League of Legends is finally nerfing ‘critical strikes’ in Season 11

Riot Games is finally set to nerf the infamous League of Legends “critical strike” damage multiplier in Season 11, after years of the LoL player base complaining that the bonus attack damage stat causes too much variance.

League of Legends is set for a massive item overhaul in Season 11, with many of the iconic swords, bows, guns, and armor pieces in the game going under Riot’s microscope.

One major focus of the preseason update is LoL’s infamous “critical strike” stat, which fans often refer to as “crits.” These bonus damage multipliers have long drawn the ire of the LoL community, and Riot is finally answering the calls.

Riot game developer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter has revealed that ‘crits’ will be taking a fairly big whack at the start of Season 11. The nerfs, the LoL balance figurehead revealed, are mainly aiming to “pull power from super late-game crit builds.”

The focus for the Critical Strike rework is to “bring a bit more power into the early curve, and [make sure the stat] has a slightly less exponential payoff.” This is likely to include crit-reliant late-game League carries like Draven, Yasuo, and Master Yi.

There will be two hefty changes to the “critical strike” stat in the Season 11 rework; firstly, the actual damage dealt by a crit will be reduced from 200% of the auto-attack, to just 175%.

Secondly, each item that currently gives critical hit chance will only hand out a 20% chance, rather than the previous 25%. This includes Essence Reaver, Infinity Edge, Stormrazor, and all fully-built from the low-tier Zeal item.

Senna, Tryndamere, Yasuo, and Yone also have critical strikes in their kit.

The rework will also see “critical strike” added to “a lot of useful items,” including Mercurial Scimitar, Bloodthirster, and Mortal Reminder. This should “open up build choice dramatically,” Yetter explained, and allow new options in build paths.

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“These choices become new options at second or third items, because they wouldn’t derail your damage per second completely,” he said. “We will be making sure non-crit champs also have access to items with similar niches.

Critical hits remain one of the last chance-based statistics left in League of Legends in terms of champion builds. Dodge which let champions completely ignore auto-attack damage, was cut from League in patch v1.132 back in 2012.

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Dragons also became more RNG-based in Season 10, with League’s big Rise of the Elements update. The neutral creatures now spawn as one of four elements, and give special bonuses depending on what Rift element they are aligned to.

Yetter confirmed the critical strike changes would be added to LoL’s staging server, the PBE, within the next week. These changes will likely go live in Patch 11.1.