Cooldown



A cooldown is a period of wait time before a spell, ability, or item power can be used again.

Mechanics
Usually, a skill will be on cooldown if the skill was activated and the cast time of the skill has passed. For instance, Sand King's Epicenter will instantly go on cooldown when activated, since it has no cast time. If the hero is interrupted before the channel time is over, the spell does nothing, and the cooldown and mana is wasted. On the other hand, Sniper's Assassinate and Shadow Fiend's Requiem of Souls have long cast times, and they will not go on cooldown before the cast time is over. Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness is an exception to the usual rule; it goes on cooldown once the charge ends or is canceled, not upon cast.

If a hero has several versions of the same item, all versions will be on cooldown upon activating one of them. For instance, all Dagons are in the same cooldown group.

Some item powers also have one or more cooldowns for being affected by the item power. For instance, Restore (Mekansm) will not heal a hero who has been affected by Restore in the last 25 sec or by Mend (Guardian Greaves) in the last 43 sec.

Many abilities have reduced cooldown when leveled up. If an ability is on cooldown and it is leveled up, the current wait time will not be affected at all.

Some abilities have charges and charge replenish time instead of the usual cooldown. For instance, Sniper's Shrapnel has 3 charges and 55 sec restore time of each charge.

Cooldown manipulation
Several abilities and items are able to manipulate cooldowns of abilities and items. These include cooldown reductions, which can only occur when the spell is off cooldown first, or cooldown reseting.

Sources of reduction

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Sources of reseting

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Charges
Some abilities use the ability charge mechanic, instead of cooldowns. These abilities have a set number of charges on them, which replenish over time. Instead of going on cooldown, these abilities use up one charge per cast instead. This means when having multiple charges, they can be cast quickly in succession, but cannot be used when having no charges left. Each charge takes a certain time to replenish. Multiple charges of a spell do not replenish at the same time, they recharge one after another.

Charge-based abilities will appear to be on cooldown when using the last charge. This "cooldown" however is only to visualise when the next charge is going to be ready again. This visual cooldown cannot be affected by any form of cooldown manipulation.

Charge-based abilities
The following abilities use the charge system



Known bugs

 * The visual cooldown of charge-based abilities can be reset with . However, this does not affect the actual charges and only resets the visual cooldown which shows when the next charge is ready. This is also only an issue in Ability Draft or other custom game modes, since Tinker does not have charge-based abilities in the default mode.