I have been playing WoW since launch, well over half my life at this point, but when I think about starting this game as a new player, it seems very overwhelming with the sheer amount of classes, abilities, and specs you have to play around. The learning curve for this game is probably a lot steeper than veteran players might realize.
Now, the one button rotations seems to be working great for a lot of people, but I think one of the biggest issues is that it’s hard to learn how to play your classs/spec when you use it. I get that it’s designed for accessibility and whatnot, but I think it has the potential to be a fantastic learning tool for a lot of people, especially new players, or even veteran players that want to learn a new spec. Additionally, I think it would be incredibly boring for a lot of people to simply use one button to play the game in an optimized way. For the halfway point between a hardcore and a casual, I think the rotation helper would be something worth leaning into.
The current rotation tool lacks a lot of the niceties that something like Hekili does, where it shows you a spell queue, timing, and even the button that you have the skill bound to. I think this makes learning a new rotation a little easier, since timing is very important for a lot of classes. Eventually, muscle memory and instinct take over to the point where everything just becomes very natural and you can adapt much easier in a changing environment. The current rotation helper is a great starting point, but I think it has a way to go before it can adequately replace what we have available to us at the moment.
If they remove Hekili functionality then they will have to. It’s either that or make DPS rotations boring. The highlight assistance is wonky as heck because for once, it doesn’t show a queue, secondly, it doesn’t show on the cooldown manager which is such an oversight it’s embarrassing.
You mean the one that is incredibly wonky, doesn’t show a queue, and has poor timing on everything? If an Assassination Rogue wants to learn all the finer points of envenom uptime and bleed snapshotting does the current “helper” actually do that? No, that’s why you need something like Hekili.
So your post says it needs a rotation helper like Hekili.
But there is a rotation helper.
People tell you there’s a rotation helper.
You get snippy about it.
But in reality, your issue is that you don’t like the rotation helper, know it’s there, but asked for a rotation helper anyway.
I suggest updating your original post to explain that “WoW’s rotation helper needs improved,” and not that the game needs one when it has one— it’s just not great functionally.
I do, especially since they have something to work off of already. I think they have a very talented team of developers that are actually far too rushed under the Microsoft Iron Fist. I would be willing to attribute most of the problems they have been experiencing lately to a lot of what I have experienced in software development myself. Rushed deadlines almost ALWAYS lead to a shrinking of the testing phase, even though it’s arguably the most import part of the cycle.
I don’t know what the OP was before editing, but I agree that the new rotation helper added in 11.1.7 is very clunky to use compared to the addon it was supposedly based on, Hekili. The way the information is delivered is much less useful, both in terms of moment to moment decision making and long term learning.
Hekili being a queue window you can place anywhere that shows the next few abilities and also includes cooldowns is much more helpful. I hope the new base version will recieve significant updates before Hekili would ever be disabled, if that would ever even happen.
The OBR does show the timing if the GCD is active and if you use it as an indicator (not an action) then the GCD penalty is not applied. It does NOT show you the next 3 recommended abilities like Hekili (so I can skip the #1 recommendation and pick 2 or 3 if I’m lining up a trinket CD or something). You can use the OBR as the rotation helper and that avoids having to follow the blue highlighting of the rotation helper all over your action bars… one spot to look at to see the next recommended spell and you choose manually press the recommended actions on your traditional action bars or use a different ability.
If Hekili goes away I won’t be using the “Single-Button Assistant” (OBR) to repeatedly click, nor will I ever use the “Assisted Highlight” that draws your focus to your actions bars (all over them) rather than a single focus point. However, I will use the OBR on Action Bar 8 (with “Always Show Buttons” turned off) as an indicator, not an action button, to replace at least the first icon I have for Hekili (when they remove what Hekili needs to function from the API and it effectively is disabled).
It would be nice if they showed the key-bind in the upper-right rather than that silly and static circular yellow arrow, but it’s first iteration, so maybe it’ll improve.
The OBR proves that Ret isn’t braindead like ppl keep saying. The OBR truly handles the Ret rotation like it’s braindead. It doesn’t line up cooldowns at all. It doesn’t handle any of the nuances that are needed to play it well, like pooling holy power before popping Divine Hammer.
