In League of Legends, more and more details about the changes coming in Season 11 are being announced. The latest information revolves around damage from critical hits. Players and developers have been discussing this for years. Now a nerf is expected.
What is supposed to change? As developer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter mentioned in a tweet, critical hits are set to be weakened in the upcoming Season 11. Changes are primarily planned for the “super strong late-game crit builds.” In return, there will be more strength in the early game.
Specifically, the following adjustments are planned:
- The damage from critical hits will be reduced from +200% to +175% of the actual damage.
- All items that previously granted +25% critical hit chance will be reduced to +20%. This affects all items that stem from “Eifer,” the Infinity Blade, Stormrazor, and Essence Reaver.
However, not only nerfs will come to the game:
- Some additional items will receive critical hit chance, including Bloodthirster, Quickblade, and Mortal Reminder. Overall, Riot Games plans a major overhaul of the items in Season 11.
- Champions who heavily rely on critical hits, such as Yasuo, Yone, and Tryndamere, will also receive adjustments to mitigate the nerf somewhat.
How are the changes being received? The topic of critical hits has been hotly debated for years. Players repeatedly call for the complete abolition of the value. This wish has also been expressed multiple times under the tweet.
Others, however, fear that AD carries may become (even) less attractive after this change. There are already repeated combinations that rely on an AP carry, i.e. a spellcaster. The duo lane consisting of Sona and Lux is one example. If it were up to them, there shouldn’t be a change at all.
On the other hand, some are satisfied with the adjustments or want to try them out themselves. These will already be brought to the PBE, the test environment of LoL, with the next update.
Players desire skill-based battles, randomness is a hindrance
What is the problem with critical hits? Critical hits depend on critical hit chance. This is a percentage value and is typically not brought to 100%. This means conversely that critical hits depend on chance.
So if two AD carries fight each other, a random critical hit can decide victory and defeat and not necessarily the skill of a player.
Random effects were much more common in LoL in the past. Initially, there was even a chance to dodge normal attacks. This was removed back in 2012. For purely skill-based battles, however, all random effects would have to disappear, including critical hits.
What could be a possible alternative? In a Reddit thread about 2 years ago, user ManoGG99 called for the abolition of critical hits and proposed some alternative concepts:
- There could be items that increase the pure damage of auto-attacks by X%, allowing for consistently more damage instead of suddenly more due to chance.
- There could be items for ranged champions that provide significantly more attack damage. This would buff AD carries but not melee champions.
Are there opposing voices as well? Yes, both in the Reddit thread by ManoGG99 and under the tweet by Mark Yetter, there are players who absolutely do not agree with changes to critical hits.
For them, the value is part of the game and it would ruin their gaming experience if it no longer existed.
What do you think about critical hits? Should the randomness be abolished?
In addition to the unusual bot lane consisting of Sona and Lux, there is another rather unusual build that especially professionals have used in the last tournaments. Here, Shen is again used as a jungler, which was particularly popular in the early seasons.
