In League of Legends, Tenacity is a powerful but often overlooked stat. Unlike stats such as at Attack Damage, Ability Damage, and Attack Speed, the role of Tenacity isn’t obvious by the title of the stat alone.
In this article, we’ll break down the function of Tenacity in League of Legends, explain why it’s useful, and discuss champions, items, and buffs that can increase or lower your Tenacity.
What is Tenacity?
Tenacity in a stat in League of Legends that lowers the duration of crowd control (CC) effects inflicted upon your character. The more Tenacity you have, the more effective your crowd control reduction will be.
Tenacity is represented as a percentage, which indicates how much the duration of an enemies’ CC will be reduced. The stat caps at 100%, and no CC can be reduced to less than 0.3 seconds.
While Tenacity is effective against the most common forms of CC in League of Legends, there are some notable exceptions. Forms of CC that Tenacity mitigates against are:
- Slows
- Roots
- Stuns
- Blinds
- Fear
However, your Tenacity stat has no impact on the following disables:
- Airbourne
- Suppression
- Drowsy
- Statis
- Nearsight
Why Is Tenacity Important?
In League of Legends, your effectiveness is driven from your ability to move and make actions, whether that’s auto attacking, using abilities, or claiming objectives.
All crowd control debuffs and disables prevent you or make it more difficult to perform such actions, which is why lowering their duration through Tenacity is extremely valuable.
Building Tenacity is incredibly useful because it improves both your offensive and defensive capabilities. For champions that excel in getting in the enemy carry’s face or causing havoc in a teamfight, having greater resistance to crowd control means you can be more aggressive.
On the other hand, having greater resistance to slows and hard CC means you’ll have a better time avoiding enemy skillshots, and improves your chances of escaping a fight that isn’t going in your favour.
How To Increase Tenacity in League of Legends
There are many ways to increase Tenacity in League, both in-match with items and pre-match with runes and summoner spells. A few champions also have Tenacity buffing aspects in their kit.
Below, we’ve included a list of all the ways you can increase Tenacity.
Items
- Mercury’s Treads: 30% Tenacity.
- Iceborn Gauntlet: All legendary items improve your Tenacity by 5%.
- Sterak’s Gage: 30% Tenacity for 8 seconds after the shield pops.
- Silvermere Dawn: Activate the item to grant 50% Tenacity for 3 seconds.
- Mosstomper: 15% Tenacity for 1.5 seconds after the shield breaks.
- Elixir of Iron: Consume for 15% Tenacity for 180 seconds.
Runes
- Legend: Tenacity: Gain up to 20% Tenacity through takedowns over the course of the game.
- Unflinching: Gain 5-25% Tenacity, based on missing health.
Summoner Spells
- Cleanse: Upon use, gain 65% Tenacity for 3 seconds.
Champions
- Garen, Courage Ability (W): Gain 60% Tenacity for a few seconds.
- Milo, Breath of Life Ability (Ultimate): Grants yourself and allies 60% Tenacity for 3 seconds.
Dragon Buffs
- Chemtech Blight (Chemtech Dragon): 6 / 12 / 18 / 24% Tenacity depending on stacks.
Which Champions Should I Build Tenacity Against?
While most champions in League of Legends have some form of mitigatable crowd control built into their kit, it’s not worth prioritising Tenacity every game. While you should always aim to have some Tenacity – especially if your champion doesn’t have many movement capabilities – it can sometimes be better to focus on other stats.
That said, here’s a list of champions that you should consider countering with Tenacity when you’re against them:
- Ahri
- Amumu
- Anivia
- Annie
- Ashe
- Bard
- Braum
- Fiddlesticks
- Galio
- Jhin
- Karma
- LeBlanc
- Leona
- Lissandra
- Maokai
- Morgana
- Nami
- Neeko
- Rammus
- Renata
- Sejuani
- Seraphine
- Shaco
- Twisted Fate
- Veigar
- Zilean
- Zyra
While it can be worthwhile building Tenacity against champions not mentioned above, these champions have a lot of hard CC baked into their kit.
Good Luck On Summoner’s Rift
Of course, if you’re fantastic at avoiding skillshots, then you don’t need to bother building any Tenacity! But you might regret that decision next time you’re rooted for an eternity by Morgana’s Q.
