[CRITAL STRIKE REWORK] Making Crit work like Fervor of Battle (No more burst)
Preface: I want to suggest a rework for Crit that makes it a stable, healthy, and easily balance-able stat. If by chance you don't agree with any of the scaling proposed, which are literally just trading the live stats 1 for 1 for comparison's sake, Riot can always tune them down to each individual auto attack because there is no longer any RNG. However, adc's will already "lose" a lot of damage to begin with. (0 burst damage, more sustained damage) Still, I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on where they think this rework misses any marks, or what edge cases could be too OP. (some topics I already thought of are in the -Misc- section.)
------ Crit Rework ------
- The TL;DR of this crit rework is "crit works like fervor of battle"
This is a crit rework that "fixes" crit so it has zero RNG, does "less" damage at early stages of the game, "more" damage at later stages, and doesn't have any sudden burst element. The stat also has it's own built-in counter-play that isn't "buy more armor". Thus it'll make divers, skrimishers, and assassins better by proxy if they're able to do their job (prevent the carries from auto attacking) the reason for this is because it inherits fervor of battle's game space, where sustained auto-damage is useless if you get cc'd, bursted, zoned away.
"CRIT CHANCE" -> changed to: "CRIT RAMP" (conversion is 1-1: 10% crit = 10 crit ramp) "CRIT DAMAGE" -> changed to: "CRIT CAP" [base 200] (conversion also 1-1)
"For every auto attack against an enemy champion or epic monster, you additivlely stack [CRIT] equal to your [CRIT RAMP]. Auto attacks deal BONUS physical damage equal to: [CRIT]% BONUS AD. Maximum [CRIT] is [CRIT CAP] [CRIT] decays by [CRIT RAMP] after not attacking an enemy for [3 + 100% of total Attack Speed] seconds."
**EXAMPLE 1: ** You have 20% CRIT RAMP, the base 200% CRIT CAP, 60 base ad, and 50 bonus ad. (BF and Zeal item rush, more or less)
Your first auto attack deals 110 damage, the next will do 120 (110 + 20% of bonus AD), subsequently 130 (110 + 40% bonus AD), 140, 150, 160, 170, 180, 190, 200, 210, 210, 210.... 210..... etc. at this point you've hit your CRIT CAP and the "crits" do slightly less damage as live crits, but happen every auto. (live auto's crit for 220). This scenario can only happen if you manage to stay alive as an adc for 10+ seconds while consistently auto attacking. (getting chain cc'd means you might lose your stacks, if you don't die) Not a lot of adc's have much greater than 1.0 Attack speed by this point in the game either, so you only have 4ish seconds of breathing room between auto's (fevor of battle gives 8 for comparison)
Essentially, marksmen break-even with live damage numbers somewhere after 9 - 10 auto attacks and then do more damage afterwards, assuming with live's 20% crit chance you crit 2-4 times in 10 auto's (crit chance isn't linear unfortunately, so comparing to live is difficult). So at the beginning of a fight marksmen won't have the damage to melt face immediately and need to "ramp up" for their bonus damage on auto's. "lucky crits" that can burst you are gone. If divers, skirmishers and assassins can get to the adc, they'll have upwards of 8 of seconds worth of time before the adc is able to kill them (dosent necessarily mean the adc will die, just that the other class diving them can't die without outside intervention). Skirmisher's love medium extend fights like these, especially in the early game. However, if everyone leaves an adc unchecked in the middle of the fight, they'll eventually do more damage than any other class in the game, as they should. IMO adc's should be able to kill everyone, but only if they are able to respond to threats and auto attack consistently!
This still works late-game!
EXAMPLE 2: You have 80% CRIT RAMP, 250 CRIT CAP (+50 from Infinity Edge passive), 100 base AD, and 150 bonus AD
first auto deals 250, then 370, 490, 610, 625, 625, 625... 625... etc.
Obviously the CRIT RAMP stacks much faster per auto attack, yet in the first 3 auto's, an adc has lost anywhere between 390-765damage (2 or 3 crits in 3 auto's with 80% crit on live is fairly consistent) but in the next 3 auto's they've lost a maximum of 15 damage. ADC's are therefore still able to do the damage late game that they are known for, but only if they stay alive long enough and know how to position in order to auto attack those first couple of times. If they get jumped by a diver or assassin, those classes still have 3-4 seconds to do their Job. Late game those couple of seconds count for a lot.
---Notes----
The side effects of this rework are: that it heavily favors adc's with Attack speed steroids or extra auto attacks, adc's will opt into sustain AD items before crit to stay alive, and crit no longer works/stacks on minions. However, I believe it is still balanced in regard to marksmen as well as 3 of the melee carries that still build crit: Yasuo, Yi, and Tryndamere. The only exceptions are Jhin, Ashe, and Graves, who have crit scalings already in their kits; GP, as his play pattern doesn't support it; and Statikk shiv's lightning, which can't crit to start a fight.
Lastly, Crit Ramp as a stat is not something that adc's are going to rush, or something tanks are going to buy. They can't because it deals bonus damage based on their BONUS AD. If you first back and get a zeal with 15 ad in runes and 7 ad from a Doran's blade, the maximum bonus damage you'll get on your auto's is 44 after auto attacking a champion 10+ times! You're better off getting a BF which will just give you 40 AD out the gate, which also enhances your ability damage. IE rush also becomes situational/not effective as the passive doesn't come into effect until you're exceeding the base Crit Cap. Tanks won't build crit at all similarly because they'd still need to buy bonus AD in order to make use of the crit. Skirmishers would be the only class that can dip into crit itemization. (Another class CAN build crit with ad, such as a fighter or bruiser, but then their building into a skirmisher identity instead of their own class identity)
---- Misc----
Q1. What happens to abilities that crit? A. they can stay as is, crit strikes and crit ramp are comparing 'an effect on an ability' to a 'stacking stat buff', and most if not all of those abilities are "guaranteed crits" anyway, or riots way of saying "do bonus damage if X happens with some crit text flair". If however I'm forgetting any edge cases let me know. Yi and Garen would have to take a look at Q3
Q2. What happens to critical strike animations and the their crit damage text? A. probably something like: If ( %Bonus AD damage from Crit >= base auto attack damage) then: show crit animation. This visually makes it clear that you're "online" as an adc and that you've actually doubled your auto attack damage.
Q3. Could more abilities now interact with crit ramp and not exclusively auto attacks? A. Yes. In one of 2 ways. Either the ability gives Crit Ramp if it lands (abilities buffs auto's), or the ability applies Crit's bonus ad damage (auto's buff abilities). The best two examples of this would be Garen and Yi respectively, who already have the afore mentioned interactions. Garen could now get a crit ramp stack if he hits a champion with E ticks, buffing his next auto attack, and YI now applies all his bonus Crit AD to his Q, so it's tied even more to his auto attack pattern. (I'd really like to see adc's with similar interactions as above, like Lucian getting a Crit Ramp stack on his Q, and Jinx getting Crit AD on her W)
Q4. What happens to Jhin? A. not sure. IMO he still has his lethality build and he's not designed to be a tank buster, more of an adc/skirmisher/ranged assassin that focuses squishys. It's possible that he might be fine if his final auto always crits at the Crit Cap exactly the same way it does on live (with total ad as well) but he'll still lose all his crit ramp stacks after reloading as the trade off.
Q5. Ashe? A. her crit scaling is her passive. which just gives her bonus ad basically. Nothing has to change, she'd still keep her reliable auto attack scaling. The only difference is she wins fights the shorter they last compared to another adc, which has to Ramp up, since she starts the fights with the same immediate amount of bonus ad damage that she ends with.
Q6. Graves? A. The "crit scaling" I was referring to was that he gets extra shells in his buckshot when he crits. This is a strange case interaction where the best I can say is he gets +1 shell for every X amount of crit he's stacked. However, Graves's Identity is that of a burst ad caster now, not a sustained damage dealer. Something might have to be done similar to Jhin to accompany his reload mechanic and auto attacks.
Q7. GP? A. GP is a Burst orientated AD Caster that builds crit 'cause BARRELLSSS. Honestly, he'll probably have to build tankier and walk up into fight's to get auto attacks in if he doesn't just do his lethality build. I'm really not sure with him. it's hard to provide a crit rework that doesn't at least fuck with one of the crit melee carries. Trynd and Yasuo's interactions with crit ramp are actually not nearly as bad. Yasuo just gets double Crit Ramp, but a smaller Crit Cap, and is less bursty overall to begin with, and Trynd can still stack rage on minions, but won't be stacking Crit Ramp till he starts auto attacking champions.
Q8. What happens to Statikk Shiv/ other zeal items? A. simple answer is each of them can get a new unique interaction with Crit Ramp. Shiv can still do it's thing for the beginning of a fight/do aoe waveclear, and can also provide a base amount of Crit stacks so you always start a fight up 1 auto attack worth of Crit Ramp with the energized passive. Runaan's bolts can each give a small amount of extra Crit when they hit champions. Phantom Dancer can give extra Crit Ramp for attacking the same target, and Rapid Fire can add extra seconds to the decay timer so you can extend a poke pattern with it's bonus range.
Q9. What are the break points/ power spikes for Crit Ramp? They're at 10/20/33.33/50 without IE, hitting the Crit Cap in exactly 20/10/6/4 auto attacks, and 50/62.5/83.33 with IE, hitting cap with 5/4/3 autoattacks. (notice though the amount of gold you'd have to spend to only get Max Crit Cap 1 auto faster at this point.)
Q10. Would Randuin's omen anti-crit passive need to change? A. Probably not. It'd make every auto after the first to do 10% less total damage. If that's too overbearing though the passive could change to "an Enemy's Crit Ramp is reduced by 10 for auto attacks against you." Early game that means having 20 Crit Ramp - which usually takes 10 auto's to get the Crit Cap - would actually take 20 auto's. Late game it means much less, but by then ADC's are supposed to be able to handle tanks better. If that's **still ** a problem it can be a percentage decrease instead.
And that's the rework! The likely hood that this falls on deaf ears is pretty high but just in case... This is about as close to an "interactive critical strike" system that could be available to the game. If the rework has any merit, Riot, please iterate on it!
You mentioned these as the only champions with crit scalings/interactions in their kit, but that is not true.
There are more champions affected by this change.
The damage of her passive is scaling with crit.
The CD of her passive is scaling with crit.
Her ult is able to "mini-crit". Q is able to crit (just guaranteed if first target killed)
The bonus damage from her Q is able to crit, not guaranteed.
Damage of her E is scaling with crit.
edit:here is an example