One terrible, awful feeling that all League of Legends players know is the feeling you get when you’ve been hit by some crowd control. Even though they only last for a matter of seconds, being hit by a Q from Leona or Morgana makes you feel like you could take a bathroom break and come back before you’re able to act freely again. Despite these two forms of crowd control being different, the fact that they disable your character in any way often makes them feel quite similar. This guide will hopefully offer some clarity by going through the different types of crowd control, along with giving advice on how to apply them and what to do when you’re afflicted by them.

‘Soft’ Disables

Just like the name suggests, these types of crowd control are arguably ‘softer’ than other forms, only inhibiting certain types of actions rather than outright disabling them. Despite this, these effects are still easily noticeable, and can definitely result in you dying or being forced to Recall if you’re not careful. Let’s go over the different types that exist, how to use them effectively, and what to do if you’re afflicted by one.

Blind

Effect: Results in the target champion being able to initiate basic attacks, but those basic attacks will miss their target, and thus be unable to deal damage or apply on-hit effects.

Removal/Resistance: The duration of this effect is reduced by Tenacity, and it can be removed by any form of cleansing except Mikael’s Crucible

This form of crowd control is interesting in the sense that only one champion can apply it: Teemo. By making basic attacks unable to do damage, Teemo can effectively deny the enemy laner opportunities to trade, farm minions, and go all-in.

How to Use Effectively: As was implied above, the opportune time to blind an opponent is when they are about to do something that would either benefit them or harm you. Wasting your blind to poke and deal damage can be effective sometimes, but those times are the exception rather than the rule. Denying your laner the opportunity to farm can secure you an advantage in items over them, and making it so that they can’t trade with you means that you can stay in lane for more extended periods of time than they can. Alternatively, this spell can do much to deter an enemy from ganking your lane, so holding it for that is also a viable option.

What to do when Blinded: The most important thing to remember when blinded is to not waste your cooldowns on empowered basic attacks. Doing so while blinded is a huge waste of mana and cooldowns, so waiting until after you’re done being blinded to use them is ideal. Alternatively, preparing one and baiting the enemy into blinding you, then going in while their blind is down, is a simple but effective counterplay.

Cripple

Effect: Reduces the effected champions' attack speed.

Removal/Resistance: The duration of this effect is reduced by Tenacity, and it can be removed by any form of cleansing.

While this form of crowd control isn’t as rare as blind, it is only possessed by three champions: Fiora, Malphite, and Nasus. However, items which build out of Warden’s Mail (Frozen Heart, Randuin’s Omen, and Thornmail) all cripple enemies for 15% of their attack speed, so this effect is something that any champion could theoretically buy their way into being able to apply.

How to Use Effectively: The most effective targets for an ability that cripples are Marksmen, as they tend to rely on building items that offer attack speed to maximize their damage potential. In general, anyone who is building attack speed items isn’t going to enjoy being crippled. In this vein, buying any item that builds out of Warden’s Mail is a good way to counter a snowballing Marksman.

What to do when Crippled: When you’re crippled, your best bet is to rely on any spells you have instead of basic attacking. Ideally, you’d avoid being crippled by minding your range and staying away from targets who can cripple you. Alternatively, if your character lacks powerful spells, being crippled isn’t the end of the world and just continuing to basic attack can still produce results.

Ground

Effect: Grounded champions cannot cast dash or blink abilities while grounded, including summoner spells.

Resistance/Removal: The duration of this effect is reduced by Tenacity, and it can be cleansed by any form of cleansing except for Mikael’s Crucible.

Rarer than cripple but not as rare as blind, only three champions can apply the grounded effect: Cassiopeia, Poppy, and Singed. Once you’re grounded, your inability to dash away is often compounded upon by other forms of crowd control to secure a kill. Thus, while not lethal in itself, being grounded can be a death sentence when combined with other abilities.

How to Use Effectively: Since ground only making dashing and blinking impossible, using an ability which grounds on opponents without these types of abilities is often ineffective. Thus, ensuring that you are keeping track of whether an opponent has their flash up is crucial for using grounding abilities effectively. Building off of what was said above, holding onto your grounding ability until an ally can gank your lane is the best way to get the most out of your opponent being grounded.

What to do when Grounded: While there isn’t much you can do in terms of avoiding being grounded, there is one very important thing to take note of: cleansing ground is effectively useless against Cassiopeia and Singed. Since these champions ground you by creating an area wherein ground is constantly applied, cleansing ground will only do so for an abysmally short period of time. Unless your reaction time is good enough to cleanse ground then dash or blink immediately, consider saving your cleansing abilities and items for another form of crowd control.

Sidenote: Knockdown

Knockdown is an instantaneous effect which can only affect a unit who is dashing or being displaced. Knockdowns, like grounds, interrupt this and force the unit to the ground. Since this effect is instantaneous, it cannot be cleansed or reduced in duration, and it does not apply a noticeable status effect to your champion. The only advice that I could offer about using knockdowns is intuitive: since it only effects champions who are dashing, only use it against champions with dashes. If you know your enemy has a knockdown effect, perhaps save your dash until they’ve used it.

Nearsight

Effect: A nearsighted champion has their vision radius reduced and does not gain vision from allies, wards, or traps.

Resistance/Removal: This effect does not have its duration shortened by Tenacity, and can be removed by any form of cleansing except for Cleanse and Mikael’s Crucible

Similar in rarity to ground, only three champions can apply nearsight: Graves, Nocturne, and Quinn. Each does it with a difference radius, but all of them make you unable to gain vision from your allies. If your champion is nearsighted by several abilities at once, the one which reduces their vision the most will apply.

How to Use Effectively: To get the most out of nearsighting a champion, try to do it when they’re in an isolated position. Removing a player’s shared vision is most potent when they are alone, since if you use it when the enemy team is grouped up, the chaos caused by losing vision will be minimal. Furthermore, remember that nearsighting a ranged champion is much more effective than nearsighting a melee one, since ranged champions need the additional vision to be able to meet their damage potential.

What to do when Nearsighted: First and foremost, communication is key. If you’re in a voice call with your teammates, make sure that they’re telling you what’s going on around you. If not, ask your team to ping lots if an enemy is ganking your lane while you’re nearsighted. Losing shared vision is much less impactful if you compensate for it with proper communication.

Slow

Effect: A champion who has been slowed has their movement speed reduced, typically by a percentage and rarely below 110 movement speed.

Removal/Resistance: While Tenacity reduces the duration of slows, slow-resist reduces their potency. A slow can be cleansed using any form of cleansing.

Slows are undoubtedly the most common form of crowd control in League of Legends. Most champions have some form of slow, along with many items and Exhaust also applying it. This is perhaps why it has its own dedicated stat, slow-resist, that you can purchase through buying Boots of Swiftness.

How to Use Effectively: With so many champions being able to apply slows in so many different ways, you’ll often apply and be hit by several slows per fight without even knowing where they’re coming from. If you’re trying to apply a slow with any intention, do so on a target who could either be easily killed with more damage or locked down with other crowd control.

What to do when Slowed: Just like was said above, you’ll probably get slowed so many times in any given teamfight that you’ll rarely be moving at full speed. That being said, if you know being slowed will result in you dying because you can’t escape enemies, don’t hesitate to cleanse it. Slows are deceptively lethal when paired with anything else, so remember to dash or blink out of danger if you can.

Sidenote: Drowsy

Simply put, drowsy is a gateway crowd control. It is effectively a slow that transitions into sleep, which is in itself effectively a stun that can be broken by taking damage. There’s very little that could be said about it here that wasn’t mentioned above, other than that flashing to safety and/or cleansing is much more important when you’re drowsy rather than when you’re slowed. Where being slowed potentially leads to something stronger, being drowsy unconditionally does, so it is necessary to play safer.

‘Hard’ Disables

Much differently from ‘softer’ forms of crowd control, hard disables make it so that your champion simply cannot perform certain actions. Whether this reduces your damage by making you unable to attack or use abilities, or if it makes you more vulnerable by making you unable to move, these forms of crowd control are generally more potent than the ones listed above.

Disarm

Effect: Renders the effected champion unable to basic attack.

Removal/Resistance: The duration of this effect is shortened by Tenacity, and it can be cleansed by any form of cleansing except Mikael’s Crucible.

While three champions possess disarms, only two can apply it against champions: Amumu and Lulu. This makes it one of the rarer conditions you’ll encounter, and arguably one of the least potent due to its similarity to blind. It also only exists in conjunction with other, more pressing disables, so being disarmed is often the least of your worries when you are.

How to Use Effectively: To get the most out of disarming an enemy champion, make sure to do it against one that is heavily reliant on basic attacks. Disarming a character who primarily casts spells will do very little in comparison to disarming a Marksman. Besides that, disarming champions who rely on empowered basic attacks, such as Nasus or Viktor, can also be effective.

What to do when Disarmed: There isn’t much to be said here that wasn’t already mentioned in the section on blind. Just remember to save your empowered basic attacks until after one of these champions disarms you, and to switch to casting spells for the duration of the disarm.

Silence

Effect: A silenced champion cannot use abilities, other than those which would cleanse the silence.

Removal/Resistance: The duration of this effect is shortened by Tenacity, and it can be cleansed by any form of cleansing.

Building off of the above, silence is to casters what disarm is to champions who rely heavily on basic attacking. Being unable to use abilities can absolutely decimate the potential of some champions, so this effect shouldn’t be taken lightly.

How to Use Effectively: As should be implicit, silences are best used against champions who cast a lot of spells. Any character who is reliant on using abilities to maximize their damage, whether those be champion abilities, summoner spells, or items, will be put into a tough position when silenced.

What to do when Silenced: When silenced, if possible, try to retreat while using basic attacks to still do some damage to foes. Silences typically don’t last very long, so avoid wasting your cleanse on them unless you feel it absolutely necessary.

Sidenote: Disrupt

Disrupt is essentially a micro-silence which only effects channels. Its effect is instantaneous and stops any channel that the target champion is doing. Since this cannot be cleansed or have its effects reduced, just like other instantaneous effects, the best way to avoid having your channels disrupted is to wait until the enemy has used their disruption before channeling.

Forced Action

Effect: A champion afflicted by a Forced Action disable (charm, fear, or taunt) is forced into performing an action beyond player control.

Removal/Resistance: The duration of this effect is shortened by Tenacity, and it can be removed by any form of cleansing or by killing the source of the effect.

These three status effects, while all different, all have the similar effect of removing control of your character and making them perform an action related to the source of the effect. Where charm and fear make you run towards or away from the source respectively, taunt makes you indiscriminately basic attack the source.

How to Use Effectively: Forced Actions are best applied to high-impact champions who rely on having agency and control to maximize their potential. Taunt, in particular, is best against characters who rely heavily on basic attacking, since redirecting their basic attacks away from their targets and towards you could help one of your allies immensely.

What to do when Charmed, Feared, or Taunted: The best thing to do if you’re afraid of being afflicted with one of these effects is to remind your teammates to prioritize attacking the source. Since these disables are cleansed when the source of the effect dies, your team can cut the duration where you cannot control your character much shorter by bursting them down. If you know that your team is unable to do such, these effects are definitely good ones to cleanse.

Root/Snare

Effect: A champion who is rooted cannot move, nor can they use movement abilities.

Removals/Resistances: The duration of this effect is shortened by Tenacity, and it can be cleansed by any form of cleansing.

Being rooted is essentially the advanced form of being slowed and grounded. While your champion can still cast abilities and basic attack, being unable to move is often a death sentence against burst damage.

How to Use Effectively: As was said regarding grounds, champions who rely on dashing and blinking will have their effectiveness greatly reduced if they cannot use those abilities. Targeting fragile, low-health champions with roots is also effective, since they’re likely to die if held in place.

What to do when Rooted: The most important thing to remember is that being rooted doesn’t mean you can no longer deal damage. Continuing to attack and cast abilities while rooted can be the difference between winning and losing a fight, so try not to panic when hit by a root.

Stun

Effect: A champion who is stunned cannot take actions other than cleansing the stun.

Removal/Resistance: The duration of this effect is lowered by Tenacity, and it can be cleared by any form of cleansing.

Stun is the basis of some of League of Legends’ most oppressive forms of crowd control. By stopping your champion from doing anything, you become victim to whatever the enemy team pleases.

How to Use Effectively: Like other forms of crowd control, stuns are best used against high-impact champions or fragile champions. Stunning the former will ensure that they cannot be as impactful as they might be otherwise and stunning the later will likely lead to their death.

What to do when Stunned: In all truth, there is very little that can be said here. Other than remembering to cleanse this effect when possible, there is quite literally nothing else you can do when stunned.

Sidenote: Airborne, Asleep, Stasis, Suppression

These disables are quite similar to stun, so to go over them individually would just be repeating the same advice as above several times. In short, these are forms of crowd control where your character simply cannot act. While airborne is the most unique, as it is a combination of a forced movement and a stun, the only real difference is that you cannot cleanse being airborne with Cleanse and Mikael’s Crucible, and that cleansing it only stops the stun, not the forced movement. Otherwise, being asleep is just being stunned but it can be cleansed by taking damage, stasis is just being stunned but you’re also unable to be targeted, and suppression is a stun that is unaffected by Tenacity and also cannot be cleansed by Cleanse or Mikael’s Crucible.

Conclusion

If there is one takeaway from the above, it’s that crowd control manifests in so many forms in League of Legends that it’s hard to keep track of it all. While memorizing these facts about disables might be useful, figuring out which crowd controls you want to cleanse and figuring out when to cleanse them by practicing would be even more so. In short, treat this guide not as the end, but as the beginning of your understanding of crowd control.