Pools and cooldowns

Attributes are pools

No attribute makes a weapon hit harder. A weapon's damage is its own, and what an attribute does is hold a pool.

A bard and a rogue are the exceptions: everything a bard does, songs and Rally included, is played, and everything a rogue does, its dagger and its firebomb included, is quick hands. So all of either's spends dexterity, and dexterity surges it.

Whatever is left in a pool surges the next action that spends from it: each point left adds 5%. Open a fight on a full pool and you open hard, then your blows land softer as it drains. An empty pool never stops you acting. It just adds nothing.

An auto-attack costs 2 from its pool. An ability costs whatever its class page says, or less while a bard's Rally has inspired you.

Coming back

Every pool refills at 0.05 points a second for each point of willpower. That climbs to 4× once you have gone 8 seconds without acting or being hit, so rest between pulls. Health is the exception: it comes back at only 10% of that rate, so heals and potions are what get you back into a fight. Or drink: a potion refills a share of a pool's size, all potions share a 2 minutes cooldown, and H drinks your strongest healing potion. A better-made potion (Fine, Superior or Masterwork) refills more and starts a shorter cooldown, and so does the Iron Stomach talent. A Bandage mends a share of your health over a few seconds, and the Kinship talent quickens the regeneration of whoever holds it and their party nearby. The potion bar over your experience bar holds every potion you carry; click one, or press the key you bound to its slot, to drink it.

A mage's Clarity makes every pool refill faster for a while, and a priest's Renewal puts health back a little every second; both reach the whole party nearby. A bard's Encore and a priest's Communion do the same as Clarity, twice as strong, for the caster alone. Inside a castle the living hold, every pool comes back 1× faster than usual on top of that (Sanctuary).

A pool never holds more than your gear allows, so taking gear off takes its share of the pool with it.

Cooldowns

Every ability shares a 1 second global cooldown, and most have one of their own as well. One you have not learned yet does nothing and costs nothing, and so does one pressed before it is ready. A blow that misses or is dodged or parried still costs its pool and starts its cooldown. While you are stunned, asleep or knocked down you can do nothing, rooted you cannot leap away, Blink or Charge, and silenced you cannot cast or heal, though a weapon still swings. Weakened, every blow you land is that much lighter. Every class's main attack — Cleave, Aimed Shot, Staccato, Cinder, Drain and Ambush — cools down on your main hand's swing timer rather than a fixed one, so a quick weapon brings it round sooner, and Haste quickens it too. The priest's Sic 'em is the one exception: it neither waits on the global cooldown nor starts it, so the pet can be sent or called back between any two casts.

Auto-attack runs on your weapon's swing timer. A dagger is quick, a greatsword slow, and bare hands swing every 1.5 s. Casting does not hold it up, but changing your main hand restarts it.

Every class has a cooldown, a long wait for a short lift: the warrior's Recklessness, the ranger's Rapid Fire, the bard's Encore, the mage's Arcane Power, the priest's Communion and the rogue's Adrenaline. It lifts only you, never the party.

Your cooldowns and what is left in your pools are saved with your character, and pick up where they left off when you come back.