By now, there are quite a number of skill nodes and unique item mods that have triggered effects with a cooldown. It’s nice that they have a cooldown, because that means that the triggered effect can be strong, even if the player can proc the trigger often. On the other hand, this cooldown can be a bit awkward in the way that any procs that happen before the cooldown expires just whiff. From a balancing perspective, that is not a problem; I’m sure players can proc those effects often enough. But from a build planning perspective, it always feels a bit unsatisfying, because if I can proc the effect often, I want to proc it again as soon as the cooldown expires. I hope that’s not just me.
So maybe the game could be more forgiving in these cases. What if the game didn’t whiff the procs, but just delayed them, or at least one of them. If a trigger procs while the effect is on cooldown, the skill could just remember that the trigger proc’d. And as soon as the cooldown expires, if the trigger was proc’d at least once, then the triggered effect just happens again right away. It doesn’t change the balancing of the skill much, but it feels nicer to the player.
Of course, this doesn’t work for every triggered effect. For example, an explosion on crit should happen only at the moment of the hit or not at all. But for other things it works well, for example getting a Maelstrom or Fire Aura stack on kill, or buffing your minions on hit. It would be easy to communicate to the player which effects use this forgiving mechanic. Instead of “(1 second cooldown)” they could just say “(1 second soft cooldown)” or whatever, and the Alt text explains: “If you trigger this condition during the cooldown, the effect will happen again at the end of its cooldown.” or something to that effect.