Fighter Rework: Remove Critical Strike Chance on Ranged Champions
Fluppets (EUW) submitted about 9 hours ago in Gameplay & Balance
The main problem with Fighters is they share or can share alot of the items ADCs use. It is really hard if not impossible to make items that benefit Fighters but ADC's cant (ab)use better or vice-versa.
I have an idea, but it is quite radical and requires a complete item and maybe even kit/balance overhaul. However I think it has alot of benefits.
Remove Critical Strike Chance for Ranged Attacks.
- Gives Melee fighters a distinct characteristic: If they get close they have a chance to deal extra damage (with less AD investment + high risk/reward).
- Emphasises Ranged Marksmen's characteristic of dealing sustained, constant and reliable damage. (opposed to RNG/Bursty).
- Removes alot of the problems with crossover itemization and abuse cases.
This will allow fighters to make item choices balancing damage (prioritising ARpen + Crit chance) with tank + chase items so they can get to melee range, deal their damage, apply their CC and ARpen.
Rather than focusing how Fighters get close and stick to a target ( ),
I would focus on how they get rewarded for getting close and how it compares to champions that dont need to get close (ie: ADC's).
Fighters would be able to get a crit item for their (RNG) damage, get some tank + sticky items and Armor shred. In turn Armor shred should be more expensive for ADC's, thus requiring Fighters in the late game to provide Armor shred and peel power for the ADC's while not making their damage obsolete. In return ADC's should get better scaling due to the removal of Crit chance.
With and the rework, you can already see Riot testing this direction.
Meddler (NA) - about 9 hours ago
We're on the same page when it comes to fighters and ADC item overlap, which makes it difficult to offer effects that are an appropriate fit for one class, but not the other. Removing ranged crit's not the solution we're trying out however, we feel that does add some important value to the ADC role. What we're looking into instead for fighters are items that:
- Are a combination of offensive/defensive effects and therefore generally of noticeably lower appeal to ADCs who want to go full offense (e.g. the revised Black Cleaver which has a significant part of its budget spent on health, something fighters are fine with, but ADCs often aren't).
- Offer additional rewards when combined with other defensive/partially defensive items (Atma's Impaler back in the day was an example of this sort of effect. It did have some other issues and so we felt we had to remove it, we believe there may be some variants on the concept that work better however).
- Help melee champions engage in a fight, or stick to targets better once in a fight, in ways that aren't as consistently useful or accessible on ranged champions (Randuin's and Phage are good examples of this category) .
We're currently working on some items using the above approaches, which are intended in part to be good fits on heavy, immobile fighters like Garen, Darius, Udyr etc. More details to follow sometime pretty soon (patch 5.16 or 5.17 at a guess, so potentially hitting PBE 1-3 weeks from now, depending on how the rest of the work goes).
Stars Shaper (EUW) - about 7 hours ago
Does this new itemization apply only on AD based fighters or also on AP based fighters?
I know there has already been a revision of AP items but more focused over mages rather than AP fighters (such as Mordekaiser)
Meddler (NA) - 18 minutes ago
This is AD focused work, we feel AP itemization's in a generally good spot for now after the 5.13 changes.