LoL Crowd Control Guide: Every Type and What Actually Stops It

There are around twenty kinds of crowd control, tenacity ignores five of them, and being silenced doesn't stop most of your summoner spells. Here's the whole category, sorted by what it actually takes away from you.

League of Legends Guide

Crowd Control

Types and Counters

Stun, root, slow, silence, disarm, blind, cripple, ground, nearsight, drowsy, sleep, charm, taunt, fear, berserk, knock up, knock back, pull, suspension, stasis, suppression, polymorph. Each has its own rules for what it stops and what removes it.

To be fair, calling all of that "CC" is fine in chat. It becomes a problem when you buy an item expecting help and the item never touches the effect that keeps killing you.

Hard and Soft Your Summoner Spells Cleansing What Tenacity Misses FAQ

~20Distinct types

4Summoner spells it blocks

5Types tenacity can't touch

YesCleanses work while disabled

3Exceptions to that

MovementWhat decides hard vs soft

Hard and soft is really one question

The split everybody uses in voice comms turns out to map neatly onto the question the game is actually asking: does the effect take away your movement commands?

Takes your movement	Leaves you moving
Stun, root, knock up, knock back, pull, suspension, charm, taunt, fear, berserk, sleep, stasis, suppression	Slow, silence, disarm, blind, cripple, ground, nearsight

That's why a silence feels survivable and a root of identical length doesn't. You can still reposition through one of them, and repositioning is usually the thing that saves you.

Most crowd control only blocks four summoner spells

Effects that stop you casting lock out exactly four: Flash, Teleport, Hexflash and the snowball on the winter map. Everything else on your bar still works.

So being silenced doesn't stop Cleanse, Heal, Barrier, Exhaust or Ignite. If you've ever sat through a fight assuming your summoners were down, they probably weren't.

Two effects break that rule and take the whole bar: stasis and suppression. Suppression is the one that decides fights, because it locks out Cleanse itself (exactly the spell you were saving for it).

Removal works while you're locked down, by design

Cleansing effects are deliberately exempt from the rule above. Nearly all of them can be used while you're silenced, stunned or otherwise cast-locked (a cleanse you couldn't cast while disabled would be useless).

There are three exceptions: Fate's Call [R], Soul Unbound [E] on its recast, and Mikael's Blessing. Two of the three are things you point at a teammate, so if you're the one holding a cleanse for somebody else, check whether it survives you being hit first. That's a very different item to hold in a fight.

Two effects sit outside removal altogether. Stasis can't be cleansed and it switches off your cleansing effects while it runs, and Cleanse itself doesn't answer airborne, nearsight or suppression. Weirdly, cleansing an airborne only gives you your buttons back: the flight carries on regardless, and only another displacement or a dash cuts it short.

Tenacity does nothing against five of them

Tenacity shortens most crowd control by its percentage (everything except the five below). It doesn't shorten knock ups and knock backs, drowsy, nearsight, stasis or suppression. Those run their full duration no matter what you're wearing.

That's the real limit on tenacity boots as an answer to a dive. Against a team whose engage is mostly airborne effects, the slot is doing nothing and raw resistances would do more.

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Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between hard and soft CC?

Whether it takes your movement commands away. Stuns and roots do, slows and silences don't.

Can you use summoner spells while silenced?

All except Flash, Teleport, Hexflash and the winter snowball.

Can you cleanse while stunned?

Yes, for almost every cleansing effect. Three are exceptions, and suppression disables every summoner spell including Cleanse.

Does tenacity reduce knock ups?

No, nor drowsy, nearsight, stasis or suppression.

How many types of crowd control are there?

Around twenty, each with distinct rules about what it blocks and what removes it.

The short version

Ask what the effect takes away rather than what it's called. If it takes your movement, you need a cleanse or a friend, and against airborne or suppression a cleanse isn't enough on its own. If it doesn't, you probably need to walk somewhere better.

For the stat people buy against all this, our tenacity guide covers what it actually shortens, and our movement speed guide covers why only the biggest slow on you matters.

Which type of crowd control ruins your games? Let us know in the comments below.