Combat Abilities & Action Mechanics Glossary

By Treesz · Updated Oct 12, 2026

Combat in an action game or MMO is built from a small set of ideas that appear under different names in every title: abilities that need time to recharge, dodges that make you briefly untouchable, damage that arrives in small pieces over time, bursts of power that you build up and spend, and timing rules that decide whether your button press counts. Once you recognise them, a new game's combat is easier to read.

This glossary explains nine of these ideas and links to two more articles. For each, you get a definition, how real games use it and what it means for how you play. The table shows how they relate.

Term	In one line	Mostly decided by	Where it shows up
Skill cooldown	Wait time before an ability can be used again	Game design, haste or cooldown stats	MMOs, MOBAs, hero shooters
Combat roll	A dodge that can make you invulnerable for a moment	Timing and stamina	Soulslikes, action RPGs, cover shooters
Damage tick	Damage applied in small, regular steps	Duration and tick rate	Poison, burn, bleed, hazards
Mobility skill	Dash, blink, grapple, charge	Cooldowns and range	MOBAs, MMOs, hero shooters
Adrenaline rush	A temporary boost triggered by action or danger	Meters and triggers	Many genres
Rage mode	Power that builds as you fight and is spent in a burst	A meter filled by combat	Fighting and action games
Second wind	A short recovery when you are low	Once per fight or rest	RPGs, shooters, survival
Animation cancel	Cutting an action's wind-up or recovery short	Game rules and bugs	Fighting games, shooters, MMOs
Input buffer	The game remembers a button press for a moment	Frames or milliseconds of leniency	Almost everything with timing

Skill cooldown

A skill cooldown is the time you must wait before using an ability again. It is how designers stop the strongest abilities from being used constantly, and it is the basic rhythm of combat in MMOs, MOBAs and hero shooters. A short cooldown makes an ability part of your normal routine; a long one makes it a decision.

Cooldowns come in several forms:

Single cooldown. Use the ability and a timer starts. When it ends, the ability is ready.
Global cooldown (GCD). A short shared timer that starts when you use most abilities, so you cannot use several at the same moment. In World of Warcraft most classes have a base global cooldown of 1.5 seconds, which haste can reduce to a minimum of 0.75 seconds, according to the community-maintained Warcraft Wiki.
Charges. Some abilities store several uses. Overwatch's Tracer, for example, can store three Blink charges that each recharge in turn.
Shared cooldowns. A group of abilities, or all potions, can share one timer so that using one locks the others.
Resource-limited instead of cooldown-limited. Some games, such as Path of Exile, balance most skills with a mana cost instead, with only a few cooldowns. See mana bar.

Cooldowns can be shortened. League of Legends used to have cooldown reduction with a cap of about 40 percent; in the 2021 preseason (season 11) Riot replaced it with ability haste, which has no cap and uses the formula base cooldown divided by (1 + ability haste / 100). The same goes for many other games, where haste, talents or items cut the wait.

Why this matters to you:

Know your key cooldowns and their length. The best players think in terms of when their big ability returns.
Do not waste a cooldown on a moment that does not matter, especially a long one you cannot use again in the same fight.
Track enemy cooldowns. In MOBAs and arena shooters, knowing that an opponent has just used their escape is information you can act on. League of Legends' Flash, a 300-second base cooldown spell, is the classic example: the whole team notes when it is spent.
Use the interface. Cooldowns are shown as a sweep, a number or a bar on the ability icon; see timer bar.

Combat roll

A combat roll (dodge roll) is a defensive movement that carries your character out of an attack's path. In many games it also gives a short window of invincibility frames (i-frames): while the animation is in that window, hits that overlap you do not count. The window is shorter than the whole roll, and the rest of the animation leaves you vulnerable, so timing matters.

How games use it:

Soulslike games such as Dark Souls and Elden Ring tie the roll to stamina and to your equipped weight. In both games the speed of the roll depends on how heavy your equipment is relative to your limit: a light load gives the fastest roll and a heavy load gives a slow one. Knowing which band you are in is a basic part of building a character.
Cover shooters such as Gears of War use rolls to dodge shots and explosives.
Action-adventure games such as the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy use a roll to move through combat and past hazards.
MMOs and action RPGs often replace the roll with a dash or an evade with a cooldown, so it behaves like a mobility skill.

How to use it well:

Roll as the attack lands, not before. Rolling early takes you out of the invulnerable window while the enemy is still winding up. Learn each enemy's wind-up so you can pick the right moment.
Roll through, not away. Many rolls pass through the attack's area and put you behind the enemy, which is often the best place to hit back.
Watch your stamina. A roll spends stamina; running out means you cannot roll in the moment you need it. See stamina bar.
Use it to break contact, not just to avoid damage: rolling toward cover or an ally can end the fight on your terms.

Damage tick

A damage tick is one portion of damage applied at a regular interval, as opposed to a single hit. Effects like poison, burning, bleeding and acid work this way, and they are usually called damage over time (DoT). The effect's total damage is spread over its duration, so a 12-second burn of 120 damage might do 10 per second.

Where you meet it:

Spells and abilities. In World of Warcraft, a DoT deals damage on a fixed schedule and haste can shorten the time between ticks. Players follow rules for refreshing a DoT before it ends, such as the "pandemic" mechanic, which carries over part of the remaining time into the refresh so none is lost.
Status effects. In Minecraft, poison damages you every so often, but cannot reduce your health below half a heart, which makes it different from the wither effect.
Environmental hazards. Lava, toxic gas and radiation deal damage in ticks while you are inside. Fortnite's storm is a well-known example; the damage per tick rises as the circle shrinks.
Healing over time (HoT) is the same system in the other direction.

Strategy:

DoTs reward early use. The sooner they are applied, the more ticks they deal. Many players apply them at the start of a fight.
They bypass some defences. Because the damage arrives in small pieces, a single big-hit shield or dodge cannot stop all of it. The answer is to cleanse the effect (remove it), outheal it or leave the area.
They punish standing still. Moving out of a hazard stops the ticks at once.
Know whether it can kill you. In some games, damage-over-time effects cannot take you below a minimum health; in others they can.

Mobility skill

Mobility skills are abilities that move you fast or past obstacles. They fall into a few types:

Type	What it does	Example
Dash or charge	Short, fast movement in a direction	A warrior's charge in an MMO
Blink or teleport	Instant move; no travel between points	League of Legends' Flash, Tracer's Blink in Overwatch
Grapple or hook	Pulls you to a point	Pathfinder's grappling hook in Apex Legends
Phase or invulnerable move	You pass through danger	Wraith's Into the Void in Apex Legends
Speed boost	Temporary increase in run speed	Sprint buffs in MMOs and MOBAs
Climbing and jumping tools	Reach high or distant places	Grapples and jet packs in traversal games

Designers have to be careful with mobility. If an ability both closes the distance and escapes a fight, it can dominate. Typical balancing tools are:

Long cooldowns or limited charges, so the move is a resource rather than a habit.
Resource costs, such as mana or energy.
Vulnerability, such as a wind-up before the move or a short pause after it.
Counterplay, like slows, roots, stuns and walls that stop movement.

For you, the practical points are these. Use mobility to take or leave a fight, not to run around. Keep the escape for the moment you must use it and save the gap-closer for the kill. Learn which enemy abilities stop movement. If a character's whole kit is mobility, expect to play around positions rather than sustained damage. See also traversal for how movement across the world is designed.

Adrenaline rush

"Adrenaline rush" has no single meaning in games. It is a name for any temporary boost to speed, power or output that is triggered by an action or by danger. Three real examples show how different the mechanics are:

World of Warcraft has an Adrenaline Rush ability for Outlaw rogues. It is a main cooldown that increases energy regeneration and attack speed for a short time. Guides advise against using it when your energy is already near its cap, because the extra regeneration would be wasted.
RuneScape 3 has an adrenaline resource. It was introduced with the Evolution of Combat update on 20 November 2012, builds as you fight and is spent on stronger abilities.
Fallout 4's Adrenaline is a perk on Survival difficulty: each rank, earned by getting kills, adds 5 percent damage, up to 50 percent, and sleeping for more than an hour lowers it.

Common structures:

Button-activated burst. You press it, it lasts a few seconds and then goes on cooldown.
Kill- or damage-triggered. The boost builds with your actions, as in the Fallout 4 perk.
Low-health trigger. In some games, being near death grants a short speed or damage bonus, as a comeback mechanic.

Tip: when an adrenaline-type ability is on a long cooldown, use it when it will matter most, such as the start of a boss's vulnerable phase or a team fight that has just begun, and not simply when it is ready. Match it with other bonuses so that they overlap.

Rage mode

Rage mode is a power-up that you fill by fighting. The meter rises when you deal or take damage, land combos or complete objectives, and once it is full you can trigger a burst of stronger attacks, faster movement or resistance for a short period.

Familiar versions:

God of War (2018) has Spartan Rage: Kratos builds the meter by hitting and being hit, and activating it gives stronger attacks and healing while it lasts.
Tekken has a Rage state when your health is low, which increases damage and unlocks a special attack. Newer entries add other systems, such as the Heat mechanic in Tekken 8.
Monster Hunter uses the word for monsters: an enraged monster hits harder and moves faster, and you can see the state on the monster itself.
World of Warcraft warriors use Rage as a resource instead: it is generated by dealing and taking damage and is spent on abilities. This is a different use of the word.

So check whether "rage" in a given game is a mode you trigger, a resource you spend or a state an enemy enters.

Advice: do not trigger rage as soon as the meter is full if the fight is almost over. Keep it for a moment of pressure, such as a boss's final phase, and make sure your most powerful attacks are available so the boost is spent well.

Second wind

A second wind is a recovery that lets you carry on when you are low on health or stamina. The name comes from running: the moment when tiredness lifts and you can keep going. In games it is a few things:

A class ability. In Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition, Fighters have a feature called Second Wind that restores hit points once per short or long rest. Baldur's Gate 3, which uses those rules, includes it as a Fighter action.
A perk or last-stand mechanic. Shooters have long had comeback mechanics for the player who goes down, such as the Last Stand perk in the Call of Duty series, which lets you fight on briefly after being downed, and self-revive kits in Warzone.
A stamina recovery that returns some energy after you run out, in survival and action games.

Why designers add it: it softens the sudden loss that can come from one mistake and gives the player a real choice about when to use the recovery. Because it is limited, it is a decision. Players should treat it as part of their health: a character with an unused second wind has more effective health than the health bar suggests.

Tips: keep the ability for a moment where you can survive a few more seconds, not at the instant you are about to be hit by a large attack; note that some second winds only heal, while others also give protection; and know how it resets, whether after a rest, a timer or a kill.

Animation cancel

Every action has an animation: a wind-up, an active part where the move does its job and a recovery. Animation cancelling means interrupting part of that animation, usually the recovery, with another action so that you act faster than the normal sequence. Some cancels are designed, others are bugs players found and the community kept.

Where it appears:

Fighting games. Cancels are central: you can cancel a normal attack into a special move, which is how combos work. The first combos in Street Fighter II were discovered by accident and kept, and cancel systems have been part of the genre since.
Shooters. Switching weapon in the middle of an animation (see quick swap) can skip part of a reload or a bolt cycle. Counter-Strike's quickswitch after an AWP shot is the famous example.
MMOs and action RPGs. Some games let a dodge or an ability cut off an attack animation, and developers often decide which cancels are allowed and patch the rest.

Is it allowed? That depends on the game. A cancel that is part of the intended rules is just a technique, and a cancel that skips a penalty the designers wanted can be fixed in a patch. A cancel that needs an external program is a macro and counts as cheating.

If you are learning a game, look for community guides to the intended cancels, learn the timing in a practice mode, and rely on the input buffer the game gives you to make them easier.

Input buffer

An input buffer is a short memory for your button presses. If you press a button slightly before the game can accept it, for example during the end of an animation, the game stores the press and performs it the moment it is possible. Without a buffer, early presses are simply lost, and the game feels unresponsive.

Examples:

Fighting games keep your recent inputs for a few frames so that moves with long input sequences can be entered during the end of the previous move. This is what makes combos possible at human speed.
World of Warcraft has a spell queue window: by default, 400 milliseconds before the end of the current cast or global cooldown, your next ability is queued and fires as soon as it can. The window can be set between 0 and 400 ms.
Platformers commonly give you coyote time, a grace period after leaving a ledge in which you can still jump (named after the cartoon coyote who hangs in the air before falling), and a jump buffer, which remembers a jump pressed just before landing.

Why it matters: input buffering is the reason a well-made action game feels smooth. It also hides lag: a buffer larger than your delay swallows small timing errors. The cost is that too much buffering makes the game do things you no longer meant to do, such as a roll queued from long ago.

If a game feels like it ignores your presses, the cause may be a small or absent buffer, high input delay (see FPS cap and online play) or a button that is not the one you think it is (see controls). Press a little early rather than a little late.

Hit stop is the brief freeze that happens when an attack connects. It gives the hit weight and gives players a moment to see what landed; in Smash-style games it is called hitlag.
Target lock is a lock-on system that keeps the camera and your attacks on one enemy. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) made its Z-targeting famous, and Dark Souls uses a similar lock-on.

For aiming systems where you pick a target with a key instead of the crosshair, see tab targeting.