How to Fix an Ability Cooldown Bypassed Because the Client Times It

Your ability cooldown lives on the client, so a cheat client resets it instantly and spams the ability. Because the server never checks, it applies every cast. Track and enforce cooldowns server-side so the client's local timer is just cosmetic.

How to fix it

1. Track last-use on the server

Record the server timestamp of each ability use per player and reject any activation that arrives before the cooldown has elapsed by server time.

2. Treat client timing as cosmetic

Let the client show the cooldown UI for responsiveness, but never let it authorize the cast. The server's clock is the only one that counts.

3. Account for latency fairly

Apply a small tolerance for round-trip latency so honest players are not denied a cast that was valid at their time, while still blocking instant repeated use.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every Unreal Engine error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.