Crit needs reworking.

grLKQ9ma0o·Oct 30, 2014·48 votes·4,674 views

Why, in a game so based upon skill, timing, and knowledge of abilities and interactions, do we rely so heavily on the RNG god? I could be ahead of my opponent, but if I get one crit and they get 2, they have a huge likelihood of winning a fight, especially with Infinity Edge being the standard rush item on ADCs. The issue isn't that their damage output is increased, it's simply that you can't calculate it as you go very well. Can Crits be reworked into something different? Like with abilities, why not just give some sort of consistent autoattack bonus damage that doesn't calculate as AD for abilities? It just is a little frustrating to rely on you getting crits or your opponent not getting them to win a trade.

91 Comments

WeirWulfOct 30, 201415 votes

Do you think it would be better to normalise it? For example instead of 20% crit chance, "crit chance" would now increase auto-attacks damage by a factor of 1.2. As comparison ~

Current system; Your autos do 10 damage and you attack 5 times with 20% crit chance, in theory you do ~ 10+10+10+10+20=60 (ignoring RNG).
Would be replaced with; Your autos do 10 damage and you attack 5 times with 1.2 "crit chance" factor ~ 12+12+12+12+12=60

L7xLoTekOct 30, 20147 votes

I'm personally a big fan of this approach. Seems to be the least work too.

7ha7guy777Oct 30, 20142 votes

how would infinity edge work with this? +25% auto attack damage and a 50% bonus to all item based auto attack damage % boosts?

FantasySniperNov 1, 20142 votes

+50% Critical bonus (Think Rabadons)

KingsgraveOct 30, 20141 votes

This would still call for a rework of every single Crit item in the game unless you want to see characters like Riven building item 3031 first

SteelflameOct 31, 20144 votes

Not really. Any AD Caster wouldn't get any more benefit from crit items that before, because crit isn't a % AD increase, it is a % AA damage increase. Riven still gets just as little from crit as she does before quite frankly.

Mindworm JimOct 31, 20142 votes

It's not a terrible idea, but if we're going to revamp as aspect of the game I think we should be a little more ambitious than that.

Replace critical chance entirely with crit damage (default +0%, or maybe +25%), and create a mechanic that any champion can use to ensure that their auto-attack crits. Maybe they have to hit the enemy in the back, or stand still for one second, or be at least within half of their maximum range, or whatever.

Removing critical chance from the game is going to require a ton of work no matter how you slice it. You can at least make it INTERESTING.

Squeaky DreemurrOct 30, 201410 votes

+1 Stupid random stat in a professionally played strategy game. You don't see Chess with this kind of nonsense. If you want a champion to be centered around random play, then give them a unique "crit" passive so as not to plague every other champion with the evil RNG.

7ha7guy777Oct 30, 201427 votes

checkmate. not so fast, my pawn just got a crit

MarthianOct 30, 20148 votes

sorry, but my rook's passive activated.

DrogmyreOct 30, 201413 votes

Bitch please, my Bishop uses Chronoshift.

JustMyBassCannonOct 30, 20147 votes

I PLAY SWORDS OF REVEALING LIGHT!

PikmintsOct 30, 20143 votes

Wobbuffet use Mirror Coat!

Meep ManOct 30, 20148 votes

YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!

DecaedeusOct 30, 20143 votes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXrzdsr8DRQ GO SHOOTING QUASAR DRAGON!

JustMyBassCannonOct 31, 20141 votes

GO, PIKACHU!

Kuroi86Oct 31, 20145 votes

Pops a Sensu Bean and is K.

Hyrum GraffOct 31, 20141 votes

What just happened here.

Kuroi86Oct 31, 20141 votes

Fluffy happened. Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.

Hyrum GraffOct 31, 20141 votes

WAIT. GP's oranges are totally sensu beans.

Auz the RipperOct 30, 20149 votes

Critical strike chance could easily be changed to a percentile based autoattack damage Modifier similar to what Inspectorstrange suggested without requiring an overhaul of any crit dependent champions except yasuo (no idea what would be done with him) and without requiring the change of any items except IE (which could easily just become the damage modifier's Deathcap). It wouldn't even have to have the name totally changed, only the the "chance" part cut off and maybe replace "strikes" with "attacks," I don't know.

it would make mid/lategame duels between two ADCs no longer totally dependent on whichever of them is luckier at that point in time, allowing the better ADC win more consistently.

The only real downside is that you couldn't get the satisfaction of laughing at the hilariously gigantic red numbers anymore (mostly a problem with GP)

DrogmyreOct 30, 20147 votes

Crit is the major reason why ADCs are so overbearing in this game. Having 200/250% damage on nearly every auto attack come late game, with a ranged kit almost entirely revolving around auto attacks is guaranteed to be the main build path.

There are some ADCs that should NEVER, EVER be able to crit. There are some champions that NEED crit, or a similar mechanic.

However, having Crit as an item stat is broken, and will never be anything but broken. It guarantees that other item concepts for ADs will die in a fire because Crit is just too strong, and there are too many items with crit for ADs that are incredibly strong.

On the other hand, removing crit leaves the question: What the fuck am I supposed to do for damage now?

Crit has so thoroughly devoured the item diversity for right click champions that removing it would cripple or even completely render right click champs unviable.

Unlike AP, where items like Zhonya's, Rabadon's, and DFG provide massive stat gains, the AD item tree has very little for just straight up AD. Bloodthirster, Infinity Edge, and a couple of others give more than 50 AD, which just isn't all that much, unless you're also critting.

So, crit has completely consumed all the item variation in the AD item tree, which is bad. However, without crit ADCs and other right click AD champs would be utterly underpowered and damn near unplayable. Which is also bad.

I'll have to think about this more, but I could imagine removing crit and replacing it with a more diverse, healthier item tree would actually be a good thing for the game. I'll see what I can come up with, and post it for suggestions and edits and such.

TilomentryOct 30, 20149 votes

However, having Crit as an item stat is broken, and will never be anything but broken. It guarantees that other item concepts for ADs will die in a fire because Crit is just too strong, and there are too many items with crit for ADs that are incredibly strong.

This is actually false. In seasons 2 & 3, BT rush for the mid-game power spike was the preferred build and most ADC where actually built more AD casters. There was also the fabled Urgot and Blue Ezreal that dominated bot lane. And then Tri-Force Corki, Ezreal and Lucian have (and still are) powerful builds

Hyrum GraffOct 31, 20141 votes

To be fair, that was when BT gave more AD than IE, so it was also the premier dps item.

buniesOct 30, 20141 votes

Crit is the major reason why ADCs are so overbearing in this game.

someone defintely never played dota

DrogmyreOct 30, 20148 votes

There's a major difference. DotA has different crit mechanics, and also has items that shut ADC/right click down. You're comparing apples to oranges, here.

When LoL gets heaven's halberd/evasion/longer than 3s hard disables/blade mail, then I'll take that comment seriously.

Also, DotA's crit mechanics work differently. You get an X% chance to crit, however crit doesn't stack %s. It stacks instances. Someone with 2 crystalys will have 2 chances of 15% each to crit on each attack, not 1 chance of 30% on each attack.

JakethenightOct 30, 20143 votes

What the hell would GP do if crits are gone?

PikmintsOct 30, 20141 votes

Get a kit rework? I'm glad they changed his ult to remove the RNG from that, but I still can smell how old his kit is because of how binary his decision making is.

Earl EulrichOct 30, 20142 votes

It´s not even decission-making...you shot someone and either you crit and follow up on it or you don´t crit and retreat.

AmightyTOct 31, 20141 votes

He's already getting a kit rework, but yea, all mADCs would need a rework to maintain any viability.

DamanziOct 31, 20142 votes

Crit has been in the game it's entire life, and ADC's have only been overbearing in cycles.

DUDE BROOct 30, 20147 votes

Critical Chance -> Critical Power Instead of a random chance to do double damage, it now amplifies your basic attacks. Same overall damage, but now your attacks are constant, rather than some weak and some super strong. (This is only for basic attacks, abilities still use regular AD)

+10% Crit chance -> +10% basic attack damage. 250% Crit Damage -> 250% Critical Power Damage

Example: You had 100 AD with 50% crit chance. You did 100 damage and then 200 damage. Now you have 100 AD with 50% crit power. You'll do 150 damage every basic attack.

Results This allows for better tuning. Now Crit power can be lowered slightly scross the board, so players won't reach 100% as easily (but won't need to, since it's applied on every attack). Although players who go pure crit power can go over 100%, but their damage will be lacking.

shppyOct 30, 20144 votes

Crit's random factor is absolute trash in a game that's supposed to be 'competitive'. Crit should have been taken out of the game years ago and replaced with a stat that increases auto-attack damage by a percentage of your total AD.

That, and there's no excuse for crit to scale as highly as it does... having a 4th scaling vector for auto-attacks (compared to the 3 vectors of nearly every other type of offense) is reasonably fine, it creates a unique powercurve and helps to ensure defense or burst don't outright dominate lategame. But crit's level of scaling is ridiculous; two measely items (PD+IE) creates an 87.5% damage amp on their crit properties alone, to say nothing of the AS/MS or AD they grant.

Crit needs to be remade into a consistent %damage amp on auto-attacks, and it needs to have its values toned down substantially (which in turn would allow armor values to be toned down, as the ridiculous scaling that crit currently allows is why armor values have to be so high to make a difference... it's also the reason why purchasing any marginal amount armor without investing heavily into armor winds up being virtually meaningless).

MrSlowDieOct 31, 20143 votes

so true, it will be better if riot rework/change crit, whether it will be constant bonus damage, or exact crit every X attacks, or anything, it's up to Riot.

and I don't think ADC that dominant, it's easier to carry a game with mid/jungler. Too much assuming and generalizing aren't healthy

CooLTanGOct 30, 20142 votes

I'd much rather complain about the scripters ingame than the crit mechanics. The 1 button script to ward & jump to it aka jax/lee sin, katerina skill spam scripts, so many scripts out there that riot could work into banning those players or work on some coding around scripting. With hexakill it really brings out them with katerina too.

MarthianOct 30, 201413 votes

Then make a thread about it. This is talking about critical hits, not macros.

DrakoUnRamaOct 30, 20141 votes

I'd much rather complain about the scripters ingame than the crit mechanics. The 1 button script to ward & jump to it aka jax/lee sin, katerina skill spam scripts, so many scripts out there that riot could work into banning those players or work on some coding around scripting. With hexakill it really brings out them with katerina too.

they can't really do much about them since most gaming keyboards and mice come with the program built in to be able to do this not too mention seperate programs ppl can get if they don't have the hardware made for it you can't ban the hardware really and so it would be unfair to then ban the software to compensate

CooLTanGNov 1, 20141 votes

I'd much rather complain about the scripters ingame than the crit mechanics. The 1 button script to ward & jump to it aka jax/lee sin, katerina skill spam scripts, so many scripts out there that riot could work into banning those players or work on some coding around scripting. With hexakill it really brings out them with katerina too.

they can't really do much about them since most gaming keyboards and mice come with the program built in to be able to do this not too mention seperate programs ppl can get if they don't have the hardware made for it you can't ban the hardware really and so it would be unfair to then ban the software to compensate

I'd still ban the software people, but u could also check to see if the same delay on abilities is consistant (aka 10 ms between skills thoughout game) to know if its a script

Kuroi86Oct 30, 20142 votes

It's not totally random. Once you have even 1% crit chance, every auto attack that doesn't crit causes your crit chance to go up until you finally do crit. No it's not perfect, but it's not totally random either.

Yes it can be improved on. Setting crit to a static hit count might help. With 1% crit, after 100 auto attacks, you are guaranteed a crit, but the other 99 prior to it will not. At 10% crit, you're guaranteed that every tenth auto attack will crit. At 25% every fourth auto attack will crit. At 50%, every other auto attack will crit. That's just a generalized example. At say 55% crit, out of 100 auto attacks, 55 of them are guaranteed crits, how they are dispersed throughout that 100 auto attacks, that is what I'd have to work on.

jQueryOct 30, 20144 votes

With 1% crit, after 100 auto attacks , you are guaranteed a crit

No, i think you are not guaranteed anything. The mechanics just does not check how many NON-critical hits u had;

It just pulls a number form 1 to 100 and if the number is less than ur crit chance u will do a critical hit. So u can have 1% and have two crits one afther the other and then on ur 50-th to have another one.

I have experienced this when playing Lulu with wrong runes (4.6% crit chance) and once I killed a retreating Thresh with 4 hits and the first and the 4-th ware crit strikes. And I still remember his response in the chat "critical lulu so op!" :D.

Kuroi86Oct 30, 20143 votes

My apologies, the way I posted it, it may have come out wrong. I was suggesting a way to improve the system with that statement, not how it works.

How it currently works isn't broken, but can be improved upon.

At current, so long as you have even 1% crit chance, every auto attack that does not crit causes your crit chance to raise until you finally crit, it then resets to the amount of crit chance you have built. Does that make more sense?

I also adjusted my original post to try and reflect what I meant.

jQueryOct 31, 20142 votes

it then resets to the amount of crit chance you have built

Im not sure , but i think its not resting anything, it just pulls random numbers before u strike, and if The Randomly Generated Number is smaller than ur crit chance - the strike is critical. And I thinks that is all of the function and logic behind the Critical strike.

So if u to have 33% chance trough the whole game and u had exactly 1000 strikes - its totally possible just 200 of them to be crits and is also equally possible 500 of them to be crits. Its even possible to critically hit width every strike with 1% chance (But i think its more likely to win the lottery 3 times in a row :D )

I think that its unpredictability its both the fun and the problem with the critical chance.

If they change it; "every 3-t strike will deal bonus...." it will loose the meaning, its no more critical strike.

But maybe the worst thing about it is that the only way*(that i know of)* you can counter it directly is with a defense mastery "Reinforced Armor".

PaperMache7Oct 30, 20142 votes

The response I gave in some PBE thread to a post from feralpony:

As someone who has discussed and seen the opinion of quite a few people, here's my view on it (some things might not be very clear considering english isn't my first language, also I'm aware it's quite a long read, but I've thought quite a bit about this matter and think changing it does require a large post on my part):

Removing it entirely and trying the rework the items accordingly would destroy years of balance, so it's truly a no go.

People would not enjoy a simple increase in % damage, it would be my favourite option balance wise, but I must admit that the people who say that the disapearance of crit animation (making particals partial would be an insane amount of work) and the high damage spikes from the crits themselves are fun and create excitement (also a fair point).

It could be kept the same as it currently is, but there's gameplay issues with doing this. First it's random (I know it's semi-random in LoL, but random is still random). Randomness in video games itself is not a problem, but for something like a player vs player game such as league where there's snowballing (this is an extremely important variable to take into account) it can cause some very undesirable effects. Seeing as someone get lucky and get a gold lead from it and the next time he faces his enemy he could be unlucky, but due to his newly aquired item lead still win the fight and snowball even further. These sort of situations just feel completely unfair for the victim and not truly deserved for the one who benefits from them.

These notions have lead me to the conclusion that a crit system when the statiscal average is enforced to be the best solution. For those who don't know what this means, it goes as follow, 25% crit = a crit every 4 AA. What about 40 then? Just imagine a bar filling up and every time it reaches or goes past 100 it would be reduced by 100. So if you do 2 AA the third one will push you over 100 and it will be a crit, 1 more AA and you're now at 60 and the next one will crit since it will put you at 100 and so the cycle continues.

And before anyone jumps their horses saying every lane would become governed by a Caitlyn like passive let me add some more. This counter would be seperate between each individual champion, minions and monsters. The reason for champion counters not being generalized like for the minion and monsters is to be absolutely sure there would no abuse cases. Furthermore (this is the part where Riot programmers would likely cringe a little if it was done, sorry guys) abilities that are some form of on-hit critting AA like Yasuo Gangplank MasterYi Q would need to have a seperate set of counters for themselves. Yas Q would probably need to prioritize champs when hitting both them and something else (use the closest champ to him as the counter if more than one is hit) and for the tornado whatever is hit first determines if the tornado would be critting or not. Well anyway that was an awfully complex read, sorry about that. Anyway as I mentionned this solution if by far my favourite.

Finally you could also use an hybrid model between % increase and statistical average where you could (for an example at 50% crit) have 1.25x damage multiplier and crit dealing 1.75x (of base dmg not multiplied by the multiplier too). This would obviously complicate things for players, but also make the damage more consistent and crits less extreme. Not really a pretty solution, but can be used if it's for the sake of balance vs "crits are awesome".

Well that was long read now that I look back... Anyhow, if you actually read it all the way through that'd be nice and if you did just acknowledging it through a past even if you're not planning to respond to any of this or/and thought it was garbage, would still be appreciated.

Earl EulrichOct 30, 20143 votes

mh *sigh* seems they still cling to the "cheap effect">"logic/gamehealth".

Wouldn´t be too hard to make shiny numbers bigger/more colourfull the more crit-power (+%dmg for AAs) one does posses and just shift the crit-animation to Sheen...as this is finally sth. everyone can make some use of (lichbane, trinity, gauntlet) opposed to being limited to AA-focused Champs (so sad that Maos brilliant animation is sooo rarely seen).

DrakoUnRamaOct 30, 20142 votes

As far as the crit goes good luck with this the same argument was made long ago when they eventually decided to remove evasion and the argument made then was everyone loves big crits and nobody enjoys missing damage lol they're not very logical when it comes to the crit mechanic

LittleBlastOct 31, 20142 votes

Just make Crit not RNG and it wpuld be better, not perfect, but better. Pretty much, with something like 25% crit chance, every 4th auto would crit, and none of your other autos. It would make GP even more of an ass to face, but it would add a bit more counterplay than "omg plz no rng gods". Also it would add a number, visible to all, that would show how much your building up a crit.

NarasimhaOct 30, 20141 votes

How does every other MOBA manage to get crit to work, but only LoL finds it as an issue?

XengreNov 1, 20141 votes

I would argue that Crit is fine if it is appropriately predictable, that is pseudo random crits are actually reflective of what they represent (20%, etc.) with a good PRNG. The problem is that Riot uses a very... moronic method of handling crit which isn't even based on an actual RNG system so much as an idiotic algorithm incorrectly handled. This creates an issue where you should possibly crit on your first or second attack during an engagement but literally can not or it heavily decreases the chances of this happening due to their algorithm. It also causes issues where you can't properly multi-crit in a row or in quick succession. This issue is most obvious with lower crit values. Having say 30% crit chance should let you realistically be able to crit back to back or twice in three hits sometimes, but over the course of the game 30% should roughly match critting 30% of the time as you get a larger sample. This is far less likely with Crit values of 8% but even this should be possible sometimes. With the current setup this simply is not possible and the previous situations become a problem.

It was changed to be this way because before 4% crit chance earlygame happened too often. What about those "rare crits" that aren't really so rare occuring that might make or break a lane? This is due to the poor RNG used previously. Using a proper RNG would not result in this problem and would, effectively, act like the dmg modifiers being asked for in this thread. The odds of multi-succession crits would become more likely as you got more crit chance (example: 30%, 40%) but with a proper RNG would never become out of control. Example: The previous 2 crits out of 3 hits example might seem incorrect but over the course of 5 hits, or 10 hits, it would quickly get close to resembling the correct percentage. Riot could argue that the RNG isn't random enough (poor distribution) or too short a period (repeats cycle too fast) but a proper PRNG would alleviate this such as a LNG Mersenne Twister PRNG could be utilized. These are also performance friendly enough to never be used as an excuse for their lack of implementation. To be completely honest it baffles me why Riot never took this approach in the first place. Oh, did I mention this could be created in a matter of minutes to hours depending on prior knowledge of the topic?

SionideCNNov 1, 20142 votes

I would argue that Crit is fine if it is appropriately predictable, that is pseudo random crits are actually reflective of what they represent (20%, etc.) with a good PRNG. The problem is that Riot uses a very... moronic method of handling crit which isn't even based on an actual RNG system so much as an idiotic algorithm incorrectly handled. This creates an issue where you should possibly crit on your first or second attack during an engagement but literally can not or it heavily decreases the chances of this happening due to their algorithm. It also causes issues where you can't properly multi-crit in a row or in quick succession. This issue is most obvious with lower crit values. Having say 30% crit chance should let you realistically be able to crit back to back or twice in three hits sometimes, but over the course of the game 30% should roughly match critting 30% of the time as you get a larger sample. This is far less likely with Crit values of 8% but even this should be possible sometimes. With the current setup this simply is not possible and the previous situations become a problem.

It was changed to be this way because before 4% crit chance earlygame happened too often. What about those "rare crits" that aren't really so rare occuring that might make or break a lane? This is due to the poor RNG used previously. Using a proper RNG would not result in this problem and would, effectively, act like the dmg modifiers being asked for in this thread. The odds of multi-succession crits would become more likely as you got more crit chance (example: 30%, 40%) but with a proper RNG would never become out of control. Example: The previous 2 crits out of 3 hits example might seem incorrect but over the course of 5 hits, or 10 hits, it would quickly get close to resembling the correct percentage. Riot could argue that the RNG isn't random enough (poor distribution) or too short a period (repeats cycle too fast) but a proper PRNG would alleviate this such as a LNG Mersenne Twister PRNG could be utilized. These are also performance friendly enough to never be used as an excuse for their lack of implementation. To be completely honest it baffles me why Riot never took this approach in the first place. Oh, did I mention this could be created in a matter of minutes to hours depending on prior knowledge of the topic?

the problem is that actual randomness doesn't feel fun or fair to play against

XengreNov 1, 20141 votes

I would argue that Crit is fine if it is appropriately predictable, that is pseudo random crits are actually reflective of what they represent (20%, etc.) with a good PRNG. The problem is that Riot uses a very... moronic method of handling crit which isn't even based on an actual RNG system so much as an idiotic algorithm incorrectly handled. This creates an issue where you should possibly crit on your first or second attack during an engagement but literally can not or it heavily decreases the chances of this happening due to their algorithm. It also causes issues where you can't properly multi-crit in a row or in quick succession. This issue is most obvious with lower crit values. Having say 30% crit chance should let you realistically be able to crit back to back or twice in three hits sometimes, but over the course of the game 30% should roughly match critting 30% of the time as you get a larger sample. This is far less likely with Crit values of 8% but even this should be possible sometimes. With the current setup this simply is not possible and the previous situations become a problem.

It was changed to be this way because before 4% crit chance earlygame happened too often. What about those "rare crits" that aren't really so rare occuring that might make or break a lane? This is due to the poor RNG used previously. Using a proper RNG would not result in this problem and would, effectively, act like the dmg modifiers being asked for in this thread. The odds of multi-succession crits would become more likely as you got more crit chance (example: 30%, 40%) but with a proper RNG would never become out of control. Example: The previous 2 crits out of 3 hits example might seem incorrect but over the course of 5 hits, or 10 hits, it would quickly get close to resembling the correct percentage. Riot could argue that the RNG isn't random enough (poor distribution) or too short a period (repeats cycle too fast) but a proper PRNG would alleviate this such as a LNG Mersenne Twister PRNG could be utilized. These are also performance friendly enough to never be used as an excuse for their lack of implementation. To be completely honest it baffles me why Riot never took this approach in the first place. Oh, did I mention this could be created in a matter of minutes to hours depending on prior knowledge of the topic?

the problem is that actual randomness doesn't feel fun or fair to play against

Actual randomness would play out almost identical to simply making crit a straight dmg modifier bar the occasional successive crit which could allow dps burst, but would equalize over the course of the next couple hits and wouldn't be so common as to be an issue with a proper PRNG, unlike their crappy one from before. The only real difference would be the potential for "burst" because you can't really predict it entirely, but you can estimate its likelyness based on how much crit has been stacked.