CD Plans vs Templates

How a one-off CD Plan and a reusable CD Template differ, how slots fill from your roster, and how to move between the two.

Last updated: June 8, 2026

Plans and templates

When you click the + on a boss in your cooldown overview, you choose between two kinds of sheet:

A CD Plan names real players. It's tied to one roster and one raid, and it's what you copy into the addon on the night.
A CD Template plans against slots instead of people, like "Discipline Priest #1". One template fills itself from whichever roster you point it at, so it survives roster changes, alts, and rerolls.

Same planner, same spells, same export. The only difference is whether the rows are real raiders or slots waiting to be filled. Most teams keep a template per boss for a strat they run every reset, then turn it into a real plan once the lineup is locked.

What a CD Plan is

A plan is the sheet you actually raid with.

Its roster comes from your Setup, so who's in and out tracks your real lineup for that boss.
You assign healing, defensives, mobility, and text reminders on the Cooldown Planner against those named players.
On raid night you copy it into Northern Sky Raid Tools, 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.

How slots fill: the numbers

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

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 and 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.

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. Switch setups to see the same plan on a different roster, or Stop previewing to go back to slots. Nothing is written until you decide to keep it.

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.

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.

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.

Where templates come from

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.

Which one should I make?

You want to…	Make a
Assign cooldowns for this week's actual roster	CD Plan
Reuse the same strat every reset without rebuilding	CD Template
Cope with alts, swaps, and rerolls without re-assigning	CD Template
Share a plan that works for any group, not just yours	CD Template
Run a community plan on a one-off or pug, with no setup	A Library plan, exported with From NSRT

When in doubt, start with a plan. It's the simpler tool, and Convert to a template is one click away the moment you realise you'll want to run it again. And if you just need cooldowns for tonight and don't want to build anything, the From NSRT shortcut below skips the plan entirely.