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A critical strike deals extra damage during an attack. This could represent an attack that hits harder, a lucky strike or damaging a weak area on an opponent.

Most champions have different attack animations for a critical strike, though some do not; this includes mages and other champions not meant to be built using autoattacks for damage. Some of these champions performing a critical strike (if built being able to perform them) may instead have a soundbite that plays in place of an animation, typically a grunt of effort.

Players can increase the chance and the damage of critical strikes with items, abilities, and runes.

It only applies to basic attacks or certain spells like Gangplank's Gangplank's Parrrley Parrrley and Yasuo's Yasuo's Steel Tempest Steel Tempest that act like a basic attack or Garen's Garen's Judgment Judgment, which is something unique.

Critical strike is valuable for all champions who primarily deal damage with automatic attacks, rather than through abilities. Some champions, such as Ashe Ashe, have an affinity for critical hits and benefit more from items that improve them.

It's important to note that you cannot score a critical strike against a building such as a tower or inhibitor.

Chance

Critical strike chance is the chance of a champion's basic attack dealing a critical strike. Critical strike chance stacks additively. Runes, items and abilities can increase critical strike chance.

When averaged over a large number of autoattacks critical strike chance is essentially a damage multiplier where each % of crit chance adds 1% damage. Thus at 50% critical strike chance a champion will be doing (on average) 150% damage with autoattacks, not counting critical strike damage. Because of this, critical strike chance scales well with attack damage, in a similar fashion to attack speed.

The maximum critical strike chance you can reach at level 1 through masteries is 20.25%, excluding abilities and items.

Critical strike chance has a hard cap at 100%.

Critical strike chance has a theoretical gold value of 50 gold per 1% critical strike chance. This makes Cloak of Agility the most efficient core item for critical strike chance, as it grants 15% critical chance for the cost of 730 gold with a 48.6 gold per % crit chance efficiency.

Increasing critical strike chance

Items

Core

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Variable Availability

Champion abilities

(Note that any ability boosting attack speed has an indirect impact on the number of crits)

  • Ashe's Ashe's Focus Focus gains Error: Parameter '3' is not accepted. Focus stacks per second after not dealing damage in the last 3 seconds. At 100 stacks, Ashe will critically strike on her next basic attack. Thereafter, Focus stacks will reset to an amount equal to her critical strike chance.
  • Pantheon's Pantheon's Heartseeker Strike Heartseeker Strike grants him 100% critical strike chance against targets below 15% of their maximum health.
  • Shaco's Shaco's Deceive Deceive grants him 100% critical strike chance on his next attack, but for modified critical damage: 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120%.
  • Tryndamere's Tryndamere's Battle Fury Battle Fury passively increases his critical strike chance by 0.35% per point of Fury he currently has.
  • Yasuo's Yasuo's Way of the Wanderer Way of the Wanderer doubles his critical strike chance, but the damage dealt by his critical strikes is reduced by 10%.

Runes

  • Template:Rune runes increase critical strike chance.

Damage

Critical strike damage refers to the amount of damage that a champion's critical strike will deal. By default, all champions will deal 200% damage on critical strikes (100% bonus damage). Critical strike damage stacks additively. Damage modifiers, such as Jayce's Jayce's Hyper Charge Hyper Charge, stack multiplicatively with critical strikes.

Modifying Critical Strike Damage

Champion Abilities
  • Shaco's Shaco's Deceive Deceive modifies his base critical strike damage to 140 / 160 / 180 / 200 / 220% from the default of 200%.
  • Yasuo's Yasuo's Intent Intent reduces his total critical strike damage by 10% (e.g. 200% to 180%).

Items

Runes

Template:Rune Runes
  • Marks: +1.24% / +1.74% / +2.23% (primary)
  • Seals: +0.43% / +0.61% / +0.78%
  • Glyphs: +0.31% / +0.43% / +0.56%
  • Quintessences: +2.4% / +3.47% / +4.46%

Notes

  • The maximum bonus critical strike damage obtainable is as follows:
    • Runes: 45.51%
    • Items: 50%
  • For most champions, the maximum critical strike damage available is 195.51% for a total of amount of 295.51% damage on their critical strikes.
    • Including the additional 20% base critical strike damage from rank-5 Deceive Deceive, Shaco's Shaco's will deal 315.51% damage on his critical strike. Including the 20% damage modifier from Backstab Backstab, this is further increased to 378.61% damage.
    • Including the 130% damage modifier from rank-5 Hyper Charge Hyper Charge, Jayce's Jayce's critical strikes will deal 384.15% (130 * 2.9551) damage.

Skills affected by Critical Chance

Certain skills are capable of Critical Strikes and/or are affected by Critical Chance, however these skills may bound to certain limitations. E.g. Poppy's Poppy's Devastating Blow Devastating Blow will gain critical damage bonus only based on her attack damage, and the bonus damage part of the skill is not accounted.

Below is the list of skills that are capable and affected by critical strikes and chances.

Miscellaneous

Other skills that may OR may not be affected by critical strikes and chances, due to other reasons.

  • Anivia's Anivia's Frostbite Frostbite: The double-damage proc'd by being chilled is given out as critical strike, despite being unaffected by critical damage and critical strike.
  • Nidalee's Nidalee's Takedown Takedown: There is a known bug for the skill to critically strikes, yet receive no critical damage. This may be due to it switches the entire damage into "bonus damage", and the skill itself allows critical strike to base on the attack damage portion only, which may lead to the current result of "Critically strikes without inflicting Critical bonus damage.
  • Pantheon's Pantheon's Spear Shot Spear Shot: Will crit for a +50% damage bonus due to the passive fromCertain Death Certain Death if the target is under 15% health. Crit damage modifiers (such asInfinity Edge Infinity Edge) apply to this.
  • Shaco's Shaco's Deceive Deceive: Causes next auto-attack during the next 6 seconds to deal increased damage, which is described as a "Critical Strike", and is affected by any other modifier such as Infinity Edge Infinity Edge.
  • Vayne's Vayne's Condemn Condemn: The double-damage proc'd by being knocked into a wall is given out as critical strike, despite being unaffected by critical damage and critical strike.
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