Proving Grounds - Success?

[holypriest]

As for Proving Grounds in general, I love it. We look at it when recruiting for the raid team. It's not the deciding factory, but someone who can't even heal Silver is not welcome to raid with us.

Why? Out of curiosity, I'm not saying silver is hard (and I haven't even tried gold yet) but healing PG is nothing like healing in a raid, it's more like healing an undergeared 5 man with dps who don't know how to switch targets or move out of fire.

OT I tried it a couple of days after it came out because I had the quest to do it. Got to healing silver, remembered how much I hated healing as holy with this gear level and no spirit and didn't even try gold. Ill probably go back eventually just for the achievements i personally didnt find it ver fun. I agree with the person who said it would be better if the mobs scaled up and I think it would be more fun if it had more personal challenges (do gold without X or Y) sort of a mini glory of the raider achievement

[Djuntas]

Failed at gold as DPS, dunno if its my low gear on my feral druid, but found it rather hard inn the last 1-2 waves.

Okay feature, but way to little content.

[DechCJC]

Honestly struggled with the healer proving grounds a lot until I figured out how to manage my mana properly, and i'm typically a player who i'd consider is somewhat an elite of WoW. Idk, I guess it depends on what talents/class you're running it with, one thing's for sure for me, healing was much much more difficult for me than the dps/tank ones in endless (And I main healer O.o) - Each to their own I guess, i'm sure some people somehow think the complete opposite from me, but damn healer endless was tough - I think if i went back now, knowing exactly how to treat each wave purely from practice and when to use every CD, i'd probably last till wave 40-50 (I got 34, died and stopped, just wanted the title so wasn't paying too much attention). Dps wasn't too much of a bother for me, tanking just felt kinda rng tbh. I mean you could kite for your life and chain CDs but it really just felt like sometimes you just had to have a little luck in your hands, but i haven't reached wave 30 with that so meh.

[Spacepunch]

Why? Out of curiosity, I'm not saying silver is hard (and I haven't even tried gold yet) but healing PG is nothing like healing in a raid, it's more like healing an undergeared 5 man with dps who don't know how to switch targets or move out of fire.

OT I tried it a couple of days after it came out because I had the quest to do it. Got to healing silver, remembered how much I hated healing as holy with this gear level and no spirit and didn't even try gold. Ill probably go back eventually just for the achievements i personally didnt find it ver fun. I agree with the person who said it would be better if the mobs scaled up and I think it would be more fun if it had more personal challenges (do gold without X or Y) sort of a mini glory of the raider achievement

teaches more mana management, which teaches using heals more effectively. Not just spamming heals everywhere or you go oom. Those things are quite important for a healer to have in any format IMO. teaching you how to min/max to push just a little farther is good practice as well.

Edit: also I just wanna throw it in there that, as an ele shaman in mastery mode, 2second casts on everything made it quite a pain in the ass. Some classes definitely are weaker at the low ilvl.

[RickJamesLich]

I think it's pretty handy for someone that's trying to get into raiding, and for that it definitely serves it's purpose. Beyond that though, playing around with it and trying to do a challenge mode like the tank one, as a dps, can be pretty interesting. Nobody is going to be grinding this place out for more than a day or two, but still, a fun place to stop by if you haven't tried it.

[holypriest]

teaches more mana management, which teaches using heals more effectively. Not just spamming heals everywhere or you go oom. Those things are quite important for a healer to have in any format IMO. teaching you how to min/max to push just a little farther is good practice as well.

as holy at least I cast completely different spells than I would have being in a raiding environment if I were trying to use this as a training tool for raiding i wouldn't do very well. For learning mana management and CD usage I think LFR is a more useful tool. Anyway not really arguing as I have only tried it for my spec/class and it may be a useful tool for others, was just curious.

[Deleted]

They are ok. This whole 5.4 patch (minus raid content) stinks of lazy:

Proving grounds whilst a niche challenge aren't really anything,
Timewaste Isle is possibly the worst most lazy piece of design WoW has ever featured,
No connected realms is a disappointment to my dead server with dwindling player numbers on my server.

I recently tried to get a 10+ flex group sorted within a guild I was in (Hoping to make new friends and start a proper raid group, I was shocked by the number of people replying with things along the lines of "well I can basically do that in my own time, no need to have set time raiding in WoW anymore". I miss the fact that even if you had a shit raid guild in pre-lfr WoW you had a steady stream of people willing to try even if they were bad you could drill them into normal mode raiders. Now they see the content for no effort and log off. Sad times.

[Sierra85]

They are ok. This whole 5.4 patch (minus raid content) stinks of lazy:

i can agree the implementation of proving grounds does seem like it is a feature that has not been completed. I hope this is only the first parse and the dev's keep working on improving the proving grounds.

It should be a tool to teach, and better yourself. But at the moment i don't think its living up to its potential.

[Deleted]

It should be a tool to teach, and better yourself. But at the moment i don't think its living up to its potential.

I see it continuing but like the Farm once new expansion hits no-one will use it and they will have to copy-paste it to the new content but I fail to see how it will end up as anything more than a niche.

[Spacepunch]

as holy at least I cast completely different spells than I would have being in a raiding environment if I were trying to use this as a training tool for raiding i wouldn't do very well. For learning mana management and CD usage I think LFR is a more useful tool. Anyway not really arguing as I have only tried it for my spec/class and it may be a useful tool for others, was just curious.

LFR is, IMO, the worst tool in this game for teaching you anything. It doesn't teach mana management or cd usage. You can go spam happy all day as a new player, run oom and be out of cds, and 9/10 times someone else will be there to carry you. Its a stretch to even say lfr teaches you mechanics of fights. If you can heal/dps/tank gold/endless PG, then odds are you are ready for flex/normal. On the opposite side of that, if you complete LFR you prolly didn't even have to do anything to get through it, and may or may not have learned anything at all.

[Galararia]

I like the proving grounds, it also can be helpful for people who need to better understand all the things their class can do, and pushes people to know whats in that lovely spell book cause you don't have someone else to deal with a mechanic for you. All around i think its a good thing

[Deleted]

It's not something that u will be doing as much as brawlers or something if we talk about the recent new features, but they aren't a fail either.
It's a feature u will maybe visit few times in your life, get what you wanted and move on ;p

Depends on what they do with it. If they expand upon it and include it whilst leveling, it could for example be an alternative to spamming dungeons. Offer several difficulties for your role, the more difficult of a challenge that you manage to complete, the more experience you gain.

[Belloc]

Impossible for me as Arcane, as I have no on-the-move spells aside from ABarr and FiB (and a non-Frost Bomb). Failed on stage 2 every time, simply because blowing cooldowns was pointless.

You don't HAVE to be Arcane.

Furthermore, you are more than capable of stopping, casting a quick spell, and then moving again, right? Or, perhaps... wave spawns --> Polymorph one add, start moving. Arcane Barrage is instant, right? You have your Bomb talents, which are instant. And once you've finished one of the banana-throwers, you can very easily kill the second one without having to move -- they have very low health.

Every DPS class and spec is capable of finishing Gold Proving Grounds. The fact that you're having trouble with this just shows that you're not thinking about it hard enough.

[Neji]

I find it astonishing, the number of people who make up shitty excuses for not doing it or quitting before hitting gold. I for one love the Proving Grounds and right now and working hard to reach wave 20 of endless tanking. It's quite a bitch as a guardian druid but definitely do-able. All you have in there is your own skill and talent as a player - no over gearing to carry folks through it.

Separates the men from the boys.

[mitbrandir]

Why? Out of curiosity, I'm not saying silver is hard (and I haven't even tried gold yet) but healing PG is nothing like healing in a raid, it's more like healing an undergeared 5 man with dps who don't know how to switch targets or move out of fire.

I'll agree with this. I find the healing challenge so stupid, simply because the units barely use any of their abilities, don't move from fire, cant rotate interupts etc. It might be because I play healing as the worst role of the 3, but i burn way too much mana when i go there. By the time i got to round 8 on healing endless, i was so oom i could'nt heal anymore

[Slatch]

I'm amazed by all the people who claim PG is easy, but that they didn't finish it. Difficulty comes in many forms including things like length of fight/play time, how boring things are handled and many more things people don't directly equate to difficulty. A person who can't handle all aspects of PG may also be that person who half way through a raid night has their performance tank, or who on farm content performs poorly. Reading over some people's responses has added another tool to evaluate raiders with!

What is also an important part of PG is this: "You play like you practice." Any sports player who had a good coach will have heard this a million times. While not singularly true there is a direct relation between practice, muscle memory and success. Playing WoW works the same way and practicing how to cope with mechanics can directly increase a player's skill. Here are some examples.
DPS: Getting used to burning a banshee is extraordinarily similar to any raid adds that need to be burned.
Heals: Knowing when your tank is going to get hit hard and preparing for it reflects either burn phases or boss spike abilities.
Tank: Popping Shield Wall on an enrage is the same as using it for a burn/enrage phase.

Too many people stressed direct things about a mob, like how it's not an actual boss, rather than how the mechanic the mob is representing is similar to a mechanic in an actual encounter. Learn to deal with mechanics, not mobs, and PGs are suddenly an amazing tool.

I made a post in my guild's forums when PGs first came out to stress to people how I thought they were beneficial. For this I came up with a list of skills I could think of that are used. I'm sure people could think of even more I forgot. Copied here for your enjoyment.

DPS
Rotation
CD management
CC
Personal awareness/positioning
Situational talent and glyph critical thinking/swapping
Cleave and AE situations
Dpsing on the move
Interrupting
Correct gear and gem choices
Racials
Spec choice for classes with 2-3 dps specs

Heals
Mana control
Triage
Overheal control
Dispelling
Undispellable debuffs
Interrupting
CC
CD Management
Improving throughput with repetition
Situational talent and glyph critical thinking/swapping
Personal awareness/positioning
DPSing if/when appropriate
Correct gear and gem choices
Disarming
Racials
Spec choice for Priests

Tank
Rotation
CD management
Active mitigation
Mob positioning
LoS
Knock back awareness
Taunting
Situational talent and glyph critical thinking/swapping
Cleave and AE situations
Personal awareness/positioning
CC
Interrupting
Kiting
Correct gear and gem choices
Bleed Effects on self
Disarming
Racials

Edit: Final thought. I have used every single one of these skills listed here in MoP raid content to handle raid mechanics. PGs can be a success if used right, and are fun to boot! Who doesn't like growing your epeen with high Endless scores?

[Belloc]

What I said is that I honestly do not get how I managed to survive Wave 10 on Gold; it took about 10+ tries, blowing every cooldown I had and nearly getting globalled with cooldowns regardless when both Conquerors would enrage. The 11th try, the one I got it on (lasting past their enrage, at which point it became easy) I literally do not know how I managed to survive it that time when I failed the other 10 tries by doing the same thing i.e. popping heavy cooldowns (GAK in my case as Prot Paladin) when both Conqs enraged. So yes as far as I'm concerned it's RNG, if I got lucky and dodged or parried an attack.

Therefor me Proving Grounds as a tank doesn't teach much of any skill beyond "Pop cooldowns and pray that you get lucky" because pretty much trying Endless, that's what it is, an exercise in how lucky I can be each attempt - I have rotated cooldowns on the heavy hitting wave #6, and still get destroyed before I can get off enough HP to even pop a Shield of the Righteous. It teaches how to deal with packs of adds, which is very little of what a real raiding tank does. Which is also why I would have preferred a tank trial like on Norushen, because THAT is more indicative of what a tank does in raids than picking up groups of adds and getting beat on while waiting for a shitty healer (because that NPC is fucking awful) to heal me and hoping that I don't take a string of bad hits in a row. The number of times I've had to deal with a knockback or some random pack coming from behind are minuscule, and that's pretty much what PG is for a tank.

See, here's where I start to wonder what you're actually doing in there. If you're dying on Endless Wave 6 with GoAK up, there's something seriously wrong. For wave 6 and 16, I can survive simply by using GoAK at the start of the wave and no other survival cooldowns (except, maybe, DP). Of course, I'm also stunning one of the adds (fist!) and keeping up a 5 stack Eternal Flame heal. And, also, when I say "can survive," I mean that I have survived... but I don't actually just use that cooldown on my regular attempts.

Wave 6 is easily handled by saving up a 5 stack of Bastion from the previous wave, hitting Avenging Wrath at the start of wave 6 (while the adds are running to the middle) and casting Eternal Flame (I usually have 5 holy power saved at this point). As soon as the mobs engage me, I hit GoAK and focus on gaining holy power (proper prot rotation is usually irrelevant in PG). When GoAK expires, I hit Holy Avenger (and the ToT valor trinket -- the dodge = extra GC procs), spam my holy power generators, refresh EF after I've had a 5 stack for a bit, and keep spamming SotR for the damage reduction. I usually also stun one of the 3 adds as soon as GoAK falls off. Once the first add is dead, EF, SotR damage reduction, and Sikari heals are enough to last you the rest of the wave.

So, here's what I'm thinking about your wave 6 issues: You were probably getting hit in the back. Yes, I know this sounds absurd, but it is quite common during early PG attempts. But I really cannot see how you'd have died with GoAK up, otherwise... unless you didn't have a 5-stack of EF up.

I'm also still guessing you didn't use the lava pools on Gold wave 10.

So, anyway, the point. You might not feel like this is testing your ability to tank... but it is. Tanking is more than sitting on a boss, taunting at certain times, and doing your rotation. Tanking is about keeping yourself alive. Tanking is about knowing when the damage is going to get heavy and using a cooldown. Tanking is about noticing that your health is dropping fast and you need to heal yourself. Tanking is about picking up loose adds before they become a danger. Tanking is about proper positioning.

Tanking is about doing the right thing at the right time. Everything I said in my previous paragraph is tested in the Proving Grounds. Yes, it can be challenging. Yes, it can seem like it's completely RNG. Yes, I can see why some players think that it doesn't test actual tanking skills... but it does. It's not very RNG, it's not overly complicated, and it is an excellent test of a person's ability to handle situations that are a lot more common than you might think. You simply have to identify the pattern as it appears in this situation.

edit: I'd also like to mention Norushen's tank trial. I think it's pretty safe to say that it boils down to two things: Interrupting the cast and moving out of the cone... right? If you really want to complicate it, you can add a cooldown for the burst and active mitigation for the piercing attack... neither of which are necessary. Norushen's tank trial is hardly representative of anything that a tank should find challenging and, while I'd be happy with them adding additional things like this to the PG, I definitely don't think it's anywhere near what the average tank considers a challenge.

[mistahwilshire]

Lots of my guildies really enjoy proving grounds and have some pretty fun competition between one another almost daily. We're 6/14H with a roster thats split between some people that play every single day and want to raid constantly and some people with more restricted schedules. Competing against each other in endless has given us "nolifers" something fun to push when we can't raid.

[Deleted]

It's pretty bad IMO. The only "hard" thing is staying focused and not dying by making a simple mistake from boredom. Also playing with scaled down gear sucks. Scale the mobs up if you must scale something, not the player down.

[Belloc]

It's pretty bad IMO. The only "hard" thing is staying focused and not dying by making a simple mistake from boredom. Also playing with scaled down gear sucks. Scale the mobs up if you must scale something, not the player down.

Why? What sense does it make to scale the mobs up? They've already created a balance in this game by scaling down gear, so what's the point in scaling up mobs?

As it is, scaling down gear puts us ALL on equal footing (if, nothing else, on a class-by-class basis). It's easier to scale down than it is to scale up and, quite honestly, it also makes more sense.

I know you don't like that your numbers go down and everything, but you're clearly not even thinking about the reasoning behind it. As best as I can tell, your argument basically boils down to: I want to feel strong, so don't bother with your gear scaling technology -- implement a new feature that scales mobs based on my item level. I want to feel strong!

Stop focusing on how big your numbers are -- they're only important in raids. This is Proving Grounds and your gear is supposed to be the same as everyone else's. We don't need Blizzard to implement new technology just so you can hit harder while having the same experience.