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 abilities or items have multiple cooldowns, using a different duration if their conditions are met. For example 's cooldown differs for melee and ranged users. 's cooldown is 0, but only when successfully killing a hero.

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 a charge replenish time instead of the usual cooldown. For instance, Sniper's Shrapnel has 3 charges and a 55 seconds replenish time for each charge.

Cooldown manipulation
Some abilities and items are able to manipulate the cooldowns of abilities. There are several different types of cooldown manipulation:

These cooldown modifiers reduce or increase the cooldowns of all abilities and items by a percentage when used. They cause abilities and items to enter a reduced or increased cooldown after being acquired. This means they do not retroactively affect already running cooldowns. Percentage-based cooldown reductions have inconsistent stacking behaviors:
 * Percentage-based reductions and increases

's cooldown reduction stacks multiplicatively with all other sources of percentage-based cooldown modifiers. However, all other sources stack additively with each other.

These cooldown modifiers reduce or increase the cooldowns by flat amounts. Unlike percentage-based cooldown modifiers, these can affect abilities which are already on cooldown. Flat changes are applied before percentage-based changes.
 * Flat reduction and increases

Some abilities are able to completely reset the cooldowns of abilities and items instantly, so that they are ready to use again.
 * Cooldown resetting

Talents reducing cooldowns
The following heroes have a talent that reduces all their cooldowns by a percentage.

Besides these, the following heroes have talents which reduce cooldowns of specific abilities by a flat amount

Unaffected by cooldown manipulation
The following abilities have cooldowns that are unaffected by cooldown manipulation for several reasons:
 * The ability may use a custom cooldown system, which is not covered by default cooldown manipulation.
 * The ability may use a cooldown for other purposes, for example, to indicate a delay before taking effect, like the effect delay of invisibility.

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. 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.

The replenish time of charges can be affected by the cooldown reductions of, , and talents, and can all be replenished with. Other sources of cooldown manipulation cannot grant charges back or affect the recharge times.

Charge-based abilities
The following abilities use the charge system:

Patch history
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