What If We Added More Items with Less Crit?

TL;DR: Remove the necessity of crit by reducing it, but increase the diversity of builds by branching out into other items and stats. Tweak AD numbers to compensate for the gutting of crit, but make other stats important so they're not bursty like they currently are.

Before I begin, I'd like to clarify that what I mean is reduce the amount of crit given on a given item, but have more items that give crit. And I'm also not going to be going into detail about the situations that brought up this topic as other threads have already covered it.

So, not too long ago (during MYMU) we had drastic changes to how cooldown reduction and mana items worked. Instead of building Double Morello, Athenes Morello, or Morello + 10% CDR Runes + Lucidity every game, we were given more options to get cooldown reduction, some of them more situational than others (). They also made 40% CDR not so manditory like it was before by tweaking around numbers and stat scalings. This opened up a lot more ways to play the game. Facing a mainly AD comp, you can build Morello + Zhonya for 30% CDR. If they have no tanks, you can spec into Lucidity for that 40%, or if they do have tanks you can go Sorcs and not feel like you're missing too much. Same goes for going against a mainly AP comp, except for using Abyssal instead. If they have really high AP and AD, you can go Morello Zhonya and Abyssal and have 40% CDR, this way the extra boost in CDR makes up for the lack of damage you'll be missing out on by building defensively. Or, you can just snowball the game and not even pick up 40% CDR. Just grab a Morellonomicon and go full damage.

This healthy balance of options is a great inclusion of the game. Making a single set core that's purchased every single game is not a great example of balance. Let's look at World of Warcraft for another example of diverse gameplay. The revised talents released in the most recent expansion of WoW, Legion, were a great edit to a mistake of the past. Instead of going the talent build that's "best" for your class, there are several different ways to build the talent trees to fit your playstyle, and you have to choose wisely which stats you'll pick based on your talents. This opened up the opportunity for players to enjoy whichever playstyle they enjoyed most, instead of just building what is "the best", because "the best" varies on how you play now. Of course, some set-ups will be more optimal than another, but that's with every game. In a game with hundreds of items, several classes, and the etcetera like League of Legends and World of Warcraft, it's impossible to make everything equally good and entirely skill-based. But you can get pretty close.

That said, why not include more items that have crit, but have less crit on those items? While doing this, let's stop stapling crit to attack speed like we stopped stapling cooldown reduction to mana. Instead, let's branch off. Throw 10% crit on Mercurial Scemitar. Add a Magic Resist item with 10% crit. Add a health item with 10% crit. Remove Rapidfire Cannon. Compensate for the removal of Rapidfire Cannon by making Statikk Shiv deal %bonus health physical damage to the primary target. Reduce the amount of crit on Statikk and Phantom Dancer to 15%. Reduce the amount of crit on Infinity Edge to 10%. Introduce more items that don't have crit to make the items that do have crit more situational. This is going on a whim, but maybe introduce a couple items that deal %bonus health physical damage and buff Blade of the Ruined King a little bit.

You might've noticed that I said %bonus health instead of %max health or %current health. AD Carries are meant to be tank shredders by dealing constant, sustained damage to the tanks. They're the best at focusing tanks, better than mages or assassins because mages and assassins rely heavily on burst and cooldowns, which tanks nullify. AD Carries, however, can constantly put out damage. Instead of making AD Carries bursty and pretty much nullifying the role that mages and assassins play (so AD Carries aren't slaughtering assassins when assassins are supposed to counter AD Carries), let's bring them back to the sustained damage role they're supposed to play. %max health is a stat that would make them deal high amounts of damage to even squishy mages. We don't want that. We want a healthy cycle: Tanks beat mages, mages beat assassins, assassins beat adcs, adcs beat tanks. %bonus health would make it to where adcs will only be shredding through the health bars of tanks while applying moderate damage to the rest of the team. Adding AD to such an item would make it to where they're not feeling absolutely useless building that item.

You might also wonder, "Why such low amounts of crit?" Because we're trying to step away from the necessity of crit. Instead of every ADC having 80% crit, make every ADC have maybe 30% crit and occasionally build into 50%. Let them branch out into other items. Bring back the optimality of Trinity Force ADCs, Blade of the Ruined King, maybe even see some Guinsoo's or Witt's End if tweaked correctly. That's the diversity League of Legends needs.