I know it’s only been one day since the patch but the servers were up so quickly I’d imagine people were able to play a number of games yesterday. So, how are the new tenacity items treating you? Have you been buying them or just sticking to your trusty Merc Treads?

I think I’ve only purchased the Cloak and Dagger in any of my games so far, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. I really like that it offers an opportunity to buy Ninja Tabi or the cooldown boots, which are really the only boots I tend to use on my DPS characters. Occasionally I’ll get ‘Zerker’s Greaves but that’s rare.

So far, I think the new items will mostly be for niche uses, like Gangplank. He gets a lot of benefit from Cloak and Dagger, where other champions would probably do better to spend the cash on more damage. I am a little worried that some of the tankier toons will benefit from it as well. I’ve already seen more Warwicks in Sorcerer’s Boots than I care to.

The preview for tomorrow’s patch is now live, bringing with it some very interesting news regarding the future of crowd control in League of Legends. As I mentioned in a recent post, crowd control is more prevalent than ever and in need of more counter-itemization than just Mercury Treads. Tomorrow’s patch delivers just that, introducing three new items that reduce crowd control under a new name, Tenacity.

Tenacity works just like the old Mercury Treads CC-reduction, reducing the duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, and snares by a percentage equal to the amount of Tenacity (at least I’m assuming so). Tenacity now also includes blind and silence reduction but the effect cannot stack with other Tenacity items.

It’s also worth noting that Tenacity is no longer a percentage value, likely so it can be assessed for potential diminishing returns should Riot decide to let Tenacity stack. I’m glad to see that sort of mathematical conversion. It goes against some of the design simplicity of LoL and the “burden of knowledge” design standard, but the game has been complicated enough that I think this kind of thing will be necessary.

You can see the new items in the picture at right. Notice how cheap they are? Obviously the items are meant to be an early game Mercury Treads replacement, so the cost is fairly similar. Cloak and Dagger is 1450g, Moonflair Spellblade is 1290g, and Eleisa’s Miracle is 1200g, the same price as Treads. These items will allow players to do a couple things.

First, we can now get the defensive benefits of treads while building offensive/support stats. This is huge, especially because there is no tanky version of these items. The bruisers in the game rarely itemize for AP or attack speed/critical strike, with the possible exception of Rumble. Essentially, the lower health champions should see some enhanced survivability in with a little early game damage.

Second, the items allow for different boots. This is really a secondary benefit because the other boots currently in play aren’t very good, at least not for physical carries. We’ll probably see quite a few carries with Ninja Tabi for the extra survivability, but against AP heavy teams, Merc Treads are still probably the best option. They get better CC reduction than any of the new items and they also add magic resistance. This will be a somewhat nicer buff for the AP/support toons out there, since magic penetration can be hard to come by if you don’t roll Void Staff. Early Sorcerer’s Boots with the Spellblade/Miracle will make AP/support both durable and deadly.

This is such a big mechanic change that I’m going to hold off calling it one way or the other. For now, I think it’s a step in the right direction. My guess is that the numbers will need tweaking, and I think there’s a very good chance we’ll see stacking Tenacity in the near future. The 25 percent reduction offered by the new items might fall short of what’s necessary for players to see a real benefit from the item.