Track Trinkets, Potions, and Consumables
While the Cooldown Manager has been a great improvement to player's ability to natively track buffs, debuffs, and important cooldowns, it's been limited by only showing what Blizzard designers want us to see. Although that's still the case and players cannot make freeform alerts for anything and everything they conceivably want to see, the developers have recognized that the current system lacks a lot of functionality.
Trinkets can be seen in the cooldown portion of the manager, and their buffs are confirmed to be added to the buff tracker as well.
Blizzard has also highlighted better consumable management, though it's still unclear is exactly how that will work. Presumably helping players keep track of things like flasks, weapon oils, and Well Fed, these would file under the buff tracking portion of the Cooldown Manager, though cluttering that line of important combat information with an hour long food icon isn't exactly useful either. Even having an icon appear only when the buff isn't active would still be potentially invasive, since most players don't need their flasks or food buffs active all the time - only when engaging in higher-end content such as Mythic+ dungeons or raids.
Hour-long flask durations and food buffs are important, but don't need to be prominently displayed in the middle of the screen.
What would be really be really useful is the ability to separate buff tracking into multiple groups, rather than just the current set of icons and bars. This way, players could keep their important combat buffs front and center, or separate them however they see fit, while moving consumable information to a less prominent corner of the screen.
Ping to Share Resource Information
Developers are also expanding the ping system, allowing players to ping their action bar, player frames, and Cooldown Manager to announce more information to the rest of the group.
Ping your health bar to share your current health percentage to the group. Sadly it doesn't seem to shout "I need healing!"
Ping your resource bar to share your amount of current mana, energy, rage or other resource levels, so that overzealous tank knows its time to stop and drink.
Ping your own action bars to share cooldown information, which is helpful for knowing if a major external is available.
Everyone needs to know!
Configure Healer Raid Frames
Blizzard has also shared their intention to allow healers to better configure which kinds of healing buffs show on raid frames, and how they're prioritized. This is a major benefit for healers, as cluttered raid frames have been a constant source of criticism, especially when it causes important encounter de/buffs to become less visible.
Everyone needs to know!
There's not much too say here until we see it in action, though that the addition of a third section of the Cooldown Manager gives us a lot of hope that Blizzard will continue to find new ways for players to customize exactly what information is displayed and how they want to see it.
Patch 12.1
PTR Development Notes
Discord Integration
First Look & WoWCast Reveal
Class Changes
DPS Cooldowns Nerfed
Endgame Gearing Changes
Season 2 Tier Set Bonuses
Season 2 Tier Set Appearances
Content Updates
Addons and Aura Filters
Housing Blueprints and Pets
Season 2 Dungeon Rotation
