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!

2

Feedback regarding onebutton

  • in its current state the only funcionality it has is pretty much assisting people with severe disabilities to do questing and any solo content pretty much which is great

I also think you are completely missing the point. The fact that this needs to exist only shows that your base game on a weekend-player housewife level is so inaccessible that you need to bandaid fix the game. You guys really need to have a meeting with game designers and discuss what is your game exactly. Watched the whole interview with Ion Dratnos and max and imo if you want to lobotomize your game addonwise just make content that doesn’t require a weakaura with 700lines of custom lua code. Look at one armed bandit. 99% of your players doesn’t know that the combinations show up right outside of the boss arena because you require ~7 combos pre-assigned with 3 variables. Of course people just gonna make a weakaura for it. Also you are asking a feedback on accessibility from the general public rather than simply from people who it’s made for.

Regarding actual rotational quality

  • tried arcane, its completely wrong. doesn’t use evocation once, couldnt make it use arcane surge either, spams away arcane orbs to build arcane charges (wastefully), it sometimes doublecasts missiles for no reason
  • tried fire as well, completely wrong and too slow as well for the spec. it uses phoenix/fireblast majorly to overcap hot streak, the added GCD due to 1-button nature actually makes it slower during hyperthermia than just spamming actual 1 button called pyroblast

Imo this is 3% to the way of being shippable. You need to realise that people will 100% use this in keys and raids even tho its significantly worse than manually playing badly, people will 100% get kicked, bullied and reported for playing with it in PUGs and probably the worst part is that it teaches completely wrong rotational habits, and you cannot really argue that “well its optional” because you well know how the average player is. They will turn this on, pull it on the bar, go and spam Poisoned Knife after entering a Kingsbane cycle without pooled toxic blades and log on your general forums to call you all bad at your job cuz “assa is weak”

How I see now this really has 2 potential outcomes:

  • Its either insanely bad and people who are disabled to the point where they physically cannot interract with the game well will use it and possibly be annoyed that it is making them play worse than some accessibility addon or AHK or whatever (keep in mind these people are not dumb)
  • Its actually decent or even good and people will 100% be bullied into playing with it in low rank guilds or keys

I think you are fighting a problem created by you. There’s multiple versions of your game running at the same time and each of those have its own mastery and skill ceiling. It’s just that live wow is unenjoyable for new people unless they take it as a university class. Maybe its time to not have your buddies make a 9-5 out of your game

5 Likes
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I haven’t tested this on the PTR, but I’m guessing the general idea is; new player comes to wow and has buildin tools . If he expands he can go from
Ingame cooldown manager → weakauras .
Single button assistant → self play or GSE when not physically able to play.
Ingame rotation helper → self play or Hekili.

Personally I would have preferred that Blizzard would polish the cooldown manager first before introducing another addon replacement which doesn’t really compare to existing addons.

Edit; I’ve tested it a bit on a couple of chars.
Single button.
It isn’t for tanks or healers. Just for “DMG abilities”

Rotation helper;
Also doesn’t suggest to apply marrowrends bone shields for dks.

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Wow. I knew they were copying Hekili aka “Assisted Highlight mode”, but Single-Button Assistant? Hekili is something I have instructed new players to give a try if they have asked on Newcomer Chat, e.g., “How can I do more damage?” or “How can I learn my rotation?” → Instructed them to try it out, and once mastered with rotation, drop it.

Single-Button Assistant? That’s basically WoW Lazy Macros GCD copy.

How long is the penalty in terms of lost DPS, for example - I am worried that people might not bother learning their rotations at all anymore due automated systems in the future. Soon you’ll be playing high M+ and run Mythic raids without anyone ever learning anything.

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Cos they won’t.
If you turn off by default for any group activity i.e. dungeons, raids or pvp they simply won’t do it or will click “whatever”.
Then they will demand it to work on siad activities.

If this will work from the start at group activities like raids, pvp or dungeons then people will start kicking out people that underperfom just “cos you are using 1 button instead of clicking”. And yes, this will be the case cos in one-button mode you will lack numbers required to finish said activities.

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If someone is in need of an Addon to play their character, maybe Blizzard should have considered reducing the complexity of the WoW gameplay instead of bringing something that will completely remove the gameplay. There’s a clearly a problem out there, but resolution isn’t to add an additional problem like they’re doing now.

Game is unnecessarily difficult what comes for rotations of certain specs; tens and tens of different buttons required to master your rotations for most optimal output - and who does it serve? No one, except esports organizations who’s members play WoW as their job.

Ion himself said in an interview with Dratnos and Maximum that World of Warcraft is really difficult to master. There are so many things going on, so many keybinds required, so many different skills and different talent tree builds. Lets address this problem instead.

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and let’s be honest - only fraction of people will see Mythic raids or M+20 or whatever - and it is ok - it should be reward for these people that are masters for getting things done even if this will be less than 1% of population.

As you said - cut buttons or move them on gear instead as engrave like with DKs. There is not a single reason to go with one button instead.

Do you really think the top guilds/players etc will say “wooohooo more people around that we can carry because they can spam 1 button but with this timer they cannot reach numbers they should for this difficulty” or they will just kick them out of the group instead?

No dear Blizzard, this is not how world works.

1 Like
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You’re missing the point of a lot of this.

They have to make content complex to be challenging, because weak auras and addons are so powerful now that simpler content can be trivially solved.

One-armed bandit is a great example, because you DON’T need to pre-assign choices. That’s not remotely a requirement. You could easily deal with the mechanic by looking at the provided information and putting a safe choice in each time. But people don’t, because it’s easier to use an addon to trivialise the content than it is to make decisions yourself.

You need to realise that people will 100% use this in keys and raids even tho its significantly worse than manually playing badly, people will 100% get kicked, bullied and reported for playing with it in PUGs

Why on earth would this change any of that? Players who aren’t good enough to do the content would not be good enough with or without this. If they can be invited using this, they could be invited playing manually and badly, and the exact same thing would happen.

Bad players who play incorrectly are always complaining their spec is weak. This changes nothing there either. That’s why everyone looks at stats for balance, not at random bad players’ feedback.

I think you are fighting a problem created by you. There’s multiple versions of your game running at the same time and each of those have its own mastery and skill ceiling. It’s just that live wow is unenjoyable for new people unless they take it as a university class.

They tried dumbing down the game, making things simpler by reducing talent options.

It was universally hated. People rejected the dumbing down of classes, and constantly asked for more options and more impactful options.

1 Like
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My one requirement to use this system would be the option to see not only the ICON of the next ability, but the KEYBINDING of the next ability too within the Single Button frame. I wont be following a green circle around my action bars (I rarely look at them), but I would love the “One Button Icon” to show the keybinding of the recommended spell, not the unchanging keybinding of the one-button spam macro, so I can use the information from the Single Button Assistant but not suffer the penalty of the GCD delay as I would still be physically casting the individual ability. Much like Hekili does now.

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The very fact that you had to dismiss the idea that this button will not move the character for you is absolutely tragic and it shows how bad is the direction that the game is heading to. we will soon become robots with no real sense of accomplishment. What’s the purpose of this? The ultra casuals don’t do complicated stuff so they don’t need a flawless rotation to complete their goals. You can easily do heroics, m0, +2, lfr without needing to be brilliant. You can press whatever you like and still complete the content.

The high skilled players will surely not use this, and for medim players this will just be frustrating. You learn your class and improve your game, you get a sense of accomplishment when you evolve and then comes a player with absolutely no idea of their class and spec, but he presses one button and can easily match you. Great stuff.

Besides, what’s even the purpose of having different classes if everything plays the same? Do you want to play a retribution paladin? Cool, press brainlessly this button + divine toll. Want to play a shadow priest? Cool, press brainlessly this button + void erruption/dark ascension. So cool, so different

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This is exactly what will happen. Nobody will ever read the talents or spells. People will just spam one button with absolutely no idea of what’s foing on and finish a good portion of the content. The game is slowly turning into a brainless activity with no real fun or sense of accomplishment. In a few patches we will have one button that does all the rotation and all the mechanics for us. And at the end of the fight we will have full bis gear dropping for everyone of us. Such a cool game…

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I tested it out of curiosity on the PTR and found that the damage output of the highlight assist and one-button mode was similar, given that there is a delay introduced by watching for a highlight and then pressing it. The output was pretty average, but I believe that’s how it should be (i.e. enough to get by, engage with low-medium difficulty content, etc.)

I think this will open the doors to players with disabilities (poor mobility, chronic pain, poor coordination, dyslexia, etc.) whilst not allowing those using it to basically be OP. It’s a good balance IMO.

One thing I noted when testing it on a Guardian Druid, was that it would not suggest Ironfur and it seemed only too happy to waste the rage (capped at 100% with no spend suggestions.) I know Ironfur could be (and likely is) classed as a defensive, but it also deals damage depending on spec… Something to consider.

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I really feel this is a net negative to the game. The people this is aimed at don’t need to do flawless rotations because they primarily do legacy content or simple activities. Wanting better on-boarding for new players is a valid goal, but this is the wrong way to do it.

That’s not even to mention the one button rotation. You’ve banned one button macros in the past for the exact issues it will cause, and now you’re implementing it into the game under the guise of “accesibility”. There is no feasible interaction with this system that doesn’t devolve the game into a brainless monotonous activity

Players will always choose the path of least resistance, always.

2 Likes
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i don’t want these people in my content. Automation is abhorrent, like aimbot in FPS.

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The global cd is not enough you should get a overall dmg penalty if you play the lazy mode. Also there need to be a way to get those folks using the one button garbage to be excluded to queue up in pug m+ content or at least a filter to exclude the players using it

1 Like
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I think the global cd for the single button should not benefit from haste / global cd reduction methods.

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Rogue: it always assumes that you want Deadly Poison, so can’t do your rotation unless you have it on. I want wound poison for PvP. Not sure if it changes in pvp combat since queue times are eternal.

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I tested it on PTR today.
Well, I’m surprised with the feature that blizzard delivered that fast. It’s not that bad. I think the community is panicking more than understanding how it can be used.

My thoughts about one button:

  • it works very well for many melee classes.
  • Enchantment: One button + Storm strike + Lava lash. Provides almost the same results from someone doing the manual rotation. So, before you needed 15 buttons for shammy?? Well now 4 buttons are enough!! It is huge improvement :tada:
  • Retribution Combining the one button + judgement + blade of justice. Provides almost the same results from someone doing the manual rotation. You still needing to press some buttons manually, e.g. Hammer of light. To not be stuck in the 1.3 GCD
  • BM Hunter Combining the one button + barbe shot + kill command. I think it’s the same results :joy:
  • Frost mage : Underperforming. The spec is too complex and heavily based on conditionals, unlike others that only follow priority list.
  • Monk: It is underperforming. I don’t understand the spec. But following the list provided by Hekili I had more DPS :laughing:
  • Prot paladin The one button keeps all base mitigation up 99% of the time. I would say that Paladins are now the first spec to pick if you start to tank.

Assisted Highlight
Prot warrior: There are too many green icons glowing in the screen… It’s probably a bug to report.
Overall: I was running both (Hekili) and assisted highlight. Due the fact that Assisted highlight doesn’t glow CDs. I would say that Hekili can’t be replaced. If the goal is to reduce addons dependency and further replace Hekili, CDs should be covered.

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Considering it doesn’t use CDs and ignores utility, i really don’t see why there should be a penalty.

1 Like
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I don’t think so. In the future all those 1000 spells will turn into 4. 2 Resources builders, 1 mid damage 1 big damage!
Game will finally start getting ready for console. Next thing to fix is the amount of priority targets in a pack.
Tanking with a controller still challenging.