Crowd Control Has a Few Issues (Clarity & Counters)
(Warning: long post. TL;DR at the bottom)
In Patch 4.21, 
received a buff to his ultimate: Idol of Durand's taunt is no longer reduced by Tenacity. This was a much-needed change, as the stat completely messed him up.
However, it also raises an issue of clarity that I think goes beyond just one ult: crowd control, as a system, lacks clarity. We have CC types that achieve the exact same effect, yet do not follow the same rules when it comes to item-based reductions and counters: stuns, knockups and suppression all prevent you from taking action for a certain duration, for example, but whereas stuns are reduced by Tenacity, knockups and suppression aren't. Suppression and stuns can be negated with a 
, but knockups can't. We even have "fake" knockups: 
and 
's Aqua Prison and Tectonic Disruption respectively have an effect called suspension, where the victim is launched into the air (just like a knockup), which counts as a knockup for the purpose of 
's ultimate (which is, itself, a suspension effect), but which is actually a stun, and is therefore reduced by Tenacity and cleansed by QSS. There no real way of telling the difference between some of these effects, and there's enough special-casing here on what can and cannot be mitigated or countered that it falls into a book-keeping problem, where knowledge of these mechanics is more dependent on wiki memorization than immediate feedback.
Another phenomenon I think ties into this is the increasing prevalence of knockups and displacement. This thread describes this trend in good detail, and the bottom line is we could be seeing knockup creep in League of Legends. It risks being a problem, since knockup-heavy teams cannot have their CC mitigated and could end up overriding comps with just as much CC, but without as much displacement. Trouble is, knockup is also the lesser evil here, and is the designers' natural response to the current state of crowd control. Here's what Meddler had to say about displacement:
First off, some details on why we've been using displacements more/what we feel the benefits of displacements are:
- Displacements are clear. Having the unit(s) affected move makes it clear who a spell's hit and, provided the displacement arc or knockback distance is understandable, helps all players involved track the duration of the CC as well.
- Displacements are visceral. A knockup can often feel better for the caster than a significantly longer duration stun, leading to better satisfaction from the same power budget.
(Emphasis mine)
Effectively, knockups are being used a lot more because other forms of hard CC are just not as clear. If we want to avoid knockup creep, crowd control as a whole needs to be updated and brought to modern standards of clarity. On top of this, I think the current methods of countering CC (Tenacity and cleanse items) need to change. Here's what I suggest:
- Unify CC as much as possible: When you have literally four different effects that lock you down in pretty much the same way, but each have their own differences under the hood that do not impact moment-to-moment counterplay (as opposed to item-based reactivity), you know you have a problem. There's no real need for suppression when you have stuns, and no need for suspension when you have knockups (or vice versa). I think the simplest way to deal with these disparate forms of CC would be to relegate suspension and suppression to knockups and stuns respectively, and have both follow the same rules of mitigation through Tenacity and anti-CC spells and items.
But what about crowd control that is not meant to be mitigated?: One of the big advantages to knockup is that it's irreducible through Tenacity. By removing its immunity to CC reduction, all knockup champions ( especially) would end up being nerfed. Converting all suppression abilities into stuns would break every single one of them (namely, 
, 
and 
's ults), because they all rely on their CC having a fixed duration no matter what, as does Galio's ultimate.
I think the solution here is not necessarily to buff knockup champions, but rather to address Tenacity and the issues around it (see below). In the case of suppression champions and Galio, their CC paradigm should be changed to look more like 
's Equinox (the AoE silence): as long as the channel lasts, the target(s) is/are CCed, regardless of how much Tenacity they have (in Skarner's case, the conditional should be on his leash holding, which will only fail if he dies while ulting). While some of these champions (namely, Warwick and Malz) might have their ultimates changed in the future, currently they all have the advantage of giving a very clear visual when they're laying down their crowd control (Warwick claws at his target, Malzahar leashes them with void energy, Skarner encases them in crystal and carries them around, and Galio turns to stone and lays down his large AoE taunt).
In the specific case of lateral displacement (i.e. knockback, knock-aside, pulls, etc.), I don't think their distance component should be affected by CC reduction, as that would seriously mess up their consistency (it's also not what Tenacity is meant to reduce in the first place).
-
Clarify existing CC as much as possible: While a lot of older CC might get "fixed" just by updating the champion in question, a lot of it could be helped a lot with a bit more visual help.
's polymorph is fantastic at giving visual feedback, for example, because its combined pacify/slow effect is perfectly conveyed by the sight of the target being turned into a harmless critter. 
and 
's ultimates, both of which are stuns, are super-clear, due to how they encase their victims in ice. Champion-specific visual cues like these would help a lot in providing the feedback a lot of crowd control seems to be lacking. 
is a good example of hard CC not being conveyed as well as it could, due to visual confusion (his ult looks like a stun, but still lets its victims cast spells). -
Reevaluate Tenacity: CC reduction creates a lot of problems when it's in too high amounts (one of
's biggest issues), because it makes the user a lot more difficult to stop and can seriously devalue champions who specialize in crowd control. On the other hand, it's also a very useful stat: most tanks wouldn't be able to function properly without Tenacity, because they'd be continuously locked down by CC-heavy comps while on the front line. A big issue with knockups is that, when stacked to sufficiently high amounts, frontliners get tossed up and around with no real means of itemizing against them (one of the reasons 
is a popular competitive pick), unlike other forms of hard CC. Crowd control reduction needs to exist in a state where it's good enough as a reactive pick against heavy CC stacking, but not good enough to trivialize crowd control at any point.
While I'm personally not sure of the exact way to go about doing that, I think a good potential model would be that of diminishing returns in World of Warcraft: there, crowd control is a lot more common, and so there's this innate system where getting hit by CC opens a window where immediate subsequent crowd control becomes increasingly less effective. In the context of League, a similar system (via Tenacity) would allow frontliners, especially tanks, to survive through heavy crowd control, while still allowing individual CC abilities to shine, especially against squishies and back liners. This likely needs to be refined a lot more (there could be a ton of abuse potential I'm missing here), but I think the end result should be a CC reduction stat that allows the wielder to better survive CC spam without ever trivializing crowd control.
- Reevaluate CC removal: Cleanse items such as Quicksilver Sash,
, 
and 
all have a critical problem: they hard-counter crowd control. Most of the time, the drawback to their use is their extremely long cooldown relative to most CC, so they're not too much trouble, but in the case of heavy CC ultimates (
's Enchanted Crystal Arrow, 
's Chain of Corruption, etc.), which are themselves a massive investment, they negate these plays with little gameplay involved. One of the reasons Malzahar isn't a viable pick is because anyone playing against him will just rush QSS and cancel his ultimate with the press of a button, and the same could be said for Ashe and Varus's interaction with Mikael's Crucible. There's also a problem of clarity with these items, as they make the CC they negate even more confusing when they're used ("I just stunned this guy, why is he walking away like nothing happened?", also a problem with 
's oranges in the way they're curently implemented).
One possible solution is to just get rid of these items altogether, but then that would completely screw over vulnerable, low-mobility champions, who would have even less options against CC-heavy dive and hard-engage comps. I think the counterplay these items bring could be made less binary if it were shifted around: instead of cleansing crowd control post hoc, these items could instead provide a short-duration spell shield, which would add a lot more gameplay and unreliability to these items (having one of these wouldn't allow you to negate a 
ult or any other well-placed stun/root/knockup/etc.), but could also potentially allow these actives and items to be a lot more powerful while still remaining healthy. I'm not saying this is the only way these items could be improved, but active spell shields as implemented on 
and 
are both powerful and rich with gameplay. Perhaps even 
could have its passive spell shield turned into an active, but that's perhaps straying a bit too far from the main goal of this discussion.
TL;DR: Crowd control lacks a lot of clarity, and needs to be brought up to modern standards if we don't want to see knockup creep in League of Legends. Tenacity and CC removal also have issues of clarity and gameplay (or, rather, a lack of both), and need to be brought to a state where they can be powerful without trivializing crowd control.
What's your opinion on the above? Do you agree or disagree? What do you think of the current state of crowd control, and what improvements would you suggest, if you think CC needs improving? Discuss!
