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What is the *actual* purpose of crit? [Poll Inside]

Hinagiku33·2/4/2015, 12:53:09 AM·3 votes·1,070 views

TL;DR - Crit is kinda ridiculous since it gives a huge dmg boost on top of already high dmg and armor shred to make it hit even harder. Would it be too crazy to make critical strike chance and armor penetration something to choose between instead of something to stack together?

Hi all,

To begin I'd like to point out that I am a long-time Fiora main - in case you didn't see my name - and that I actually prefer a crit build on Fiora since I find using the rest of her kit more than than just being an ult bot. I'll say it right now, I like critical strike chance and want it to stay a part of the game. It adds a bit of excitement when I get a crit and a simple trade become an opportunity to go in for the kill and turn the lane in my favor.

But holy hell, crit combined with armor penetration and late game AD and AS is kinda insane and gives tanks a hard time.

Tank mains are having a bad time right now because full AD Carry builds get out of hand. Ranged or Melee doesn't matter - killing a squishy in three or so hits is expected, but a tank should take more like six or so hits to go down (at late game).

A lot of people correctly blame critical strike for causing a bit of a power imbalance. Suddenly dealing double damage on something that can already hit as hard a mage spells is a big deal. On top of that, it's limited to basic attacks and scales with AD so champions that don't build AD or attack a lot can't utilize it - i.e. mages and tanks. This also means that champions with greater attack speed will get much more use out of it than champions that only throw in one or two attacks into their combos - i.e. fighters and assassins. So it's a huge damage boost that can only be properly used by a single class of champions - i.e. marksmen.

I want to argue that crit itself is not bad. Crit combined with powerful armor shred is bad. Just stacking crit will amplify damage every couple hits and is pretty manageable. But with a lot of armor penetration, suddenly every attack hits like a truck and each crit hits that much harder. That combo combined with AD Carries' already high AD and AS mutate the sustained damage class into a solid burst class that can also erase tanks.

I believe this is a problem that should be addressed for the future health of the game, and I believe that I'm not alone thinking this.

My Probably Crazy Idea

I might be alone in thinking that we can leave both critical strike and armor penetration in the game and still make it balanced. But I feel that to make it work we need to make them something to choose between rather than something to stack together. The idea is simple...

Critical Strike Chance - Gives a percent chance for the champion's next basic attack to ignore 50% of the target's armor. That attack is also not affected by other sources of armor penetration the champion has.

Basically, if you plan on auto-attacking a lot you can build crit chance to increase your chance to ignore half your target's armor but the attack itself still has the same damage as every non-critical hit since it doesn't boost the damage, it just reduces mitigation from armor. If you plan on auto-attacking only a little then you can get armor penetration since it makes each of your few basic attacks hit a bit harder and also works on your abilities. An auto-attack reliant champion might not want to get armor penetration since it wouldn't boost his criticals at all and his criticals would deal more damage so it'd be more efficient to build more critical chance.

Obviously some champs would need to be looked at (I'm thinking Ashe Yasuo especially). Items would need to be tweaked but it could open the door for more diverse items for AD Carries and AD Casters hopefully. With any luck it can breath some new life into the tank class by making armor more effective since you can plan on only 50% getting ignored at most and balance around that.

Criticism is welcome so please let me know what you guys think. If it's stupid, please tell me why it's stupid (it probably is) and we can hash out some tweaks.

9 Comments

PrinceArchie2/4/2015, 1:06:18 AM3 votes

I think this concept can work and is actually bringing to light a big issue in the current state of the game. As in other threads where ADC and Assassin are complained about, while many continue to voice the "pure tank" loss of viability; I feel that the real issue stems from the items flat out. In the game Damage Items>Defensive items in almost all instances, on top of the fact that offensive items scale much harder than defensive items, because killing a champion to riot is more valued than sustaining. Now im not saying we need to be in a game where players can never die, however we shoudln't be in a state where the best answer to offense is..... offense.

Like no that just rules out so many champions and if we do that all champions might as well be damage dealers with unique CC and utility so EVERYONE makes big plays. Since thats not going to happen though I think making moves like this, where offensive stats and items have to interact with other aspects of the game is good. Crit shouldnt be a free additional damage like it is, cause im pretty sure you cant build against Crit (there is no crit resistance item but merely ONE crit resistance mastery). Offensive champions should have to choose their "best" pathway to offense and stick to it. Forcing someone who wants to build crit to focus on crit and not get attack speed and high amounts of AD all in one is GOOD!

It's tiring to see these carries (especially ADC's) get away with so much free damage because they simply do not have to interact with the defensive items of thier enemies whatsoever. There should be itemization to boost crit, life steal, attack speed and raw damage. HOWEVER THERE SHOULD ALSO be itemization against EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THOSE THING! It makes itemizing more dynamic, less cookie cutter and makes it easier on tanks and other roles to survive, without feeling they are dammned if they build HP and Defense and dammned if they dont, because honestly thats how it feels like right now.

BluePolarizer2/4/2015, 2:57:41 AM2 votes

I actually think its percent armor penetration that is the problem, not crit.

It is my belief that champions should not be picked because they are OP but because they fill a certain niche. Currently, any ADC can be picked to be a tank buster, meaning that Kog and Vayne are nothing special, they just do it faster, but at the cost of a weaker early game. With this weaker early game, however, it means that the side that picked a lane bully can win lane, and still bust tanks late game.

Armor penetration is the key stat that allows for easy tankbusting, not crit, and I don't think every ADC should be a tankbuster. If you want a tankbuster, you should forsee that during the pick/ban phase and get Vayne, Varus or Kog, realizing that you are trading lane dominance or weakness to ganks for the ability to counterpick 2 other lanes at once (top and jungle). Otherwise, if you pick a lane bully like Cait or Draven, realize that you will actually fall off if you fail to establish your dominance (rather than still scale better than top/jungle/mid), and thus you have to play very aggressively.

I believe that ADCs should be distinct in their uses and thus you pick the ADC depending on your team comp, not on whose currently OP. For example, Vayne/Kog/Varus are good tank busters, while Cait/Draven/MF are lane bullies who fall off (without last whisper) if they don't get fed. Against dangerous diving teams like Jax/J4/Zed you'd pick Lucian, Ezreal or Tristana, who can kite and disengage like no tomorrow, while if you were secure and needed to clean up 5v5 teamfights with heavy engage on both sides, you'd pick Jinx.

The opposite argument - that ADCs should not be distinct - is ridiculous. Then why not give Ashe a Vayne tumble for her E lol?

TheDuelist9992/4/2015, 1:18:15 AM1 votes

Change critical strike chance to an equivalent percent of bonus AUTO attack dmg that maxes out at 100 Change IE passive to your bonus auto attack damage is increased to 3/2 what i was and buying it raises the cap to 150 or have the cap always at 150 could also work The problem before is this would've made IE too good early but now they already moved the crit around a bit and they could also take a tiny bit of ad (5 or 10) off ie if IE really does become problematic. Ashe would need a new passive

JustMyBassCannon2/4/2015, 1:48:13 AM1 votes

To answer the question of your topic line; the actual purpose of Crit is to multiply DPS for auto attack based champions. It's the edge given to glass cannons that makes it worth playing Marksmen, rather than just picking up the nearest melee Fighter and building them with equal offense/defense.

Right now, the main problem with Crit is how it functions as a mechanic. Because it's a random chance to deal double damage, it's either significantly useful or horribly useless if you don't have enough Crit Chance to make it happen more regularly. Yes, they've theoretically got it less random with the PRNG, but it is still random.

Right now, there are three main things that, in my personal opinion, are bad with the current damage system.

  1. Crit is necessary, but it's functioning on (P)RNG, which is not controllable. It should either not have RNG involved, or basic attack champions need to have some item diversity to replace Crit as a system. For example, Infinity Edge could just directly increase the damage of basic attacks (to non-structures) by a percentage, so it's still in the role of increased basic attack damage, but it's no longer random. Meanwhile, having items like BotRK and Runaan's for other Marksman final options (obviously, not in Runaan's current state, but with some tweaking, it could be a solid final item on certain champs).
  1. Flat penetration is currently skewing the strength of % Shred/Penetration. And, to be honest, I still don't quite like the purpose of Flat Pen. It has no use against higher resistance targets (until you have % Pen ignoring a third beforehand), but against squishy targets, it's like inverse-scaling AD or AP. What I mean by that is, the lower your scaling ratio is, the more effective Flat Pen is, as opposed to AD or AP on the same spell. But most of those are just my personal, "why the hell does it work like that?" musings.
  1. Tank items have taken overall, consistent nerfs ever since Season 1. I've been around since before then, so I should know. Warmog's, at one point, had 50% more max HP, much better regen, stacked and cost less. Aegis used to be broken as hell, along with Runic Bulwark. There are players who don't know the hellspawn known as Innervating Locket and Force of Nature. Or that there used to be a health+armor gold gain item, back when gold gain items stacked and just gave pure GP10. Randuin's, Sunfire, almost every item I can name has taken nerfs, either directly through stat/passive/active changes, or indirectly through cost increases or build path changes. It's been a while since we've seen anything positive for defensive itemization that wasn't nixed a few months later (if not a few weeks later).
Rozzeta2/4/2015, 1:48:53 AM1 votes

In the old times, characters had the chance of dealing double damage or missing entirely. Both RNG, only dodge was seen as bad design since it allowed people to narrowly escape death, which apparently is more frustrating than being killed by a lucky crit. Thing is, in the stale game that was lol in seasons 1 and 2, Riot removed dodge as one of the measures to increase the kill rate in the game. This and some other changes made the AD focused game that we have now.

SmokingPuffin2/4/2015, 3:29:23 AM1 votes

The purpose of crit is to serve as another damage multiplier for ADCs.

The whole point of the ADC is to put tanks on a steadily decreasing clock. That's how Riot convinces games to actually end.

Critical Strike Chance - Gives a percent chance for the champion's next basic attack to ignore 50% of the target's armor. That attack is also not affected by other sources of armor penetration the champion has.

If this is what crit does, there are only a couple champions in the entire game that want the stat. No ADC will want it because it's obviously more efficient to buy a Last Whisper and call it good.