For better or worse, a new single-button way to play World of Warcraft is changing the game: 'We've received overwhelmingly positive feedback'
Rotation assist, a new single-button way to play World of Warcraft, is literally game-changing. Introduced in the most recent patch 11.1.7, the feature has two flavors:
- Assisted Highlight, which highlights the toolbar button corresponding to what ability a player "should" use next for optimal gameplay.
- Single-Button Assistant, which for a small global cooldown penalty will let you just press a button repeatedly to cast the next ability.
"We've received overwhelmingly positive feedback regarding the feature," said associate game director Morgan Day. "We're hearing from all types of players that they're finding it valuable to them, especially the Single-Button Assistant. For some players, they’ve shared the game is more enjoyable to them using the assistant because it's allowing them to focus on what's in front of them instead of what's next in their rotation."
After a full patch of gameplay and a small mountain of hours spent testing, I'm ready to review the impact of this new feature on players and on WoW in general.
My credentials: I'm a Cutting Edge raider, with best-performance parses in raid of 98% in mythic and 99% in heroic difficulty, and I'm in the top 2% of mythic plus dungeon players worldwide by score. I've been playing (and professionally reporting on) World of Warcraft since second-push alpha testing of the original game.
How good is Assisted Highlight at the game?
Obviously a system that highlights the next button a player should press needs to be good at the game to be effective. And for rotation assist, your mileage will definitely vary depending on the class and specialization you play.
...Nearly all non-elite players will do better following Assisted Highlight prompts than with their own gameplay based on Warcraftlogs statistics.
Wowhead's guide writers did a nice job going over the simulations on this, but you'll basically lose between 2% and 23% of your perfectly-executed damage for damage classes and up to 60% as tanks, and almost no one was perfect to begin with. (Because tank damage equates to threat and rotation assist doesn't handle healing well at all, the feature is not recommended for use by tank or healing classes.) I did about 20% worse using Assisted Highlight than my own gameplay on most classes.
For damage classes, this means that Assisted Highlight recommendations are very, very good indeed. Even at 23% loss versus ideal play, nearly all non-elite players will do better following Assisted Highlight prompts than with their own gameplay based on Warcraftlogs statistics.
How effective is Single-Button Assistant?
Single-Button Assistant is extremely strong. For augmentation evokers, Wowhead estimated it was just 8% behind perfect gameplay; for destruction warlocks, it was 10% behind. For most specializations that don't have a new ability to cast with every global, its GCD penalty is minor. Tettles did a nice video showing how he topped DPS in a +17 mythic plus key—a very, very difficult dungeon—as a balance druid using the one-button rotation assist.
For fast-casting specializations that rely on keeping up damage over time spells or buffs, it may not perform well because the GCD penalty causes those stacks to drop off (my beast mastery hunter and retribution paladin, for example, suffered). But even the worst-performing specializations only lose about 30% DPS from the ideal using one-button RA, far above what many players do now.
That said, how well the very best players do with the one-button assistant may not translate to those players who actually use it most. Day said developers have been watching real-world results from players and are happy with the results.
"We've been monitoring data on the performance of the Single Button Rotation and feel it’s currently meeting our intentions for the feature," he said. "Our intent is to keep the assistant up to date when we do significant work on a specialization to ensure it is suggesting the right spells and abilities."
What are some of the effects of Single-Button Assistant being that good?
I'm already seeing casual guilds I'm affiliated with starting to nudge their players to use the one-button assist (whether they want to or not) if they don't demonstrate above-average gameplay. Players have also confided with me they're using it instead of learning their class, because it plays better than they could hope to in raid or in keys.
Players have also confided with me they're using it instead of learning their class.
A number of players who have disabilities, just want to experience game content without stressing about learning their class, or are trying out a new specialization or new encounters are loving it. Playing all content with friends, not getting yelled at in pickup groups, being able to focus on boss mechanics—it's fantastic, they tell me.
"I have arthritis in my hands and it's been a total game changer. Love it," wrote one typical commenter on Reddit.
At the highest levels, factors besides "what do I press next" play much larger roles in your overall performance, so top gameplay rankings are safe. Tettles did his #1 dps with rotation assist on a class he knew how to play very well. Putting a new player on a balance druid and plopping them in a +17 level mythic plus dungeon with Single-Button Assistant would not get the same results.
The biggest problem with Single-Button Assistant is that it's mind-numbing. It's not a short-term issue; it's a long-term worry, as players discover that for them, the best way to play the game could be done by a drinking bird, boring them to tears and causing them to stop playing.
The biggest problem with Single-Button Assistant is that it's mind-numbing.
"Some have shared it can be a bit fatiguing to continuously press a single button for play when using the Single-Button Assistant, which is great feedback," Day said. "We’re looking into options for improving usability on this front but do not have anything in the [11.2] Ghosts of K’aresh update or near future just yet to address this."
How does Assisted Highlight compare to Hekili?
Hekili is the most common rotation helper in World of Warcraft. It's also one of the add-ons that will quit working when Blizzard takes away its access to the combat log. It puts the next three best abilities in a row on your screen to guide you.
Hekili comes close to (but does not quite achieve) recommending perfect gameplay in many classes, and almost always beats Assisted Highlight recommendations. For starters, Assissted Highlight never recommends big player cooldown abilities, those damage-boosting spells that you only get to cast every minute or two or when conditions are precisely right.
Second, Hekili includes incredibly frequent updates to the optimal gameplay rotation as player theorycrafters discover new, better ways to do damage, so it's more up to date. I found that I did 20-25% worse with Assisted Highlight recommendations than I did with Hekili's while playing beast mastery hunter, a class I know very well.
You can make a sort of Hekili lite by making a toolbar with your most commonly used abilities and hitting them as Assisted Highlight lights them up, but it's more distracting and obstructs part of your screen, since it's interactable.
My final verdict
The one-button version is simultaneously a boon for casual players and one they likely will be pressured to play.
Assisted Highlight is a second-rate Hekili for players attempting to truly learn their class using the highlights. Single-Button Assistant is simultaneously a boon for casual players and one they likely will be pressured to play—something that, long term, may not be healthy for the game.
Day said that no new tweaks to the feature are coming in the next 11.2 patch, other than updated rotations for changing specializations, such as frost death knights and shadow priests. The real test will be when Hekili and other combat add-ons go away, leaving players to cope with rotation assist or to, finally, learn their classes.