User blog:Qwertyfatcat/A different look on Crit

For quite some time now, Riot has been putting in a lot of effort to curb inconsistency in League of Legends that would normally be found in DOTA. Factors such as luck and dodge chance has been removed from LoL and damage is now more consistent throughout the game.

Except for criticals.

For a long time now, critical chance is still the only thing left in this game that isn't reliable. Certainly we can say skillshots can be unreliable, but that is due to a player's skills and circumstances rather than luck. However, crit is still something that can easily turn a fight or render someone useless in teamfights.

Think about it like this, marksmen invest gold into buying crit chance, yet they don't have any real idea of how much value that can bring into a fight. Sure, we can say that we average out the chance of getting double the damage throughout a period of time, but it's also likely that the crit damage won't appear. The opposite can also happen and there is nothing any player can do to invoke critical strikes or avoid it, except for the player buying more critical strike chance.

Additionally, critical strike is expensive and provides no real substance as an individual stat. All it has is the chance to do more damage on auto attack than normal. It's not the same as say buying attack damage, lifesteal or ability power. Those kinds of stats provide actual value to a character's damage, and is reliable throughout the game. Not only that, the opposing player can build their items in ways that can counter those items. With critical strike, the only option of countering critical strike is to be lucky (although the player doesn't need to counter it because the user can't even control it outside of buying more critical strike).

Naturally, Riot can't just remove the stat. Too many items are ingrained with critical strike, too many characters interact with critical strike, and too many properties are still attached to critical strike. However, critical strike is still inconsistent and should see some changes about it in the future. The likes of Yasuo heavily destabilizes critcal chance since he makes it too convenient on himself, reaching near 100% crit with two items.

I'd like to suggest changes for crit for the future. I know that changing a system takes a long time especially if it's been around for this long, but a step in a direction isn't so bad. How about this, instead of building up crit, there would be a unique passive on these items that instead increase damage on auto attack. It might not be much but it's a start. Tell me what you guys feel about such an idea and whether critical chance should have a change or not.