Feedback: Single-Button Assistant and Assisted Highlight Mode

In Development Legacy of Arathor PTR
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In the Legacy of Arathor PTR, there are two new ways to interact with the game, the Single-Button Assistant and the Assisted Highlight mode. These are designed to help new players, players who are trying out a new specialization, or those looking for additional guidance on ability usage.

These new modes only manage your damaging spells and are primarily designed to be used by damage specializations. Both will still function if you try them out as a tank or healer, but they will only cycle through your damage abilities, and not any of your healing spells or survival abilities.

As with the new Cooldown Manager added in the 11.1.5 update, these will continue to evolve over time.

Single-Button Assistant

The Single-Button Assistant is a new spell you can click-and-drag to your action bar from the top right of your Spellbook and then use just like you would any other spell on your action bar.

This Single-Button Assistant will cycle through a prioritized list of abilities that your character knows and automatically use them against your current target. To see the full list of abilities that your current specialization will use, you can right-click on this ability while looking at the top right of your spellbook to expand or collapse the list of spells that will be cycled through. Using this Single-Button Assistant will impose a penalty to your Global Cooldown (GCD).

Assisted Highlight

The Assisted Highlight is a slightly more advanced version of the Single-Button Assistant. To use this feature, you will need to enable the “Assisted Highlight” option in the Advanced Options tab in the Gameplay Options menu.

The Assisted Highlight doesn’t automatically cycle through your abilities for you like the Single-Button Assistant does, but rather it recommends a button to press for your next action by highlighting a button on your action bar with a green border. There is no penalty to the Global Cooldown (GCD) for using this mode.

Design Guidelines

The Single-Button Assistant and Assisted Highlight modes do a lot of things, but they will not fully play your character for you. There are several decisions we made about our expectations for what these functions perform or recommend for you:

The Single-Button Assistant and Assisted Highlight modes will:

  • Adjust to abilities you know from changing talents and include them in the cycle of abilities used or highlighted.
  • Swap between single target and AoE damage spells based on proximity of enemies near your primary target.

The Single-Button Assistant and Assisted Highlight modes won’t:

  • Move your character around in the world, or use any mobility buttons like Blink, Sprint, or Heroic Leap.
  • Change targets for you if your target dies or you want to debuff multiple different enemies.
  • Use major offensive cooldowns like Avenging Wrath, Bladestorm, or Ascendance.
  • Interrupt enemies or otherwise use utility or crowd control spells.
  • Heal your low health character or use defensive abilities.
  • Use any trinkets, potions, tradeskill items, or other similar items in your inventory.

Feedback

The useful feedback we’re looking for are:

  • Your thoughts on abilities that are used improperly in a sequence
  • Abilities that are not used at all
  • Any bugs you encounter

Thank you very much for your testing and feedback!

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Hello friends,

Biggest takeaway is it is clearly designed purely around DPS regardless of role. Doesn’t cast Ironfur, Shield block, etc.

  • Suggestion here is to possibly add conditionals for Active Mitigations such as Ironfur, Shield Block, Demon Spikes, etc. Even “If Bone Shield is under X duration, cast Marrowrend”

Only “real” angle tank wise, currently, would be Prot Pally which casts Shield of the Righteous in its current DPS rotation.

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I like that it lights up the next recommended button, but it LAGs behind by 1 global making the recommendation kind of bad. It should highlight the next in line while casting another spell and or a separate color glow for the next spell recommendation so you can queue albites.

Ex: Green for recommended press now and yellow for possible next spell/ability recommendation.

Also How do you plan on dealing with empower abilities for evokers? Cast level recommendations?

Any support planned for Tanking/Healing besides DPS rotations?

Any support planned for first recommendations prior to a pull? I.E mouseover for healing or target for tanking/DPS?

Edit: For the one button rotation helper.

Since its not designed for people that want to master their spec. Why not just disable the one button from 10+ keys and heroic or mythic raids. Its not for those people.

is would solve issues where high end content can be cheesed if tuning does not matter.

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(With respect to Single-Button Assistant) I would like to echo that Evoker Empower abilities might warrant some additional consideration. At the moment with Press and Tap enabled they seem to default to Rank 4 at all times. I do understand that the system isn’t meant to be completely optimal, but this one could use some further discussion at least.

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Step 1: Hire the guy that wrote Hekili and hire the best of the class theorycrafters.

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Here’s some feedback: Instead of this bandaid fix for how bloated rotations are, why not address the reason the devs felt this was necessary in the first place?

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There is no point in wow’s history where this wouldn’t have been beneficial to members in the community. Especially those with illnesses that hinder their motor skills.

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It kind of sucks that new tanks and healers don’t actually get any assistance with their rotations. I am sure this will help with the complaints about the lack of tanks and healers in random groups.

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I like the recommendations and that it won’t hurt anything but can be helpful. Will it show just the next button or the next 3? I’m hopeful this will update as we change talents, I thought I heard in the video that it might or it will in the future? Won’t be a good look for new or veteran players to change talents and have it recommend something you don’t use.

Updating to ST vs AoE will be a must, racials and trinkets would be cool but most classes usually tie those together into one major CD so I don’t think it would be a huge deal.

For healers, I’m hopeful this will adjust to players instead of enemies so they can adjust appropriately to what is needed instead of dps. I wouldn’t think this would be too hard to adjust.

Tanks, reading # of enemies, current health, current cool downs for defense and suggesting would could be used next > damage would be helpful to new tanks.

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Back during TBC I played with a person who was disabled. He struggled to do anything and it was rather hard to make up for his issues. I am certain this system would actually allow him to play a lot of modern WoW without feeling like a burden on his group.

This is exactly what I was hoping it would be. There are a lot of people that would like to play again but just can’t be bothered with how complex many of the classes have become and I am all for it.

From the design intent listed Single button will not be good enough for mid level M+, any PvP or Heroic raid but I think that is totally fair. More people playing WoW is good as long as it doesn’t make the game worse and I don’t think this hurts anyone.

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Some of the profiles are REALLY bad. For example DR MM it fires black arrows without precise shots and will cast back to back aimed shots. I know its not supposed to be perfect, but making sure you have streamline up for every aimed shot is the CORE rotational loop of the spec, and using precise shot buffed black arrows is the core of the hero tree for that spec.

I think blizz needs to not worry about nailing the rotations and just allow for community priority profiles. Farm it out to the community please! I know its not supposed to be the best way to play but if the robot generated profiles are too good, they can always go harder on the GCD penalty.

Its also worth noting that in its current state the rotation helper cant even really be used by new people to learn their spec since its just too wrong for some specs. This game cant really afford to do that kind of disservice to the people this is for.

3 Likes
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Overall I think these are good changes that make the game more accessible for new players. I am not sure about disabled players though to be honest. Most of what it takes to succeed in higher end content, even normal raids, is movement and proper defensive usage. The single button rotation might help them with their damage abilities, but the old adage “dead DPS do zero damage” still applies.

However, part of me wonders if this is just arenas 2.0. Arenas just didn’t address issues with PvP from Vanilla. It completely rebuilt and rebalanced the system. Someone like me that enjoyed playing fire mage and battlegrounds all of sudden found his preferred build no longer viable and his preferred content no longer rewarding (in terms of itemization).

There are some classes whose entire rotation, like mages, is reacting to procs. Fire and frost are all about reacting to procs and using resources properly so that you do not waste them. Other classes though don’t really need to react to procs or can wait to use them. Like on my WW I don’t really need to react to any procs right away like I do on mage. Like if get a Chi-Ji proc I don’t need to immediately use Spinning Crane Kick; I can wait a bit, or even wait until I get 2 stacks of it. My concern is that this is going to reprioritize the meta in favor of classes that don’t need to react to procs at the expense of those that do.

I think the correct solution here is to rebalance combat so that it is not so complex and does not require such a system. I recognize that this is a huge undertaking that will take years and that this the next best things. However, I think it might be setting the game up for years of problems like the arena system for PvP back when it was added in TBC.

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I totally understand that some players want this and might already be using GSE (an addon which serves also as a one button macro rotation type of thing) but I feel there is still impacts which need to be thought out.

I have the same concerns as yesterday that this encourage designs to stay bloated and this might stop a lot of players growth in the game as there will be a hard stop where this doesn’t work anymore and the shock will be then even higher.

Another concern which I thought about is that if this is allowed in group content it might add more friction as people will get removed for using this considering all the downsides and added gcd. Is this something we want to push for? Maybe restricting it in group content or some higher level of group content would be best and we could then also remove the gcd downside as it wouldn’t then be used in content where it could matter.

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What I’ve learned from listening to people who use Hikili (sp? I don’t use it) is they have all sworn off on-use trinkets because they hate seeing it come up as “the next best key.” When I hear that, all I can add to this conversation (as someone who WILL use the native one-button mode for low priority DPS alts in delves and follower dungeons) is a request either to just blanket toggle to exclude cooldowns beyond a certian threshold (one minute? Like we talking the button casting heroism on a random lone trash creature here?) or allow individual “exclude from the one button rotation” options.

Like yes, I know, for the content and the players this will be intended for, I’m sure there’s a degree of “meh” shrugging at throwing your army of the dead at a lone kobold in a delve because it was off cooldown and “next,” but I thought it was worth mentioning.

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This system is beneficial to more people than just those that need help understanding specs.

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin highlights the need for something like this for disabled people.

I request to be more open-minded and show some sense of empathy outside of “OMG this is strictly designed because specs are overloaded”

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It doesn’t suggest hero or army of the dead.

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It’s ok to acknowledge your ceiling and stop there. It’s actually one of the smartest things one can do in a game as broad as WoW. I see a lot of people complaining that “but people will stop improving” and… yeah. It’s pretendy funtime games, not a real world career path (for most people).

We aren’t entitled to people “growing” around us. Just finish your 5 timewalking and move on.

Just my two cents. I will use the one-button. I am a veteran of almost every era of WoW. I’m “good enough.” I’m just effortcomincal and not interested in MASTERING every spec of my 48 alts. If I acknowledge the ceiling of that, I have the option to do so. And I will.

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I don’t think it’s a question of mastering to the point of being pro, even if you go from chess to checkers you still need to have some understanding. But a one button rotation doesn’t have that kind of notion, it’s all blended together. And I think it’s a big part of playing the game but I don’t act like I don’t understand why people would want this I just think there is more to consider. At the end of the day I’m pretty sure this is very locked in but I think some nuances can be added.

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When I say I like pancakes it doesn’t mean I hate waffles. I am not unsympathetic towards disabled players. I am concerned about the larger implications and consequences of the system.

I did not call rotations bloated. I called them complex. They need to be simplified so that they are intuitive and can be figured out in game without consulting guides or theorycrafters.

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At minimum, please add the following for tanks to make active mitigation at least somewhat functioning:

Blood Death Knight:
actions.assisted_combat+=/marrowrend,if=buff.bone_shield.down

Vengeance Demon Hunter
actions.assisted_combat+=/demon_spikes,if=buff.demon_spikes.down

Guardian Druid:
actions.assisted_combat+=/ironfur,if=buff.ironfur.down

Protection Warrior:
actions.assisted_combat+=/shield_block,if=buff.shield_block.down

1 Like