM3 votes

Many people, like the ones who say crit doesn't work on bruisers and some assassins, like to think in absolutes. If something works it always works, and if something doesn't work it never works. Thinking that way can be fine if you don't use generalized labels like bruiser or assassin to describe large numbers of champions.

To put it simply it's a knowledge problem. They are working off assumptions and treating them as facts. Hopefully your post changes a few minds, but I doubt it will.

xJLx MCHammer11/16/2015, 7:05:58 PM2 votes

an ADC will be constantly using AA hence the return for wasting gold to get crits will always be good. Like you said, assassins don't tend to use a lot of AA, Zed tends to use very few AA abilities. Talon, Kha, and even rengar, they don't use a lot of AA attacks. Kha jumps in, uses Q>AA>W>AA>Actives, Rengar does a similar ability.

With that said, i don't think you understand what people mean when they say it useless. You said, 'it didn't hurt to have a random crit pop off if you're a sustained fighter (Wu, Jax, Olaf, Irelia, etc)." That's not true, the cost of items are based on the stats it gives you. If an assassin can get an item that gives him more flat AD or Armor Pen instead of crit (same gold value), it would benefit them more. That's the idea.

Azuredragon65311/16/2015, 10:52:37 PM1 votes

Let's take a few specific examples. This isn't about whether or not AS is good on these champions; this is just comparing AS to crit.

Irelia - She gets absolutely nothing when she crits. When she attacks more often, her she applies her W, her main damage source, more often. Olaf - He gets absolutely nothing when he crits. When he attacks more often, he can cast E, his main damage source, more often. Renekton - He gets absolutely nothing when he crits. When he attacks more often, he gets more rage, a key component of his healing, damage, and CC. Jax - He gets absolutely nothing when he crits. When he attacks more often, he stacks his passive faster and triggers his R more often, which are both good sources of damage.

And so on and so on

Espy Psyche11/16/2015, 8:21:11 PM1 votes

It's basically like crit in World of Warcraft. I'm gonna make parallels between WoW stats and League stats to make this easier to understand.

Agility improves a hunter's damage dealt with attacks _(Attack Damage)._ Stamina improves a hunter's ability to stay alive through damage (Health). Critical strike improves a hunter's chance to hit for additional damage on attacks (Critical Strike). Haste improves a hunter's ability to use abilities more often (Cooldown Reduction). Multistrike improves a hunter's ability to attack faster (Attack Speed). Mastery improves a specific aspect of a hunter that works better against some enemies than others (Armor Penetration).

Ability crits in World of Warcraft don't crit for double damage there, it's only 1.5x, so for specs that don't have some benefit from crits, Critical Strike is less useful than Haste, Multistrike, or Mastery. Fire mages have Hot Streak, which gives them a free instant Pyroblast (their most powerful spell) if they get two crits in a row. Marksmanship hunters have Enhanced Aimed Shot, which causes their Aimed Shot criticals to restore Focus (their resource, which works like Energy, so they can use more abilities). Feral druids have Leader of the Pack, which heals them when on crit (basically Warlord's Bloodlust).

Do Frost mages, Balance druids, or Survival hunters improve their DPS from crit? Yes, they do. It's not a wasted stat. Do those above classes improve their DPS with crit as much as they do with Haste, Mastery or Multistrike (or as much as a fire mage would from crit)? No.

If a survival hunter had a choice between two pieces of gear:

Chestguard of the Merciless -- Agility, Stamina, Mastery, Multistrike

Chestguard of the Fireflash -- Agility, Stamina, Critical Strike, Haste

The survival hunter would choose the first piece (Merciless) because it has the stats he prefers. But if he had the choice between Fireflash and nothing, he would choose Fireflash. He would also choose Fireflash over a Merciless piece with significantly lower Agility and Stamina.

The same applies to a Talon or Zed. Yes, they do improve their DPS from critical strike. But they improve their DPS more from Attack Damage, Cooldown Reduction, and Armor Penetration. They would rather have an item with the same amount of AD as Infinity Edge, but with the critical strike and Infinity passive removed and replaced with Armor Penetration and Cooldown Reduction.

Bears Dont Care11/16/2015, 10:10:19 PM1 votes

Essentially bruisers and most assassins are ability reliant, and crits can only occur if the ability is allowed to crit such as Pantheon's Q, Evelynn's E, Talon's Q, an a few others. This, however, dends on how often the character auto attacks, and in the case of Talon, Pantheon, they do not auto attack often enough to utilize crit.

Sona Ping11/16/2015, 10:46:58 PM1 votes

The comments about this are really in regards to Ghosblade, so on the topic of Ghostblade:

"it didn't hurt to have a random crit pop off". Yes, it didn't hurt, because more damage is more damage, but it's for that very reason why they are better off getting more damage, i.e. more AD, from Ghostblade for the gold they spend, rather than the small amount of crit that Ghostblade would provide them as they usually would not get said "more damage" in the majority of attacks. Sustained fighters, like you mentioned, who attack more have more appreciation for crit but champions like Irelia normally don't even buy Ghostblade because it doesn't meet their needs, and champions like Wukong were usually really just in it for the Brutalizer and if they did get Ghostblade would appreciate having more AD over the crit.