A CD Plan names real players and is what you copy into the addon on raid night. A CD Template plans against slots like "Discipline Priest #1" instead of people, so it survives roster changes, alts, and rerolls. Same planner, same spells, same export, either one fills itself from your Setup roster whenever you need it.
When in doubt, start with a plan. It's the simpler tool, and Convert to a template is one click away the moment you realize you'll want to run it again.
What a CD Plan Is
A plan is the sheet you actually raid with.
- Roster comes from your Setup, so who's in and out tracks your real lineup for that boss.
- Assignments for healing, defensives, mobility, and text reminders happen on the Cooldown Planner against those named players.
- Export copies it into Northern Sky Raid Tools on raid night, and each raider sees their own reminders.
If you only ever run one roster, you may never need anything else. Plans are the default for a reason.
What a CD Template Is
A template plans the shape of an encounter without committing to names. Each row is a slot tagged with a spec and a number: "Discipline Priest #1", "Discipline Priest #2", "Beast Mastery Hunter #1", and so on. You assign cooldowns to the slots exactly like you would to players, then fill them from a real roster whenever you need the plan.
That indirection is the whole point. Rebuild your healing core, bring an alt, swap a spec mid-tier: the template doesn't care, because it never knew the names in the first place.
Templates on the Setup page
On the Setup page, a boss column can hold a plan or a template directly. A template attached to a boss fills itself from that setup's roster and keeps adjusting as people move in and out, which is the hands-off way to run the same strat every week.
Applying a Template to a Setup
Applying a template is a live preview, not a save. Pick a setup from the template's export panel and the slots resolve to that setup's real players in front of you: names, classes, and your assignments, ready to read or export.
Pick a setup to preview against
Open the template's export panel and choose a setup. Slots resolve to that setup's real players immediately. Switch setups any time to see the same plan on a different roster, or Stop previewing to go back to slots.
Export straight from the preview
Once a setup is picked, the NSRT export reflects the resolved, real-name plan. You can hand a template to your raid without ever turning it into a saved plan. Short rosters are flagged, not hidden: if a setup doesn't have enough of a spec, the extra slots stay unfilled and the preview tells you so, instead of quietly dropping assignments.
Generate a note to keep it
When you're happy, Generate note materializes a fresh CD Plan from the preview: unfilled slots are dropped, the plan links to that setup's boss slot, and the original template stays in your notes as a reusable source for next time.
Nothing is written until you decide to keep it.
A Note for Tonight, No Setup Needed
A setup is the right home for cooldowns you'll raid with again, but sometimes you just want a note for one pull and don't want to build anything. Every plan in the Cooldown Library has a From NSRT button for exactly that.
Paste your live raid
Export your group from NSRT in-game and paste it into the From NSRT dialog. The plan's slots resolve against the exact people you brought.
Confirm any specs we couldn't read
If a line didn't carry a clean spec, you get a quick check to set it, so the right cooldowns land on the right players.
Copy CDs and go
Hit Copy CDs and paste straight back into NSRT. Slots your raid can't fill are dropped automatically, so you only get cooldowns for who's actually there.
Nothing is saved and you don't even need to be signed in. It's the fastest way to put a community plan to work on a pug or an off-night, and it's a good reason to browse the Library before building from scratch.
Building a Template
Two ways in, depending on whether you're starting fresh or already have a plan you like.
Start from scratch
On a boss card, choose CD Template from the + menu. You get an empty template, and you add slots in the planner the same way you'd add players, picking the specs and counts your strat needs.
Convert a plan you already built
Open a finished plan and click Convert to a template in Roster Settings. Your assigned players are grouped by spec and turned into numbered slots, so the work you already did becomes reusable in one click.
Converting is safe in two ways worth knowing. It's non-destructive: it spawns a brand-new template and leaves your original plan exactly as it was. And it's private: real character names are stripped as the slots are created, so a template never carries anyone's identity, which is what makes it safe to publish to the Cooldown Library.
How slot numbers fill
The number on a slot sets the order it fills. When you apply a template, "Discipline Priest #1" takes the first Discipline Priest on the setup, "#2" takes the next, and so on, in the order players sit in your setup. Order your slots the way you want raiders picked, so your most reliable external lands on #1's job.
Pinning specific raiders to a slot
Numbers are enough for most slots, but sometimes a job should always go to one person. Click the pencil on a slot and add preferred characters. When the template fills, pinned raiders are claimed first, in the priority order you set, and the remaining slots fall back to plain numbering. So you can say "this tank swap is Mike's if he's in, otherwise next Protection Warrior" without hand-editing every week.
Spec slots vs class slots
Some cooldowns care about the exact spec; many raid-wide ones don't. A slot can be either:
- Spec-level ("Restoration Druid #1"): fills only from that spec.
- Class-level ("Druid #1"): fills from any spec of that class, for shared cooldowns where the spec is irrelevant.
You can take a spec's slots down to class-level later with the → class action in Roster Settings. Because a class slot only carries class-wide spells, anything spec-specific you assigned to it is dropped, so the planner shows you exactly which spells would be lost and asks you to confirm first.
Where a template can come from besides you
A template isn't only something you build. Anything reusable behaves the same way under the hood:
- Your own templates, built or converted as above.
- Cooldown Library imports. A shared plan lands in your notes as a template, so you can drop it onto any of your setups immediately.
- Supporter Examples, the curated cooldown sets, apply through the same slot-and-fill flow.
All three fill from your roster with the same numbering and preferred-character rules, so once you understand templates you understand all of them.
See Also
- Cooldown Planning: assign spells on the Grid and Timeline
- Resets & Setups: build the setup a template fills from
- Cooldown Library: import a community or official plan as a template