Why aren't they building crit on Yi?

[{quoted}](name=Menea Calais,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=936QENLx,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-01-24T00:40:24.208+0000)

Because crit doesn't increase the true damage, and he needs AS/hp to deal tons of dps while staying alive.

More or less. Crit yi is for a snowballing lane yi instead of a jungle yi.

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He's been building crit forever though. How can you say that he doesn't scale off crit. Alpha can crit.

its the only crit scaling in his kit. and alpha strike scoring a crit isnt guaranteed. youre gambling that you can get in and blow up a squishy before you blow up.

bruiser/on hit yi is just more reliable and alpha strike is used more as a gap closing tool and as a tool to dodge abilities rather than for raw burst.

alpha strikes cooldown is also reduced with attack speed.

No, he really hasn't been building crit for a very long time. It's been like 2 seasons since he's seriously bought crit items. He did it a bit right after he got reworked in season 3, but by season 4 people had pretty much stopped building it. Feral Flare and later devourer took him away from the stat for good. He would maybe get a Yoummu's, but nothing more.

Alpha strike may be able to crit, but that doesn't really matter when everything else on his kit scales with on-hit effects much better than it scales with crit. His scaling with non-crit stats is much, much higher than his scaling with crit.

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He's been building crit forever though.

He didn't used to have on-hit true damage. Devourer didn't used to exist. BotRK didn't used to exist. Guinsoo's used to be a bad item.

I haven't done the math, so I don't know which build path is better, but the AS + on-hit path is at least reasonable.

Devourer makes Crit Yi obsolete.

Because when you do the math it hurts way more while giving you more utility and making you tankier. It's better in every way except alpha strike damage.

Think about it like this. Yi has a true damage on-hit effect on his E, and it is a large percentage of his damage, right? Well, if he gets items that synergize with that, then he can increase his damage. Devourer is a great item for this. Rageblade is great for this (and it's great with devourer). Crit.... is not. The only thing crit does for him that on-hits don't do better is make alpha strike a bit stronger, and alpha strike is not your main source of damage. It's your smallest.

On top of that, on-hit items don't scale with other on-hits, which means you can get a large amount of damage from 2-3 items and then you can build tanky. Crit does nothing unless you have other items to scale with it, so I'm forced into a squisher build to make crit work even though I'm not doing much more damage than an on-hit build because I'm not building to support my main source of damage. That's not very appealing.

Basically, on-hit items synergize with his main source of damage and lets me build tanky while getting X damage. Crit synergizes with his smallest source of damage. Seems like a pretty clear choice to me.

Are you saying that non critting AAs are stronger than critting AAs with the on hit build vs the crit build?

At the same gold threshold? Yes. If I 5,000 gold worth of items on Yi, I'll be doing more damage with that gold invested into on-hit effects than I will if I have that gold invested into crit items, particularly if I have a devourer further enhancing the value of on-hit effects. By the point where a crit build catches up in damage, I could have a tanky item on an on-hit build and not have to worry about getting instagibbed. I'll still be able to 1v1 anyone easily.

The crit items (PD/STATSHIV) have as AS built in and doesn't have to ramp up like rage blade.

Yi ramps a rage blade in just a bit over a second, and the crit items have less total attack speed and get access to it later in the build.

But yeah I see what you mean cause it takes longer for the crit build to power spike since you need both to make it go.

Honestly, you need even more than that. If you're going the crit build, you can't stop it at IE/PD. You'll get have to get more damage items to make that 50% crit efficient. Your power spike isn't really complete until the next item after IE/PD, and that's a lot of time to stay extremely squishy.