Two versions of the same game reward opposite things, and the whole click-speed subculture sits on the seam between them.
1.8: every click is damage
In 1.8 combat there is no attack cooldown. A swing that connects deals full damage, so damage per second scales linearly with click rate. Competitive players hold 480 to 720 CPM — 8 to 12 clicks per second — through a fight, and the difference between 8 and 12 is the difference between winning and losing.
This is the world the Kohi test was built for, and it is why a generation of players trained jitter and butterfly clicking as a competitive skill.
1.9 and later: the cooldown
Version 1.9 introduced an attack cooldown. After a swing, the weapon’s damage ramps back up over a fixed recovery time, and hitting before it recovers deals a fraction of full damage. On most weapons the cooldown recovers in about 0.3 seconds, which caps useful hits near 200 CPM — 3.3 clicks per second.
Above that, extra clicks do not just fail to help. They actively hurt, because each early swing resets the ramp.
| Version | Useful ceiling | What wins |
|---|---|---|
| 1.8 | None in practice | Raw click rate |
| 1.9+ | ~200 CPM | Timing to the cooldown |
What this means for practice
If you play 1.9 or later, click speed training buys you nothing at the keyboard. The skill that matters is rhythm at a specific, slow rate — closer to a metronome exercise than a sprint.
If you play 1.8 servers, the old arithmetic still holds, and a ten-second interval remains the honest way to measure it.
The anti-cheat line
Server plugins flag sustained rates above roughly 1,200 CPM, because no hand produces 20 clicks per second on one button. If your legitimate readings are approaching that, they are coming from switch chatter rather than from you — and the ban will not distinguish.