PoE 2: Cooldown Explained

Cooldowns are timers for Skills or other effects in Path of Exile 2 that must expire before reuse is available.

What is a Cooldown?

Some Skills and other effects have a base Cooldown to limit how often they can be used, such as Forge Hammer which has a base Cooldown of 8 seconds. The Cooldown timer is usually incurred upon usage of the Skill, and is tied specifically to that Skill - it does not prevent the usage of other Skills, but it will prevent the usage of Skills of the same name, even if they're sourced from a different Gem.

You can add a Cooldown to a Skill via the use of powerful Support Gems, for example Hourglass or Excise.

Note: you cannot add a Cooldown to Skills that already have a base Cooldown, therefore certain Support Gems cannot be used.

Cooldown Length & Recovery Rate

Cooldown timers are specific to each Skill, with some more powerful Skills often imposing longer Cooldowns. You can alter the length of a Cooldown timer via investment into modifiers to 'Cooldown Recovery Rate', such as supporting a Skill with Cooldown Recovery II.

Cooldown Recovery Rate modifiers impact the speed at which Cooldowns recover, rather than their Duration directly. For this reason, a total of '100% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate' would result in a Cooldown timer being half its normal length.

The final Cooldown length can be calculated:

Base Cooldown / ( 1 + ( Total increased Cooldown Recovery Rate / 100 ) )

Cooldown Uses

Some Skills have both a Cooldown timer and a number of Cooldown Uses, such as Gas Grenade which has a Cooldown of 3 seconds and 3 Cooldown Uses. When a Cooldown Use is expended by using the Skill, that Use will begin its Cooldown timer, but the Skill will remain usable if there are Cooldown Uses remaining. Each Cooldown Use will recover separately, and only one Cooldown Use can recover at any one time.

Cooldown Uses can be added to Skills using a Support Gem such as Second Wind I, or via investment into Skill-specific mechanics like the Grenadier Passive Skill Tree Notable.

Tip: you can obtain rare modifiers that provide a chance to not consume a Cooldown Use upon Skill activation, such as the Chronomancer's Now and Again.

Temporalis

Temporalis is a very special Unique Body Armour that has the modifier 'Skills have -(2 - 1) seconds to Cooldown', which removes a flat amount of time from the Cooldown timer of all Cooldowns that the character has. This is calculated prior to modifiers to Cooldown Recovery Rate, meaning that Skills with a base Cooldown higher than 2 seconds cannot have their Cooldowns fully removed by this item.

Time Snap

The Chronomancer ascendancy for the Sorceress has exclusive access to the Time Snap Skill, which can be used to immediately reset the Cooldowns of all of your other Skills, allowing them to be used again.