Proving grounds for Monks

[Thegeeza]

So I'm a bit curious as to how everybody who has done proving grounds so far has done on their monk.

I did my first run through of it getting through gold dps fairly easily. Then i attempted endless and reached wave 38 on my first attempt. I could have gone further as well but i accidently hit my flying serpent kick hotkey and got myself finished by one of the banshee bombs. To me the dps didn't feel that bad especially with the buff to Storm, Earth and Fire. Basically I saved the damage increases for the large sha on wave 5 and 10 and then every other 5 waves after those.

For the FOS "You're doing it wrong" I did the Silver damage in Brewmaster really easily, so for monks that should be much easier than a lot of other classes given the high dps brew can put out.

I havn't attempted the tank one yet though and I'm wondering how brew will go. iv'e always felt a bit squishy playing brew and I'm wondering how the ilvl squish would go compared to other thanks.

[britishbubba]

I got to wave 34 for the tank challenge after 5 tries at it. Probably could have gone more waves, but I kinda stopped caring since I already had the title.

Only thing I really took from doing it as BrM was that I ended up having to take power strikes to make up for the loss of haste and t15 4pc (since 4pc is disabled in there). PS was the only way I could generate the chi to clear stagger enough which leads me onto the next part... Had to swap forges (but not gems) from crit > haste > mastery over to mastery > haste > crit just to survive some of the damage that the later waves put out. Other than that I didn't really do anything special. Used Xuen to my advantage by having him tank mobs for me sometimes (mainly on wave 26 as the set of 3 winged mobs for some reason wrecked me) and also to offset the part that the panda in the middle liked to ST things that I didn't want her to focus down first anyway.

dropping your statue is worth it as it will cast shields onto the panda you're protecting, and it seems that occasionally mobs will target the statue and kill it, sparing you or the panda some of their health.

Without those changes I personally felt WAY too squishy to deal with the damage the mobs put out. I assume other people have had a better time of it than me and made it a lot farther.

[Cov]

The silver damage as mistweaver is quite easy aswell. had plenty of time on every wave.

[Thegeeza]

The silver damage as mistweaver is quite easy aswell. had plenty of time on every wave.

I'm thinking the people who may have the hardest time with the feat of strength would be pures that dont have a healing or tank spec. I can see it being hard to tank or heal on a rogue or mage.

[Hyve]

The silver damage as mistweaver is quite easy aswell. had plenty of time on every wave.

I've played Mistweaver since day one on the Beta, and I found Silver to be fairly easy, but stepping up to gold has had me pulling my hair out. The damage done overall just chews through all of our HoTs. You're so reliant on Uplift & Enveloping Mists that not generating the Chi needed is the difference a difficult run, and an impossible run.

Also by the time the third wave comes, the DoT abilites kick in and the damage they do is higher then out HoT heals. It can be removed by healing the target to 90% health, but the only reliable way to do so is to cast Surging Mists, which chews up your mana and during that time you've also got your Tank being smashed to hell.

I'm not complaining as such, I love the challenge I do, but I'm finding it a little tough to believe that in my 8 years experience, and having solo healed raid bosses during Heroic Progression, that this is tougher and that it is my own fault, and not a balance issue.

[DechCJC]

As a mistweaver i've been struggling greatly, when I first went in because I didn't have much spirit, It was reduced to literally 4k and that was hopeless. So I reforged back into spirit, regemmed, spirit flask etc - At 8k spirit and many attempts I was FINALLY able to get through gold.

Endless, for me, is impossible. Like the poster above I find it REALLY hard to believe that this is a skill issue, there's just no way in hell that you can keep your mana up in these kind of situations, the only way for us to heal through the large damage that the tanks take + the constant dots is for us to surge or get really luck with chi generation. I've found myself having to CC/interrupt as much as I can as the damage is just too much. The RNGness of mana teas can make or break it too, when your mana is this limited and your crit chance has been reduced, getting 2 stacks instead of 1 can be a life saver.

My best score in endless atm is wave 9, I'm certain that you can go further than that but it's going to rely some luck and serious reforges etc to get that far. I was really looking forward to this, I really wanted a challenge - But being limited to such tiny mana regen whilst having to deal with such spikey damage at times is ridiculous, we're pretty much forced into surging misting at least a couple times each wave unless you have some sort of CD ready. The general rule of thumb to always use ReM isn't cutting it either, I have to only ReM if we actually need it. It would be good if there was some sort of mana pool that spawned every so often at a random spot that you had to run over. Currently I barely even have to move, it's literally just about standing there and healing the fuck out of them whilst interrupting/CCing at appropriate times. If they introduced a mechanic to get mana back but required you to be much more mobile i'd be all for it, currently the biggest thing limiting me has to be my regen, I just can't do it.

Disclaimer - I LOVE challenges, but I don't find this challenging more I find it impossible to think how i'd ever get to waves above 30, never mind the ones further up.

Having tried this on a couple chars now, I can safely say that this, at least for a mistweaver, is MUCH. harder than what most other classes have to put up with.

[Deleted]

I did tank and damage yesterday, stopped both sometime after wave 30 since I had the achievement (and due to some server stability issues, I didn't want to risk to get a DC and lose the achievement). DD seemed easier than tank, though as main WW my gear is more specialized for that one. And I didn't bother reforging, which could have bigger impacts on the tank. I wrote some tips for WW in another post if someone wants to spoiler some of it.
And yes, for the achievement "you're doing it wrong" monk is awesome, the silver dd challenge with bm is easy.
As for the healing challenge: Can't really say much about that, because I don't have a healer. But a resto druid in my guild yesterday too complained about mana, and how he found it impossible to manage it (was oom in the seventh wave). Probably usage of a bit more CC? Disable, Leg Sweep and Paralysis saved my ass in the tank challenge many times.

[Deleted]

I followed Brittishbubba's advice reforge and talent-wise and I reached wave 59 on the first try as a tank, after which I fucked up and got gibbed. Once you know when to pop cooldowns it's very easy and quite boring. Further waves don't actually increase in difficulty much, because you'll have more vengeance.

[Thegeeza]

I followed Brittishbubba's advice reforge and talent-wise and I reached wave 59 on the first try as a tank, after which I fucked up and got gibbed. Once you know when to pop cooldowns it's very easy and quite boring. Further waves don't actually increase in difficulty much, because you'll have more vengeance.

Yeah i have to admit i didn't reforge for the dps one but that would have made it a fair amount easier. I actually found the first 10 waves harder than the ones after mainly due to the fact that was wasn't truly aware of the types of abilities that each wave throws out. Once you have done it a few times you start to remember where things spawn as well, which saves you alot of time.

[Callypso]

DPS proving grounds can basically be described as 'use SEF and don't forget random spawning banshees'.
Seriously, I failed a few times just because I didn't see a banshee spawning (and didn't know when to expect one initially).

I had a good time playing around with this

[Alhoon]

Got the Endless 30 title with 3 tries as DPS, round 33 to be more specific. Even allowed for a few mistakes. Rounds X3, X7 and X0 where the worst for me.

[Inthislzon]

Silver damage as tank (for achi)
Bronze healer as tank
Endless 10 tank as tank (wiped on 19 due to a random death of the mw)

Unrelated note: I'm the only one that thinks damage on tank grounds is overtuned? Despite going mastery, grabbing power strikes, stunning what can be stunned, disarming the big guys and popping CDs i'm getting randomly globaled (usually X5 waves get me)

[Floopa]

Endless as a Mistweaver. I'm done. It's the most stupid shit ever. Spend 4000g regemming full spirit, wipe on wave 8. Randomly do it as a Resto Shaman which I suck at and hit wave 19 on first attempt without interrupts/stuns.

[britishbubba]

Silver damage as tank (for achi)
Bronze healer as tank
Endless 10 tank as tank (wiped on 19 due to a random death of the mw)

Unrelated note: I'm the only one that thinks damage on tank grounds is overtuned? Despite going mastery, grabbing power strikes, stunning what can be stunned, disarming the big guys and popping CDs i'm getting randomly globaled (usually X5 waves get me)

I think the damage intake is ok, what I don't think is ok is the mobs health. how tank *should* have worked is the panda in the middle heals you, and that's all she does. I don't like that I have to rely on her to do damage, because sometimes it just seems that she doesn't do that much damage and I would have much prefered to have the mobs health be low enough that I could kill them myself faster, rather than have to wait for her to kill them. I say this mainly because there were multiple waves where she just didn't kill a wave until 10-20 seconds into the next wave, and that's usually what killed me, not any particular wave actually being difficult.

Although, I did hop on my warrior and did a few waves and it felt much easier and like there was less damage going out, just because warrior is better at that ilvl imo. Shield block is so strong and have access to more CDs smooths out the waves. Don't know if BrM is going to be the toughest for these... that title probably goes to druid, but some of those waves are certainly unpleasant, but one thing that is also odd is that the few waves I did after 30 seemed VASTLY easier than the few leading up to 30.

[Deleted]

Made it to wave 33 on endless damage on my 2nd try, accidentally put Xuen on CD on a previous wave and didn't have the dps to clearn up the virmen, aside from that wave the only other one I found tight was the 10th wave sha (got a 1mill crit at 1second left on wave 30 that saved my life, mistakenly had Xuen on CD again).

Reforging for more haste would probably give me a much easier time of things, due to the scaling I have like 2k or so which is far from ideal, but that's a lot of hassle.

Good use of SEF and the amber orbs is pretty much the key to the entire thing.

[Inthislzon]

I think the damage intake is ok, what I don't think is ok is the mobs health. how tank *should* have worked is the panda in the middle heals you, and that's all she does. I don't like that I have to rely on her to do damage, because sometimes it just seems that she doesn't do that much damage and I would have much prefered to have the mobs health be low enough that I could kill them myself faster, rather than have to wait for her to kill them. I say this mainly because there were multiple waves where she just didn't kill a wave until 10-20 seconds into the next wave, and that's usually what killed me, not any particular wave actually being difficult.

Well that's what gets me too, i have to purify more often on X5 waves so i have one at half HP up when X6 wave spawns and from then on it's just downhill.

Guess i'll try reforging into some haste for more chi, as 1k is WAY too low.

EDIT: I'll even advocate on giving a full party that kills mobs for you and you only have to survive long enough for them to finish them off, kinda like the healer one

[Oratory]

It seems like building a set of gear forged and gemmed specifically for Proving Grounds will be a good idea. ilvl and set bonuses don't matter, all you need is the right stat allocation and any items with an extra socket is gold. The legendary meta doesn't work so we'll definetly want a helm to use a blue meta in it.

For the healer challenge I reforged (but didn't re-gem) for spirit > crit > haste > mastery and didn't worry about any haste BPs. Pretty sure I was below 3k anyway. I did a couple tries and got to wave 15 in endless before getting overwhelmed, mana wasn't really a problem so I should have been more liberal about using it. Try to keep Renewing Mists casts to a minimum, don't use it on cooldown like in a raid. Any overhealing you do is a complete waste of mana.

I also did the tank challenge, I had to reforge everything into haste to get gold and it was really close, although I didn't try Power Strikes like suggested above. I haven't tried endless tank yet.

And then I did the DPS challenge in tank spec and successfully did the silver one. I think it was wave 6 that is the most challenging with the large healer add. Stopping the heals isn't a problem but it does have a lot of HP to burn through. In the last phase I used Touch of Death on one of the Amber Casters right away so I wouldn't need to run around dodging the amber balls from two directions.

[Orion Antares]

Wouldn't you be able to hit these with the same gear you'd use in a CM, minus the crit build a BrM might use with a Disc healer? Haven't had the time to try them yet.

[Lovestar]

EDIT: I'll even advocate on giving a full party that kills mobs for you and you only have to survive long enough for them to finish them off, kinda like the healer one

It would be a lot more fun if all the trials were set up like the Healer one. It's just not the same when you're "duo-ing" or soloing, you don't get to use your toolbox the same way and it feels more like a training dummy than a simulated group encounter.

Especially since the Tank grounds give you a healer that likes to AoE mobs the second they appear (like an ADHD DPS player), and often "spaces out" and keeps DPSing even when you're getting totally slammed. I guess this might add a touch of authenticity for PUG content, but it's teaching you to tolerate irresponsible players and blame yourself, which is a somewhat-dubious message.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the challenge of protecting this psycho-healer and I'm having fun with it. I'm just a little sceptical that this is really the right way to train PvE tanks.

[Deleted]

died on 48 or 49 th wave on endless tank at first try , could do more if i was focused on what happened :/ ( 1 mob alive , thought i couldn t die ^^ )

Used chi wave , rop , healing elixir and xuen