Description
How often a unit casts its ability. Most damage, healing, shielding, and crowd control on a board comes from abilities, so squeezing extra casts per fight usually decides who wins the round. Two main levers — Mana governs the cost, refunds, and starting pool that gate every cast, while Attack Speed controls how fast the unit auto-attacks (each attack generates Mana).
What enables Cast Frequency (8)
Completed items (3)
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- +20 MR
- +3 Mana Regen
Gain an additional 15% Mana from all sources. The wearer gains an additional bonus based on their Role: Tanks and Fighters: Gain 30 Armor and Magic Resistance. Other Roles: Gain 10% Attack Damage and Ability Power.
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- +150 HP
- +10% AS
- +15% AP
- +20% Crit
Attacks grant 2 bonus Mana, increased to 4 if they critically strike.
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- +15% AD
- +15% AP
- +1 Mana Regen
Attacks grant 5 bonus Mana.
Radiant items (3)
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- +300 HP
- +20% AS
- +30% AP
- +40% Crit
Attacks grant 4 bonus Mana, increased to 6 if they critically strike.
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- +30% AD
- +30% AP
- +2 Mana Regen
Attacks grant 10 bonus Mana.
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- +40 MR
- +7 Mana Regen
Gain an additional 30% Mana from all sources. The wearer gains an additional bonus based on their Role: Tanks and Fighters: Gain 80 Armor and Magic Resistance. Other Roles: Gain 40% Attack Damage and Ability Power.
Artifacts (1)
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- +20% AD
- +20% AP
- +1 Mana Regen
Reduce the holder's max Mana by 10. Subsequent spellcasts reduce max Mana by 5%, to a minimum of 15.
Augments (1)
Gold (1)
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Promised Protection Gold Gain a Protector's Vow. Protector's Vow grants its holder 20% additional Mana from all sources and 200 max Health.
See also
Frequently asked questions
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What does "cast frequency" actually measure in TFT?
Cast frequency is how many times a unit fires its Special Ability over the course of a single combat. TFT abilities have no cooldowns — the only gate is the Mana bar filling — so cast frequency is just the rate at which a unit's bar empties and refills. Most damage, healing, shielding, and crowd control on a board comes out of these casts, so the number of times a unit reaches the cast threshold per fight is usually a better predictor of board output than its raw ability tooltip values.
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Which stats and effects raise a unit's cast frequency?
Four levers move cast frequency. (1) Lower max Mana shrinks the bar, so each cast comes faster. (2) Higher Mana per attack — flat bonuses or role upgrades — fills the same bar in fewer swings. (3) Higher Attack Speed packs more swings into the same window, multiplying every per-attack Mana source. (4) Starting Mana or on-cast Mana refunds shorten how much of the bar has to fill from zero. Mana regen adds a constant per-second trickle on top of attack-driven income. See the dedicated Mana and Attack Speed pages for the underlying numbers.
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Why does the same-name unit cast slower on my board than on another player's?
Almost always Attack Speed or items. Attack Speed buffs are percent-based and stack from traits, items, augments, and ally auras — two boards with the same star-level unit can reach combat with very different effective Attack Speed, which directly changes how fast the Mana bar fills. Items also matter: starting-Mana boosts, per-attack Mana bonuses, and on-cast Mana refunds all change cast cadence even when the printed ability tooltip is identical. Ally-side effects that grant Mana or Mana regen also shift the count.
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Why does a small-looking max-Mana increase feel like a huge nerf?
Because Mana income is discrete (a fixed chunk per attack) and the bar fills in whole-attack steps, raising max Mana past a multiple of per-attack income forces an extra swing. A unit at 60 max Mana that takes 6 attacks to cast (10 Mana per swing) still takes 7 attacks at 61 max — exactly the same cost as raising it to 70. That single extra attack is roughly a 17–18% reduction in casts per fight. Tiny tooltip patch changes can therefore look cosmetic but be enormous in practice.
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Does Attack Speed scale cast frequency linearly?
Roughly yes for attack-driven Mana, until the 5.00 Attack Speed cap. Each additional attack carries the unit's role-based Mana value (10 / 7 / 5 depending on role), so doubling effective Attack Speed roughly doubles attack-driven Mana income and therefore casts per second — minus the fixed Mana-lock window after each cast and any time spent in cast animation. On units that also gain Mana from being hit (Tanks) or from Mana regen, those non-attack sources don't scale with Attack Speed, so the curve flattens slightly at very high AS.
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How does Mana lock affect cast frequency, and is it the same for every unit?
After every cast a unit enters a Mana-lock window where it cannot accumulate Mana from any source — attacks, damage taken, items, and trait passives are all suppressed for the duration. The default is 1 second per Riot August, but units with longer cast animations (typically channeled or sustained-effect abilities) are locked longer. The lock is a fixed floor on time-between-casts, so for very low max-Mana units it caps cast frequency more than the bar size does — past a point, more Mana income stops helping until the lock expires.
Sources
- Mana lock — Dot Esports (LeBlanc's mana lock increased "from one second to two seconds" — the 1-second default and that some champions are locked longer) (opens in new tab)
- Mana (TFT) — League of Legends Wiki ("After casting their Special Ability, champions can't accumulate mana for the second thereafter") (opens in new tab)
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Does cast frequency stay constant through a fight, or does it ramp?
It usually ramps. Many cast-frequency multipliers compound across the fight — Mana overflow banks excess past the cast threshold so subsequent casts start with a head-start, on-cast Attack-Speed buffs make later attacks generate Mana faster, and stacking-on-cast effects pay back into the next cast. Frontline units also see continuous Mana income from damage taken, so their cast cadence is steadier. Big-Mana backline casters typically only fire once or twice without item investment; cast frequency is highly sensitive to fight length for those units.
Sources
- Mana (TFT) — League of Legends Wiki ("Mana that is gained that would overflow will be carried over up to one cast") (opens in new tab)
- Shallow Dip: TFT Units and Mana Design — Steff 'n Stuff (big caster champions cast "once or twice a fight without investment"; frontline units have continuous Mana growth) (opens in new tab)
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Are units with multi-cast traits actually higher cast frequency?
Sort of — they fire the ability more times, but the bonus occurrence runs at reduced effectiveness. When a set ships a multi-cast trait, it typically makes a unit's ability occur an extra time at reduced strength rather than full strength. So a multi-cast unit's true cast frequency in raw count is higher, but the extra occurrence's value is lower; for output comparisons what matters is effective casts (count × payload multiplier). Whether a given set ships a multi-cast trait at all rotates set-to-set, so this is a soft lever, not a permanent fixture of the game.