Here's how to fix crit. Feedback please.

Hey all! I came up with a rework idea for crit chance. I posted this on the game play board, but thought it might be a bit more appropriate here than there. Anyway, onward to the text wall!

So when I think of critical strikes, I think of two things: luck and careful aim. Either you get really lucky with a shot, or you have a chance to take your time and line it up just right.

When I see people cry about how op crit chance is because you can get critted three times in a row and just die, especially when someone is building higher amounts of crit (or that low amounts of crit is chalked up to a pseudo rng system of some kind), I see an issue with how people perceive critical strikes. There's an element of luck when you have a low crit chance, but it turns to certainty the higher your chance gets. I don't think that's workable. Being able to pay gold to get a certainty for 100-150% damage amp doesn't sit well with me.

Of course there were ideas about making crit just a %amp like ashes current (season 5) passive, or a certain number of shots fired before a crit happens (every 3rd shot crits, if we go with the current rule of 3, or you crit every 100/crit chance shots), but those just make it so you can pay for the same statistical average of damage but have it guaranteed instead of rng based. While that gives a certainty about the damage being dealt, it's still really powerful and doesn't give a feeling of being lucky or lining up a strike.

Now on to my idea.

As I said above, crit seems like it should come down to luck or aim to me. And that's at all points. Even when you have stat value of 100% chance, you should have a degree of uncertainty or require time to line up a shot. It should be much more easy to land a crit when you've stacked your chance up high, but it should never be a guarantee. A new system, if ever put in place, should not rely on guaranteeing damage, but instead focus on introducing uncertaintly where there is none and giving a clear read on how likely a crit is to land. It should also be simple to understand and translate easily into the current game. What I propose is this: turn the crit chance stat into a crit chance CAP.

Here's how it works. We'll take season 5 statikk shiv as an example with its current 20% crit chance.

My system behaves differently not based on time in and out of combat, but rather the number of auto attacks and time in between them. And I know that seems like the rule of 3 idea mentioned as a bad idea above. I promise it's different.

You have 20% crit cap, you walk to lane with 20% chance to crit on your next strike. You land a strike, your chance to strike drops to a percentage of what it was. Say it goes to 1/4 your total cap, so you have 5% chance to strike on your next hit. Every shot dials in a crit strike, giving you a percentage of your total cap on the next shot. Keeping with the 1/4 starting point, missing the first shot gives you 2/4 total cap on the next, the second miss gives you 3/4 total cap on the next, and missing 3 times gives you the entire cap of 20%. You can crit at any time, but that's down to getting a lucky hit in. The more missed crits you have, the more time you have to dial in a shot on a vital. It's like adjusting aim on a target. Stacking your chance cap makes it more likely to crit at all times, but never guaranteed unless you've missed 3 shots with a 100% cap.

It's a little abstract of a bit, but an example of a (very one-sided) fight is below. I'm a shitty writer

So. You're an adc with a statikk shiv. You have a 20% chance cap value. You walk into lane with 20% chance to crit with your next auto attack. The enemy adc is farming in lane. You walk into the bush and take a shot at them. No crit. Fire again, no crit. Third shot crits. You now have 5% chance to crit on the next shot, and the enemy is running. You fire, no crit. 10% chance to crit on your next shot. Fire, lucky crit, 300g to you, grayscreen for them. Back down to 5% chance on your next shot again. You start backing toward your turret, and about 5 seconds into your journey, their jungler comes running at you. You have 20% chance to crit, and get lucky the first shot. 5% again. Miss. Miss. Miss. Youre at 20% again, but you miss all your crits. You still manage to pick up a double, though.

Now how did you get back to 20% when your last shot set you to 5%? Well you have a bit of a rest. After an amount of time without auto attacking, your crit stacks to the cap automatically, following the same rules as above, but using a timer instead of an auto attack.

I feel that this system is complete, fair, balanced, and simple. It would require minor changes to certain things, and allow for balancing around values in the system. Ideas for how to enact these follow.

Ashe: this one could be cool, especially with how it can interact with her season 6 passive. Your chance cap could work like crit does now in season 5, and her crit strikes could trade that damage for the enhanced slow. The choice to be made would boil down to more crit for more slows, or less crit for more consistant damage.

Tryndamere: this one could be tricky. I think a good way to handle it would be to give him his passive as it is now, though as a cap. The rage builder could be applied to stacking your cap, however. For example, with fully stacked rage and 65% cap from items (100% cap) he could crit, and because of the crit, get the chance benefits from the rage builder, only put toward the chance to crit on his next strike. His autos build 5% bonus chance to crit (25+(25.05), for a total of 26%ish per non-crit auto with this 100% cap example), his unit kills increase per auto stacks to about 28% (25+(25.1), and crits make the lower bound 28% as well. Injecting this simple math into his passive makes it very flexible as far as tuning goes.

Yasuo: This would be as simple as deciding whether to double the cap from items or doubling the build speed per non-crit. He could get a doubled cap but stack with the speed of the original. 50% cap turns to 100% cap, but you only stack a percentage of the 50% per missed crit.

Infinity edge: this one could be really interesting, and it would potentially balance itself. Instead of the 250% damage, it could be turned into a damage gate. Essentially every time you miss a crit past the cap, it increases your crit damage the next time you land one by, say, 5-10%. Miss 10 crits in a row (6 past the cap, if we're using the 1/4 stack per auto), and landing the 11th would increase the total damage of that auto by 35-70%! The balance would come from the rng itself. The higher your crit cap, the less likely it is to be able to have a noticeable effect on the crit damage, since you'll be critting more often. If you chose to only have the 20% from IE, you're taking a gamble on whether or not you'll be able to make use of the passive before you're killed.

Ruunans hurricane: faster stacking, possibly with a nerf to the amout the extra bolts charge to the cap, and only the main attack counting for the reset?

Skills like gangplank and yasuo's Q: I think the crit system should either only apply to auto attacks (skills behave like current) or only stack/not reset stacks with crittable abilities. Crit with one and there is no reset. That would bring the whole windows of strength thing into play as well. Use these skills when you have full stacks to have a better chance to crit with it.

Those were the obvious changes that I could think of.

In conclusion, I feel that this system would be a more favorable alternative to the very bipolar crit system currently in place. No more getting butt pounded by a yasuo with two items or a snowballed adc. Crit chance is not a chance when you can build to 100% chance by buying items. If nothing else, I enjoyed thinking this up. I expect people to poke a lot of holes in this idea from directions I haven't considered, and hopefully it will stand against it, growing stronger by incorporating feedback.

Let me know what you think, Riot! I'm honestly really curious to know if this might work. Please let me know :D