Feedback on cooldown manager
This post is mostly going to be some points of feedback comparing the cooldown manager capabilities to stock UI (with buff tracking through weakauras). I assume this won't really make it to anyone that matters, but I figure why not post it.
For a bit of background in how my UI has been setup for a long time, I've never used a big weakaura package for the classes I play. I have a few of the built-in action bars near the center of my screen, broken down into two groupings. Core rotational stuff and then utility stuff (defensives, cc, mobility, interrupts). The bars that actually have my hotkeys on them are hidden, and this allows me to arrange the buttons near the center of my screen however I want without messing up hotkey positions or making them unique per character.
For tracking buffs, I have a small addon I wrote that I self-describe as a really crappy weakauras because all it can do is display buffs I tell it to track and I can drag those buffs wherever I want on my screen. This same thing can be easily replicated with weakauras though, I just figured I would use the thing I wrote because I'm stubborn.
That results in my UI actually looking and functioning very similar to the cooldown manager that's in the game now. There are some differences that I think could either make the cooldown manager better, or could be applied to the standard action bar buttons that would let me continue to use my UI setup as I have before.
Things I like about the cooldown manager:
* It's very obvious when you go out of range of your target because the whole thing turns red. This is something I feel should be applied to the base buttons, or at least have an option to enable instead of just the hotkey turning red in the top-right corner if you're out of range * For things that have multiple charges, it shows the remaining cooldown until the next charge even when you have one charge available (thinking like Storm, Earth, and Fire as an example). With stock UI right now, when I have one charge available and a second is charging, I have to just guess based on the swipe how in sync or out of sync I am with Xuen because no numbers are displayed on the stock UI. They should be.
Things I don't quite like:
* I'm used to hitting a button and seeing it flash that I'm pressing the hotkey. It's apparently been feedback the game provides that I didn't realize I would miss. If I'm spamming Tiger Palm right now, the cooldown manager doesn't provide visual feedback that I'm hitting that button, even if it's being tracked. This is probably something I will get used to but I really miss the visual indicator that I'm hitting the button. * I really feel I need to be able to create multiple groupings of cooldowns being tracked that I can configure and position separate from one another. I'd like to be able to group my defensive tracking in one area, my cc in another, my mobility in another. I don't want to have 10 abilities displayed all next to each other and I have to quickly figure out which one I care about. I also think doing this will help resolve some potential issues of the aesthetics of the UI when you have an odd number of abilities you want to track and you don't want them all on one line. If you have 7 abilities to track and want two rows, you're going to have a dead spot that looks really bad since you can't "center" the display across multiple rows. * The above point definitely applies to buffs being tracked, probably more than anything. There are certain buffs that are good to know about, but not critical to your rotation. I don't want those to be side-by-side with important rotation buffs? As an example, Vivacious Vivification. It's good to know when I have a free heal, but I only need that information when I'm looking to heal myself. I'd rather look off to the side to see if I have that buff and not have to decipher it from the rotational buffs I'm tracking. * If I talent out of a spell that I was tracking, it's removed from the cooldown tracker. To some people that's probably really nice, but I find it a bit jarring when my buttons have moved around, and can easily mess with the aesthetics of how the bars are laid out. * I'm sure this has been said 1000 times, but not being able to add any spell we want to the buff tracker hurts a bit. I would like to track Vivacious Vivification on my windwalker monk but I can't.
TL;DR: It leaves me in a position of being unsure if I stick with my current UI implementation or swap to the cooldown manager. I think the base action bars and hotkeys could be improved to bring it closer to the cooldown manager functionality, which would give more options to players. And also allow multiple groupings of cooldowns and buffs/debuffs to be made.