Crits. Is it a problem?

Tusutaki·Jul 11, 2015·15 votes·1,589 views

Just something i've been thinking about for a while. Crits has a chance to allow you to deal double the amount of damage which is based on your %. With 10% crit chance it can win you a trade or even a duel against someone with superior items. It's essentially a system not based around skill but around luck.

One of the solutions I hear about recently is to rework the crits system into something like what Ashe has but if that happens then what would make Ashe unique besides a walking ult? Would Ashe's crit system even be usefully applicable in a balance perspective?

What are your guy's thoughts? Is the crit system fine the way it is or does it have room for improvements?

28 Comments

Earl EulrichJul 12, 20155 votes

It´s a rather big problem, as it takes away a lot of skill-dependance from the game and replaces it with luck. RNG really should have no place in a competitive game, crits do add a lot of frustration to either players that get critted by low-chance opponents - or even crit users that just donßt crit despite running a 55%+chance and losing a fight over it. And they don´t add anything meaningfull to make up for the frustration.

+ it really would be easy to just get rid of the rng without impacting the balance too heavily -> http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/live-gameplay/hbEj1jWi-can-we-finally-phase-crits-rngesus-out-of-the-game

TusutakiJul 12, 20153 votes

I like how Riot said they will definitely look into it and consider it but practically no word from them sense then. Kinda sad because those are great suggestions too.

GallowgrimJul 12, 20153 votes

Leave Crit alone, is my thought on the matter.

Keeps things interesting, and can give a underpowered player a fighting (if random) chance enough to encourage people to not be dickish showboats. Or at least punishes them with glorious karma if they try that nonsense.

Irelia BotJul 11, 20152 votes

Well Ashe does get a 10% boost on her damage past the first auto.

The main thing that would be good about it not being a chance is that it is realiable damage which you know you will happen instead of might happen.

Tryn doing 350 damage with 3 auto attacks that all crit when in a level 2 trade is a lot more threatening then him doing 175 damage during 3 auto attacks that do not crit. It will usually be 1 or sometimes 2 but it is not damage that is readable or reliable.

TusutakiJul 11, 20153 votes

I agree and I also agree with Trynd. One of the biggest problems I see when both playing as and facing against a Trynd is how luck reliant he is. You do not know if your trades will be successful or not. You can see Trynd being out of position and try to punish him but if he gets 3 lucky crits then you're pretty much dead. When people bring up Poppy and her invisible mechanic aka her passive I think Trynd and crits alike should be in the same category.

I personally think it's worse than blink or instant type of skills.

NemeBroJul 12, 20151 votes

{quoted} When people bring up Poppy and her invisible mechanic aka her passive I think Trynd and crits alike should be in the same category.

Trynd has a helpful little red bar below his health that tips off how likely he is to crit.

Earl EulrichJul 12, 20152 votes

well, 35%crit for a full bar during early laning still means the odds are against tryn suddenly crit-streaking the shit out of you...

FadedpfJul 11, 20152 votes

For ranged champions it is needed. It only sucks if they get RNG to win a fight or are just super fed.

For fed melee champions it is a living hell. Even more damage steroids on champions that are already compensated for being melee.

That is my take on it. Without crits adcs couldn't do their jobs effectively without some sort of changes, and crits on melee champions like Talon and Yi are just overkill. Crits as a mechanic are fine with me but RNG can be a bitch at times.

Irelia BotJul 11, 20153 votes

{quoted}

For ranged champions it is needed. It only sucks if they get RNG to win a fight or are just super fed.

For fed melee champions it is a living hell. Even more damage steroids on champions that are already compensated for being melee.

That is my take on it. Without crits adcs couldn't do their jobs effectively without some sort of changes, and crits on melee champions like Talon and Yi are just overkill. Crits as a mechanic are fine with me but RNG can be a bitch at times.

If RNG/psudo RNG was not removed in all other cases besides crit chance I would not have an issue with it so much. It is fine having it all over the place in Dota 2 but Riot has basically taken a stance that RNG/Pseudo RNG is bad outside of crit chance which is basically jsut as unrewarding to experience if you are taking it as if someone were to dodge an auto of yours with dodge.

Sire HippingtonJul 11, 20152 votes

I don't think ashe would be loose any uniqueness. She didn't have that passive till shortly and always was kinda iconic. Her permaslow+volly spam+ult+hawkshot are definitly enough unique features to set her apart from other marksmen.

Using her passive as generall crit system would be a realy simple solution to remove RNG, with little aditional work needed as it simply is the dame total damage output. the only champion really impacted would be GP, as he kinda wants the big crit-burst for his Q...

Irelia BotJul 11, 20152 votes

[{quoted}](name=Don Pavoni,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=dn4yf5QR,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2015-07-11T23:27:35.559+0000)

I don't think ashe would be loose any uniqueness. She didn't have that passive till shortly and always was kinda iconic. Her permaslow+volly spam+ult+hawkshot are definitly enough unique features to set her apart from other marksmen.

Using her passive as generall crit system would be a realy simple solution to remove RNG, with little aditional work needed as it simply is the dame total damage output. the only champion really impacted would be GP, as he kinda wants the big crit-burst for his Q...

Tryn and GP are the only ones that would likely be hurt by such a change and GP has a bit of a rework on the PBE. And it wouldn't really be hurt so much as have their damage be made more reliable and readable.

Sire HippingtonJul 11, 20152 votes

Tryn doesn't really get hurt by haveing his damage reliable rather than RNG based, and GP will still revolve around Q-crits after the rework.

SlaaneshineJul 12, 20152 votes

Just because the crit aspect of his damage would be removed, making it a percent increase in damage would just make gangplank's damage far larger overall. With his champion update coming up, it should work out really well in the end.

Sire HippingtonJul 12, 20152 votes

it wouldn't make GPs damage far larger overall, his overall damage would stay the same. Right now, one if the main statisfying things off playing GP is landing that huge Q-crit on your enemie, and his 1v1 also kinda resolves around it, you try t keep distance, Q some times and once it crits, you usually can go for the all-in.

While i'm not really sad about the 'once it crits' part going away, loosing the really statisfying burst on Q is a bit sad... Still definitly worth to trade that vs RNG though, no doubt about that.

FertsaJul 12, 20152 votes

HIya! 1% crit chance in rune page person here.

12/50 trades have been won on this one crit rune. 1% = 24% SEEMS LEGIT.

Ace Access Jul 12, 20152 votes

just leave it alone

Sire HippingtonJul 13, 20152 votes

The recent CLG vs TDK game shows how disgusting crit can be.(NA LCS, W7 D2 game 5, http://euw.lolesports.com/vods/)

In the teamfight starting at 36:50, Doublelift gets blessed by RNGsus and single-handedly wins a fight on the back off his critluck, despite TDK getting a nice initiation that allowed them to take out Pobelter befor he could cast a single spell. He is able to clean that fight by bursting vayne with a double crit follwed by bursting down ahrie with a doulbe crit, haveing a total of 4 crits in 5 hits(80%) vs them, with only 40% crit chance...

Earl EulrichJul 13, 20152 votes

having a total of 4 crits in 5 hits(80%) vs them, with only 40% crit chance...

that´s a 1,5%chance to happen actually - somewhat ironic that he´s one of the pro-players that spoke out the loudest about how he really hates the RNG...

explodingfunJul 12, 20151 votes

DOTA 2 has abilites completley built around chance which changes every time you use it. There are abilities and items that make champions have a chance to miss attacks. Is this chance a little lucky or part of the regular gameplay? For example, twisted fate's passive is supposed to be for how much gold you earn for a unit kill but Riot said they try to keep the balance to 3-4 gold a kill so when you get 6 gold the next minion will give 2 gold. Maybe critical strikes should be like this, the less crits you hit the more chance you have of hitting the next one or the other way around.

Sightless66Jul 12, 20151 votes

Maybe critical strikes should be like this, the less crits you hit the more chance you have of hitting the next one or the other way around.

That is roughly how they work. The game works on a pRNG system. If you have a 50% chance to crit, then your first attack after critting will actually have less than a 50% chance to crit, and it increases each time you attack until you crit so that you'll still get a crit 50% of the time on average.

IcyPepperJul 12, 20151 votes

I'm not sure.

Like... Ashe's passive is unique, but crit as it stands mostly benefits ranged AD champions. If crit was reworked, everyone would benefit a bit more from it than before. Trinity Force would likely need some changes due to this, especially when certain bruisers can and would abuse aa resets for massive damage.

But I could be wrong.

But as it stands, I don't hate crit right now.

Earl EulrichJul 12, 20152 votes

i rather take 20%more dmg on every aa-reset than taking 100% more every 10th time - the former one i can play around, the other one either zones me out for no reason or just kills me randomly.

TusutakiJul 12, 20151 votes

{quoted}

I'm not sure.

Like... Ashe's passive is unique, but crit as it stands mostly benefits ranged AD champions. If crit was reworked, everyone would benefit a bit more from it than before. Trinity Force would likely need some changes due to this, especially when certain bruisers can and would abuse aa resets for massive damage.

But I could be wrong.

But as it stands, I don't hate crit right now.

I would say have Ashe's system but halve the crit damage. For example, Shiv normally gives 20% crit chance but will give only a 10% damage overall damage increase whereas if you put it on Ashe she gets the regular 20% increase. I dont know, its a thought but I dont know if I would say it would benefit everyone more than before since we're only talking about an 15% increased damage vs 15% to deal 200% more dmg with Trinity Force.

ChaddyFantomeJul 12, 20151 votes

Make it so crit chance isn't a chance, but an order time system, where if you have 10%, every 10 autos will crit and if you have 50% every 2 autos will crit.

This adds both skill and counterplay by giving the champion with crits something to tract and account for. For example, an ADC could invest in crit early in laning phase and time their autos for harass in lane. it would also make it far less stupid when last hitting to accidentally miss CS because you got a crit and screwed up the timing.

Meanwhile, the enemy now has to take into account how many autos the enemy has done and now has to take into account that they can get hot with a crit auto if they aren't careful, or when being chased, they know that X auto will crit and they should avoid it. Essentially it creates windows of power and vulnerability for both parties.

Seriously, it isn't rocket science. Why Riot hasn't implemented this, i can only chalk up to crits being intentionally flawed to "soft nerf" them without making it legitimately balanced.

Sightless66Jul 12, 20157 votes

Why Riot hasn't implemented this

Because while it may solve the problem of random crits, it introduces a much more serve problem. It gives every single autoattacking champion a new mechanic to play around that takes some priority over their actual kit. It would be a pretty homogenizing effect if everyone who builds crit started playing around a pokey stack-building mechanic. They don't want every champion who builds crit as a steroid to have a stack counting minigame. They've put that mechanic on certain champions like Caitlyn, and they aren't looking to make it something that absolutely everyone has.

If I want a stack counting minigame, I'll play Caitlyn. I don't want to have to do it no matter which ADC I'm playing. That sounds extremely boring.

Teridax68Jul 12, 20151 votes

I heavily dislike the randomness of crit, and the mechanic itself has no real gameplay despite being an integral part of a whole class's power expression. However, one good thing about it is its explosive power: it gives an otherwise heavily DPS-dependent class access to bursts of power which allows them to feel stronger. A lot of proposed crit reworks advocated turning crit into a permanent percent autoattack damage multiplier (i.e. 1% crit means your basic attacks deal 1% more damage), but I'm not too big a fan of that either, since it removes the mechanic's explosive power and still doesn't add any gameplay.

A system I'd like to try out for crits, though, would be to turn it into a kind of three-strike mechanic akin to the one on Gypsylord's champions (e.g. Ekko 's innate, Gnar 's Hyper effect in mini-form, 's W) as well as Vayne 's Silver Bolts, where attacking an enemy three times in a row would "crit", though without dealing any bonus damage initially, and you could then modify those crits with innate effects (like the aforementioned mechanics) or bonus damage from items. The benefit to this is that it would keep crit as a DPS-focused mechanic, but would also keep its explosive power. It would also add a lot more gameplay and predictability to the mechanic on both ends (the player and their opponent), and could also have tons of potential for expansion: you could include all champions' crit animations for critical strikes, you could turn the aforementioned effects into crit modifiers (e.g. Vayne would deal true max health-based damage on every critical strike), and you could even get into crazy itemization expansions that could add crit modifiers of their own, and even apply to non-AD champions (you could have stuff like AP crit, tank crit or even support crit, none of which would make sense in the current framework). It would also allow a proper overhaul of current crit itemization, which is mostly pretty dry and uninteresting ( item 3031 doesn't really enhance gameplay in any way besides contributing a chunk of extra damage, and yet is still the core marksman item).

RisurinJul 12, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Just something i've been thinking about for a while. Crits has a chance to allow you to deal double the amount of damage which is based on your %. With 10% crit chance it can win you a trade or even a duel against someone with superior items. It's essentially a system not based around skill but around luck.

One of the solutions I hear about recently is to rework the crits system into something like what Ashe has but if that happens then what would make Ashe unique besides a walking ult? Would Ashe's crit system even be usefully applicable in a balance perspective?

What are your guy's thoughts? Is the crit system fine the way it is or does it have room for improvements?

Still dont understand why they felt this was a better change to the BT first back then (in season 4). Basically the winning lane, that get the BT first, will win the lane, instead of the luckiest of them. I doubt they gonna change anything about crit in the near future, as ashe and GP have crit mechanics in their kits and are freshly out of the champion update workshop, the new Zeke's herald coming up soon-ish and they would need to rework every champion that have critical hits in their kit and are balanced around it :

On top of all the autos from any champions that are expected to build critical hit,

Ashe : Passive Jinx : Q, on fishbone form can AoE Crit Gangplank Q Shaco Q, after using it, next auto within 6 second, is an enhanced auto crit Yasuo passive and Q Tryndamere passive MasterYi passive second auto can crit and Q Garen E Lucian passive, second auto can crit Jayce mercury cannon W can crit with enhanced damage Caitlyn Passive, can crit with enhanced damage Rengar Q and enhanced Q, the bonus AD (and only that) can benefit from crit Pantheon E will make autos and Q crit on targets below 15% hp Poppy Q, the bonus AD (and only that) can critical hit (and will still be magical damage) Twitch R, while under its effect, if twitch critical hit 1 target, every enemy hit by the attack get critically hit. Nidalee Q can crit and will still be magical damage Nasus Q base damage (and only that) can crit

some may have been overlook'd, some may have been left out on purpose because you dont really expect any crit items from them at all, not even triforce (although i've seen some triforce shyvana, and her Q second hit , even in dragon form. can crit)

That's a lot of work to do if they want to rework it. + although its frustrating to lose to some lucky shot (specially the cheesy 1% crit rune), its also really fun when you get those lucky crits in.

Meeks011Jul 12, 20151 votes

Crit is also ridiculously gold efficient. Getting 75% crit is essentially increasing your damage by 75% Then getting IE increases that number to 117.5%.

I suggested a while back that dodge comes back because it's pretty much the exact opposite of crits. Crits let you deal 1000 damage a hit and you'll die fast as fuck no matter what.