You know that’s a good point. I think that’s what irks players who oppose the feature the most although they can’t quite articulate it.
It’s not the top end players we need to worry about. Those guys will always play manual as they will do just about anything for a bit more DPS - they would wear their underwear as a mask if it gave them +1% more damage.
Tourist players aren’t affected either as they never intent to engage with the rotation-based gameplay regardless.
Mid-core players however … Why engage with rotation-based gameplay when you can just automate it away. Players are lazy and will take the path of least resistance. Why learn how your abilities work when you can do equal DPS blindly spamming a button?
So there is definitely a trade-off of sort here. That said, I think the boat has kind of sailed on this. Players have spoken with the popularity of add-ons like Hekili.