My problem with CC: Tenacity and Knock-up/Knock-back (Discussion encouraged!)
So I have a problem with the crowd-control in League and it can all be summarized in two ways: Tenacity and the problem of Knock-up/Knock-back.
Now, as we all know, Tenacity exists on VERY few items in League. We have 
, 
, 
and 
. I almost always consider these items the "default" I get when I jungle or just lane. Tenacity is such a good stat that if they have even a little-to-moderate amount of MR you could justify biting the bullet for that tenacity and a smidgen of MR. But the problem with tenacity is just how strong it is: Almost all of these skills cut down most CCs by 1/3 or greater. Suddenly things that secure kills are now a little more than a minor annoyance.
Now, this wouldn't be a problem...except we have knock-ups and knock-backs. These skills say "lel w/e" when it comes to tenacity. These skills are unaffected and will always CC for the full duration. Now, separate, these aren't necessarily a bad thing. Tenacity is a counter to CC, Knock-up is a counter to built-in tenacity. However, you reach an odd problem when characters have to deal with tenacity.
As of late, more and more characters have been getting knock-ups. 
,
, 
all have knock-ups. That means that out of the...I'd say around 7-ish champions that have been released recently, a majority of them have a knock-up skill.
For reference, here's the release timeline starting from Aatrox (The cutoff for "recents". Every other champion is a year+. Aatrox just barely makes the cutoff)
(Late Summer 2013/Aug.) ->
(Fall 2013/Sep.) ->
So why am I saying this and bringing attention to it? Well, to me, it feels like League is sort of spiraling out of control when it comes to CC. So we have CC, which prevents you from doing things. But that is countered by tenacity, which reduces CC. But THAT is countered by knock-ups. See where I'm going with this? In a perfect world there should be trade-offs and constant adaption to how you play. Rock/Paper/Scissors if you will. However, I can't help but feel that this is just going to be an Arm's race similar to top-lane that made the lane and champions designed for it spiral out of control.
Imagine to counter knock-up, Riot makes some item that denies knock-ups (
doesn't count. I'm talking "reduces knock-up/knock-back by %"). From there, some new form of CC will take it's place that will not be able to be countered, and then a new item, so on. The main reason I see this as an issue is that some of the cooler CC effects are being phased out. Suppression, snares, silences, blinds, even stuns are beginning to appear in less-and-less releases. Soon the trifecta of CC will be limited to Slows, Knockback, and knock-up. Little room for anything else.
I'm not saying I have some end-all-be-all solution to this nor do I have a good idea on how I feel this "problem" (At least I consider it an issue) could be fixed. Perhaps the best way is to rework tenacity or maybe increase CC durations so that they feel more meaningful. Maybe we could have some sort of three-way CC defense system: One type of tenacity reduces Knock-ups/Knock-back/supression, one type reduces silences/snares/blinds and one reduces fears/stuns/slows. May not be perfect but this way you can itemize against certain team-comps specifically made to capitalize on those ridiculous CC chains.
Perhaps I'm the only one who feels this way. Perhaps CC isn't half a problem as I feel it is. All I know is that it seems to me that knock-up/knock-back feel like the answer to "Oh we want a champion with CC but damn do we hate having to deal w/ tenacity." I personally would love to see more use of silence/blind/supression/Fear/Taunt/etc. skills. Perhaps they may make them feel less "unique" but I'd prefer it a lot more to a conga line of champions who send enemies into orbit and then push them against a wall.
By all means, share your thoughts!
