Crowd control (commonly shortened to CC) is a blanket term used in League of Legends to describe abilities or spells that remove or diminish the control a target unit has over aspects of itself - aspects such as being able to cast spells or initiate movement commands. As crowd controls impact a unit's combat ability, they are essentially more specialized forms of debuffs - however, this ability to directly hinder a unit's ability to fight means that crowd controls are often given significantly more importance in regular gameplay than normal debuffs, resulting in their special classification.
There are many different forms of crowd control, each of which is unique in the way it affects its target and the ways it can - if at all - be resisted, mitigated or removed. Some crowd controls can be exclusive or near-exclusive to certain champions or items, and different champions can apply the same crowd control in multiple different ways. A few specific mechanics (such as
) even require a catalyst crowd control to function.All crowd controls, at the exception of Blind, Reveal, or attack speed slow, even the ones without any damage, will count toward assists.
Types of Crowd Control
- For the complete article, see Types of Crowd Control.
The following are the current forms of crowd control that exist within League of Legends:
- Airborne: A unit that is airborne is unable to control its movement, attack or cast abilities for the duration.
- Knock aside: A knock aside causes the target to be made airborne in a direction perpendicular to the direction of cast.
- Knockback: A knockback causes the target to be made airborne in a direction away from the point of cast. The duration depends on how far the target travels, from 0.75 seconds ( ) to 1.5 ( ).
- Knockup: A knockup causes the target to be made airborne on the spot. The duration depends on how high is the target thrown into the air, from 0.75 seconds ( ) to 1.5 ( ).
- Pull: A pull effect causes the target to be made airborne in a direction toward the point of cast.
- Blind: A unit that is blind will miss its auto-attacks for the duration. Miss occurs on-hit, and does not prevent attacks from being declared.
- Disarm: A unit that is disarmed cannot declare attacks for the duration.
- Forced Action: A unit that is under the effect of a forced action cannot control its own movement or attacks, and is unable to cast abilities.
- Charm: A unit that is charmed will move toward the source for the duration.
- Fear: A unit that is feared move around randomly at reduced movement speed for the duration. There are currently no examples of Fear that affect champions.
- Flee: A unit that is fleeing will move directly away from the source with reduced movement speed for the duration.[1]
- Taunt: A unit that is taunted will attempt to basic attack the source of the taunt for the duration.
- Ground: A unit that is grounded is unable to activate mobility spells.
- Knockdown: A unit that is knocked down is placed on the ground.
- Nearsight: A unit that is nearsighted has their sight radius reduced by 900 and loses their allied vision.
- Root: A unit that is rooted is unable to control its movement for the duration (occasionally referred to as a snare).
- Silence: A unit that is silenced cannot cast abilities or activate items for the duration.
- Sleep: A unit that has fallen asleep is unable to move, attack or cast abilities for the duration as long as it doesn't get damaged.
- Slow: A unit that is slowed has reduced movement speed for the duration.
- Cripple: A unit that is crippled has reduced attack speed for the duration.
- Stasis: A unit that is in stasis is unable to perform any action while being untargetable and invulnerable. The duration is also unaffected by crowd control reduction.
- Stun: A unit that is stunned is unable to move, attack or cast abilities for the duration.
- Suspension: A unit affected by suspension can be targeted by , but is otherwise identical to a stun.
- Suppression: A unit that is suppressed is unable to control its movement, attack, cast abilities or use spells (including ). The duration is also unaffected by crowd control reduction.
Crowd Control | Movement | Attacking | Abilities | Interrupts Channels | Disabled Summoner Spells | Modified by Tenacity | Removal |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Airborne (status) | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Yes | No | ||
Blind | Allowed | Parried | Allowed | No | None | Yes | |
Cripple | Allowed | Reduced | Allowed | No | None | Yes | |
Disarm | Allowed | Disabled | Allowed | No | None | Yes | |
Forced Action - Berserk, Charm, Flee, Taunt | Uncontrollable | Disabled / Uncontrollable | Disabled | Yes | Yes | ||
Ground | Partial | Allowed | Partial | See notes | Yes | ||
Kinematics | Partial | Allowed | Allowed | No | None | No | None |
Nearsight | Allowed | Partial | Partial | No | None | No | |
Root | Disabled | Allowed | Partial | See notes | Yes | ||
Silence | Allowed | Allowed | Disabled | Yes | Yes | ||
Polymorph | Allowed | Disabled | Disabled | Yes | Yes | ||
Drowsy | Reduced | Allowed | Allowed | No | None | No | |
Sleep | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Yes | Yes | ||
Slow | Reduced | Allowed | Allowed | No | None | Yes | |
Stasis | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Yes | All | No | None |
Stun and Suspension | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Yes | Yes | ||
Suppression | Disabled | Disabled | Disabled | Yes | All | No |
Notes
- Movement includes basic movement and mobility abilities (i.e. dashes and blinks, e.g. or ).
- Attacking refers to a champion's basic attacks (by default right-click).
- Abilities refers to a champion's castable spells (by default , , , and ).
- Removal refers to cleansing effects that can remove the crowd control debuff.
- Root and Ground will only interrupt channeled movement abilities.
- Impaired movement refers to crowd control effects that inhibit the unit's movement, which includes all immobilizing effects as well as Drowsy, Ground, and Slow.
- Immobilizing effects refer to crowd control effects that render the unit unable to control their movement, which includes Airborne, Forced Action ( Berserk, Charm, Flee, Taunt), Root, Sleep, Stasis, Stun ( Suspension), and Suppression.
- Airborne, Knockdown, and Stasis are the only crowd control effects that interrupt dashes and displacements (airborne status while knocked up is not changed by stasis however).
- Crowd control applied by one's self or an ally cannot be countered in any way (neither reduced, resisted, nor removed) unless otherwise stated.
- Self- slows (e.g. , , and ) will be reduced by slow resist.
- Brittle is a debuff that reduces a unit's effective Tenacity by 30%. It ends prematurely when the affected unit is immobilized.
- Forced action crowd control effects (excluding Berserk) end prematurely if the Source dies.
- Berserk, Charm, Flee, and Taunt all individually apply the same debuff even from different ability sources.
- Forced action effects override each other when they're applied on the same target; an ongoing forced action will end prematurely when another one is applied.
- All crowd control effects that inhibit attacking also interrupt attack windups. In terms of crowd control, basic attacks with uncancellable windups are interrupted by polymorph only.
- All crowd control effects that inhibit casting will also disable abilities that can be recast, unless otherwise stated by the ability.
- Spell shield blocks all components of an ability, including crowd control, unless the ability itself cannot be blocked.
- channels. and are special cased to be deactivated by all forms of crowd control that interrupt all
- Crowd control applications trigger a stack for and .
- Taunt is the only crowd control that could theoretically break stealth (due to it being interrupted by declaring an attack).
Interactions with Crowd Control
The following mobility spells are interrupted / prevented by immobilizations, ground, polymorph and/or silence:
- and
The following interact with immobilizations and/or slows:
- *
- *
- *
- *
- Brittle
Categorization
To facilitate easier communications, crowd controls are usually described under one of the following systems:
Loss of Control
Crowd controls are grouped into one of two categories depending on whether or not the effect removes total control of the player's character. Hard CC completely removes all control of a character, while soft CC only partially removes it.
Hard CC | Soft CC |
---|---|
Airborne | Blind |
Forced Action | Cripple |
Sleep | Disarm |
Stasis | Entangle |
Stun | Ground |
Suppression | Knockdown |
Suspension | Nearsight |
Root/Snare | |
Silence | |
Slow |
Disruption
Crowd controls are grouped into one of two categories depending on whether or not the effect disrupts a channeled ability (such as
and ). Hard CC will disrupt all channels, while soft CC will not.Hard CC | Soft CC |
---|---|
Airborne | Blind |
Forced Action | Cripple |
Silence | Disarm |
Sleep | Entangle |
Stasis | Ground |
Stun | Knockdown |
Suppression | Nearsight |
Suspension | Root/Snare |
Slow |
Immobilization
Crowd controls are grouped into one of two categories depending on whether or not they restrict movement. Hard CCs prevent all forms of movement, while soft CCs do not. This is how hard and soft CC is usually defined.
Hard CC | Soft CC |
---|---|
Airborne | Blind |
Entangle | Cripple |
Forced Action | Disarm |
Root/Snare | Ground |
Stasis | Knockdown |
Sleep | Nearsight |
Stun | Silence |
Suppression | Slow |
Suspension |
Modifiers
Crowd controls are categorized by what their effects inhibit. Movement modifiers in some way inhibit the ability to move, while action modifiers in some way inhibit the ability to attack or cast abilities.
Movement Modifiers | Action Modifiers |
---|---|
Airborne | Airborne |
Entangle | Blind |
Forced Action | Cripple |
Ground | Disarm |
Knockdown | Forced Action |
Nearsight | Ground |
Root/Snare | Nearsight |
Sleep | Silence |
Slow | Sleep |
Stun | Stun |
Suppression | Suppression |
Suspension | Suspension |
Increasing the duration of Crowd Control
Brittle is a status effect that can be applied by and .
Each mark reduces the target's tenacity by 30%. The duration of Airborne effects are also increased upon consumption of the mark.
Countering Crowd Control
Crowd control can be countered in various different ways.
Immunity
Units that are immune to crowd control will completely negate any attempt at its application on the recipient. This does not, however, necessarily mean the user is now also unaffected by crowd controls already applied. Immunities lasting for a short period of time will prompt that a particular unit "Can't be disabled!" or "Can't be slowed!" if crowd control is imposed.
Total Immunity
All crowd control debuffs currently in League of Legends can be prevented with total CC immunity.
- provides immunity to all forms of CC applied during the parry.
- provides immunity to all forms of CC applied while the shield persists.
- provides immunity to all forms of CC while active.
- provides immunity to all forms of CC applied in the duration.
- provides immunity to all forms of CC applied in the duration.
- provides immunity to all forms of CC applied in the duration.
- All epic monsters (e.g, , ) are immune to all forms of CC with the exception of stasis.
- The Rift Herald loses her immunity in summoned form (when spawned by the ).
Slow Immunity
See also: Slow_resist#Slow_Immunity
Slow immunity always prevents slows, and in most cases cripples too.
- cleanses and provides immunity to slows and cripples for the buff's duration.
- (as )'s cleanses and provides immunity to slows and cripples for the buff's duration.
- provides immunity to to slows and cripples while active.
- cleanses and provides immunity to slows only while channeling.
- cleanses all crowd control, then provides immunity to slows only for 2 seconds.
Displacement Immunity
- Unstoppables provide immunity to displacements, knockdown and in some cases to stasis.
Spell Shields
See also: Spell shield
While not specific to crowd control, spell shields can be considered to provide pseudo-CC immunity against a single spell, but this is not guaranteed - abilities that do not interact with spell shields (such as ) will still apply any attached crowd controls if possible.
- provides immunity to CC applied with first instance of ability blocked in the duration.
- provides immunity to CC applied with first instance of ability blocked in the duration.
- provides immunity to CC applied with first instance of ability blocked while passive is ready.
- provides immunity to CC applied with first instance of ability blocked while passive is ready.
Unstoppables
This is a list of unstoppable effects. This list may be incomplete.
- and
- leap attack
- URF cannon
Removal
Most types of crowd control can be removed after it has been applied - with the exception of
, the ability or item in question can still be activated while affected by the CC it removes, even when that CC normally precludes ability or item usage.Stasis effects cannot be removed. Ground effect can be removed only by basic moving out from affected area. Nearsight effect can be removed only by
active. Airborne effects are removable only by other move blocks (airborne effect, dash or blink); airborne effects will still apply for the rest of their duration if not removed by another airborne effect (although they can be prevented and removing their stun component allows to completely remove them by consecutively using own dash or blink). Stasis makes units untargetable and completely prevents ability usage even for abilities that can be activated under CC (thus making whether it can be removed or not a moot question).- removes all forms of CC.
- removes all forms of CC.
- (as )'s removes all slows.
- removes all forms of CC.
- removes all forms of CC.
- removes all slows.
- removes all slows.
- removes all forms of CC aside from airborne and suppression.
- The Quicksilver item active removes all forms of CC, including airborne effects if a blink or dash ability is used after activation.
- active effect removes all forms of CC aside from airborne and suppression.
Reduction
- Main article: TenacityCrowd control reduction reduces the duration of crowd control effects by a percentage equal to its value. Sources of CC duration reduction will stack multiplicatively or additively with each other, depending on the source of the reduction. Crowd control reduction can sometimes be referred to as Tenacity.
Ground, nearsight, stasis, suppression and move block part of airborne are not affected by crowd control reduction and will always apply for their full duration. Stun part of airborne effect is affected by crowd control reduction.
Potency Reduction
- Main article: Slow resistThis effect is unique to the slow crowd control; potency reduction reduces the effectiveness, or percentage, of movement slows by a percentage equal to its value. Sources of slow potency reduction stack multiplicatively with each other, but do not interact with normal crowd control reduction.
Only slows are affected by potency reduction.
Self-CC
This section may have some missing information.
The following effects are comparable to crowd control, except that the effect is caused voluntarily and affects the user rather than a target. These effects cannot be removed by cleansing mechanisms and will ignore all crowd control immunity and reduction except in the case of self-slows, which will be affected by slow potency reduction (such as from ).
- Self-Disarm: A champion that disarms itself is unable to attack for a duration. The target may still move and cast spells.
- (on reload)
- (on reload)
- Self-Entangle: A champion that is entangled is stuck in place and unable to attack during the cast time of an ability.
- Self-Knockback: A champion that knocks itself back is temporarily unable to attack and issue movement commands. The target may still cast spells. These would be considered dashes and are affected by grounding and knockdown effects.
- Self-Nearsight: A champion that that is self nearsighted has their own sight radius reduced by 900, while still benefitting from allied vision.
- She compensates for this by gaining obscured vision.
- Self-Silence: A champion that silences itself is unable to cast abilities. They may still attack, use summoner spells and item actives.
- Self-Slow: A champion that slows itself has reduced movement speed.
- (with a champion)
- (when attacking a target)
- Self-Stasis: A champion that puts itself into stasis cannot perform any action while also being untargetable and invulnerable.
- (cast over himself)
- (self cast)
- (self-targeted, after fatal damage)
- (self cast, after fatal damage)
- Self-Stun: A champion that stuns itself is unable to control its movement, attack, or use abilities.
- (when colliding with terrain)
Cast Times and Channels
The casting (sometimes "charging") of an ability cannot be cancelled by the player or an enemy except by death. Forced actions (such as taunt) will have no effect for the duration of the cast, and using airborne effects to move the player will not affect the trajectory of the skill - which will start from the point of the cast, not from the player's current location. Summoner spells and most items can still be activated while casting.
The channeling of an ability, by contrast, can be cancelled by hard CC, and will also automatically cancel should the champion attempt to perform another action (such as movement, casting another ability or attacking) - there do exist exceptions to this rule, such as
cast while channelling , but these are usually specific coding allowances and not standard behaviour. Summoner spells and most items can typically be activated mid-channel without disrupting it.Channeling and casting animations are generally not considered forms of crowd control, however disruptive they may be. There do exist several notable exceptions, however:
- Channeled Self-Pacify: These abilities cause the champion to lose access to cast their abilities and issue attack commands. The champion may still freely move and use other summoner spells during this time.
- Channeled Self-Slow: These abilities will slow the caster for the duration of the channel. In all cases the champion may freely move while channeling but may not issue attack commands.
- Channeled Self-Root: These abilities will remove the caster's ability to control their movement and issue movement commands (included forced actions, such as fear).
- (for the first 1 second of the duration)
- Channeled Self-Stun: The following abilities have channels that the user cannot voluntarily interrupt (contrary to most channels which will be interrupted if any attempt is made to move, attack, or use another ability). This is effectively comparable to a stun.
- (for the first 0.5 seconds of the duration)
Trivia
- causes the target to dance.
- If abilities that share cooldowns or are unique to different forms are counted separately, then possesses the highest number of crowd control abilities in the game, at six, with and tying for second place, at four. Otherwise, if they are counted as shared, and possess the most, at four.
- stasis, she also has four.
- , , , , , , , , , , , , , , (otherwise), , , , , , , , , , , and each have three.
, , , and possess the second-highest, at four. If is counted as a form of
, and possess the highest number of unique crowd control types, at five.
- stasis, she also has four.
- , , , , , , , , , and are the only champions in the game that can activate an ability while disabled. Of these, , , and can also remove the disabling effects.
- , , , , , , and are the only champions in game without any sort of crowd control inherent to their kit.
- is the only tank in the game that lacks hard crowd control on his basic abilities.
- Most Marksman and Slayers lack hard crowd control. This is to balance their high damage dealing kits. The few champions in those classes that have hard CC, tend to have one that is a skillshot, has a long cooldown, and/or is tied to their ultimates.