First off, what is CC? It is a lovely mechanic in League of Legends and it stands for "crowd control", which is the ability to influence and inhibit another's movements and/or actions.

In LoL it appears in various forms and types. Some influence the enemy's movement, some displace the enemy and others remove their ability to attack or cast spells. I will first list all of them and then go over them in detail, explaining what each one of them does.

The different types of crowd control are:

- Stun
- Taunt
- Charm
- Fear
- Entangle
- Knockup
- Knockback / Pushback / Fling / Swap
- Polymorph
- Suppression
- Root / Snare
- Slow
- Pull / Grab
- Silence
- Blind
- Vision Denial
- Terraforming

Now this is a lot to go over, but let me give you a brief overview what each of them does. If you know your way around CC abilities, skip down past the descriptions to the "We made it"! Generally there are two main groups of crowd control, hard and soft CC. This differentiation is based on the severity of the effect and can be a topic of much discussion as some abilities could belong to either group. I will simply use my own classification and if you disagree, feel free to explain why in the comments! First off the hard CC's; they are usually the more important ones.

Note: When I write "unable to use summoner spells" this is applicable for all of them BUT Cleanse. This is the single summoner spell that is useable while being CC'd.

Stun:
The mother of all CC. It disables any and all action from the target for the duration. The enemy can't move, cast spells, use summoner spells or attack. It will also interrupt any channeled casts, e.g. Fiddlesticks Crowstorm (R) channel and his Drain (W), Katarina's Death Lotus (R).

Taunt / Charm:
A taunt forces the target to auto-attack you for the duration. To do this they will also follow you around. The target is unable to use abilities or summoner spells and cannot control his or her movement.

As a special form of taunt, charm basically functions the same way with one difference; the target is also unable to auto-attack, it will simply walk towards you. Both taunt and charm interrupt any channeled spells.

Fear:
When feared, you run around in a random direction and are unable to use abilities, summoner spells or attack. Fear, like taunt, charm and stun stops all channels.

Entangle:
Often used synonymously with root and snare, this form is actually stronger than the other two. Root and snare will also be explained in the soft CC section, but basically they prevent movement. Now entangle does even more. It not only prevents movement and use of movement spells (e.g. Flash, Valkyrie, Arcane Shift,...) but also prevents auto-attacking for the duration. This is why I would classify it as a hard CC, even though channeled spells are not interrupted.

Note that started movement abilities are actually cancelled as well, if the entangle hits during the animation. Currently Amumu's Curse of the Sad Mummy (R) is the only spell in the game that is classified as an entangle.

Knockup:
Knockup knocks you up – as the name says - and prevents you from moving, using spells, auto-attacks or any of the like. It is very similar to a stun, but unlike almost any other CC effect its duration is unchanged by Tenacity and unaffected by Cleanse, the Mikael's Crucible active or the Quicksilver's Sash active! Of course a knockup interrupts any channeled spells.

Knockback / Pushback / Fling / Swap:
These four forms of CC move the target away from his original position in a straight line. While knockback and pushback move the target away from your own champion, a fling catapults him over your shoulder and places him behind you (e.g. Volibear's Rolling Thunder (Q)).

During the displacement the target cannot cast spells, move, attack or do anything, but the time you are being displaced is generally very short. Some knockbacks cause additional effects when a collision with terrain is forced (e.g. Vayne's Condemn (E) adds a 1.5s stun when the target hits terrain). Channeled spells are interrupted here as well. For knockbacks your champion has to charge to the position of the enemy, while this is not necessary for pushbacks.

There is only one swap currently in the game, on Urgot's Ultimate (R). It causes the caster and the target to trade places and it is in Urgot's case combined with a suppression (see below for detailed effects of that).

Pull / Grab:
Displaces the target to be closer to the caster. Thresh and Blitzcrank are the two champions with a pull, both of them on their (Q) ability. While being pulled the target is also stunned (see above for detailed effects).

Polymorph:
Similar deal as a stun, just that instead of standing there like a stone you turn into a cute little something. This something is slowed, silenced and cannot auto-attack, however movement is still possible! Channels are, you guessed it, interrupted.

Suppression:
I would call it the most powerful CC as it not only does everything a stun does (which is completely lock you down), but it also prevents you from getting out of it by any means: Tenacity doesn't shorten its duration and Cleanse is, against common opinion, powerless against it.

Currently there are four champions in the game with a suppression, namely Urgot, Warwick, Malzahar and Skarner; all of them on their Ultimate (R). The first three basically also suppress themselves along with the target by having to channel the suppression. That means the suppression will end if they are interrupted by any other form of CC. Skarner on the other hand can do whatever he likes except flash or use a Thresh Lantern. This makes Skarner's suppress function like a long knockback with an undetermined path.

However suppression will be countered by a Quicksilver's Sash's active, a Mikael's Crucible active, Gangplank's Remove Scurvy (W), Alistar's Unbreakable Will (R) and Olaf's Ragnarok (R). Those were the hard ones, and now on to the soft ones.

Root / Snare:
Prevents all movement from the target, be it by summoner spell, simply right-clicking or by ability (Arcane Shift, Thresh Lantern, etc). Auto-attacking and using any other spells is still possible. Teleports are also not interrupted so Shen can still use his Stand United (R) while snared but will be snared at his target location for the remainder of the duration.

Slow:
Slows the movement of target champion by a set percentage. Champion slows stack multiplicatively with the first one taking full effect and further slows only applying 35% of their effect. However with slows caused by items only the strongest one of them is applied.

Silence:
A silence prevents all spellcasting, meaning abilities and summoner spells cannot be used. Auto-attacking and moving is still possible though. A silence will cancel channeled spells.

Blind:
Being blinded causes you to miss 100% of your auto-attacks. This is super-effective against AD champions!

Vision Denial:
An extremely underrated form of CC, this limits the area the target can see on the screen, as well as on the minimap. Abilities that go outside this vision radius and require targeting are cancelled. It also makes communicating with your team a lot harder (as nobody knows what's going on) and dodging skillshots when your vision is that small is also a lot harder.

Terraforming:
Whether this really counts as a CC is questionable, but as it does have considerable effects I figured I may as well put it in here. This includes things like Anivia's Crystallize (W), that constructs a wall of ice at a target location. Movement through this object is impossible which allows you to create choke points, cut off escape / engage paths and separate the enemy team.

We made it! Covered them all. Now on to the fun part. How to use CC.

CC wins games. It is that simple. It can turn a teamfight and snowball your early game. Already in champion select you should look at your team and decide whether you need some more CC or already have a bunch and instead need more damage or a frontline tank. You can also choose "targeted" CC. Blind is a lot more powerful against AD champions while a silence is much more useful against AP champions.

When considering whether to invade or not you should not only consider yours and the enemy team's level one damage output as well as the existing CC abilities on both sides. The team with superior CC will generally win any level one engagement (so if you have a ton of CC, invading may be a good idea)!

In the early and mid game, what snowballs your lanes the easiest are ganks, and ganks are all about CC. A strong jungler is someone who either brings a lot of burst damage to quickly kill targets (optimally supported by CC in the lanes) or provides additional CC to prevent the target enemy from escaping. The important thing here is coordinating the abilities you have at your disposal for maximum lockdown duration.

A bot lane with two stuns and a CC jungler is very difficult to play against, as pushing is always a huge risk. At any time they can turn on you and two or even three stuns will easily provide enough time that a squishy target is completely killed, down from full health. Be careful when you see a high CC bot lane up against you and, on the other hand, if your bot lane brings a lot of crowd control to the field, it is very easy (and important) to be aggressive in that lane to gain an advantage with it that you can then snowball in fights.

Be careful when playing against someone with a taunt! As it makes you attack the caster, even if you were only farming minions under their tower if they taunt you there you will get hit by the turret. This is one of Shen's qualities that make him good in a 1v2 scenario. Of course you should be extremely wary of any form of CC when planning to towerdive an enemy. It is very easy to miscalculate and stay in that tower-range just a second longer than planned and give up a kill.

Kiting is something made possible by CC. As an AD carry it is a very important skill to learn and it goes hand in hand with orb-walking (walk-attack-walk-attack-etc). The idea is to slow your enemy down, gain distance from him, attack him, slow him again and so on. If your champion has additional mobility, this becomes extremely powerful. Vayne and Ezreal with a Red Buff are masters at this, but Singed as well, even more so once he has built his Rylai's Crystal Scepter.

In teamfights coordination of your team's CC is crucial for success. There are several things to pay attention to here and generally you want to be clear about what you want to do with your crowd control abilities before the fight even breaks out. There are a few champions that demand a hard CC. These are, among others, Katarina, Nunu and Fiddlesticks. If any of them start channeling their Ultimate, you want to interrupt them as soon as possible or risk taking a huge amount of damage. Of course when playing as one of these champions you optimally want to wait until the enemy's main CC's have been used so you can then get the full channel duration out. The infamous wombo combos all rely on CC to keep the enemies in place while your team lays down all the aoe damage.

Concerning carries there are two main priorities here. a) prevent the enemy carries from using their combos and stop them from auto-attacking. You cannot let a Vayne auto-attack undisturbed for an entire fight because she will shred your teammates. b) you have to protect your own carries! This is called peeling and is rarely done. You want to kill, yes, but your carries are the ones dealing the most damage (this is why they can carry you (duh)) so you need to protect them from the enemy's attacks. So sometimes it's actually much better to stun an enemy Jax that's trying to kill your Ashe than the enemy Tristana. It is a situational judgment you have to make, but keep in mind that keeping your own carries alive is at least as important as killing theirs.

Finally, most supports are really squishy. Often you can actually burst them before they get out some of their core spells and that can change the teamfight. If you kill a Sona before she can use Crescendo (R), you have just taken out a huge part of their CC. But to prevent her from using it while you kill her, you need to keep her locked down.

Congratulations, you made it to the end! If you actually read all of that (or only some), I thank you very much for your time! Feel free to follow me on twitter here and leave a comment with feedback! An article will follow soon with counterplay options so check back every now and then :)

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