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Most video games are driven by one large program loop that advances the game's simulation forward. One cycle of this loop is often referred to as a frame, while frame rate is the frequency of how often this occurs, measured in frames per second (fps).
If applied in a multiplayer scenario, personalized frame rates could result in an unfair advantage. Instead, the game 
League of Legends uses a host that runs the game's logic at a fixed frame rate, updating and synchronizing across all clients. One cycle of the host's loop is called a tick, which occurs at a tick rate, expressed in ticks per second (TPS) or Hertz (Hz).
Additionally, the following networking terminology should be clarified:
- Client: Client in this context refers to the player that joins to the host. To be more precise, it's the game client that the player runs and plays in. It should not be confused with the launcher which is commonly called as client.
- Host: The host, is the server-side game instance that process the match and the clients joins to. Should not be confused with regional servers.
Server ticks[]
The host ticks once every 0.033 seconds (33 milliseconds precisely), resulting in a tick rate of 30.30 Hz. This value has been acquired via precise measurements, however, it should be noted that the developers never referenced accurate values, always referenced 30 Hz.
Each server tick processes the game's logic, such as player inputs, AI, pathing, positions, various calculations such as stats or dealing damage, etc. Various aspects of the game only happen periodically, taking place once every xth tick. These are most commonly are updates (see below).
It should be noted that this tick rate is the target value, and may change based on other factors. For example, when the host is under heavier than expected load, or when the regional servers experience issues, ticks might take longer to process. If a tick is not processed within the given time frame, then the players will start experiencing more and more laggy gameplay as the tick rate of the host gets lower and lower. For example, if the ticks can only be processed in 50 miliseconds, that would result in 20 Hz tick rate, or ~30% reduced game speed for all participants on League match.
The game's frame rate[]
Since the game is server-favored, one player having higher frame rate over the others have no advantage. They will only see improved client-side resources in higher quality, such as smoother looking animations or movement. If the server having issues processing ticks, the client's point of view will appear as if the game stutters for them, since smoothing ticks that are too far in time becomes harder.
Tick rounding[]
Tick rounding, also commonly called frame rounding, occurs when an action is trying to occur or finish in a fraction of a tick. Since ticks are taking fixed amount of time, this is not possible, resulting in the action being updated on the next whole tick instead. For example, the most common cast time in League of Legends is 0.25 seconds, which would theoretically take 7.57 ticks to finish. Since fractional ticks do not exist, the cast time will actually finish on the 8th tick since its beginning, which results in 0.264‬ seconds (0.033 × 8) of "actual" cast time.
Updates[]
WIP
Stat update[]
WIP
Buff update[]
WIP
Trivia[]
- On launch, Teamfight Tactics used to be on a 20 Hz tick rate, but it got increased later on to match League of Legends for consistency.[1]