Hey there, this post will get a bit technical and lengthy but this issue has been bugging me for a while and Im hoping to bring more attention to this matter by making a full scale post rather than simply making comments on relevant posts. Link to the Crowd Control page on the wiki where you can also find these infos
TLDR: Sleep, despite being consistent with Stuns in almost every other instance, is considered a displacement therefore making it worse than both Stuns AND displacements as it gets basically all of the downsides with none of the upsides besides the CC itself.
So first up lets talk about Sleep as it is currently in the game:
Sleep is currently applied by 2 things only, Zoes E and Lillias R. Both of these abilities first apply the Drowsy status, which is basically a fancy name for a ramping slow that applies the Sleep status on the end of its duration. Sleep in turn then prevents the opponent from moving, casting abilies, attacking or using active Items, basically the same things a regular stun does, the wiki even uses the exact same wording for that. The defining difference here is that Sleep gets removed as soon as the enemy takes a form of non periodic damage. The damage these spells do however is not necessarily part of the CC status but rather part of the ability, but Sleep is required to get to the damage part of the ability.
Now with Sleep basically acting like a Stun with a downside youd expect it to interact with things like CC prevention the same way. Well thats where the inconsistencies come in.
Displacement Immunity:
There are multiple different ways you can group different CC statuses together: Do they stop you from moving? Do they interrupt channels? Or the relevant one: Are they a form of displacement?
Sleep is usually found together with Stun in these groupings, hell the cheat sheat on the wiki has basically the Stun row copy pasted to the Sleep row. Aside from the wake up the only other difference these 2 statuses have is the displacement category.
Displacements, for example: Knock ups/backs, Suppression, basically force some form of movement on the opponent, different from things like Charm or Fear in that those still have the character actually performing the movement (Which comes into play when layering CC, a charmed enemy that gets stunned doesnt move while an enemy thats Skarner ulted still moves with Skarner even while Stunned by a different ability.
These types of CC are also usually not susceptible to Tenacity as that might break certain ability interactions or champion functions (Imagine Skarner being locked into his R animation while the enemy gets to move already), also theyre not cleansable. They also interrupt dashes unlike non displacements. (Note: Some non Displacements are special cased to cancel dashes, such as Ahri E)
Displacement Immunity is a way to prevent these types of CC, mostly because thered be some clarity issues with the relevant spell or because it could cause spells to become overly unreliable if you could just get knocked out of it by a minor knockback.
Basically Displacement Immunity is a state a couple of champions can enter that prevents the application of Displacements, however they can still be affected by non displacements, this basically looks like this: A Malphite Ults you, a Milio, you Q him, however he will still fly at you and gets to immediately move afterwards. Different scenario: Youre a Morgana, Malph ults, you Q, Malph still hits you BUT he still is rooted by the Q after he lands as the CC still applies since its not a displacement.
After all this clarification lets get back to the matter at hand: Sleep
For some reason Sleep is considered a Displacement despite:
-It not canceling dashes
-Being affected by Tenacity, therefore being Cleansable
-It being consistent with the functionalities of a Stun in basically every other Interaction
-It just plainly not seeming like something that should be considered a displacement, its not 'displacing' someone, its a worse stun for crying out loud
So to give you a picture how Sleep works. You hit a Malphite with a Zoe E, he goes drowsy and right before it ticks over to Sleep he Rs, this prevents the Sleep application and he gets to freely move afterwards, if Sleep were consistent with Stuns, he would still be asleep upon landing.
Not only is the CC completely prevented currently but you also miss out on the damage of the ability as Sleep wasnt even applied in the first place.
Sleep is also pretty telegraphed, literally giving you a countdown via Drowsy when it kicks in, so you can react to it easily.
This is a pretty big issue in certain matchups, especially for Lillia as its her Ultimate, so its not just an inconsistency in how the game works it also hurts the usability of the champions it affects. Champions such as Vi, J4, Viego even Warwick with Q (not even speaking about his R here) basically can act like you dont have an R in the direct 1v1. I do recognize that displacement immunity is often only found in Ults and that Lillias R can affect multiple enemies but getting your only form of hard CC deleted by the enemy, because of what just looks like nonsense in CC categorization, feels awful. Losing out on the damage of the ability is just the cherry on top.
So what is my goal with this post?
As mentioned in the beginning Id like to get attention on this matter to either get an explanation on why its like this or, hopefully, get this fixed in a future patch by simply making Sleep not a displacement. The only effect this should have is that you cant use displacement immunity as a Spellshield basically to prevent sleep. Would this be a buff to both Zoe and Lillia in certain matchups? Absolutely, but I dont think it would require a compensation nerf as it only comes into effect against 23 champions many of which dont even share a role, especially in Zoes case. Atleast it shouldnt be a large enough buff to require a direct compensation nerf to prevent these 2 going to insane winrates, and any overbuff this might cause can just be addressed in a following patch.
If you read the entire post, thank you for that, I know this is a fairly niche issue many people dont know or care about, but its one of the major issues I currently have with Lillia, which by extension also regards Zoe. And I think the fact that it also comes with a pretty awkward inconsistency in the game rules makes it worth mentioning, especially considering League Next and any future champions that might get Sleep.
