Blizzard Feedback and Philosophy for the Personal Cooldown Manager in Patch 11.1.5

Posted 2025/03/07 at 2:07 PM by Archimtiros

Thank you for writing these thorough posts so quickly! We do have plans to allow you to hide or rearrange elements on the new Cooldown Manager in a future patch, however the specifics of how that works are yet to be determined. We are reading and noting all your feedback about feature requests, but can’t speak to much at this time that’s outside the scope of this PTR.

Because elements in the tool can’t be customized, we wanted to share a little philosophy behind what we’ve chosen to include and whether to make something an icon or bar. We want the Cooldown Manager to have all the information you need to play your rotation for a spec - you can just turn it on for a spec you’ve never played and you’re good to go.

But it doesn’t show everything - it aims to clarify and filter information to help you play with intention. There are a lot of buffs and such that WoW specs gain that don’t affect their choices, like short stat buffs or maintenance buffs that tend to stay up through the course of normal play. If a proc causes an ability icon to light up, we generally don’t show an icon for it because the highlight already communicates it’s present. Not showing those makes the information you do care about easier to see.

In particular we’re careful about what shows as bars, because they’re fairly “loud.” For something to be a bar, it needs to be something where knowing when it will end affects your decision making somehow.

One of the reasons feedback about which abilities are shown (or not shown) and where they’re categorized is so valuable is that it helps us find important information we might not be showing or remove extraneous information so you can focus on what matters most. For feedback on bars in particular, it’s helpful to understand your gameplay around when those effects will end.

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Comments

Comment by HavocR24

Until I can choose what to track and customize every buff individually, this feature will be much worse than using weakauras.
But still a step in the right direction I suppose.

Comment by Peacemoon

I think Blizzard's UI Devs are going to have their work cut out to try replicate weak auras and how advanced they are. And I'm talking about simple WAs you just use for your spec cooldowns, not advanced raid stuff.

Comment by Miral007

ok but what's the reason for not making them customizable?

Comment by CashmereWizard

WeakAuras at home but I cant customize it? Step in the right direction but still pass for now. You can create basic icon/bar weak auras with any spell ID in 1 minute, and you can choose what you see and dont see. Theres the "loud" portion they are talking about. Why push out an admittedly half baked feature? Just release it when its ready.

Comment by Adaren

ok but what's the reason for not making them customizable?

They are making them customizable; it's just not ready yet. Future patch. Second sentence of the blue post.

Comment by CashmereWizard

ok but what's the reason for not making them customizable?

They are making them customizable; it's just not ready yet. Future patch. Second sentence of the blue post.

Clearly OP was talking about making them customizable from the get go and not releasing this UI element half cooked, but you can be obtuse I guess.

Comment by Linaori

In particular we’re careful about what shows as bars, because they’re fairly “loud.” For something to be a bar, it needs to be something where knowing when it will end affects your decision making somehow.

Okay but it also shows crusading strikes...

Comment by twitchcannon

ok but what's the reason for not making them customizable?

Second sentence.

WeakAuras at home but I cant customize it?

Second sentence.

Literally doing this so I can see how many comments under this miss the second sentence in their haste to post discourse. And if you mean *more* customizable past what they are talking about - use your words and let Blizzard know that's what you want. Directly. Specifically to them.

Comment by Zentail

Note that this is no way was ever meant to replace WeakAuras. It is a simple addition to the UI to help people who don't use WeakAuras (which, frankly, is probably the high majority of the playerbase). This is an amazing addition for those people. If you use WeakAuras, there is very little chance this was ever going to replace things for you.

Comment by hadware2

Give us night elf paladin

no, please.

Comment by Floruitshow

Nice change! It's a win in my books, as this is a much nicer experience for new players of a spec to quickly get started without having to set up weak auras and such.

Comment by Mementh

ok but what's the reason for not making them customizable?

They are making them customizable; it's just not ready yet. Future patch. Second sentence of the blue post.

Hide or move is not customization vs what its intending to replace / be first version of !

I recall we had this, spell alerts, they are one of the first things turned off when you start to use other mods, they are good to start, but become less useful as you add other mods.

I see this as a expansion of that feature, how is it not?

weak auras are more powerful for multiple things, useful for alot of things more than alerts!

Comment by Tomi89

Give us night elf paladin

Give us humand druids and shamans

Comment by NineIron

I suppose this could be helpful for new players? I don’t really see how it has any impact on those already subbed. Seems like if you’ve made it this far into wow’s life cycle, you either don’t care about these things, moved your action bars to a more central location to mimic weak auras, or just downloaded weak auras. I don’t see how this change can benefit any of these people. Until it matches weak auras, there’s no point for any established player to use it

Comment by Hiptoss

Can we FINALLY get a Maelstrom Weapon tracker?

Comment by DCCXVIII

So far I still haven't seen anyone tell me what this actually does. Last time I checked, CD's already told us when they where no longer on CD. So I have no idea what this new feature actually does that isn't already done by the default UI.

Comment by FerLuque1696

Watch Afenar's WA as example. Its pretty sweet

Comment by sunman42

Play with.... intention? And abandon 20 years of reflexive button mashing, the ancient tradition of the WoW community (other than Mythic raiders and their like)? Surely you jest.

Comment by Tastelikelemon

This will be quite nice of an addition for people who use basic addons to customize those things either way , now tho , they gona be part of the game always updated and working well , good addition!

Comment by ArcusOfBloodhoof

So it's just personal resource bar v2? Not customizable, not comprehensive, not going to solve the issue it's created to address.