What Crit Chance does in LoL, and why it's probably here to stay

YossarianSensei··48 votes·12,347 views

I've seen a lot of threads come up lately that are talking about reworking Crit or more often about how 'OP' crit is, probably induced by the relatively successful Ashe rework. In these threads, I can't help but notice that the conversation is misguided and there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what Crit actually does in LoL.


Fundamentally, Crit is a power-gating system We all know the reason Crit is crazy strong is because it gives ridiculous multiplicative scaling - everybody is familiar with how much disgusting DPS ADCs deal once they have 3-4 items built.

However, what's equally important to notice is that Crit is purposely RNG based; What the RNG aspect does is require a champion to have multiple Crit items before it becomes powerful. This ensures Crit can't be used as a quick power spike to massively snowball a lead (think of things like Jax's lvl 6 power spike, or Yasuo's Shiv power spike) and also guarantees basically only ADCs have the luxury of itemizing for crit.

Crit Chance by itself is an extremely weak stat, hence why most people try not to only buy an Agility Cloak when they shop. It's very hard for most champions to build crit, and you won't see the fruits of your labor until much later into the game. This is why ADCs generally have a weak early game and a strong late game - they need their 'holy trinity' items before they truly become an ADC: item 3031 item 3046 item 3072

**Because RNG-Crit is a gating mechanism, we can't rework it in favor of '% damage increase' ** It will not work. Crit is too powerful - normal champions cannot be allowed to have critical damage output. If you remove the RNG aspect, then you'll no longer need to stack damage items to get the massive benefits of crit, instead at some point %dmg amplification simply becomes a more cost efficient alternative to AD.

This same logic is also the reason we can't just have 'crit counters' where every X auto-attacks will be a crit. Crit procs are OP AF. Their damage output is far above the plane of where most champions should be at in any point of the game. If you could know for certain that your next AA would be a crit, then that'd significantly change the way you gank/lane/contest objectives/etc. Just imagine what it's like when you get ganked by a Yi with double-strike up, or get harassed by Jax's 3rd proc, or when pre-rework Ashe lvl 1 cheeses you. Now imagine that, except on every AD champion.


This of course leads to the point: Why don't we just get rid of crit? Sounds easy enough right? Nope.

This isn't Maplestory, crit didn't last 5 seasons in LoL just because Riot thought it was a 'cool' mechanic - in fact I'm willing to bet Riot thinks crit is cancer, they just don't have a better solution.

What Crit does is offer a clear distinction between DPS Carries, Tanks, and regular dooshbags because it allows the game to be balanced into different damage/durability tiers that are not easily violated. ADCs have a HUGE amount of DPS thanks to their multiplicative scaling, but because their DPS is based off of RNG crit, their degree of damage is inaccessible to regular dooshbags or tanks. On the other end, it allows Tanks to be balanced in a way that they will be able to tank regular dooshbags, but still be vulnerable to DPS Carry's higher scaling. And of course as a regular dooshbag, you sit somewhere in the middle depending on which Champion you're playing. At first this might sound anti-fun because you may not enjoy being the 'regular dooshbags', but having defined roles is actually healthy for the game overall.

Because of these soft tier distinctions, League is able to have strong team dynamics and unique roles which gives us a wide range of strategies and avoids stale gameplay. This may not be immediately obvious because we're just recently leaving the 'Assassin meta' which was IMO a terrible era of game design in LoL because there were no role distinctions - everyone just built damage and gibbed each other. We were all regular dooshbags in Assassin Meta.

Fortunately enough, LoL's meta's bounced back to where we are now in which teams have distinct Tanks, bruisers/mages/supports and ADCs which are all balanced with RNG Crit

99 Comments

Dr Poro33 votes

This is the reason why changing 'Crit chance' into '% damage increase' will not work. If you remove the RNG aspect, then you'll no longer need to stack damage items to get the massive benefits of crit, which means bruisers like Jax can just buy their ordinary items, and then once it becomes 'worth it' for them to start scaling multiplicatively, they'll go back and grab an agility cloak to amplify his AA dps by a consistent 15% and it will be totally worth it.

That reasoning makes absolutely no sense. AA %dmg amp would still be relying on buying AD first because it gives X% of your current AD as a bonus. If you go buy cloak first item and considering all you do is AAing, you'll be having 15% bonus dmg on 100AD which is 15 AD for 730g. This is terrible. 2 long swords cost 720g and give +20 AD and this AD also has effect on abilities! However, if you have 300AD already, the extra 15% crit chance (or %dmg amp) would give a whooping 45AD extra (but only on basic attacks, keep in mind!)

It doesn't matter if it's crit chance of a %dmg amp. You'll always need AD items first and it'll always be a suboptimal (although not useless) stat on casters.

The only thing %dmg amp would do is remove the RNG part. This makes ADCs more reliable in what they hit but also removes the cheesy 1% crit rune tactic where you go ham once you finally got that lucky crit off in order to snowball further.

Riot stated why they hesitated on changing crit into %dmg amp and it's not the reason you're giving. It's mainly because they want to keep the RNG so that games don't feel lost as soon as they're behind, which in my honost opinion is a pretty weak reason compared with the upsides of removing RNG would bring, but I do understand their point of view.

Edit: Just repeating incase you didn't understand: The reason why assassins, bruisers, tanks, etc don't build crit is because it only affects auto attacks (while assassins and bruisers mainly deal damage with their abilities that have high AD scaling and/or high base damages) and also because it requires a lot of AD to be efficient (which is a problem for certain AA tanks like volibear). RNG has nothing to do with it. If anything, Assassins prefer having the RNG chance to do a higher damage burst so they can (atleast sometimes) burst down a squishy and get away ASAP.

Trumpet7 votes

Give this person a cookie

LaserDeathBlade10 votes

Yes most caster heavy champions won't build crit, but if it were changed into % damage amplification there are definitely a good portion of champions that would benefit a lot off of it.

Riot's reasoning is pretty solid; Consistent % dmg amplification is OP because you know exactly how strong you are at any point of time, which means you'll be able to push and snowball off of a much smaller advantage.

DomainSpecific5 votes

Knowing exactly how strong you are is OP?

You can push and snowball off a smaller advantage with crits, and either you will do better than you expect, or you will get frustrated due to not critting.

It's like fighting Tryndamere as a melee champion at level 1. You will lose or win due to how lucky you are, which in my opinion is more frustrating than him just dealing 35% more damage per auto.

ChaoticPinecone5 votes

i disagree. knowing how much damage you and your enemy can do is a good thing, not a bad. Yes, you can push and snowball off a smaller advantage. but it also prevents snowballing to a HUGE advantage due to a roll of the dice, or getting destroyed in a fight because you got 3 normal autos when you have 90% crit while the enemy got 3 crits with only 50%. It doesnt help that the amount you lifesteal is also based off crit - a lucky chain does more damage and gives more survivability.

it takes an unaccountable, unforseeable aspect out of the game.

YossarianSensei5 votes

Statistically this 'huge' roll of the dice is astronomically unlikely because LoL's crit implementation is a biased RNG.

At that point you were equally likely to lose the fight because a gopher ate your internet cable

Fredart15 votes

I see nothing wrong with crit, you're trading raw dmg for a chance of double dmg.

Fuaztin9 votes

{quoted}

I see nothing wrong with crit, you're trading raw dmg for a chance of double dmg.

NOt when you buy an I.E. You get both. Or do you mean attack speed? PD now I have 50% crit from two items. With attacks speed and damage. Now I have 4 slots to build with according to what the enemy team might throw at me.

Mandang06 votes

You still pay for the crit on both of those items, which is a less reliable form of DPS than either the AD or attack speed on those items. It doesn't matter whether the item has 2 different stats on it, you're still making the choice to invest in unreliable DPS for the chance to hit harder at times.

TrinityTriTri3 votes

If that was the case this would've been item 3072 meta like season 3 shitlyn MF practically AD casters everywhere.

Mandang03 votes

Yea, except that item 3072 isn't the item it was then. Now you pay a large amount on the shield (which scales with level) instead of the stacking AD, making it a bad first item.

The problem you're speaking to is that there aren't strong reliable alternatives to IE, not that crit is inherently flawed.

TrinityTriTri3 votes

If the problem was with the damage, item 3508 would see play because CDR = more abilities = more damage for 2 less kills (3200g VS 3800g). But that's not the case, the damage provided by IE's crit passives is way too high for anything else to replace it. Back in season 3 ADCs didn't take it /solely/ for the raw AD and stacks, they wanted the lifesteal as well because it gave burst and denied poke hardcore.

It's not being picked up because IE outperforms it using item 3031 + item 1053, not because it's bad. New BT is actually amazing just overshadowed.

Mandang05 votes

Oh cmon, does anyone actually believe essence reaver is a good item? You don't get the mana restore until you finish it, you might not even need that mana restore on most ADCs, and CDR is also wasted on a lot of them.

If old BT was still in the game, you'd see ADCs prefer it over IE just like they used to because it's more reliable. It never scaled as hard as IE, but ADCs still preferred it for that reason. ADCs took it first and not BoRK because of the stacks, not for the lifesteal. New BT is good, but not as a first item, as I explained earlier. For that reason, it doesn't compete with IE.

There's still not a good item to compete with IE as a first buy, which is why IE's so popular. That's not a problem with crit chance needing to be reworked or anything else like that.

Sammystorm2 votes

BT was a first buy on every champion for a while. You can see the effect of a item with consistent damage over taking IE with both BT and tri force. In certain points of the history of league one or the other was the most effective. Consequencly we also see a different set of adc's played when the most powerful item switches because each adc scales differently. When IE is the best option hyper carries usually thrive. Champs like Trist, Cait, Vayne, Kog, Jinx. When BT is strong Pseudo casters are strong, Lucian, Graves, Cait. When Tri force is strong we seeing ever more caster based adc's. Ez and Corki. Out of all of these starting items IE is probably the best to have because that means it takes champs longer to ramp up and we have more variety in bot lane usually.

rampaging poet3 votes

With PD sure, but the extra crit damage on IE halfway pays for itself. IE's stats are gold efficient before its passive. By the time you have the two AD pieces of IE, switching to crit increases your expected DPS more than more AD before considering the IE passive. At 150 AD (not an unreasonable assumption for IE-rushing carries), the bonus damage provides the same DPS as an extra 10% crit chance - literally half the crit chance you bought with the IE. That number only goes up when you buy more crit chance.

A few levels later with 160 AD and 50% crit (say a PD, though that actually hits 55%), the IE passive is worth an extra 25% crit chance. It didn't pay for all the crit chance you built, but it paid for all the crit chance on itself. If you're getting at least two crit items anyway, the crit on IE pays for itself. Otherwise, you're only being charged half price for the crit portion of IE making it a reasonable stand-alone item on any AD champion that auto-attacks a fair bit.

Mandang03 votes

You're getting off the point here.

The crit chance is the unreliable damage stat I was speaking about, and IE isn't gold efficient without that (not that gold efficiency is even relevant to the point I was making). The fact that crit increases your DPS more than other stats is both intended and necessary. No one would buy an unreliable DPS stat if you didn't have a greater payoff for it. That's just risk and reward, plain and simple.

Crit's intended to scale as hard as you're describing because ADCs need that to make their powercurve work. When your damage is just single target and rightclicks, you need those rightclicks to scale pretty hard. If ADC didn't have crit, tanks would just rule the game.

rampaging poet3 votes

The unreliability isn't the reason not everyone builds crit. People build things other than crit for damage because (a) they are casters and need the AD/AP for their ratios more than crit for their autos (b) they are tanks or bruisers that can't afford the item slots to invest in tons of AD and crit, or (c) they're someone like Warwick, Kayle, or Teemo that scales well enough with attack speed and on-hit effects that crit isn't mandatory.

You indirectly brought up gold efficiency when you said that people paid for the crit on IE and PD. Yes, they pay for that crit chance on those items. That just means there are better items for increasing DPS when you don't have enough AD for the crit chance to scale well OR need stats like armour penetration or on-hit magic damage to counter other people's defenses. Reducing the impact of the RNG wouldn't change that, so carries would still want crit while bruisers would still want AD.

Mandang01 votes

I meant pay in terms of opportunity cost. I was replying to someone's (misguided) argument that buying crit items doesn't carry any unreliability because the item (PD or IE) also has a reliable stat on it. In short, he's trying to say that crit's not an unreliable purchase because it comes on items with other stats, and I'm saying that doesn't matter because you're still spending gold on crit that could be spent elsewhere on a more reliable stat. That more reliable stat is what you give up, the opportunity cost.

Gold efficiency is just a different way of talking about it, and every item in the game is gold efficient, so if you had a more reliable item to compare IE to, you'd still realize how you're spending gold on an unreliable stat where you could be spending it on something else instead. (But again, this is a tangent)

I agree about why not everyone builds crit, but if you look at the post I was originally replying to, their discussion was focusing on ADC itemization and implying that the crit items don't carry with them any unreliability (which is clearly wrong).

rampaging poet3 votes

Ok, that makes more sense. You still get some reliable damage with crit items (other than the basic items you're always going to build into the full items), but part of their power is the unreliable but harder-hitting crit and that's accounted for in their cost. Therefore, you pay for the crit. Got it.

I agree that crit items are not perfectly reliable. Expected DPS != actual DPS in any given fight, and everyone has stories of that triple Trynda-crit or the time they lost a fight to three non-crits in a row despite having a 75% crit chance. My main point of contention is more with the original poster because the unpredictabiliy isn't why ADCs are the only ones that can afford to buy crit.

Also, I see my original argument about not paying for the IE's crit chance is flawed because other high-end attack items also offer gold efficient stats plus strong passives, so despite effectively not paying gold for the crit chance you're paying an item slot for the passive and other item passives may be more useful or reliable than Infinity Edge.

Puri Puri Taric1 votes

simply pick ashe and there goes the random chance and there comes raw real dmg.

Mandang02 votes

And you also lose the reward of critting someone, getting to do 2x damage or more.

Puri Puri Taric2 votes

so ? what does the chance do me good if i dont critt within 10 attacks even with 60% critt chance ? i rather have increased dmg within 10 attacks than having a slight chance to do double dmg.

Mandang03 votes

You're talking like Ashe's passive suddenly makes crit some godly stat, when all it did was average out her crits. She didn't get some massively-buffed damage formula, she gets just about the same DPS as any other right clicker from her passive. You've mentioned the upside of the lower risk, but you failed to mention the lower reward that comes with it (your crits do much less than 200% damage).

And, honestly, the spikier damage is more valuable because it lets you burst people, which wins fights.

Dr Poro12 votes

Crit it perfectly fine. It allows the ADC class to exist. The RNG part of crit, however, is the only (action based) RNG in this game. Dodge was removed because it had a too great impact for a random factor. There are still random factors in the game, but they have very low impact (Bard's chimes, Thresh's souls). It's debatable whether or not the impact crits have is too big. I would say it is. It directly affects things you need to do during a fight (which leads to more in depth decision making which is good) but can also inevitably turn around a fight in a way neither you or your opponent has control over.

R11012 votes

If you remove the RNG aspect, then you'll no longer need to stack damage items to get the massive benefits of crit.

This is the major part is completely disagree with. Example: If you remove the RNG from crit and and you let item 1051 have the same cost as item 1036 so you can start in lane with the same amount of potions, then no champion would build a glove + pots over longsword + pots. Let's assume we have 50AD at lvl 1 then you will gain a measly 5 extra damage on every autoattack with the glove, while you get 10 from a longsword that also makes your abilities stronger. Removing RNG from crit doesn't magically make it stronger, you will have exactly the same dps and the reasons to buy or not buy crit remain exactly the same.

LaserDeathBlade6 votes

But its not, because %dmg/gold will exceed flat AD/gold at some point.

You won't be starting off with item 1051 at level 1, but when you're Lvl 11 with 250 AD on Riven, 15% amplified damage from item 1018 gives you 37.5 increased basic attack damage for only 730 gold, compared to item 1037 which is only 25 AD.

Daen2 votes

Except that item 1037 builds into something that's actually useful for Riven, whereas item 1018 really just doesn't. Keep in mind, also, that item 1018 only benefits her autoattacks, whereas item 1037 amplifies the damage of every single part of her kit. This is really important, especially seeing as most of Riven's damage comes from her abilities.

Besides, you could always tweak the values so that lower tier crit items (e.g. item 1051) are exponentially less valuable than mid-tier crit items (item 1018) and finished items such as item 3031.

Champion Skin2 votes

Well there is one thing though Riven's abilites scale with her AD... which makes AD a lot more useful... And it works the exact same way now as well...

1% crit increase your AA DPS by 1%... (1.5% if you have IE) This is in the game right now... that is how the math works out...

And why isn't Riven building AS? When she has so much AD it would increase her damage by quite a bit as AS is a % increase in AA damage based on your AD (and crit)

Simple Riven is a burst and ability reliant champion and doesn't reply on a lot of AA's so auto attack damage modifiers like Crit and AS aren't very good on her

Ellphi1 votes

Riven's an arbitrary example, it could've been anyone lol

J4 only has 270% AD scaling off bonus AD in his whole kit. As long as he can get off a lot of Autos, %AA damage would be worth it on him.

Champion Skin2 votes

Jarvan wouldn't buy crits either... why? Well because Hydra + AD gives better burst... And Jarvan would likely either go for AD to burst down targets and dunk them or build tank to be able to initiate and absorb damage better (while still providing good utility in his E + Q knock up, from W slow and ult lock down)

or possibly some middle ground where crit probably would be even worse given that it is and AD multiplier and the less AD you have the less it is worth

Though of course IE would be good most of the time on any AD champion who auto attack as it gives such a good amount of AD with crit... it just such an insanely expensive item (so it is hard to be able to buy it without screwing yourself over by delaying other items and well it's build path can be rather clunky)

NoobLearninGame9 votes

You will not take away my early-game ~1% crit chance rune lottery draws again my enemies.

googlemaster9 votes

then why does every time the game tries to give you a little crit its blatantly op? remember the 4% crit chance mastery? everyone bitched to high heavens that bot lane was a 1/25 chance of auto winning and it became whoever crit first won. remember crit potions? 8% crit for 250 gold and AS to boot.

i dont even think you understand how +% AA dmg works. jax builds a crit cape because hes at the point that the cape is the highest damage item ratio he can buy. ok, so, he has enough damage to warrant a crit cape. he has enough gold to afford the damage and now he bought a cape. and he doesnt need any defensive items. guess what? you lost 15 minutes ago.

+% AA dmg only effects auto attacks, it does not change any of the ratios of the skills. so no, it is not better than raw damage. it will add no damage to the ratios of his skills.

see, the problem with this argument is that most of you dont actually understand what it is in the first place. you think of it as pure damage bonus when it only effects auto attacks just like crit does.

there is nothing different in crit and +% dmg except the RNG. you are paying for stats that you have to gamble to use.

LaserDeathBlade6 votes

It wasn't 'OP', it was TOXIC.

When you're facing a Riven in lane, you're not expecting her to crit; when she does crit, she pretty much kills you for free due to RNG

However when you face an ADC that you know has like 55% crit chance, you know that their damage will very consistently be amplified by that crit. At ~50% crit, it's not 'luck' based anymore. With the Biased RNG system, you pretty much know they're going to crit every other AA.

YossarianSensei2 votes

there is nothing different in crit and +% dmg except the RNG. you are paying for stats that you have to gamble to use.

But see that's the whole point.

Most champions aren't going to pay for those stats because it's not worth it for them to take the gamble.

googlemaster1 votes

no, they dont buy it because it doesnt effect their ratios and they dont auto attack enough. nor do they buy bloodthirsters. the gamble has nothing to do with it.

Drunk Rummate6 votes

Your argument is inherently flawed because it assumes that building a crit cloak would suddenly be a good idea for champions that don't currently build crit.

This is not true because most champions of the non-marksman sort can't afford to do sustained autoattacks, and by averaging crit as percent bonus damage it emphasizes sustained damage in a kit.

There's a reason it's still better to get Flat AD or Flat attack speed runes on Ashe. Even with her 100% crit passive, she deals more damage with attack speed or attack damage early game. This is because that even with 100% crit chance, your crit still scales off of your attack damage and attack speed heavily. You need a LOT of those stats for the crit to start paying off. But by averaging the damage over her autos, Ashe becomes more reliable and consistent, while losing that random "lol I crit you 4 times and won even though I was behind" mechanic.

So why doesn't this suddenly make Zed want to go out and buy a crit cloak? Say you've got 3 damage items and you're debating an IE versus a BT as your next item? Well if the bonus damage from IE gets averaged out, it means you're guaranteed to deal 1+(.25)(1.5) = 1.375 bonus multiplier on auto attacks. However with a current IE, there's a 25% chance that you'll deal 250% bonus damage on auto attacks. So as a burst oriented champion, which do you think Zed would prefer? A 25% chance to instantly gib his opponent? Or 1.375 damage multiplier after his first auto attack?

Dr Poro3 votes

Give this man a item 2009 !

LaserDeathBlade3 votes

I think the point of it was that at some point, the 15% crit from Agility cloak becomes more cost effective than 730g worth of AD or AS in terms of straight DPS. The only reason you don't see bruisers building %crit is because they can't utilize crit effectively enough.

The only exception is Trinity Force, but you mostly build Trin for the other stats it gives, and TBH it's weird that Trin even has crit.

Champion Skin2 votes

Well... duh... Should we suddenly nerf HP or armor... because at some point it becomes more effective to build HP over resistances? That is silly...

AS and AD makes Crit stronger... So of course if you have a lot of AD/AS... crit will be more effective And if you have a lot of crit then AD/AS will be more effective

Same way if you have a lot of armor/mr then HP will be more effective If you have a lot of HP then armor/mr will be more effective

What is the problem with this? It is pretty much how most stats in the game work... The more AP/AD you have the better CDR becomes (as it will increase the DPS of your abilities by a %... of course for assassins and such raw damage is better as they want to kill their target as quickly as possible and don't care much for DPS)

Fried Noob4 votes

My only problem with crit is Tryndamere, solely because it allows him to luck his way into winning lane, regardless of how well you play against him. Otherwise, you're right about crit.

LaserDeathBlade9 votes

It's not really 'luck', he has 35% crit with his fury built. If you let him build fury then he's obviously going to crit you every 2-4 AA's.

xFLVCKO3 votes

With all due respect, this is all completely wrong. The reason crit is necessary is that it prevents ADCs from shredding turrets while still keeping them relevant in PvP. So yes, crit is necessary, but there is no reason it shouldn't be replaced by a multiplier. With any knowledge of probability one would know that replacing crit with a multiplier would not change overall damage output at all, it would just make it more consistent and predictable. This would make for easier trading, as you would be able to know exactly how much damage is coming out. This would not be inherently OP... In fact, if you think about it, AD is already an auto attack multiplier, and a myriad of champs don't build AD. To sum this up, the (only?) reason crit exists is to make ADCs strong against other champs but not TOO strong against turrets.

Miku Lv993 votes

Crit actually makes ADCs stronger than a % damage increase since the enemy has to get zoned out of a bit more for fear of dying to crits.

The real reason ADCs scale better into lategame is that they have more multipliers. They have damage, attack speed, and critical hit chance. If you gave them +50% of each, they'd do 1.5^3 times as much damage. Other champions can get something a lot closer to quadratic or even linear damage with items as they get more of them.

Mandang02 votes

You could rework crit to something like Ashe's passive and you wouldn't have problems with killing tanks or with bruisers abusing crit (it still wouldn't scale their on-hits).

The problem with doing so is that you lower the threat range of the ADC, and you nerf their burst (2.5x AD crits in fights). Ashe was given a bonus 10% AD on her formula, and I think this was the reason: given the same damage dealt, you'd prefer to deal it up front rather than as a DoT.

SuperS0aker2 votes

Yea, I've never understood why people can't grasp this: Would you like your sheen proc turned into a DoT? Would you like your Luden's turned into some smaller proc with a lower charge up?

No, because burst is the best way to deal damage, everything else equal.

Champion Skin2 votes

It wouldn't really turn into a DoT though like at 100% crit everything would be the same you would deal 100% more damage each auto attac

at 50% crit it would be the same as you got 1 crit and 1 non crit every 2 attacks (no lucky streaks but no unlucky streaks either)

Though of course it kills crit fishing

kunkudunk2 votes

The main reason crit is around isn't because percent damage increases would be op but because keeping crit makes it so adcs don't kill towers immediately since you can't crit a tower. Crit chance is there to help them fight enemy champions.

Champion Skin3 votes

You could simply make the bonus AA damage not work on towers? Just like Ashe passive?

Omiwom2 votes

The problem is how crit interacts with squishies. They get erased before they can do anything

Ellphi1 votes

Those squishies would be erased just as quickly with dmg amp.

It's rare that you'll actually 100-0 someone with a single crit, and over 2-3 AA's that squishy would have died anyway.

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