"Why does crit exist?"
Introduction
I’ve heard this question asked multiple times on this board in one way or another, so I thought I’d make a post addressing the issue. Let’s break it down into two parts:
- Why do we need a stat like crit?
- Why is crit usually random?
As a preface, the point of this post isn’t to argue that crit is good or bad, the point of this post is to inform players of why game designers generally like crit and incorporate into just about any modern PvP. Whether the benefits of crit outweigh the costs is a discussion for the comments.
1. Crit is used as a way of giving ADCs a sharper power curve
One of the main qualities we associate with ADCs in League is the idea of late-game scaling. In fact, you’ll find that in pretty much any game with crit, it’s usually the late-game damage dealers making the most use out of it. Why is that? Well this is going to involve some simple math and reas-HEY WAIT COME BACK I PROMISE IT’S NOT THAT BAD!
The gist of it is that stats become more efficient when you have less of them compared to other stats. For example, the more attack speed you have, the more each point of attack damage is worth. this means that in most cases, you want a relatively even mix of stats to maximize damage. As a side note, this is why most damage builds incorporate a mix of damage stats and tank builds incorporate a mix of both health and resistances. This principle is what makes crit so important.
By giving ADCs another stat to build, you find that crit becomes extremely efficient to build once you have enough AD and attack speed. In other words, crit causes ADCs to scale better with items. This allows ADCs to have their distinctive power curve, being weaker in the early game but scaling into machine gun/bow/spear monsters. Without crit, ADCs would essentially lose their identity, possibly turning into ranged fighters of ranged bruisers. This is because at one point, buying attack speed, attack damage and armor pen may be less efficient than just buying health to live longer, allowing you to output more damage.
2. Crit is random in order to force players to adapt
This is where crit gets a bit controversial for some people. Crit is inherently random, but it really doesn’t have to be. Think of Ashe’s passive just a few months ago, where targets slowed by her took bonus damage from her autoattacks. Ashe received a flat damage increase based on her crit chance, absolutely no randomness whatsoever. If crit doesn’t need to be random, why is random crit so common in the game industry?
The main idea behind making crit random is to keep players from being able to rely on a 100% reliable source of damage. If a losing ADC gets caught by a fed ADC, but manages to get a crit, it forces both players to adapt. By making players actually play around what’s happening, rather than watching someone get right-clicked to death, it opens opportunities to outplay your opponents. Additionally, it prevents ADCs from being to snowball their lane opponents to death off of one kill, since the ADc that’s behind could always force a fight after a lucky crit.
One concern that people raise is that no other damage stat forces randomness, so why should crit be the exception? The reason is because other classes often have less reliable damage than ADCs. As a mage, you probably have multiple conditions on getting the most out of your abilities, usually in the form of skillshots. Most ADCs get most of their damage just by autoattacking, damage that is pretty much guaranteed. Crit adds uncertainy to an ADCs damage in the same way that skillshots add uncertainty to a Mage’s damage.
This also means that a tank’s main focus, their health, is also unreliable. Other champions receive uncertainty through crit (AD assassins), conditions on their abilities (AP assassins and supports) or both (AD casters). In this way, every class is forced to deal with some level of uncertainty, which means everyone in the game has to adapt depending on how things play out in the spur of the moment.
Tldr/Conclusion
Crit is used for two main reasons. First, it defines ADCs as a class that’s weaker in the early game but scales well into the late-game. Second, the random nature of crit means ADCs aren’t the only class that gets access to 100% reliable damage all the time.
