A quick introduction on how to install and use the DPS rotation addon Hekili
Casting the right spells at the right time will cause your DPS to take off in World of Warcraft. This balance of spell use and timing is referred to as your “rotation” and it can be tricky to master when you are just starting out. In this article, we will talk about the WoW addon Hekili and how it can help you improve your rotation.
Hekili is a popular addon that helps prioritize the best spells in your rotation in World of Warcraft. It does this by showing a bar with a recommended cast sequence that adjusts based on your spec, combat situation (single target or AOE), and several other factors.
If you want the video version of this guide, feel free to check out this YouTube video I made!
Once you are done here, I would recommend reading my article: Best DPS Rotation Addon in WoW. In that guide, I put Hekili head-to-head with 4 other DPS rotation addons — MaxDps, Ovale, HeroRotation, and Conflict Rotation Optimizer (ConRo).
Features: What does Hekili do?
Hekili is an addon that attaches a dynamic spell bar to your user interface. This bar displays icons that match your character’s abilities. The icon that appears on the far-left side of the bar is known as the “Primary” spell and is the ability that Hekili suggests you cast next.
Once you start casting the ability, the bar will shift to the left and automatically reveal the next spell that you should cast.
Since it shows a few steps ahead, the addon effectively allows you to see a little into future possibilities. If you are a fan of the Mistborn book series, you can think of Hekili as a piece of “atium” that lets you see some outcomes you might take in the future. If you haven’t read Mistborn, you should. It is great!
In addition to including your basic class abilities, you can also set it up to include major cooldowns, defensives, and even interrupts (which works best for melee characters).
Setup: How to install Hekili
You can install Hekili using the same process as any other addon. The easiest way to get Hekili is to use an addon manager like Curseforge, but you can also install it manually if you prefer.
For a step-by-step guide, check out my article on How to Install WoW Addons.
How to use Hekili
Hekili works very well out of the box. After installing it, boot up your game, and you will see a basic cast sequence on your screen. From there, you can start mashing the buttons it tells you to.
By default, Hekili shows 3 icons and automatically detects whether you should cast single-target spells or AoE. However, if you want to include other cooldowns, interrupts, or defensives, further customization is required.
You can make these changes pretty easily by left-clicking the Hekili icon on the minimap and marking the circles you want to enable.
You can also move the Hekili bars to where you would like on your screen.
How to move Hekili bars
You can move the Hekili bars once you enter the addon options. To do this, simply type /hekili into chat and press enter or right-click the minimap button if enabled. Once the options window opens, you will be able to left-click and hold to move the bars around. Easy!
Customizing Hekili
In the options menu, you just opened to move your bars, there are several other customizations you can make. In the left-hand menu of the options, you can see the following categories:
- General
- Toggles
- Displays
- Spec list
- Priorities
- Abilities
- Gear and Trinkets
- Issue Reporting
- Snapshots
- Profile
Let’s walk through a few of these and how you can use them to customize the addon.
General & Issue Reporting
The general and issue reporting tabs include information on how you can contact the developers of Hekili with questions or report issues with the addon. Not much more to say about that, so let’s move on.
Toggles
The “toggles” options let you choose which categories of spells are shown. From here, you can change whether major cooldowns, interrupts, defensives, and potions are shown. You can also select the combat display mode you want (automatic, single target, AoE, etc…).
These options are the same as the ones shown when you left-click the minimap icon, so you would probably only use this tab if you disable the minimap button.
Displays
Your displays tab allows you to customize the recommendation bars’ appearance. You can apply a font change to all the bars at once or customize specific bars by selecting them in the menu.
One helpful change you may want to make is to adjust the size of your icons. For example, you can go into this menu and change the size of the primary spell to be larger if desired.
Spec List
Depending on what class you play, you should see a list of specializations in the left-hand window. From here, you can disable certain specs, assign your default potions, set up important cooldowns, and change settings related to the way Hekili recognizes enemies.
You can also make some changes to the speed with which spells show up to improve performance if you are running into FPS issues.
Priorities
The priorities tab includes settings for — you guessed it — the spell priorities used in the addon. By default, Hekili uses “ideal” rotations from SimulationCraft (simc). If you aren’t familiar with simc, it is a tool that top-end players use to estimate how much DPS they can do with different gear and in different situations.
In other words, Hekili takes that information on DPS estimates and gives the best rotation to reach that.
It won’t be perfect all the time, but it can be a great tool for learning your rotation or playing a large number of characters casually.
Abilities & Gear and Trinkets
The next two options—abilities & gear and trinkets—allow you to adjust individual spells or trinkets. You can disable spells or equipment from showing up completely or set limits on when they appear. Some limits you can set include whether you want to show it in non-boss combat, how many targets should be present before using it, and what “toggle” needs to be active.
Snapshots
Snapshot options are another advanced feature in Hekili. Without diving into too much detail, snapshots allow you to see the logic used to recommend a certain skill. To use snapshots, you can either use the keybinding ALT-SHIFT-[ to copy the logic or pause the recommendations and hover over the spell. This will show you the variables leading to that recommendation.
Again, most users won’t care much about this setting, but it is there if you feel the need to “debug” the recommendations.
Profiles
What addon would be complete without the good-old-fashioned profiles setting? Profiles allow you to save the changes you have made to your addon and share them across characters or with other players.
So there, you go… you now have a good feel for some of the ways you can customize Hekili. Now, for a common question…
Is Hekili Good?
That is a great question. If you watch videos and talk to players, you will quickly see mixed feelings about Hekili and rotation addons. Some players love it, while others despise it.
My thought is that Hekili can be useful when you are just starting with the game or a new class. If you want to play on several characters, Hekili can help identify spells that are important to cast. Once you get a feel for the class, you can probably scale back your use of it.
To measure this question more objectively, I tested my DPS before and after Hekili and then compared the improvement to other rotation addons. Then, my wife (who doesn’t play WoW) was nice enough to run the same tests and the results were really interesting! If you want to see how much Hekili and other DPS rotation addons help, check out this video:
Final Thoughts and Important Links
Hekili is a helpful addon for learning and improving your rotation. I think most players can get some benefit out of using the addon, especially for alt characters. In addition to great out-of-the-box functionality, Hekili offers some great customizability to more advanced users. If you are looking to improve your rotation, I recommend that you try out Hekili for yourself.
Authors: Hekili
Curseforge: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/hekili
GitHub: https://github.com/Hekili/hekili
Thanks for reading!
Hmm, the moving thing doesn’t work and forces me to task manager end task the game.. I can click on it and move it, but it never lets go of the panel, and you cant click, the buttons dont work, you can’t click on menus if you press ESC, etc – completely locks everything else and all it does is move around and you can’t let go
Interesting; I’ll have to look into it. There is a good chance that the pre-patch UI overhaul did something that is causing this issue. I’ll see if I can’t replicate the issue and let you know what I find.
Great article with proven results and information. Thanks for your input and sharing.
Thanks for reading!