News and Opinion

General news and opinion about WoW.

One Button to Rule Them All

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Blizzard recently announced a new feature that’s got the community riled up. A one-button rotation option will be introduced that automates the next optimal spell cast. On paper, it sounds like a dream come true for players who struggle with complex rotations or for those who want a more relaxed gameplay experience.

But there’s a catch.

The one-button option comes with a longer global cooldown (the gcd), meaning that while you gain simplicity, you lose speed. Blizzard says the intent is to provide an alternative for players who use addons like Hekili to guide their rotations. The idea is to give players a built-in option rather than relying on third-party solutions.

But is it really going to change the game? Let’s break it down.

Why It Won’t Matter at the Mythic Level

At the Mythic raiding level, this one-button option is not going to see much use. The problem is that gcd penalty. When you’re pushing hard content, every millisecond counts. Adding even a slight delay between abilities can make the difference between a kill and a wipe.

Mythic raiders are already primed to think on their feet. They’re analyzing cooldown windows, juggling procs, and reacting to boss mechanics while weaving in their DPS sequence. This one-button system can’t keep up with the speed and precision required at this level.

One potential use that I could see, though, is the highlighter feature that comes with it. Even for skilled players, having a quick visual cue as a reminder could be handy. Think of it as a built-in priority helper. You’re still pressing your own keys, but the highlighter points out your next best option.

That said, I can’t see anyone who is seriously aiming for Cutting Edge relying on the full one-button rotation setup. It’s just too clunky for high-end content. Not saying that it’s impossible, because I suspect there will be a group that manages to do so but it’ll be towards the end of the tier with massive nerfs to the raid and equally large buffs to the characters.

Who Will Actually Use This Feature?

I see this being most useful for newer players or those picking up a new class or spec. If you’re learning how to be a Shadow Priest after maining a Warrior, you’re probably overwhelmed by the number of spells. I’ve been a Priest main forever, and I still get overwhelmed. The one-button option lets you get your feet wet without feeling like you’re drowning in keybinds.

Start off pressing one button, get a feel for what abilities trigger when, and eventually transition to pressing individual keys as you get more comfortable. It’s a teaching tool, not a crutch, and that distinction matters.

Another group that might benefit is the casual players who aren’t pushing Mythic+ or raiding at a high level. For them, the convenience might outweigh the GCD penalty. The same goes for players with accessibility challenges who might find a one-button rotation genuinely helpful for maintaining steady performance.

The Real Impact: A Wake-Up Call?

There’s one aspect of this feature that might catch some players off guard: the reality check.

If you’ve been using addons like Hekili for a long time and suddenly find that your damage drops when using Blizzard’s built-in version, it might make you question just how much of your rotation was actually instinct versus following visual cues.

I’m not saying everyone who uses rotation guides is a bad player, but there’s a difference between knowing why you’re pressing a button and just pressing it because it lit up. This new system might be a bit of a rude awakening for some players who thought they were more skilled than they actually are.

Ultimately, this feature is less about helping high-end players and more about making the game approachable for those who struggle with complex rotations. As long as it’s framed as a stepping stone rather than a solution, it’s not inherently bad.

The real key will be community perception. If players start using it as a crutch rather than a training tool, it could lead to some awkward encounters where one-button users find themselves vastly underperforming compared to their peers.

As always, the key to mastering your class is understanding why you’re making certain choices, not just following an automated sequence. If this feature helps players transition from basic to advanced play, great. But if it becomes a band-aid for bad habits, then it will end up being another unused option in the settings.

Thoughts on the Upcoming Raid Renown

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With the next raid, Blizzard is building upon the finery buff that was added in the first season. Raiders would receive a gradually increasing buff over time as they worked their way through the raid, and this week is the final amount where it will cap at an 18% bonus. The Gallagio Loyalty Rewards club aims to build upon this with additional rewards and features while raid teams progress their way through the raid. There are 20 Renown tracks which means there will be at least 20 weeks of raid because you can only progress one Renown level per week. We can easily acquire Renown just by participating in the raid by defeating bosses or knocking out various Lieutenants throughout the raid. If you happen to fall behind, there are catchup mechanics where more reputation will be earned on kills until you get closer to parity.

The big prize that stands out is the return of the bullion currency (Puzzling Cartel Chip) which can be used for a player to redeem to a vendor for any weapon, trinket, or special item from the Undermine raid. Like what we had back in Season 4 of Dragonflight, these are items on their own upgrade track (a maximum of rank 14).

Unfortunately, the two Puzzling Cartel Chips drop at Renown 17 and Renown 19.

I would much rather see the Cartel Chip moved up earlier. For it to be released at week 17 and week 19 is fairly useless because it equates to being at a similar point to where we are right now in Nerub-ar Palace. Seriously, we would get new toys 4 months after the raid releases. I’d prefer to see one come out at week 12 (after 3 months) and the next one at week 16 (after 4 months). It gives us time to enjoy where it might impact progression, especially for any mid to late mythic progression teams.

In terms of other rewards, I would also advocate for another catalyst charge or two in some of the earlier Renown tracks just to help with gear flexibility and bad luck protection, especially for teams who are just unfortunate or who have a slightly imbalanced roster for tier sets.

It’s also odd to me that Enchanted Crests aren’t anywhere to be found in the reward track here, as they were offered in the other Renown reputation tracks outside of the raid. I would add consider adding an Enchanted Heroic Crest somewhere around Renown 10 and then an Enchanted Gilded Crest around Renown 14 just to further help players (and their alts) with crafting pieces as those will continue to maintain relevancy for alts and help out players who are behind on their gear (whether it’s due to playtime or as bad luck protection).

After testing the PTR the previous weekend when it was available for normal bosses, I appreciate the lobby area, which has all of the profession tables, vendors, and craft orders. I can see them coming in handy in the future and it’ll save raid groups time if they need to grab something.

Renown 18 comes with increased movement speed and an Auctioneer, but since we can mount around inside anyway, I feel like this particular reward isn’t as necessary. I suspect many raid teams will have at least one character with some kind of Brutosaur.

The Augment Rune vendor is a great touch, even if it comes in at Renown 14. It might be a potential money machine for those with an army of alts to simply pop in the raid, grab the rune from the dispenser, then resell it (assuming they’re tradeable, to begin with).

I like the innovation going on here with the Renown feature and can’t wait for it to go live in the next patch! But please consider changing the order of that Cartel Chip reward!

Crests and Flightstones Need to be Alt Friendly

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With the upcoming The War Within expansion for World of Warcraft, we’re getting some cool new features like Warbands and reputation consolidation (at the cost of Human Diplomacy, sadly). But if we really want to make it easier and more fun to play with our alts, we need to take another look at how we gear them up. Right now, the system for Crests and Flightstones is a massive pain, especially if you’re trying to gear multiple characters.

The Current Problem

I’ve got a Priest and a Shaman both sitting at item level 527, which is pretty close to max (barring some vault upgrades). But when I think about levelling up my Paladin, Mage, and Evoker, it feels like an insurmountable grind. Running endless dungeons to collect Crests just isn’t appealing. To make things worse, Crests and Flightstones can’t be sent to your other characters, even though other in-game currencies can in TWW. This really slows down progress for alts.

Some Ideas to Fix This

Discounted Upgrade Crests and Stones

A great solution would be to offer discounted upgrades for Crests and Flightstones for alts. We already have something similar for gear upgrades. For example, if you get a new belt, you can upgrade the ilvl of it to match your current belt at a cheaper rate (no Crests, just Flightstones).

Why not extend this to our alts?

Imagine if once your main character fully upgrades their gear set to a certain level, like with the The Awakened Aspects achievement, your alts could then upgrade their gear more cheaply. This would reward your hard work and make gearing up alts a lot less painful.

Exchange Rates for Crests and Flightstones

Another idea is to let players buy Crests and Flightstones for their alts using an exchange system. Many of us have loads of Crests and Flightstones just sitting there unused on our main characters. I think my Priest has like 450 Aspect Crests just collecting dust. If we could trade them at, say, a 3:1 ratio, it would make those extra resources useful again. This way, we wouldn’t have to grind so much to gear up our alts.

Better Boss Drops and Incentives

On a completely different note, we also need to talk about raid rewards. Right now, the last two bosses in any raid drop the same level Crests as the earlier bosses in the instance. But bosses like Raszageth, Echo of Neltharion, and Sarkareth are a lot tougher. In Heroic raids, for example, it would make sense for these bosses to drop higher-level Crests like Aspect Crests instead of just Wyrm Crests.

This change could also keep players interested in completing entire raids. Right now, when I join pickup raids, I notice many players quit after getting their weekly vault rewards from the first six or so bosses. If the final bosses offered better rewards, more players might stick around to finish the raid or decide to give it a few pulls just to see.

Wrapping It Up

This expansion is a perfect chance for Blizzard to make the game more friendly for players with alts. By adding discounted upgrades and an exchange system for Crests and Flightstones, the game could become a lot more enjoyable for those of us who like to play multiple characters. Not only that, by tweaking raid rewards to match the difficulty of bosses, Blizzard could keep more players engaged throughout the whole raid. We can do it with the power of… uh, friendship!

In the meantime, I’m going back to chain-running dungeons to try to max out my Paladin before expansion launch.

Idea: Could LFR Boss Mechanics Reward Gameplay?

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LFR has a reputation for being a raid mode that’s already mindless and easy. LFR Raszageth was an exception, but we’ll chalk that to a one-off. With today’s release of the second wing of Aberrus, everyone’s queuing in for a shot at tier and trinkets. On a Tuesday morning, I see that many of the players are choosing to ignore some of the mechanics and I’m sure that’s okay to do if you’re already geared and can survive a few things. I do catch the odd player here and there who’s not sure what’s going on or struggling when they’re targeted with certain abilities. What if there was a way to teach and incentivize the players in LFR to do certain things correctly?

At the end of Shadowlands (Season 4), all expansion raids were back in circulation but with some new affixes. If you completed the mechanics, you’d gain a buff whether it’s to haste or throughput or movement speed. That was a neat way to add some extra challenge and reward. Why not take that concept and introduce it to a few bosses and abilities in LFR that are staple mechanics that can be commonly found on other bosses? What I’m suggested is if players execute a given mechanic properly, reward the raid with a positive buff.

On this Rashok screenshot above, you can see Doom Flames is in the progress of being launched. Some of them are soaked, but others aren’t. Normally, any missile that doesn’t hit a player results in the whole raid taking damage per missed attack. If all of the pools are soaked, let’s provide the whole raid with 10 seconds of haste.

In Assault of the Zaqali, players can hurl these boulders over the edge at designated spots with the red column of light indicating there’s a wall climber ascending. One idea could be that if the raid successfully eliminates five wall climbers with boulders, everyone’s attacks has a chance to be duplicated onto one nearby target for 6 seconds.

When raid mechanics get missed, the healers are often punished because it’s on them to heal through what (admittedly little) damage goes out. At least this way, it provides extra onus to the DPS players. Experiments last stage involves Rionthus’ Temporal Anomaly where he gets a shield if the orb doesn’t get booted away and I guess that sort of punishes DPS players a bit as they have to punch through a shield. Anyway, the point here is the idea that proper execution can lead to a small, minor performance boost and players can feel good about themselves in the process. Hopefully, this will encourage better play that could translate to normal raid difficulty and above.

Mythic Dungeon Season 1 Isn’t Fun

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I want to take a moment and just discuss the state of keys and dungeons for this first season of Dragonflight. There’s some definite negativity going around with the dungeons, the affixes, and the season in general. I’m not immune to it and I understand it. But I’ve never participated in a season where I’ve witnessed players just bailing on keys mid-run.

This just happened to me the other day. I mean, yeah it’s Tyrannical this week, but I don’t think it was impossible. It would’ve been very close.

Anyway, I find the atmosphere around keys have been quite gloomy and not as optimistic. Some of my friends in previous seasons who aimed to push and test their ability to climb as high as possible aren’t going for it this season. They’re content to just get their +20s done and unlock their portals then call it until the next season.

Why Is That?

Because it’s not fun!

Thundering is just not enjoyable at all. You get a buff that’s difficult to discern in what is often a visual cornucopia of ground effects, spell effects, and other bullshit on your screen. In order to handle it effectively, you need to have some Thundering Weak aura installed that gives you and your team the best chance of clearing it at the right time so you can track who has what debuff and where they are. It can be hard to tell the differences between two shades of gray when you’re on other sides of the room or a mob pack without it.

Seriously, I would’ve made the positive a bright purple and the negative a Lucio green or something to make it pop that much more.

Furthermore, if you fail to clear it, you get stunned and you take damage that normally isn’t bad by itself and is survivable, but when combined with other incoming attacks is often lethal to one person. It’s at the point where I’ll clear it within 5 seconds right away to not have to deal with it. The 30% buff to performance just isn’t worth the risk.

Let’s look back.

Shadowlands Season 1

  • Prideful: It was okay, but if you didn’t utilize the Prideful buff, you risked completely bricking your key. You sure did feel amazing though when you had the Prideful buff.
  • Tormented: Better. You got to pick a buff. Your character got stronger and stayed that way for the course of the dungeon. Depending on your role, there were certain must-have picks. It may have been boring, but it wasn’t actively punishing.
  • Encrypted: Easily one of my favourites. The relics were great and it spawned a mob that you had to deal with which buffed your party temporarily. Priest Boon of Ascendance with near-unlimited cooldown recovery was just fun even if it was for a few seconds. You could tailor your routes accordingly by targeting Wo and using invisibility to get around.
  • Shrouded: Alas, this one was also kind of boring since it was just a flat stat buff as you progressed. But if you defeated the Infiltrators, you still gained a buff and you could feel your character get that much stronger over time within the dungeon.

None of the ones here felt overly punishing. Even if the affixes themselves seemed dull, that’s okay. Let the dungeon itself provide that fun factor.

I won’t touch too much on the BfA affixes. Those ones were just extra things that made the dungeon more challenging and didn’t offer much of a benefit except for Awakened which was neat and allowed for creative pathing with the Obelisks and the alternate universe.

In any event, Thundering doesn’t provide an impactful performance when playing. I’m not sure how I would really fix it. One thing I would do is make it less punishing — Remove the stun if two people don’t clear and just leave a DoT on the affected. At least it gives the players some chance of recovery. If they do it, great. If not, well they’re dead anyway. A DoT plus a stun is excessive. It’s so punishing that it leads average players (like myself) to not even risk a long duration of the buff. If it was just a few DoT ticks, I can make that tradeoff calculation in my head and decide whether it was worth that extra party damage and healing through it.

The seasonal affixes have the opportunity to make even the most dreadful dungeons appealing.

King’s Rest?

Shrine of the Storm?

Sanguine Depths?

De Other Side?

Cathedral?

I absolutely hated healing through all of these, but give me Encrypted or Tormented and even the most hated dungeons go from “hell no!” to “okay, fine!”. As for the other dungeon affixes, I don’t have a strong opinion about them one way or the other. The Bolstering change has been incredible. This week with Tyrannical, Bolstering, and Volcanic is a great push week. Managed to get to +2400 on my alts to the point now where both my Mage and my Evoker have more portals than my Priest. But for the designers, I implore you. Incentivize the players with the benefit of doing the seasonal affix. Don’t punish them. If you want to make dungeons difficult, the rotating weekly affixes already do that. If you want a challenge, then let the dungeon trash or boss do that. But adding another pain point in the form of a seasonal affix that operates under “If you don’t do this, bad things will happen” is backbreaking. Make the seasonal affix something that players look forward to and are eager for.