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Regarding Critical Strike

Varnoc·1/19/2017, 7:40:14 PM·3 votes·2,985 views

I've been thinking about this for awhile, and it's against my better judgement that I write it out. I don't really expect anyone to agree with what follows, but I've got to get it off my chest. This post will be long, and the gist of it can't be conveyed in a little TL:DR, so fair warning.

Critical Strike, for those unaware, operates off of a pseudo-rng system in League of Legends. For those unaware, this means that your chance to critically strike is increased additively each time you fail to Crit with basic attacks.

For example: You have 10% Crit, you attack your target and fail to critically strike, your next attack's Crit chance is now 20%. Failing to critically strike again would add a further 10% to the total, granting your next attack a 30% chance to Crit, and so on until you Critically Strike something. At this time, your Crit chance is reset to your base 10%.

So now that we're all on the same page as to how it works, what about it? Well, by definition, Critical Strikes are attacks that hit a target in a vulnerable area, or while they're in a vulnerable state, thus inflicting more damage than they normally would. With this definition, it stands to reason that abilities should Critically Strike every once and awhile.

Diana Heretic Alert! Diana

But Varnoc! This would cause everyone to deal even more item 3078 than they already do! I mean, imagine Syndra's Ultimate critting, Illaoi's Tentacles (shudders), Nasus Q, or any other absurdly hard hitting ability. This sounds like a stoopid idea.

I imagine this is along the lines of what you're thinking. And I agree. Given the current workings of Critical Strike, this is completely true, which is why such a massive change to the game would warrant accompanying changes. Here are the most important ones:

  1. All Champions in the game will now have a base Critical Strike Chance statistic. This number could be anything from 1% up, as decided by Riot. I'm not near experienced enough in the implications of what I'm suggesting to give any real hard numbers here, but as a general rule, Slayers, Fighers, and Mages, Marksmen, would have higher base Crit Chance, while Tanks and Controllers would be towards the lower end. Given that so many champions cross these lines every which way though, it'll likely be a case-by-case kind of thing.

  2. Critical Strikes now deal ~150% damage, rather than 200%. This causes lucky Crits in the early game (Looking at you, Tryndamere) to not swing the early game quite so hard as they do now. Still, damage is already far too high as it is without abilities critting, so I propose an overall reduction in ability damage to compensate. Again, I'm no balance wizard and what I'm talking about would have massive implications, but roughly 25% damage reduction on abilities would cause combat to be a little more drawn out, thus resulting in more chances to proc Critical Strike.

  3. Consecutive Critical Strikes (from any source) against the same target deal increasing amounts of damage or would have a higher chance to critically strike. This would reinforce the idea that Critical Strikes are opportunities to be capitalized on, rather than just a lucky damage bonus. This would likely take the form of a stacking debuff that falls off one at a time, refreshing when critically struck. This also rewards group play without being overt about it.

  4. AoE abilities calculate Crit on a per-target basis. This means that your abilities could hit 5 targets, but only 2 of them may take Critical damage. This prevents abilities like Zigg's Mega Inferno Bomb from deleting entire teams through luck.

Building off of those Jhin core rules, we can speculate other things:

  • Items would give +x% Base Critical Strike. For instance, item 3031 could give +100% Base Critical Strike Chance, but if you've only got 5% base Critical Strike Chance, your total only ends up being 10%.

  • item 3089 can finally lose it's boring +%AP passive in favor of increasing Critical Strike Damage, similar to item 3031 currently (I imagine they'd probably share a unique passive). Offensive Mages would still like to pick this up at some point, and it retains the multiplication of previous purchases it has now, though on a little wider of a scope.

  • Marksmen, as a whole, would likely gravitate towards items that provide more consistent DPS. Given that a single Crit is no longer such a massive swing in damage, and Crit cannot be attained as easily as it currently is. This is more in line with their primary purpose anyway (consistent ranged damage versus objectives). This could go a ways to relieve the issue of Marksmen being mandatory each game.

  • Due to Mages now having access to Crit, many Mage items can now include the stat. This means that Enchanter items can now include -actual- AP on them without risking heavy Mage abuse, as they'll want as much Crit as they can get their hands on. (I still expect some cases of items being used in unintended roles, but I think that's fine so long as it's not wide-spread).

  • Along those same lines, the AP yield of items will likely decrease. I expect it to still be a higher value than the AD provided by items (given that AP doesn't augment basic attacks normally, unless it's against structures), but overall I think 100AP will probably be the highest provided by any item under this system.

  • Damaging effects provided by outside sources (I.E. Items like item 3151,item 3285, or keystones) will likely not benefit off of Critical Strikes. Given that on-hit effects do not currently benefit from Crit.

  • Only damaging effects can Critically Strike. CC effects wouldn't be longer, healing or shielding wouldn't be more effective, etc.

  • Yasuo and Tryndamere become a bit healthier in their interactions with Crit.

In conclusion, what would this achieve?

  1. Critical Strike becomes a universal force in the game. Critical Strikes themselves no longer swing the fight heavily in one sides favor in the early game, due to reduced damage they deal, and the fact that -anyone- can Crit. Critical Strikes create opportunities for you and your allies to follow up, making the game more dynamic, and a less luck based.

  2. Mage and Enchanter itemization can finally diverge. Both want AP and CDR, but Mages would want Crit now, while Enchanters would care more about utilitarian effects.

  3. item 3050 becomes useful, item 3143 becomes mandatory. (This second part is a joke, RO would need to be looked at.)

  4. More classes than just Marksmen can interact with Crit, and done in a healthy way that encourages team play and opportunity capitalization.

  5. Champions that are too strong or weak can have their base Critical Strike statistic used as an additional balancing leaver.

I suspect the main thing that would/is preventing this from happening in some form is that it's simply a massive undertaking. All champion ability damage would need to be tweaked. Ability ratios would need to be looked at. Items would need revision. I seriously cannot understate how much work this would be to execute, but I sincerely feel like it would improve the game as a whole, so here we are.

If you read through this, thanks for taking the time. This has been something I've been mulling over for awhile now, and I wanted to get it out there. This may not be the solution to people's dissatisfaction with Crit, but I think it provides a good base to work from while moving the game ahead. Hopefully this at least gives you some food for thought.

6 Comments

Asayake 5150glow1/19/2017, 8:30:40 PM1 votes

  1. Sure anyone can crit, now all fights will be decided mostly by RNG and how many crits people got, instead of just fights with ADC's, Yasuo, or Trynd.

  2. Not sure giving mages a 150% damage amplifier as a stat they could build is a good idea. That's because it's either reliable enough that they would always get it, making anything else suboptimal, or the crit is low enough to either be regarded as something extra that may come in handy sometimes (RoA's healing per spell cast, for example), but then the items would have to make mages strong enough to do their job without that crit, making any crits overkill and op, or if damage is balanced around critting, but critting is unreliable, then damage would be shit.

  3. Any item being mandatory is not too healthy.

  4. Is it really healthy though? Wouldn't crit chance make things so much harder to balance? Or maybe they are balanced, but then random crits make things feel op anyway, and make you lose a fight you by all rights should have won?

  5. Uh... base Crit should be low enough to be unreliable, else that's just too strong, but using something unreliable as a balance lever means that it's only balanced... sometimes.