EUPiLoL#10 - Examining our Obession with Mercury Treads

This post is going to be a bit out of the ordinary, but I believe it might be helpful to some of you. I was thinking up a build for a certain character and when thinking about which boots I should buy, the thought popped into my head that no one has actually (to the best of my knowledge) gone through the trouble to examine Tenacity and see if our reliance on it is actually misplaced. No one has put forth the effort to actually get some hard numbers on how much CC reduction we are actually getting. My first instinct was to go through and apply the 35% duration reduction to every form of CC in the game. Obviously this is a terrible idea, so I came up with the much simpler (as well as convenient) idea for starting at .5 and making my way to 3.5. My findings were a bit eye opening.

.5 seconds = .325 seconds (Minus .175 seconds)
.75 seconds = .4875 (Minus .2625 seconds)
1 Second = .65' (Minus .35 seconds)
1.25 Seconds = .8125 (Minus .4375 seconds)
1.50 Seconds =  .975 (Minus .525 seconds)
1.75 Seconds = 1.125 (Minus 0.625 seconds)
2 Seconds = 1.3 (Minus 0.7 seconds)
2.25 Seconds = 1.4625 (Minus 0.7875 seconds)
2.50 Seconds = 1.625 (Minus 0.875 seconds)
2.75 Seconds = 1.7875 (Minus 0.9625 seconds)
3 Seconds = 1.95 (Minus 1.05 seconds)
3.25 Seconds = 2.1125 (Minus 1.1375 Seconds)
3.50 Seconds = 2.275 (Minus 1.225 seconds)

The unspoken rule within the LoL community has usually been that if they have 2+ forms of CC, you opt for Mercury Treads. I was one of those people up until recently when I realized that a lot of the CC in the game doesn't last very long. Because of this, a lot of that CC reduction is modest at best. Before you jump to any conclusions, know that I am a proud supporter of Mercury Treads. I can definitely see and without a doubt acknowledge their usefulness. That being said, allow me to pose a question. How many of you actually notice the difference after getting these Tenacity items? Obviously the difference between a 3.5 Second Ashe ult and a 2.2275 Second Ashe ult is huge, and obviously being able to leave Galio's ult early can do wonders wheni t comes to countering him, but perhaps we are being a bit narrow minded when it comes to our reliance upon Mercury Treads. Perhaps Tenacity boots are a more situational pick that we have grown to become so attached to simply because that's the way it is. I'm not saying that they should only be picked in extreme cases, I am simply pointing out the fact that in certain situations, it might not be the best choice, and the +2 CC rule doesn't apply to every composition.

That being said, tenacity isn't the only attribute that these boots offer. You are getting enough MR to feel somewhat comfortable in the early game, and it is probably the most cost effective choice of boots (excluding Attack speed boots, perhaps).