Ahead of the season 11 preseason, Riot has shared their plans on how the Critical Strike is going to work in League of Legends.
For the upcoming 2021 preseason, Riot is planning to bring some major item updates, new item class, and item system overhaul. A couple of months earlier they shared how the Grievous Wounds is going to work in the preseason. And later on, revealed details about the upcoming new item class called “Mythic Items”.
And now, League of Legends’ lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter shared their plans for the Critical Strike changes for the upcoming preseason update.
- Read More: Riot shares details on what players can expect from the new Item Shop Update in 2021 preseason
Critical Strike Changes
- Critical strike damage reduced to 175% from 200%.
- This pulls power from super late game crit builds and lets us put more power upfront from stats (AD and AS)
- The critical strike chance per item reduced to 20% from 25%.
- This in combination with adding crit chance to a lot of useful items (Merc Scimitar, Bloodthirster, Mortal Reminder, etc.) opens up build choice more dramatically.
- These choices become new options at second or third item because they wouldn’t derail your DPS completely.
- We will be making sure noncrit champs still have access to items with similar niches and are doing some creative things for on-hit champions to open up their options more.
The new changes are clearly direct nerfs to the Critical Strike. For the 2021 preseason, Riot is reducing the critical strike damage to 175% to pull its power from the late game. They are also reducing the crit chance from 25% to 20% to all the items. However, they are adding Critical Strike stats to items like Merc Scimitar, Bloodthirster, and Mortal Reminder to balance things up.
Mark Yetter also mentioned, “definitely don’t worry that this will be a crit champion nerf, we have shifted the power from crit damage into other stats.”
Although Riot is shifting the power from crit damage to other stats, League players are showing their concerns for champions like Yasuo, Tryndamere, and others who heavily rely on crit damage.
However, Mark Yetter stated that “we will do preemtive changes on champs with crit interactions (Yasuo, Yone, Tryndamere) to make sure they are similar power to live.”
According to Riot, the main goals behind these Critical Strike changes are to “bring a bit more power into the early curve and slightly less exponential payoff.”
The new Critical Strike nerfs will definitely bring some interesting first item choice for many champions in League of Legends. The 2021 preseason is expected to hit the PBE for testing very soon.
