With Midnight, World of Warcraft has received a new expansion and all classes have undergone a major overhaul. MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus took a look at a new class for the addon and utilized a tool from Blizzard – with a surprising yet frustrating result.
I was a Mythic Raider for a long time and I’m still in a guild that clears the mythic content each season. However, in the last raid of The War Within, the Manaforged Omega, I mostly sat it out – my class, the Outlaw Rogue, was simply useless there.
Frustrated that even good performance couldn’t compensate for the poor balancing, I put the whole game on ice for a while, until the pre-patch of Midnight, where all classes were revamped and many skills were removed.
When I finally returned, a lot had changed. My rogue played completely differently, I wanted to switch to Paladin for Midnight and addons were almost completely eliminated, though not as extensively as initially thought.
To find my way back into the game more easily, I thought to use the functions that Blizzard provides by default. And, oh boy … They did a really good job. Maybe too good.
WoW plays almost by itself now
World of Warcraft was too complex for newcomers for quite some time. Especially the many skills each class required led to a lack of clarity and overload of the interface.
Because of this, Blizzard introduced two new tools with Patch 11.1.7 designed to assist players in managing their class:
- the “1-button rotation”, where you only need to press one button, which always selects the currently best skill – with a longer cooldown
- and the rotation assistant (or
Highlight Suggestion
orAssisted Highlight
) which visually highlights a recommended skill on the bar.
After the long break, my guild offered me a few runs to at least get mounts and such and to not be a complete burden, I thought: before I completely fail and have to learn my class anew, I’ll just use the rotation aid, similar to the addon Hekili back in the day.
Honestly, I had low expectations, as I always considered myself a good player. When I suddenly saw myself on the DPS meter again, I started to doubt my abilities …
I’m dealing much more damage now, and I only press glowing buttons
The rotation helper works about like the Paladin back in Cataclysm: just press the skill that is glowing, and it will somehow work. Ideal for someone who doesn’t want to learn a new class, but just wants to join in.
What surprised me then is that I actually dealt damage. Not just a little, but significantly more than expected. Outlaw Rogues had been one of the worst DPS classes throughout the last raid and up to the end of TWW.
Now I suddenly found myself above some of my teammates who had much better gear. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t just about the tool. The class balance shifted significantly with the pre-patch, Outlaws were still weak, but relatively no longer complete losers. You can find a comparison in the latest DPS standings.
What surprised me more is that I could achieve so much with so little effort. According to Wowhead, the assistant leads to about 4% less damage than playing myself – a deal I gladly took, which also raised a bitter question:
Am I really such a bad player?
I used to think that I actually mastered my classes quite well. After all, I raid mythic content, although I haven’t been at the top in quite some time. The rotation assistant made me doubt that.
For if the game itself knows better what I should do, how good can I truly be? Many players similarly felt when they tried the 1-button rotation and had to realize that they are not as good as they thought.
The assistant accompanied me through the pre-patch and a large part of the leveling phase. By the way, it wasn’t boring because leveling has never been much of a challenge.
Still, the fear settled in me that I might really have gotten worse. At least until I was more often in dungeons. Because there I noticed where the weaknesses of the assistant lie.
A certain danger and a nasty trap
The rotation assistant does not take away my thinking, but merely the mechanical component of my class, which means: the part that I would eventually do automatically through muscle memory.
What sets a good player apart from others is the ability to react quickly and correctly to situations, and that is crystallizing more and more through tools like this. But exactly here, the assistant presents a dangerous trap:
- the glowing buttons tempt one to only look at the skill bar and find the next ability
- meanwhile, ground effects one is standing in or boss skills one is getting hit by are often overlooked
For use in more difficult dungeons or raids, the assistant is probably still useful but definitely requires a customized UI. And what I also noticed: The tool makes it more difficult to truly “learn” a class.
Instead of making me aware of which skills I use and above all, why, I just mindlessly press buttons. It took a while until I ignored the recommendations, especially while leveling.
Because the “ideal DPS rotation” is completely unnecessary if two skills are enough to defeat the opponents. But if those skills only come “ideally” late, I might need double the time to complete the fight.
Either way, the rotation assistant taught me respect – for players who are better than me, but also for Blizzard’s own understanding of the game. And honestly: When I look at the community sometimes, nobody should be ashamed of making the game a bit easier: The new WoW expansion has only been live for a day, but sweaters are escalating in dungeons
