Can we finally phase crit's RNGesus out of the game?

#tl;dr w/ summary of this thread's discussion + ideas further below

#Updates

kind of Red Response - links won't work for some reason. Use Ctrl + F to search for "Phreak".

Dignitas ImaQTPie Responds!

He basically attacks 2/3 of the proposed methods in the OP. Would love to hear discussion on this!

Get your paper and pencil out and be ready to learn. Morello is here! :D

Re: Other solutions - Fine by me! I presented my own to start discussion, but the purpose of this thread is to find a sensible replacement to crit RNG! Check the bottom of this post for a summary of two other methods that offer smoother transitions than my own.

RE: Carry DPS without crit - The proposed changes will deal similar damage to live, please read my reply below to Ilya for detailed explanation or PhoenixSlayer for summary. Thanks!

#End Updates

                 Why Critical Hits Aren't Necessary in LoL

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Date: June 2014

Since Riot is preparing another large item overhaul, I think it's an appropriate time to talk about Critical Hits, the last major RNG element in the game. Critical Hits are an iconic element of traditional RPGs, but you know what else traditional RPGs have? Dodge, random battles, random loot—all things that aren't present in LoL. Why? It's because LoL isn't an RPG. It's a MoBA, and as such there is no requirement for it to be beholden to archaic RPG elements. The new motto is interactive gameplay. Randomly winning or losing trades/duels due to critical hits is the opposite of that.

On top of this, crit occupies a weird spot where almost no one can use it but autoattack champions, limiting a crit item's appeal to a relatively small range of champions. And for the autoattackers, items like Atma's Impaler and Executioner's Calling end up being redundant and difficult to balance because PD/SS/IE already provide the most desirable sources of crit in a well-balanced 6-item build. Like the old dodge, crit simply doesn't have a lot of design space to maneuver in; we've tried for years to go beyond just PD/SS/IE and failed.

Crit is also difficult to quantify because it's inconsistent. Even Trinity Force's 10% Crit doesn't feel noticeable. While the crit is most definitely doing work, people really buy it for other reasons. It's hard for players to interpret an inconsistent stat and readily establish expectations for its performance. Crit isn't like AD or AS, which are intuitive and flexible enough to mix and match with interesting items. Crit is a cumbersome stat with nebulous and problematic (see Xypherous's quote coming up) gameplay.

For perspective from a respectable authority on the ins and outs of League gameplay, here are CLG Doublelift's tweets on RNG, which in part corroborate what I have felt for a long time:

tweet1 tweet2 tweet3 tweet4

http://i.imgur.com/d23955u.jpg?1 CLG Doublelift

I really hope IE changes never make it live. I don't want to see S4WC million dollar bot lane trades decided on who gets the first IE crit.

I can't believe there's an argument for the potential for IE vs IE 2v2 all-ins where the player who crits 1 more time is bound to win... lol

I hate RNG and it's even worse when it's an attractive option for early game where snowballing lane is most important

There's nothing wrong with BT vs BoRK build paths right now, it's skill-based and calculated gameplay with no room for luck

Let's examine Xypherous's recent quote on pRNG (pseudo RNG) referencing 10% crit chance:

http://i.imgur.com/69Z01Un.jpg?1 Xypherous - aka Riot's Master of Items

The problem with critical strike is that at low values it is inconsistent and unpredictable because there's no way to plan around it - what you want is increased predictability of the system - and PRNG needs a large base and a better time frame to do that kind of work.

Basically: The pRNG system in place doesn't cope well with low crit chances.

Now, 8 out of the 12 crit items offer lower than 20% crit chance, and arguably the cut off could go as high as PD. Thus, addressing crit is relevant for the health of at least 8 of our items and any future items like them, and it affects all areas of the game, not just bot lane (think: runes, bruiser Trinity Force builds, or any builds with Zeal derivatives, etc.)

So, we have two options: We can phase out crit entirely, or we can at least change the items with low crit chance. I'll try for the former, because as already covered above at length, RNG is shit from a competitive perspective, and it's invisible gameplay to casual players.

##    The Items   

• Infinity Edge
• ** Phantom Dancer**
• ** Statikk Shiv**
• Trinity Force
• Youmuu's Ghostblade
• Atma's Impaler
• Executioner's Calling
• Sword of the Divine

There are 4 major items here with serious gameplay ramifications: IE, PD/Shiv, and Trinity Force. The changes will seem weird at first, but ultimately they are passive statistical bonuses just like crit and with time players will get used to them. Other solutions exist that are valid! Mine are just an out of the ordinary suggestion to provoke creative discussion.

The rest of the items are used too seldom to matter. If you don't like my ideas for these disposable items, that's ok because you could potentially make any change you want to them without affecting the state of the game. This is an opportunity to remove toxic elements in these minor items that will make them better design investments in the future.

Note: Since writing this, Ghostblade has become more popular on some champions. While the item itself may arguably no longer be relegated to "minor" status, it still falls into the problematic regime of low crit chance mentioned by Xypherous above, so alternative options to its crit stat are worth exploring.

Here are my ideas:

##                             Major Items

### Infinity Edge

• 25% crit chance / 50% bonus Crit Damage

• Unique Passive: Unlimited Power - Increases Auto Attack damage by 35%

Currently, the critical hit portion of IE increases autoattack DPS by an average of 37.5%. This means the damage is virtually unchanged.

The DPS difference in building PD + IE is less than 1%.

### Phantom Dancer

• 30% crit chance

• Unique Passive: Dual Wield - Every 3 attacks, a fourth strike is delivered. Counter may or may not reset after 4 seconds of inactivity.

This passive is a 33% increase in damage; live bonus from PD's crit is 30%. It's not perfect, but it's workable.

Double PD / PD + Shiv builds require minor changes discussed in my reply to Critkeeper (link at bottom).

### Statikk Shiv

• 20% crit chance

• Unique Passive: Dual Wield - Every 3 attacks, a fourth strike is delivered at 60% AD. Counter may or may not reset after 4 seconds of inactivity.

This passive is exactly equal to Shiv's current crit dps bonus.

Again there are minor options needed for stacking PD/Shiv builds (see link at bottom). This doesn't pose an issue; solutions come out very close to live values.

### Trinity Force

• 10% crit chance

• Buff Spellsword damage

OR

• Increase AD/AS to 40/40%

If you require symmetry, you could also increase the AP. The numbers can be fine-tuned to be roughly equal to the difference with 10% critical chance.

##                             Minor Items

### Youmuu's Ghostblade

• 15% crit chance

• Increase Armor Pen. Alternative: AD or CDR or combination

Ghostblade is a semi-minor item that has recently risen in popularity. It's useful for its early game spike in damage, valued in particular by AD Casters. But who benefits the most from it? Autoattacking, AD caster champions, to wit: Lucian and perhaps Twitch. We can do better. Moving its crit to more APen, with a combination of AD or CDR expands Ghostblade's relevance within its niche; it will remain very useful on Lucian, but will have better continuity among AD caster champions. This change arms Ghostblade with greater reliability and further cements it in its unique niche as an early AD Caster power spike that falls off as the enemy builds armor.

AD, CDR, or some combination is another route to explore.

### Atma's Impaler

• 15% crit chance

• Builds from Pickaxe. Add 25 flat damage to it. Adjust price accordingly.

This item is only good on Garen, who also happens to have AD ratios almost as high as Talon, so he would have no problem with this change.

###Executioner's Calling

• 20% crit chance

Replace with 15% lifesteal for niche as lane trading item, or replace with AS to provide better late game scaling as a dedicated AD + AS item. You could honestly do whatever you want with it atm because no one builds this anyways.

###Sword of the Divine

Leave it as it is. 100% crit chance is not random and now it's also unique.

###Brawler's Glove/Cloak of Shadows/Avarice Blade/Zeal

removed

removed

Now grants 10% AS instead of 10% crit.

Builds from two daggers. AS% increased to 25-28%

###Runes Crit runes removed. Did anyone really like getting crit in lane when your opponent is running one crit mark with <1% chance?

###    Champions      

My suggestions (not perfect! - Trynd, Garen and Yasuo need work. Feel free to help!):

• Unchanged because he has 100% crit - not random

• Unchanged because he has 100% crit - not random

• The above suggestions actually buff her passive, so it may not need a rework. Still: Rework concept - Ashe's basic attacks apply a debuff that lowers an enemy's slow resist by 10% (stacks 3 times). Alternative: Ashe's basic attacks inflict a stacking counter at a rate proportional to the number of slows active on them. At X stacks, the counter is consumed for %AD damage.

• Passive grants +% bonus damage up to 35% bonus damage (exact same as now!). If it multiplies with IE, his late game scaling stays within 5% the same damage. His mid game scaling is 4.5% stronger with SS or 8.8% stronger with PD.

• IE passive applies to his AD ratios on E. (riskier suggestion: attack speed scales his number of E ticks, applying more ticks of either base damage or AD ratio)

• Currently discussed below in comments. It's been difficult using my changes to crit, but with a different approach it seems straightforward.

Consider this: The longer we wait, the more crit-based champions like Yasuo will be released, and the harder it will be to go back and make a change to the last RNG effect in the game.

###Final Words

These changes are ideas of what can be done, not necessarily the exact values or even solutions that should be used. If we put our heads together, we can find viable alternatives to critical strike.

We got rid of dodge, we successfully altered Phage, we fixed fear. Now let's do ourselves a solid and boot crit once and for all. Luck should not be a replacement for skill.

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###               Viable alternatives from other posters / TL;DR

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Two other solutions have been proposed so far that promise likely smoother transitions than my own. Rather than replace crit with new gameplay, they aim to leave the system (including champions and items) as it is but remove the RNG aspect. This section summarizes the main proposed methods.

Some other solutions have also been suggested that haven't been fully fleshed out yet, such as "earning your crits."

####Diffusing crit's damage spikes

"Passive: Weapon Efficiency: amplifies the damage of auto attacks by a percentage of total AD. This bonus damage does not affect towers."

This converts your %crit chance directly into a %Damage bonus. IE's unique passive multiplies this damage by 1.5. All dps values come out to the same as live. All items would stay as they are, only %crit chance would be renamed to weapon efficiency. Here's an example of how it could be implemented.

Advantage:

• Very smooth transition. You can directly convert crit-based champions like Yasuo and all items so that their DPS is the same as live, and they will play similarly as well.

In lieu of big, satisfying crit numbers on the screen, the damage can be color coded for increasing amounts of damage to better communicate to the opponent how much damage is being dealt, as well as reward the player aesthetically for dealing tons of damage.

Tooltip from Sacred Salvation

Alternative suggestion that would be even easier to implement ####Enforcing crit's statistical average

Submitted by a couple of users

This implements a stacking counter which increases every auto attack proportional to %crit chance. Taking PD as an example, your counter increases every autoattack by 30. When you pass 100, it consumes 100 points and converts it into a crit. Ex:

30, 60, 90, 120 (crits on 4th strike and minus 100 stacks)

20, 50, 80, 110 (crits on 3rd strike and minus 100 stacks)

10, 50, 70, 100 (crits on 3rd strike and minus 100 stacks)

In order to prevent abusing it by timing it for enemy champions, separate counters would exist for minions and champions.

Advantage:

• Retains the same "feel" as the current system with critical hits but eliminates the RNG factor. Possibly an even smoother transition than the other solution because the "burst" of a crit remains present.

QTPie criticized this as being too easy to prime a crit before a trade. Here's an idea that I found interesting in the thread.

####This Post's Proposal – Dual Wield

A mix of the above two: It retains the "burst" feel of crits in limited scenarios through a new, interactive mechanic. It sacrifices perfect numeric conversion for a (hopefully) good-gameplay mechanic. This method may be difficult to implement for some champions (discussion pending) and requires heavier modification of most existing crit items.

With the purchase of either a PD or Statikk Shiv, every 3rd attack deals bonus damage. The attack counter decays when not fighting, like Jax's passive.

Advantage:

• The advantage is mostly contingent on whether the mechanic of Dual Wield is fun or not. It also proposes comprehensive removal of crit's weaknesses from the game (ie. RNG and inconsistency, but also item usability issues stemming from crit catering exclusively to autoattack champions).

####2nd Proposal (band-aid fix to current pRNG system)

• Reduce % Crit Damage in half from 200% to 150%.
• Double all sources of % Crit Chance
• Any % Crit Chance that exceeds 100% is converted to % Crit damage at a rate of 0.5% Crit Damage for every 1% Crit Chance.

This takes advantage of the current PRNG system to continue determining critical hits. The higher % Crit Chance reduces the cases of low chance where PRNG doesn't function well (consider removing Brawler Gloves and crit chance runes anyways), while the lower % Crit Damage mitigates the impact of cases where PRNG fails and lucky crits occur.

Advantage

This deals very similar damage as live. Easily implemented. Maintains some RNG, as well as the burst of crits, and it is dramatically less likely to cause unfair exchanges. It's basically an improved version of now.

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RE: Diffusing crit's damage spikes - Look up any conversation with Raytchet, TSM the cat, or Don Eulrich.

Answering criticism of my suggestions:

RE: Building PD + PD - check out my response to Critkeeper

RE: IE too strong with assassins - see response to Tortunga

RE: Changes to items not necessary - from shortfallguy. This actually makes implementation of my suggestions much easier.

http://i.imgur.com/9QP1b4s.png

This is right after 4.10 on Gosu's stream. It highlights how even if PRNG were to be considered a fair gameplay element, the psychological effect of feeling out of control of a situation is negative and possibly demoralizing. Nowhere in here was the dealer of the crit excited about getting lucky, rather the tone of everyone was commiserating. If you think this is the kind of negativity that can come out of a regular solo queue game, the backlash in a tournament setting, for example world championships, would be enormous and worth preempting. Those high pressure games are already tough enough without hurting their confidence through some perceived luck-based event.

To be fair, the Lucian did admit to needing to adapt after.

Source: http://www.twitch.tv/ mushisgosu/b/540732867?t=06h02m30s (fix the space in the middle)