Cooldown

Cooldown is an extension of the exhaust system governing spell incantation. It was implemented in Update 8.7 and was part of CipSoft's ongoing efforts to balance vocations. Every spell has an individual cooldown and one or two cooldown groups. Ultimately, all spells share between 4 cooldown groups, officially named 1s, 2s, 4s, and 8s, which are their respective default local cooldowns (1 second, etc.).

For instance, suppose we cast the spell Ice Wave, which has a cooldown of 4 seconds but is part of the 2s group. Two seconds after we cast the spell, our attack cooldown timer has finished, while our ice wave should have 2 seconds remaining. The player can cast Terra Strike before their ice wave's cooldown has ended.

The groups in which spells are categorized are largely determined by their focus. Most healing spells, for example, are in the 1s cooldown group, meaning you can cast Light Healing once per second. On the other hand, all rune spells and most attack spells are part of the 2s group, and strong attack spells are part of the 4s group. The 8s group is specific to special moves (e.g. Strong Ice Strike); all of these spells have two cooldown groups: one is the 2s (attack) group, and one is the 8s (special) group. What this means is that druids cannot cast Strong Terra Strike or Strong Ice Strike twice within any 8 second period, and you cannot cast normal strike spells (or any spell in the 2s group) until 2 seconds have passed.