Wowhead’s Cooldown Manager UI Guide
Cooldown Manager Customizer AddonEdit Mode Expanded Addon
By default, the Manager prioritizes spells in a way that makes sense for leveling, but isn’t necessarily endgame optimal.
Despite the irony of using an addon to improve a tool meant to reduce dependency on addons, the Cooldown Manager Customizer addon addresses one the new feature’s main limitations, allowing players to decide which spells are shown:
As you’d expect, hiding an ability with the addon simply removes it from the UI, though you cannot add spells that aren’t currently learned.
What it doesn’t do is allow players to rearrange the position of abilities, such as putting Raging Blow in front of Bloodthirst, though the developer of Edit Mode Expanded is currently working on this functionality as well.
There does appear to be an issue in which the addon can rearrange the order of abilities, though it doesn’t seem to happen on every character.
Even with addon support, the Cooldown Manager still isn’t a perfect replacement for Bartender, ElvUI, or an extensive suite of WeakAuras, lacking the extensive customization and control they give players. There’s also redundancy, as the Cooldown Manager presents players with a pre-built action bar, but does not allow you to keybind any of those abilities, so you still need a regular action bar somewhere (and probably visible, since the main bar also cannot be hidden).
So while the cooldown manager may not be particularly exciting for players already using addons and weakauras, it’s important to remember that isn’t really meant for them either. It’s meant for new players leveling up for the first time, GeForce NOW players without access to less popular addons, or players who simply don’t want to maintain extra third-party tools. Everyone approaches this game differently, so catering to a wider variety of players and raising the informational floor is ultimately good for everyone. As far as a first pass goes anyway, it does that job well enough and should only improve as time goes on.
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