Hard mode monster skills recharge faster?

I was trying to vanquish the Eastern Frontier yesterday and tried it with The Last Day Dawns quest active because it turns all the monsters into Charr. It seemed like every group of Charr I came up against had at least one Charr Mind Lord (Mesmer) using Ether Feast. Ether Feast has an 8 second recharge and these guys were spamming it in what seemed like more often than 8 seconds. I decided to time it and, sure enough, they were casting it every 5 seconds. I know hard mode makes many changes to monsters but I don't ever remember skill recharge times being changed for them. I checked the wiki:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Hard_mode

and I can't find anything that says recharge times are lowered for monsters in hard mode.

I guess I should know this since I've been playing for 6+ years but do all monster skills recharge faster in HM or was this because it was part of one of the more difficult Glint's quests?

It's the 'new' Fast Casting. It recharges skills faster in PvE.

Fast Casting decreases the activation time of your Spells and Signets. (No effect for non-Mesmer skills with an activation time less than 2 seconds.) In PvE, each rank of Fast Casting decreases the recharge time for your Mesmer Spells by 3%.

LOL. I totally missed that (or forgot about it) in the update notes from a year ago.

HM mesmer monsters can have up to 18 in Fast Casting which is why they're super spammy. I tend to forget about the faster recharges too until I do something like Bogroot Growths where the Ibogas can seemingly spam Power Drain and Ether Feast alternately.

Does in do BOTH in PvE? or just the decrease of recharge?
pretty dumb question but I'm not sure.

Yes, Fast Casting decreases activation time for spells and signets(with exceptions as noted), and in PvE, it also decreases recharge times of Mesmer spells, just as the description states.

The decreased recharge effect in PvE is in addition to the fast activation; it does not replace it.

This is like 50% and more than explains the ether feast spam all by itself, but yes you have the FC reduction on top of it, for mobs that actually specced FC at least. (Not all do...)