LoL Tenacity Guide: How to Become Nearly Immune to CC in League of Legends

League of Legends Tenacity Guide: Ways to Increase It

You can increase your tenacity bonus in League through a number of different means: items, abilities, summoner spells, and runes. We will cover each of these ways as well as how you can stack tenacity bonuses to make yourself nearly immune to CC.

Items that Increase Tenacity in League of Legends

There are a few items in LoL that increase tenacity. They are:

Mercury's Treads

Mercury treads is a finished item that provides increased magic resistance in addition to a significant increase (+30%) to a champion’s tenacity in LoL. These are exceptional items to get on bruisers and tanks that need crowd control resistance as well as increased tankyness.

Elixir of Iron

Elixirs in LoL apply temporary boosts to stats. It grants bonus health, as well as a +25% increase in LoL tenacity. It’s a great item to get to help you close the distance in a pinch on a particularly dangerous foe or when you have already finished your build.

Sterak's Gage

If you want an item that increases a variety of important stats, you should look to Sterak’s Gauge. In addition to providing a boost to tenacity, Sterak’s increases both attack damage and defense. If you take more than 400-1800 damage (based on level) with Sterak’s within 5 seconds, you will gain a shield as well as a +30% tenacity boost.

Champion Abilities that Increase Tenacity in League

Currently, there are only two champions in LoL that have abilities that temporarily increase their tenacity.

Dr. Mundo: Burning Agony

When Dr. Mundo ignites himself, heal deals magic damage to enemies around him. Burning agony also grants Dr. Mundo a +30% tenacity boost to help him stay engaged in close combat.

Garen: Courage

Courage’s passive provides increased armor and magic resistance. When activated, courage grants additional temporary damage reduction as well as a massive +60% tenacity bonus (though only for a brief 0.75 seconds).

Tenacity LoL Runes and Summoner Spells

There are also some great runes and summoner spells that you can pick up during champion select to improve your Tenacity stat.

Legend: Tenacity

If you choose the Precision rune path, you gain the option of selecting one of three Legend runes. Legend: Tenacity provides a tenacity boost to the champion that scales with champion, monster, and minion kills. It gives a small +5% bonus at the start of the match; however, it can grow to a respectable +30% tenacity boost to help keep you mobile in combat.

Unflinching

Unflinching provides a boost to tenacity in LoL that is dependent on your summoner spells. For each summoner on cooldown, you gain a moderate +10% tenacity boost. When a summoner is used, you gain an increased +15% tenacity boost for 10 seconds.

Cleanse

If you are facing a team with lots of crowd control abilities, strongly consider taking the summoner spell: Cleanse. It immediately removes all disables (except suppression, nearsight, and airborne) and then applies a massive +65% increase to tenacity for 3 seconds. Cleanse is especially useful if you are facing multiple stuns or other hard CC abilities.

League of Legends Tenacity Guide: Decrease Enemy Champion Tenacity

Tenacity can be reduced to negative values, causing crowd control effects to last longer.

Ornn's Brittle can Decrease Enemy Tenacity

Two of Ornn’s abilities can cause Brittle (Bellows Breath & Call of the Forge God), a unique effect that reduces tenacity by 30% and increases knockup duration by 30%. This is great for Ornn, who has multiple knockup abilities. It can also be very impactful for the rest of his team who can also take advantage of the tenacity reduction applied by Brittle.

Does Tenacity Stack?

Tenacity in League can stack both multiplicatively and additively. It’s not obvious which combinations of tenacity stack multiplicatively and which tenacity stack additively, so we’ll cover all of the special cases.

Calculating tenacity in League of Legends is a bit complex, just like calculating damage as a result of mixing lethality and other armor penetration stats.

Tenacity Stacking Additively

Most tenacity combinations stack additively; however, there are a few combinations that stack additively. Meaning, if you add a +30% tenacity bonus to a previous +30% bonus, the champion ends up with a +60% bonus.

• Elixir of Iron and Unflinching’s Passive Bonus
• Mercury Treads and Sterak's Gauge
• Both Dr. Mundo's Burning Agony and Garen's Courage with Ornn's Brittle or Unflinching's Active Bonus

Tenacity Stacking Multiplicatively

All other LoL tenacity stacking is done multiplicatively. Tenacity stacking multiplicatively can provide good bonuses; however, they are smaller bonuses than additive bonuses. For instance, if you combine a +30% tenacity bonus multiplicatively with a previous +30% bonus, you will end up with a +51% bonus (1.0 – (0.7 x 0.7) = 51%). As you can see, multiplicative tenacity stacking bonuses can provide great bonuses; however, they are not as significant as additive ones.

Limitations of Tenacity in LoL

Tenacity in League is a great stat to boost; however, it does have its limitations. Tenacity reduces all crowd control effects, except:

It’s important to remember that tenacity does not reduce these crowd control effects, especially that tenacity does not reduce suppression effects. Malzahar, Mordekaiser, Sett, Skarner, Tahm Kench, Urgot, and Warwick all suppress their enemies.

Tenacity LoL Stacking is Capped

While a champion can achieve an extremely high tenacity stacking bonus, the maximum reduction in CC from tenacity alone is capped. The duration of crowd control effect can never drop below 0.5 seconds. At 5 seconds, Nasus’ Wither ability is the longest-lasting CC in the League of Legends. With this LoL tenacity cap, there is currently no benefit to obtaining a tenacity stack of more than +90%. Most other champions don’t have CC durations this long, so usually, it is not beneficial to stack more than +80%.

In LoL Tenacity Changes Do Not Affect Ongoing CC Effects

Lastly, it’s important to note that the duration of crowd control reduction is calculated when the CC is applied. The calculated CC reduction does not change if the champion’s tenacity stat changes during the CC, such as from Unflinching wearing off mid-way through the crowd control effect. Further, it means that boosting your tenacity mid-way through a CC effect (such as through Garen’s Courage) will not help you.

Champions in League that Benefit Most from Tenacity

Tenacity increases your mobility. Champions that need mobility need tenacity. Bruisers, tanks, and assassins all need to be able to stay mobile and close the distance to the enemy. ADCs and most mages need to maintain a sufficient distance from the enemy champions. Tenacity in LoL helps these champions stay alive longer and deal more damage.

We Hope You Have Enjoyed this Guide to What is Tenacity in League

Check out our other beginner and intermediate League of Legends and TFT guides for more helpful information to increase your win rates. If you are looking for ways to make it around the rift even faster, you may be interested in checking out our informative jungle pathing in LoL guide. See you on the Rift!

Images Courtesy of Riot Games.