⏱ Gaming Cooldown Calculator
Model base cooldown, ability haste, cooldown reduction, charges, animation lock, burst timing, uptime, and casts per combat window.
| Haste | Cooldown Multiplier | 20s Skill | 60s Skill |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1.000x | 20.0s | 60.0s |
| 25 | 0.800x | 16.0s | 48.0s |
| 50 | 0.667x | 13.3s | 40.0s |
| 100 | 0.500x | 10.0s | 30.0s |
| 200 | 0.333x | 6.7s | 20.0s |
| Loop Type | Common Window | Good Target | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPS utility | 12-30s | 2 casts per fight | Holding too long |
| MOBA skirmish | 20-45s | One cast every wave | Missing objective |
| ARPG pack pull | 20-35s | Permanent uptime | Dead downtime |
| Raid burst | 60-120s | Sync with buffs | Desync drift |
| Support peel | 15-40s | Answer every engage | No charge saved |
| Charges | Opener | Recharge Rule | Best Use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | One cast | Normal timer | Single burst skill |
| 2 | Double cast | One charge at a time | Saved utility |
| 3 | Triple dump | Queue recovery | Trap or dash kits |
| 4+ | Banked setup | Cap wastes regen | Objective holds |
| Preset | Base CD | Window | Goal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Destiny Grenade | 32s | 90s | Six throws |
| Mythic Kick | 15s | 45s | Four stops |
| FFXIV Burst | 120s | 240s | Two syncs |
| League Haste | 80s | 180s | Three ults |
| Diablo Shout | 25s | 90s | Near perma |
Cooldowns is essential to every rotation in the game. Cooldowns are necessary for every aspect of the game, from the use of grenades to dungeon interrupts and burst damage window. A player can experience a clean or messily rotation due to the way that the game handles haste, cooldowns, refund, and stored charges.
Many players make mistake with game mechanics because many players treat each of these as the same, ignoring the importance of the fight timing. Most games separate the handling of cooldown reduction from ability haste because the two has different mathematical functions within the game. Cooldown reduction will remove a flat percentage from the ability cooldown shown on the tooltip.
How Cooldowns, Haste and Charges Affect Your Skills
However, cooldown reduction becomes less efficient at approximately 40% cooldown reduction. Ability haste will divide the cooldown of the ability by a larger denominator. With each point of ability haste added, the cooldown of the spell will remain useful even at high values for ability haste.
By plugging in the cooldown of the ability, the ability haste of the skill, and the percentage of refund of that ability into a calculator, players can save themself the guesswork of whether or not a hybrid attack style or pure ability haste is better for their game build. Stored charges will allow players to utilize an ability more times at the start of a fight without utilizing the recharge timer for that specific ability. For instance, if an ability has a 12 second recharge timer but has two stored charges, the player will be able to use the ability two times at the start of the fight.
The second use of the ability will still be required to use the recharge timer for that spell. This create a decision for players of whether to spend game points on increasing the recharge rate for an ability or increasing the number of stored charges for that ability. This tool treats these two separate value, allowing the player to understand what will happen if they hold one of their abilities for a reaction to an enemy.
Animation lock and active duration are two statistics that can be easy overlooked because they are not displayed on the ability tooltip. For instance, an ability with an eight second duration may have a 0.8 second cast lock before it activates. In this case, the player will lose ten percent of the uptime of the ability.
This can quickly add up in the course of a fight. However, the cooldown and animation lock calculator factor these percentages into the uptime percentage for the ability. Burst alignment can be felt by players but is not easily quantified.
For instance, many players may feel that a cooldown that aligns with an enemy buff is late because it lands one second after the buff expire. While this can be felt, it is difficult to provide an exact value. By comparing the cooldown of the skill to a target value, players can see if the ability lands in a timely fashion for players to reutilize that ability.
This helps to inform players of any gear or ability adjustment that may be necessary to optimize their damage or utility output. The reference tables at the end of the page provide examples of the most common fight windows throughout the game. Each role has different requirement for fight windows.
For example, burst damage windows for raids will be longer then skirmishes in a MOBA game. Each of the game’s mechanics will have different requirements for haste to match the requirements of each fight type. By utilizing these tables, the calculator can be applied to the correct games and content.
Many of the mistakes that players make can be eliminated by understanding that cooldowns are not all the same within the game. Some abilities will gain more power with stored charges because they will be used at the start of the fight. Other abilities may require more haste so that they are used within every single fight rotation.
The refund will only provide value for the ability if it hit an enemy. For these reason, the game separates the value of the refund statistic from the cooldown reduction value for that ability. Understanding which part of the rotation is weakest will inform players of any gear or talent value decision.
The main value of using cooldown and spell timer to model abilities is that it will force the player to understand the rotation of the game as a whole. Each of the ability values will provide insight into how well the rotation may function if each of those variable is adjusted. If all of the variables match, then the player can successfully execute the game rotation.
