Is Increase Crit Rate a Failed Buff in Raid?

What if one of Raid: Shadow Legends’ core damage buffs… just doesn’t make sense anymore?

That’s a bold claim, especially in a game built around stat optimization, nukers, and squeezing every ounce of damage from your builds. But today, we’re diving into a hot topic: Increase Crit Rate. Is it still relevant in modern Raid? Or has it quietly become one of the most outdated and awkward buffs in the game?

Let’s break it down.

Increase Crit Rate sounds like a straightforward damage boost, but in modern Raid: Shadow Legends, it often plays more like a relic from an older version of the game. The core issue is simple. Endgame damage dealers want consistency, and this buff rarely delivers it in a way that actually matters.

For new players, Increase Crit Rate can be genuinely helpful. Early accounts struggle to reach 100% crit rate because gear is limited, substats are weak, and you are not stacked with blessings, relics, and premium sets. In that environment, a 30% crit rate swing is huge, and it smooths out early Campaign, Dungeons, and general farming.

Once you are deeper into Raid, your nukers are expected to be at 100% crit rate. Not “most of the time,” not “with a buff,” but always. Modern damage comes from stacking crit damage, multipliers, sets, blessings, and relic bonuses. When you miss a crit in Hydra or Arena, you do not just lose some damage; you can lose the entire run.

In theory, you could build a nuker at 70% crit rate and rely on Increase Crit Rate to cap them. In practice, it is awkward and risky. The buff can be blocked, stripped, or outpaced by turn order. In Live Arena, the champion providing it can be banned or killed. The result is brutal. Your nuker suddenly drops to 70% crit rate and becomes unreliable, which is not something most players will accept.

This is why so many champions with the buff do not meaningfully benefit from it. Gizmak is a great example of the contradiction, because he needs 100% crit rate for key parts of his kit, yet still provides Increase Crit Rate. Kurosa highlights the self buff issue, because even when it looks like she is meant to build lower crit rate, the safest approach becomes building 100% and skipping the buff anyway. Siphi is the funniest case, because many players forget she even has the buff, which says a lot about how little it impacts real builds.

Plarium’s more modern approach has been to give champions baseline extra crit chance, rather than forcing reliance on Increase Crit Rate. Errol and Calamitus-style design feels cleaner and more consistent. If a champion has an extra 20% to 30% crit chance on all attacks, you can build 70% to 80% crit rate and still crit consistently—no buff timing. No getting blocked. No form swap problems. It just works.

Increase Crit Rate is not totally useless, because it still helps early accounts and has a few niche endgame team uses. But for most modern content, it feels like a wasted slice of a champion’s power budget. If Plarium wants the concept to matter again, it likely needs a redesign, or a new mechanic that rewards excess crit rate, or more kits that have built-in crit chance rather than temporary buff dependency.