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

**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
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.
, not because it's bad. New BT is actually amazing just overshadowed.
have the same cost as
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.
, 15% amplified damage from
gives you 37.5 increased basic attack damage for only 730 gold, compared to
which is only 25 AD.
!
, 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.