Feedback: Cooldown Manager in 11.1.5

In Development The War Within Patch 11.1.5 PTR
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In the 11.1.5 PTR, there’s a new User Interface feature called the Cooldown Manager. The Cooldown Manager’s purpose is to help inform you of the state of your important class and spec cooldowns in a consolidated space on your UI.

The Cooldown Manager is a new display that can be enabled by opening the Options Menu, navigating to Advanced Options, and checking the box labeled “Enable Cooldown Manager”. There’s also a search bar at the top of the Options menu! Once enabled, you can make further adjustments to the size, position, opacity, and other options in Edit Mode, just the same as you would adjust any other User Interface element.

The Cooldown Manager has four parts to it that can all be adjusted and shown or hidden separately based on your preferences.

Essential Cooldowns

Essential Cooldowns are where any ability you currently have access to that has a cooldown is displayed. These are where your core rotational and big impact abilities are found, such as Crusader Strike, Judgment, and Avenging Wrath.

Essential Cooldowns show whether an ability can be used, the remaining duration of any effects is applies, and its cooldown once its effects are no longer active. Highlights that appear on abilities in action bars also appear on Essential Cooldowns, so you have all the information you need to play your spec in the Cooldown Manager, in the form you’re used to seeing it.

Utility Cooldowns

Utility Cooldowns is for buttons that are situationally useful, such as interrupts, mobility, or crowd control. You’ll find spells like Counterspell, Blink, and Ice Block here.

Tracked Bars

Tracked Bars appear for effects where it’s important for you to be able to see their exact duration. For instance, spells that change your rotation like Combustion, effects that are important to maintain like Shield Block, or effects where it’s helpful to know exactly when they will end, like Eclipse.

Tracked Buffs

Icons appear in the Tracked Buffs section for effects where it’s important for you to know that you have the effect, but its duration isn’t especially significant. Buff icons like Nether Precision for Arcane Mage, Backdraft for Destruction Warlock, or Maelstrom Weapon for Enhancement Shamans show up here.

Tracked buffs show icons, durations, and stacks of the effect. Tracked Buffs do not appear for effects that are fully indicated by ability highlights in the Essential Cooldown section.

Feedback

This first version of the Cooldown Manager is a designer-curated list of abilities; which abilities are shown and the order in which they appear is not customizable. While you can adjust the size, opacity, location, and other properties of each section of the Cooldown Manager in Edit Mode, you cannot control what abilities show up or the order in which they are shown.

The most useful feedback we’re looking for are your thoughts on abilities or buffs that you feel are missing, extra icons or bars that do not feel important to you, and obviously any bugs you encounter.

Feedback about how you play is also extremely valuable to improving it in future patches. We have plans to add new features and customization tools. Are there important aspects of playing your spec that you cannot do with only the Cooldown Manager? What information do you need to track, and how do you currently track it?

Thank you very much for your testing and feedback!

6 Likes
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Off-the-cuff impressions as a Blood DK who usually does M+: (2000 rating last season, hate managing addons, I would love to have this feature work)

This has been needed for a very long time. Blood and other specs are essentially impossible to play effectively with the current live UI. While I’m glad it’s here, the current iteration of Cooldown Manager has a long way to go.

  • First and biggest is that this feature really needs to launch with some way to edit and select what is tracked. I know that’s a lot of additional work, and I know you said it’s coming later, but everyone has a different idea of what needs to be where, or what needs to be tracked at all. Unless Blizzard goes to all 39 Wowhead spec guides and implements everything listed on the rotation page, and does it again after every class balancing patch, it’s going to be rough to stay caught up. I’d rather have a Cooldown Manager that works strongly out of the gate, rather than one that ends up neglected by most players because the first version didn’t meet their needs.
  • Or if you can’t do that, at least let us reorder the items inside Cooldown Manager or allow us to hide/show individual items.
  • The Cooldown Manager has absolutely no interaction with hero talents. For Blood, there’s no tracking of the Essence of the Blood Queen buff as San’layn, and no tracking of the Reaper’s Mark cooldown as Deathbringer. Both are absolutely mandatory.
  • I also need to track my on-use trinkets and their cooldowns.
  • The debuffs on my current target are just as important as my current buffs. As Blood, I’m going to have a rough time if I don’t know the status of Blood Plague on my target (or Reaper’s Mark as Deathbringer), and I know a lot of specs have it much worse than that. I know it’s next to my target’s nameplate, but if consolidation is the goal then debuffs need to be included.
  • There doesn’t seem to be any consistency with what is tracked where. Just going down the list of Blood defensives: Vampiric Blood and Icebound Fortitude are on Tracked Bars, Rune Tap is on Tracked Buffs, and Anti-Magic Shell and Lichborne are only on Essential Cooldowns. I know that some defensives are stronger than others, but I think this is a very unintuitive setup (others may disagree, see my first point). I need to know my current active defensives in one single location.
  • I do like that whenever you activate an Essential Cooldown or a Utility Cooldown, you get a “reverse cooldown” effect on the icon to show the ability’s remaining duration. (Except for Dancing Rune Weapon, but I assume that’s a bug.) I honestly think this should be in the base UI, as part of the ability icons on our bars. It’s useful and intuitive information even for newer players or players at lower skill levels.
  • Blood-specific feedback: At the absolute minimum, we need the buff “Death and Decay” on Tracked Bars, Soul Reaper on Essential Cooldowns, and our hero talents (Essence of the Blood Queen on Tracked Bars for San’layn, and Reaper’s Mark on Essential Cooldowns for Deathbringer). I could mention others, but these are the ones I would 100% need to function in M+.
4 Likes
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Bear Player Here, these are my immediate reactions:

  • Cool that it shows procs for Mangle and TnC procs for Raze/Maul.
  • Let us center the cooldowns in a multi-row setup.
  • Ironfur would still require a WA to properly track stacks if it shipped like this.
  • Let us remove things from the trackers.
1 Like
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From a Mistweaver Perspective it has made me realize maybe picking something from the buff bar in the top right to add it to the “Tracked Bars” part would be cool.

Currently only shows Jadefire Teachings and Awakened Jadefire, but doesn’t show the following:

  • Chi-ji Duration
  • Fortifying Brew Duration
  • Diffuse Magic Duration
  • Teachings of the Monastery Stacks
  • Doesn’t show Jadefire Stomp on the actual Cooldown bar.
  • Mana Tea stacks somewhere would be nice
  • Showing that you have Vivacious Vivification would be nice

Along with my other general suggestions of picking what you can have or remove and also centering the cooldown bar itself with multi-row setups.

1 Like
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For evokers, it would be really nice if Iridescence was shown in the ‘‘Tracked Buffs’’ bar.
Firestorm is not being tracked properly due to snapfire resets

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Very exciting beginnings to an integrated WeakAuras type of UI element. Though this is just the first iteration, I have some considerations:

– Players need to be able to track and untrack spells to their liking. —Essential Cooldowns and Utility Cooldowns— bars would be more useful to me if I could change what spells/cooldowns are tracked individually. I can get cooldown information mostly by a quick glance at my action bars, so this might not be as useful for me. It’s good for the players that need this feature. Would like there to be a setting here that only shows spell icons on these bars for spells actually ON cooldown, rather than displaying all spells at all times like they do now, cooldown or not. This would make these bars less cluttered and easier to immediately see a spell is on cooldown.

– My use case for WeakAuras is mostly to track buffs/auras that are currently active. The —Tracked Buffs and Tracked Bars— feature is the most interesting to me and I hope to see it expanded upon. Again, allow players to choose what to and what not to track individually please.

It seems the Essential Cooldowns and Utility Cooldowns bars might be trying to display tracking information for an active buff/aura and then the cooldown both, but I’d much prefer if I could track only the active buff/aura per spell on its own specifically to my liking.

An example of my use case:

I personally would most likely turn off the Essential Cooldowns and Utility Cooldowns bars completely (maybe I’d track 1 or 2 spell cooldowns here and there if I could specify what’s shown) and only use the Tracked Buffs and Tracked Bars – bars. With that in mind, I’d like there to be a way to put Icy Veins/Time Warp/Mirror Image (and certainly more) on my Mage for example in the Tracked Buffs bar as I’m for the most part only interested in tracking durations of auras/buffs rather than spell cooldowns.

I would really like to request that if you allow us to track specific spells, auras, and buffs— that you also allow us to track debuffs as well. I like to be able to track specific debuffs like Hypothermia from Ice Block/Ice Cold and Forbearance from Paladin for example.

Another random request would be for a separate reminder tracking bar for Class Buffs that would show for example Arcane Intellect 0/5 or 1/5, as in, 1 out of 5 party members have this buff. Then, when you buff all 5/5 this reminder bar will disappear automatically.

Thanks for adding this feature into the game. It might be in its first steps, but I’m eager to see it flourish.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that in the addon WeakAuras, you can add a “Show Glow” to your specific aura. Specifically, aura/buff icons can have a glowing border around the tracked icon. You can choose between “Autocast Shine”, "Pixel Glow, “Proc Glow”, and “Action Button Glow”. I’d love to see something like this added to make certain aura/buffs stand out more and generally be more customizable.

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I’m glad WoW is finally getting a built-in cooldown manager! With the understanding there will be more iteration and features added to it, this is my initial feedback for monks.

General:

  • Defensive duration needs to be tracked, or at least be consistent. Diffuse Magic duration is tracked on Utility Cooldowns panel, but Fortifying Brew duration is not (for WW and I presume MW).
    • Ideally, these would be a Tracked Bar, but showing the duration in the Cooldowns is a good start.
  • Healthstone, the most relevant healing and mana potion, trinket CDs would be nice to have visible.
  • Racial cooldowns are missing (or at least, I didn’t see the Void Elf racial in the Utility Cooldowns).

Mistweaver, on top of what @Lofibanshee has already mentioned:

  • Sheilun’s Gift stacks
    • The icon shows under tracked buffs, but it does not currently show stacks
  • Celestial duration
    • This is already displayed under the player frame, but this would be better on the tracked bars.
  • Master of Harmony Vitality tracking bar
    • Or at least some way to track how much vitality you have. Having a bar fill up is pretty intuitive to how it works.
  • Jade Empowerment and Dance of Chi-ji stacks
    • If we’re running these talents, we don’t generally want to overcap on these. In the case of Jade Empowerment, this can help us figure out if we need to use a stronger CD because we don’t have it, or send CJL for healing in M+ because we have it.

Brewmaster:

  • Purified Chi stacks to know when you’re capped for the biggest Purifying Brew shield you can make.
  • Having Purifying Brew and Diffuse Magic on both Essential Cooldowns and Tracked Buffs feels weird. I think the tracking these buffs could be better as a Tracked Bar instead, seeing as Dampen Harm and Fortifying Brew are also on the Tracked Bar.
  • Blackout Combo needs to be tracked so you know when you have it.
  • Charred Passions duration
  • Expel Harm CD is missing
    • The number of Healing Spheres available also needs to be tracked somewhere.
    • This can inform your decision to use a healthpot/healthstone or a Vivacious Vivification proc or Expel Harm to heal yourself.
  • I don’t think Counterstrike or Hit Scheme are important to track, especially when taking Blackout Combo. Neither of these affect any actions I take as Brew.

Windwalker:

  • Dance of Chi-ji and Blackout Kick! procs
    • I usually don’t depend on the action bar glow, but instead rely on either a tracked buff (for Dance of Chi-ji) or my WA lighting up (for Blackout Kick!).
  • I don’t think tracking Dance of the Wind is valuable, but if it will remain, then it should also be tracked for MW. Knowing how many stacks of this buff wouldn’t affect a decision I would make.
  • Touch of Karma CD is missing from Utility Cooldowns
  • Jadefire Stomp CD is missing from Essential Cooldowns
  • Last Emperor’s Capacitor stacks needs to be tracked somewhere.
  • I’m not sure if the first half of Xuen’s Battlegear is tracked, but it should be if the second half is tracked.
1 Like
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Vanish is off in the manager for Outlaw Rogues. If Subterfuge is learned then it appears under both Essential Cooldowns and Utility Cooldowns at the same time, which is redundant. If Subterfuge is unlearned then Vanish is absent from both.

Unsure of exactly what the plan was, but Vanish is considered essential in current builds and should appear in exactly one category.

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Echoing what people said above, this is an excellent step in the right direction, but still has a ways to go:

Customization, customization, customization

  • Let us choose which spells show up on which components of the manager. A Prot Paladin might want to see consecration under Essential Cooldowns. It’s less important to me as a Holy Paladin.
  • Most of the crucial stuff is there, but there are even some class mechanics that don’t show up. As a Holy Paladin, I’d like to keep track of how many Dawnlight charges I have left, for example
  • On-use trinkets don’t show up at all. Someone might want to track those so that they can line it up with cooldowns
  • I see a ‘Tracked Bars’ option in edit mode, but have no idea which spells apply.
  • The “Tracked Bars” show the icon for Light’s Hammer… a Paladin spell that doesn’t even exist any more lol

The Good

  • For someone getting started with WoW that has no idea what a Weak Aura is or how to use it, this is great
  • I like that the manager indicates when a cooldown is active/in progress, like Avenging Wrath or Divine Shield

I believe a separate “Cooldown Manager Options” window is needed to let us fully customize these settings to our liking - let us pick and choose what we’re tracking, and which window they appear under.

If this is ever going to really compete with/replce Weak Auras for tracking cooldowns, it’ll need that same breadth of customization. Rather than worrying about implementing every single buff on your end, perhaps an ‘add by SpellID’ option would work best for letting us set things up to our liking.

2 Likes
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  1. Add everything you can to tracked buffs and tracked bars and let us blacklist what we don’t want
  2. Dot mechanics(immolate, agony, corruption etc.) - NEED to be tracked on “essential cooldowns” bar for my current selected target, without this I can’t use this system.
  3. I need healing pot and healthstone tracked in “utility cooldowns”
  4. When cooldown is back to ready for use I’d like some “pop up” animation so I know it’s back (kick, defensive cds, dps cds)

Not sure if these count towards this but:

  1. Better way to track class resources(soul shards, energy, combo points etc.) with this system, depending on how I move camera personal resource bar goes under cooldown manager, I’d like it to all be centered
  2. Better player health tracking, I’d like to make my player frame just be one green bar that changes color depending on my health - example: 0-15% red, 15-50% different shade of yellow/red, 50-75% yellowish, 75-100% green
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Edit: Fixed, I’m an idiot. I thought it being enabled in Edit Mode meant the actual Option itself was enabled, this is not true. Enabling the actual Option made it show up. Thanks Gromiron for redirecting me.

Before I offer feedback, I can’t get the Cooldown Manager to show up on my UI at all. It shows up in edit mode, I made it Always Visible and unchecked Hide when Inactive. It never shows up on my UI, in or out of combat, on different characters, both copied from live and test characters created (BM hunter, WW monk, guardian/feral druid). tried both a custom UI layout, and the default Modern preset. No addons. Nothing shows for me, but judging by other comments, I must be doing something wrong?

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Second paragraph of the Blue Post:

“The Cooldown Manager is a new display that can be enabled by opening the Options Menu, navigating to Advanced Options, and checking the box labeled “Enable Cooldown Manager”. There’s also a search bar at the top of the Options menu! Once enabled, you can make further adjustments to the size, position, opacity, and other options in Edit Mode, just the same as you would adjust any other User Interface element.”

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If you’re replying to me, I have been playing with it in Edit mode and changing options (second sentence of my post). Once I save and leave Edit mode, it never shows on the UI.

Edit: Scan an Repair on 11.1.5 PTR installation didn’t fix. Complete uninstall and reinstall didn’t fix. I’ll try again in another build, don’t want to muddy a feedback thread too much with this. Very odd though.

Edit 2: I am a proper dummy. I mixed up “enable in Options” with “enable in Edit Mode.” I was able to make changes to it in Edit mode before I had enabled it, which made me assume it was already enabled. Once I enabled the actual option outside Edit Mode, it showed up.

16

Hello,

The built-in weak auras are excellent!!

  • can show the GCD
  • can show both the duration and the cooldown of abilities with a nice white overlay

Overall, my experience was great! Good job!

What however is very important and is missing, is the ability to rearrange them, and turn off the ones you don’t want.

But again, as a user with 100% weak-auras-based UI, the so called “cooldown manager” definitely exceeded my expectations. Great start

1 Like
17

While the graphics/textures are *cheff’s kiss*, I don’t think I’ll be using this to track cooldowns as is. Please let us integrate tracking inside the actionbar. I don’t want to have a double icon where 1 is to see my action bar and the second to see the buff time remaining.

https://imgur.com/a/oxFrIzL

1 Like
18

Love all the changes going into this patch cooldown manager looks great. My only feedback would be to include the personal resource bar with this update being able to move it or scale it these two features really go hand-in-hand with each other.

4 Likes
19

Oh big true. I’d like to see something like Plater integrated into the game one of these days.

This how I feel too. I glance at my action bars to track cooldowns just fine. For me personally, the new cooldown bar is a bit redundant. What I mostly want from this new feature is to track active aura/buff durations rather than cooldowns, and of course add which specific auras/buffs I want to track to my own liking.

1 Like
20

I think the cooldown tracker is a good start, however, it could be improved. With this feedback I think this will improve.

#1
Right now, the tracker doesn’t account for on use items. Which people would like to know when their trinket or item CD is off CD and when the effect will end. Something like that would be really nice. I have the new on-use back from the raid. I used it and I had no indication on how long it was lasting and how long the CD was. As a player I love playing with my actions bars hidden. I shouldn’t have to make a whole new action bar just for trinket cooldown tracking with this new feature

#2
There should be an option in the cooldown tracker on what specific spells you want to be included. You could do something like the quick keybind mode in keybind section but for what spells you want to track. Giving all the spells, depending on the class, sometimes they’re used in a very specific situation such as a dungeon or raid. Being able to remove that cooldown from the cooldown tracker when I don’t need it would be amazing and vice versa. So I propose once you click this button it’ll open the spell book and you can left click to select spells for it track and it’ll automatically go into the tracker category its supposed to be in and right-click to be removed from the tracking. As for instance, why isn’t blessed hammer in the essentials cooldown for protection paladin. With this Tracker button, I could put it there if need be. This should be incorporated with the talent tree as well! I wish having Gift of the Golden Val’kyr part of the tracked bar section as just a quick example. This would in summary be two buttons one for spellbook and one for talent tree.

21

Yes keep pushing to get rid of weakauras to track stuff.

1 Like