How to use the New Assisted Highlight & Single Button Assistant

Blizzard has introduced two new features – the Assisted Highlight and the Single Button Assistant – designed to help players learn and understand their class rotations. This guide will break down what these features do, how they work, and most importantly, how you can use them effectively.

Blue is Assisted Highlight & Gold arrow is Single Button Assistant

What They Do and Don't Do

At their core, both features operate similarly: they examine your class and specialization, then suggest which abilities you should be using and when, all in real-time. Typically, players would rely on third-party websites like Wowhead or Icy Veins to find ideal rotations. Blizzard aims to reduce this reliance.

The rotation suggestions consider various factors, including:

• Debuffs: Essential debuffs your class needs to track. For example, an Unholy Death Knight relies on maintaining Festering Wounds on a target, applied by Festering Strike. The assistants will ensure Festering Strike is prioritized as soon as the debuff falls off or is about to.

• Procs: Ability procs that influence your rotation.

• Enemy Count: Automatically switching from single-target abilities to Area-of-Effect (AoE) abilities

  when it's more beneficial due to multiple grouped enemies.

What They Don't Do

It's important to understand the limitations of these tools:

• They won't use or suggest major offensive cooldowns or any defensive cooldowns.

• They will not suggest interrupts for enemy spell casts.

• They won't suggest crowd control abilities, potions, or trinkets.

• Crucially: The Single Button Assistant does not auto-play the game for you. It's a tool, not a bot.

Assisted Highlight vs. Single Button Assistant

Let's differentiate between the two features, starting with Assisted Highlight.

Assisted Highlight

To enable it, open your game menu, go to Options, then Advanced Options, and check the box to enable Assisted Highlight. Once activated and you engage an enemy, the game will highlight the ability you should use on your action bar. After you press it, the next recommended button will highlight, and this continues until you disengage from combat.

Single Button Assistant

This feature is added to your action bar directly from your spellbook. Open your spellbook, look in the top right corner, and drag that button onto your action bar, assigning it to your desired hotkey. Now, this single button will automatically cycle through your recommended abilities every time you press it.

You might be wondering, "Why use the Assisted Highlight when I can just hotkey one button and do the same thing?" This is a great question, and I'll expand on it shortly, but the main reason is that using the Single Button Assistant results in a significant DPS loss due to a Global Cooldown (GCD) penalty.

The Main Benefit and Primary Tool to Use

World of Warcraft's leveling process is fairly quick, and new players can quickly become overwhelmed with the sheer number of abilities unlocked. These tools make the learning curve less challenging and will give you a good grasp of your class's core rotation.

I highly recommend that you primarily use the Assisted Highlight over the Single Button Assistant. 

Here are three main reasons why:

1. It visually highlights your class's core rotation.

2. It helps you develop the necessary muscle memory for pressing different keybinds.

3. There is no GCD penalty associated with using it.

Can All Roles Utilize This?

The short answer is yes.

• DPS and Tanks can utilize these tools to efficiently learn and play their class's damage rotations.

• Healers can also use these tools, but keep in mind it only suggests damaging abilities. It's not going to suggest your Flash Heals, Rejuvenates, Chain Heals, etc.

A Deeper Dive into the Single Button Assistant

In my opinion, the Single Button Assistant is primarily an accessibility feature, although it does have specific uses. The main reason I believe this is due to the GCD penalty associated with using the tool.

Your Global Cooldown (GCD) is the time you must wait before you can use your next ability. This is why, even if you use an instant cast spell or a melee ability, you still experience a brief period where you can't press another button. The Single Button Assistant applies a 25% GCD penalty once it's pressed.

Is This 25% Penalty Noticeable?

Absolutely. If you've been playing WoW and are comfortable with your class, you will immediately notice and feel that 25% penalty as you go through your rotation.

How About a Noticeable Damage Difference?

The answer, again, is yes. Let's use a simple example with hypothetical numbers. GCDs differ for every class and change depending on stats, but let's use a standard 1-second GCD. This means you have to wait 1 second before you can use your next ability. With a 25% penalty, you're now waiting 1.25 seconds before each ability.

Let's say you have a 5-minute boss fight, and there are two players casting the same spell that hits for 1000 damage:

• Player 1 has a 1-second GCD.

• Player 2 has a 1.25-second GCD due to the 25% penalty.

Calculation (5 minutes = 300 seconds):

• Player 1: 300 seconds / 1 second/attack = 300 attacks * 1000 damage/attack = 300,000 damage.

• Player 2: 300 seconds / 1.25 seconds/attack = 240 attacks * 1000 damage/attack = 240,000 damage.

  
  

That's a pretty substantial difference!

For Healers: A Word of Caution

Some healers might be curious if they can use the Single Button Assistant to easily throw in some damage while also healing, essentially freeing up some keybinds. The short answer is yes, BUT—and this is a big BUT—know that once you press that Single Button Assistant keybind, the GCD penalty triggers for everything.

This means that even if you press this button once or twice and then immediately need to cast a heal, your healing spell will be delayed due to that GCD penalty. Using our 1-second to 1.25-second example, if your heals are normally going off every second, and you press the single button assistant, you're now waiting 1.25 seconds before you can cast your next heal. Personally, I'm not using it for healing in any serious content.

When to Use the Single Button Assistant

In general, this isn't to say that you can't use this tool at all. I just want to temper expectations and inform you. This simply isn't viable for pushing high-end content. It's better delegated as an accessibility use or for story content and lower difficulty endgame content, such as:

• Low-level Delves

• Heroic and Mythic 0 Dungeons

• LFR (Looking For Raid)

• Possibly Normal raids

With that said, I'll give you a personal example of when I'm going to use the Single Button Assistant. I have a Restoration Shaman that I push content with. However, I have not learned either of the DPS specs (Enhancement or Elemental), and I don't have any desire to learn them for casual content. So, when I'm clearing world quests or story content, I'm going to switch over to the Elemental spec, plug in a generic talent tree, and then throw the Single Button Assistant as my number 1 hotkey. This way, I can easily breeze through and enjoy the content without needing a full DPS setup.

Final Thoughts

There you have it—pretty much everything you need to know about these new rotation tools. DPS, Tanks, and Healers can all use them in different capacities. I personally think they're a great new feature to help people learn a new class, or even improve their understanding of their own class, without constantly having a rotation guide on a second monitor.

I'm curious about your thoughts! Tell me if, or how, you plan to use these new features.