What Tenacity Does in LoL and Which Items Give It

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

TENACITY EXPLAINED

UPDATED AUGUST 2026

What tenacity actually does

Tenacity shortens crowd control. It does not shorten all of it, and the exceptions are the ones that usually kill you.

Reduced by tenacity: stuns, roots, slows, taunts, fears, charms, silences, blinds and polymorphs.
Not reduced at all: airborne (every knockup and knockback), suppression, drowsy, nearsight and stasis.

That is why Mercury's Treads feel useless into a Malphite or a Warwick and excellent into a Lissandra or an Ashe. No amount of tenacity shortens a knockup by a single frame.

There is also a floor: no disable can be cut below 0.3 seconds, and tenacity is capped at 100%.

Where tenacity comes from

Source	Tenacity
Mercury's Treads	30%
Chainlaced Crushers	30%
Sterak's Gage	20%
Wit's End	20%
Endless Hunger	20%
Tenacity and Slow Resist stat shard	15%
Elixir of Iron	Bonus tenacity

How multiple sources stack

This is the part almost everyone gets wrong. Tenacity from items and shards does not add together. It stacks multiplicatively, so each new source works on whatever is left over.

Combination	Naive guess	Actual
Mercury's Treads + stat shard	45%	40.5%
Mercury's Treads + Sterak's Gage	50%	44%
Treads + Sterak's + stat shard	65%	52.4%

The maths is 1 minus (0.70 × 0.85) for the first row. Stacking three sources still leaves you taking just under half of a stun's duration, not a third of it.

Practical takeaway: the first tenacity source is by far the most valuable. Going from zero to Mercury's Treads buys you 30%. Adding a second big source only buys another 14 points on top. If the enemy composition is mostly knockups, buy neither.

Everything below this line is the original 2011 post, kept for the record.

Stay and play with me...I'll show you my treasuressss

With our powers combined...

So you've seen the items that have the stat "tenacity on it" and it says that it reduces crowd control effects, but what exactly does it mean, and are they even worth getting?

In a nutshell, Tenacity reduces all Crowd Control effects by 35%, 1% per point of tenacity, but getting more than one item will not improve the CC reduction. Crowd Control is any spell that causes you to lose control of your character or decrease in control including silences, stuns, fears, slows, and ensnares.

From left to right, we have Moonflair Spellblade, Cloak and Dagger, Eleisa's Miracle, and Mercury Treads.

Currently, in order of most commonly used to least commonly used are: Mercury Treads, Eleisa's Miracle, Moonflair Spellblade, and Cloak and Dagger. The last two are almost never seen.

Why?

When you pick one of these items, it takes up an item slot. Since every hero needs boots anyway, Mercury Treads lets you save an item slot for something more powerful such as an Infinity Edge. The early magic resist also helps you against your laning opponents and in teamfights.

Eleisa's Miracle sees some usage since it builds from the Philosopher's Stone, which is a good early game gold generating/lane sustaining item.

As for Cloak and Dagger and The Spellblade, they simply aren't effective since they make you deviate far from your normal build just for to gain the tenacity.

So are they worth it?

In a nutshell, yes, but it depends who you're playing as and who you're playing against. Your tank on the team should almost always get Mercury Treads, and oftentimes your Bruisers (melee champs) generally get them too since they'll be in range to actually get CCed. Generally powerful offensive spelllcasters like Brand and Annie choose to get Sorceror's Boots since once they throw down their spells it's okay if they get CC'ed afterwards, and should be hiding or poking instead of jumping into battle anyway.

AD Carries are a little more flexible. Most need to right click repeatedly in order to get the best effect out of the heroes, but they generally also have a large amount of range like Caitlyn or Ashe, and might get away with getting Berserker Greaves instead. However, if the other team is very CC heavy and/or contains anti-carries such as Xin Zhao or single target surpressers like Warwick or Malzahar who target you every teamfight, Merc Treads could be very beneficial.

Building against a specific team?

Tenacity is one half of surviving a composition. For the other half, read how armor and magic penetration work, or see the solo queue tier list for what you are likely facing.