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Would removing critical strikes from the game cause problems?

XYGSYS·11/7/2018, 2:50:00 AM·2 votes·1,175 views

Let's make one thing clear from the start: this is not a post whining about how stupid crits are, and demanding that RIOT remove them. I am legitimately curious if it would be an issue. With the disclaimer out of the way, let's get to the topic. (I realize removing crits from the game is totally infeasible in terms of finding out how to rebalance the game without it, so this is purely hypothetical.)

In my opinion crits just add RNG to a game that, in my opinion, should avoid using RNG as much as possible. I find it very frustrating to lose a duel because the enemy landed multiple crits. I also don't find it rewarding when I win a duel because I land multiple crits. I would be happy if there were no crits in the game, because that would remove the only source of luck, that I can think of, in the game.

It is possible that there are reasons crits are important to balance, and the they do add to the game in a way I don't realize. So, are there reasons that removing crits would cause issues with balance, and damage the game in general?

I obviously wouldn't advocate just removing crits and not compensating champions that use it. I just think it would be more fair to have all champions have predictable damage output. For this reason I don't have issues with crit effects such as on stormrazor. As long as they are predictable I don't think there is an issue, but needing to do statistics to calculate your chance of survival is annoying.

Again, I don't hate crits, I just can't personally think of a reason why the game is better with them.

Do you think that crits add something to the game, or do you have any other reasons that crits are important to the game?

16 Comments

iiGazeii11/7/2018, 2:58:38 AM3 votes

It's an interesting idea, and I agree, removing as much RNG as possible from the game would be ideal.

Maybe work it in that every single champion crits on the third auto (three hit passives seem to be Rito's thing), but every champion's crit damage starts at +0%. Crit items would increase the damage a critical strike grants, rather than the chance of getting one, and finished crit items could make it so that you crit more often or under certain conditions (e.g., against CC'd champions, champions above/below a certain health threshold, when every basic ability is on cooldown, etc.).

This would accomplish the same thing that normal crits provide (extra DPS that is better on high-attack speed champs), but without RNG involved. It also wouldn't be front-loaded burst, since you'd need to stay in range of your target for a few attacks before getting the bonus.

ZerglingOne11/7/2018, 3:06:14 AM3 votes

How would you feel about % auto attack damage amplification as a replacement?

MrFawknSunshine11/7/2018, 2:53:33 AM2 votes

i dont believe RNG is good for the game however i would rather have crit then true damage. at least with crit i can build armor to negate damage from them. with true damage i cant build any defense to legit reduce its damage.

breakordoom44411/7/2018, 3:00:22 AM1 votes

well first, we have to redesign champions:

Any champion with any mention of crit (even not at full dmg) has to be retexted/redesigned to make it fit.

now we have to rework/remove all the crit items.

now we have it!

half the items gone. champions like yasuo and jhin cant fucking play the game any more.

ProfDrDeath11/7/2018, 7:41:42 AM1 votes

Yes, it would. Crit cannot be replaced easily, despite what some people like to say here.

While replacing Crit with a percentage-based auto-attack damage increase would achieve the same averaged result (30% Crit Chance equals 30% increased AA damage), it would also come with a massive increase in reliability - every AA would do more damage, instead of a non-predetermined one out of three. As reliability correlates with damage, this would mean that the amplification effect would need to be nerfed to compensate. And nerfing the damage output of late-game ADCs will have a lot of ripple effects regarding damage to tanks, damage to objectives and minions (they reintroduced IE's extra crit damage against minions and monsters, remember!) and general power level.