LoL Crowd Control Guide (2026): Every CC Type, Tenacity, Cleanse

The periodic table of crowd control

Fifteen ways to lose control. Know which ones you can answer.

Each element shows a real ability that applies it and whether Tenacity shortens it, Cleanse removes it and Quicksilver Sash removes it.

1 St Stun Amumu TCQ

2 Rt Root Morgana TCQ

3 Ai Airborne Malphite TCQ

4 Su Suppression Warwick TCQ

5 Sp Sleep Zoe TCQ

6 Sx Stasis Bard TCQ

7 Ch Charm Ahri TCQ

8 Fe Fear / flee Fiddlesticks TCQ

9 Ta Taunt Rammus TCQ

10 Po Polymorph Lulu TCQ

11 Si Silence Soraka TCQ

12 Gr Ground Cassiopeia TCQ

13 Sl Slow Lulu TCQ

14 Bl Blind Teemo TCQ

15 Cr Cripple Malphite TCQ

Hard CCForced actionSoft CCTCQ lit = answered

Rules: the official League of Legends wiki's crowd-control summary table, read 8 November 2026. Abilities: Riot's Data Dragon 16.22.1. Live patch 26.22.

Crowd control — CC — is anything that takes control of your champion away from you: a stun that stops you acting, a slow that stops you escaping, a charm that walks you into the enemy team. It decides more fights than damage does, because a champion who can't act deals no damage at all. This guide covers every type of crowd control on Summoner's Rift on patch 26.22, what each one stops, how tenacity shortens it, what Cleanse and Quicksilver Sash can and can't remove, and how to land CC on the enemy and survive theirs.

What crowd control is

The official wiki defines crowd control as abilities that "remove or diminish the control a target unit has" over itself — its movement, attacks or casting. It adds that "hard CC" and "soft CC" are informal names for immobilizing and non-immobilizing crowd control, with polymorph a strong kind of soft CC. In practice, three families matter:

The post-game screen tracks it as CC Score, which awards points per second of crowd control you put on enemy champions. One quirk from the wiki: blinds and cripples don't count towards assist credit; every other CC does.

Every CC type and what it stops

From the wiki's summary table (movement, attacks and casting) with the three answers. "Partly" means the CC stops some of it — a root lets you attack and cast but not dash, for example.

TypeMoveAttackCastTenacityCleanseQSSExample

Stun nonono yes yes yes Amumu · Bandage Toss

Root noyespartly yes yes yes Morgana · Dark Binding

Airborne nonono no no no Malphite · Unstoppable Force

Suppression nonono no no yes Warwick · Infinite Duress

Sleep nonono yes yes yes Zoe · Sleepy Trouble Bubble

Stasis nonono no no no Bard · Tempered Fate

Charm forcednono yes yes yes Ahri · Charm

Fear / flee forcednono yes yes yes Fiddlesticks · Terrify

Taunt forcedforcedno yes yes yes Rammus · Frenzying Taunt

Polymorph yesnono yes yes yes Lulu · Whimsy

Silence yesyesno yes yes yes Soraka · Equinox

Ground no dashesyesno movement spells yes yes yes Cassiopeia · Miasma

Slow sloweryesyes yes yes yes Lulu · Glitterlance

Blind yesmissyes yes yes yes Teemo · Blinding Dart

Cripple yessloweryes yes yes yes Malphite · Ground Slam

Two smaller effects round it out. Nearsight (shrinking your vision) and drowsy (the slow before a sleep) aren't reduced by tenacity; Cleanse doesn't remove nearsight but does remove drowsy. Kinematics — pulls and pushes that move you without stopping you — can't be answered by anything. Examples come from each champion's ability text in Riot's Data Dragon 16.22.1.

How tenacity works

Tenacity shortens the duration of incoming crowd control. The rules, from the official wiki:

1. It doesn't touch five effects: airborne, drowsy, nearsight, stasis and suppression last their full time.
2. The duration is set when the CC lands. Buying or activating tenacity afterwards doesn't shorten a stun you're already in.
3. Nothing goes below 0.3 seconds, however much tenacity you have.
4. Sources stack in groups. Within a group they multiply — 30% and 20% from the same group give 1 − 0.7 × 0.8 = 44%, not 50% — and the groups add up, to a cap of 100%.
5. It can go negative. Effects such as Brittle (-30%) make crowd control last longer.

Mercury's Treads30% tenacity

The standard answer: boots you were buying anyway, with magic resist.

Elixir of Iron25% tenacity

Plus 300 health for three minutes — a late-game fight buy.

Cleanse75% for 3 s

After it removes your CC, the next stuns in the fight are cut hard.

Rune shard10% tenacity and slow resist

The defence-row stat shard — small, but always on. See our runes guide.

What tenacity does in a fight is easiest to see with a number: a 2-second stun with Mercury's Treads lasts 1.4 seconds. That's the difference between Flashing out of the follow-up and being dead when it lands.

Cleanse, QSS and spell shields

Three kinds of tools remove or block crowd control, and they're not interchangeable:

AnswerCost / cooldownRemovesCan't help with

CleanseSummoner spell · 240 s · level 9Most CC and summoner debuffs (Ignite, Exhaust), then 75% tenacity for 3 sAirborne, nearsight, suppression

Quicksilver SashItem · 1,300 gold · 90 sAll crowd control except airborne and stasis — including suppressionAirborne, kinematics, stasis

Spell shieldsAbilityBlocks CC before it lands — Morgana's Black Shield blocks disables until it breaksCC already on you; damage beyond the shield

The practical difference: Cleanse is free and comes back every four minutes, so carries facing one key stun take it; QSS costs an item slot but has a 90-second cooldown and answers suppression — the right buy against a Warwick (or any other suppression ultimate) that would otherwise lock you down for the whole channel. Some champions carry their own answer: Fiora's Riposte blocks disables and stuns the attacker if it blocked an immobilizing effect. The summoner spells guide compares Cleanse with the other spells.

The CC nothing removes

Three effects ignore tenacity, Cleanse and (except suppression) QSS. They're the most valuable CC in the game, which is why the champions who own them are picked for teamfights:

Airborneknock-ups, knock-backs

Malphite's Unstoppable Force knocks everyone it hits airborne. Only another displacement, a dash or a blink can override the movement — positioning is the real answer.

SuppressionQSS only

Warwick's Infinite Duress suppresses the first champion it hits for the whole channel. Tenacity and Cleanse do nothing; QSS does.

Stasisboth ways

Bard's Tempered Fate puts champions, monsters and turrets in stasis — enemies and allies. Untargetable, but unable to act.

The flip side is CC immunity. The wiki notes that immunity blocks new crowd control but doesn't remove CC that's already applied, and that some abilities make a champion unstoppable against displacements while they're active. If an enemy pops an immunity, wait it out instead of throwing your stun into it.

Landing and chaining CC

1. Hit the target that can't dodge. A champion who has just used Flash or a dash is the easiest stun of the fight — track those cooldowns.
2. Chain, don't stack. A second stun cast while the first is still running mostly overlaps it instead of adding to it, so most of its time is wasted. Cast yours as the first one ends.
3. Use the right type for the job. Ground (Cassiopeia's Miasma) stops dashes; a charm such as Ahri's also halts movement abilities; the wiki notes that a knockdown interrupts a dash already in progress.
4. Save interrupts for channels. Disruptive CC cancels channelled abilities — a stun into a channelled ultimate can win the fight on its own.
5. Call it. "Stun on carry in three" turns five separate CC abilities into one chain. The pings and communication guide covers how.

CC as a team: engage, peel and pick

Most good team compositions have some of each. If your team has lots of engage and little peel, fight early and fast; if it has peel and little engage, let the enemy come to you and turn the fight. The teamfighting guide covers each role's job once the fight starts.

Playing against heavy CC

Common crowd control mistakes

Read next: damage and resistances, power spikes, tower diving and teamfighting.