Proving Grounds - Success?

[Deleted]

I have done endless 30+ as tank, dps and healer quite a while ago. Here is my opinion about proving grounds.

First off, to all players in this thread saying that you learn nothing and completing them says nothing. You are dead wrong. I do not even know how you are thinking. Of course you learn a ton from it. There is a reason most raiders I know one shot all up until gold and get endless 30 within a few pulls. If there was no correlation between the two, then that would not happen. While proving grounds do not maybe teach you your patchwerk rotation, you got to ask yourself. Is that really important? It may not teach you exactly how you are going to heal several raid bosses etc. Proving grounds teach you something far more valuable and necessary for being succesful in raids. It teaches you critical thinking, how to adapt to an encounter and figure out your own tactics for how to deal with an encouter. It also broadens the knowledge of your class toolkit. You only have to go to the second page in this thread to find this comment

Fail for me, simply because I got Silver, failed on Gold, and there was no guidance in game on how to improve, so I'm never touching it again.

Which to me is a proof of the problem in WoW and how good it is that proving grounds is designed the way they are. Generally speaking, the WoW population is in a great need to be handheld like a toddler on every step they take, they need to be told what to do, they can not figure it out on their own. This is a fairly toxic atmosphere for a game as it does not encourage game development. This is the reason so many people are so unsuccesful in raiding and they never will be. The are to dependant on other people figuring out and telling them what to do. The ability to figure stuff out on your own is far more valuable for raiding than anyone in this thread seems to concieve. The NPC in proving ground is even doing handholding far more than I would like to see. The NPC tells you for every new type of mob that spawns exactly what it does, to me that is not needed, but I guess it is nice for some people. What it does not do however is tell you exactly how to beat it with your class and spec. It tells you, this is the mob, this is what it does, deal with it. As players are inside proving grounds alone. In the end, you yourself have to use your own mind, think about your classes mechanics, the mobs mechanics and how to deal with them. This is one of the reasons I was reluctant about writing a guide to proving grounds, since proving grounds to me is just that, figuring stuff out without a guide. In the end I decided to write a guide for Endless Tank, but I deliberately did not touch gold tank as I feel like players should figure that out on their own.

I would strongly suggest the people in here that consider proving grounds to give useless training to check this video made by Evrelia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdeyG-VZ0Sc
Where he touches the subject of how Soloing raids make you a better player and raider. The same logic can be applicated to proving grounds.

We often said in our guild that there are 4 levels of raiders. The first level would be the people that lacks the ability of thinking for himself, adapting while also lacking the skill of playing the game. What some people would refer to as "LFR raider". Me myself, would avoid using that term as there are plenty of good players in LFR. The second level is the people that needs to be told what to do, handheld at every step, they can get the job down, but they need a lot of guidance. This is typically the kind of players that struggle with normal modes, but atleast get a few of them down and maybe even clear the raid before the end of the tier. The third level is the players that need some form of handholding in terms of reading a few guides, getting a few tips here and there. But overall they are fairly independant. They can figure out some strategies for themselves, when to use certain spells, how to survive certain things etc. This is typically the type of players that clear normals fast and get a fair bit into heroic content but rarely clear the entire heroic content unless it is was content that recieved serious nerfs while current such as ICC or DS. The fourth level is the players that do not need guides or help. Sure, they still keep tabs on current discussions revolving around their class, noone can know everything and new things are always found out about classes. But these players are highly independant, they adapt well to the encounters, they make good use of their toolkit, they figure out when to use what etc and how to beat the fights. These are the kind of players that when first time they reached the snail trash before Ji-Kun, they noticed the snails had a debuff that said "Will instantly devour anyone that comes in close range", and figured, "Hey, I do not want to be devoured". They do not need to be killed by something to figure out the mechanic and know it is bad. They move from fire the first time they see it, not after being killed once from it. These are the heroic raiders and those that clear heroic modes fairly quick.

Now of course, that is extremely generalised and simplified. Truth is that there are several levels in between and above those aswells. Class knowledge and rotation knowledge also of course play a huge part, but what I have found during the years is that players that inhibited the skills of independance and adaptation also learned their classes well. I guess it goes a bit hand in hand. The point is that what proving ground teaches you is necessary to advance in the raiding pyramid. And the players that learn those key feautures also takes the time to learn their classes main rotational abilities, making them to me secondary.

What can be improved proving grounds

There are not enough different proving grounds. Hopefully this is something that will come in the feauture. More and more proving grounds focusing on different aspects of the game.

The 463 scaling is a bit weird to me. I would have liked to see different scalings for different item levels, see above different proving grounds needed. One for 463, one for 502 and one for 535 could have been an idea.

I do not like the endless concept as it encourages farming optimal gear for proving grounds, PGs should not be about the gear. Gold is fine as it can be done regardless how shitty your gear is. But it becomes a problem in endless.

I think that pots and flasks that only work inside proving grounds aswell as 300 stat food should be sold by the vendor in there.

Endless is way to long. Going after wave 60+ just takes so much time, especially since it is pretty much facerolling for the first 30-40 minutes. I think some revision of endless needs to be done. One thing that me and my friends discussed was allowing players skipping waves. If you have beaten wave 30 you would be able to start at wave 10, if you have beaten wave 40 you can start at wave 20 and so on. Basically so you "only" have to repeat 20 minutes of waves that you have completed before.

What I can see in the future of proving grounds

I can see it being expanded further. Low level proving grounds granting experience. Granting more experience the higher difficulty you play at. I could even see the highest difficulty allowing to to level way faster than all other methods of leveling. Leveling right now is just a pointless grind, you learn nothing about the game while leveling. PGs for leveling would put a bigger purpose in it. Allowing players that display capability of playing the game to level faster would allow those that struggle more time to practice and learn.

I can even see it granting gear at maximum level. Running a PG is far more rewarding for a persons skill level progression than say running an LFR. I would see no problem with PGs at the hardest difficulty granting LFR level loot and at lower levels granting dungeon level loot. A player spending 30 minutes to do 30 waves of endless PG has spent a lot more effort into it than someone that spent 30 minutes killing a boss in LFR.

It can be expanded into a lot more proving grounds, not all of them has to be wave defenses. We could have proving grounds that reassembles dungeons with trash and mini bosses, another one that reassembles raid bosses, maybe even northrend beast style with several mini raid bosses etc. The possibilities are there.

All in all, I think proving grounds is great. A lot and a lot of things can be improved. But considering it is in its trial phase, I think it got great potentials. PGs are miles better than most other futures released lately.

[Ronduwil]

First off, to all players in this thread saying that you learn nothing and completing them says nothing. You are dead wrong. I do not even know how you are thinking. Of course you learn a ton from it. There is a reason most raiders I know one shot all up until gold and get endless 30 within a few pulls.

Recently? Because I know they nerfed the NPCs at least on the healer one and now they can't even clear mobs from the current wave before the next one hits. I believe you can get endless 30, but not "within a few pulls."

It teaches you critical thinking, how to adapt to an encounter and figure out your own tactics for how to deal with an encouter.

What are you talking about? It teaches you how to macro your interrupt on a specific mob and that's about it. There's nothing to avoid on the ground, there aren't any stack or spread phases, and you're faced with serious mana management issues that don't even exist in real raids. Most of the time in raid you stack during high damage phases. In PG the NPCs deliberately spread so that you can't just drop your AoE heal and power through.

It also broadens the knowledge of your class toolkit.

That's about the only useful thing that it does from a raiding perspective, but even then it's not complete. Hexes and polymorphs, for instance are disabled in Healer PG.

The third level is the players that need some form of handholding in terms of reading a few guides, getting a few tips here and there. But overall they are fairly independant. They can figure out some strategies for themselves, when to use certain spells, how to survive certain things etc. This is typically the type of players that clear normals fast and get a fair bit into heroic content but rarely clear the entire heroic content unless it is was content that recieved serious nerfs while current such as ICC or DS.

This is where 99% of players are.

The fourth level is the players that do not need guides or help. Sure, they still keep tabs on current discussions revolving around their class, noone can know everything and new things are always found out about classes. But these players are highly independant, they adapt well to the encounters, they make good use of their toolkit, they figure out when to use what etc and how to beat the fights. These are the kind of players that when first time they reached the snail trash before Ji-Kun, they noticed the snails had a debuff that said "Will instantly devour anyone that comes in close range", and figured, "Hey, I do not want to be devoured". They do not need to be killed by something to figure out the mechanic and know it is bad. They move from fire the first time they see it, not after being killed once from it. These are the heroic raiders and those that clear heroic modes fairly quick.

Consider that Paragon, the guild that got a world/western first kill on 10-man Garrosh, wiped on him over 486 times. I think you're overestimating the amount of strategizing that goes on in successful heroic raiding. The strategy is only part of it. The rest is developing muscle memory for the mechanics. Proving Grounds does not exercise that.

The 463 scaling is a bit weird to me. I would have liked to see different scalings for different item levels, see above different proving grounds needed. One for 463, one for 502 and one for 535 could have been an idea.

Not to mention the fact that gems and set bonuses have a drastic impact on its outcome as well. To truly be scalable everyone should be given one set of unmodifiable gear to work with. Much has been made over certain gemming and reforging strategies. This, again, is not applicable to actual raiding. Most raiding guilds don't reforge between bosses. Maybe some do, but I would expect that to be done only at the highest levels of raiding.

I do not like the endless concept as it encourages farming optimal gear for proving grounds, PGs should not be about the gear.

Exactly. Great minds think alike.

I think that pots and flasks that only work inside proving grounds aswell as 300 stat food should be sold by the vendor in there.

Personally I think he should give you a pot when you start the fight. That's another aspect of PG that's weird: inability to use pots.

Endless is way to long. Going after wave 60+ just takes so much time, especially since it is pretty much facerolling for the first 30-40 minutes.

Well, it is called endless for a reason. I can't see why I would want to go past 30 anyway. Once you have the title what's the point?

I think some revision of endless needs to be done. One thing that me and my friends discussed was allowing players skipping waves. If you have beaten wave 30 you would be able to start at wave 10, if you have beaten wave 40 you can start at wave 20 and so on.

At what level of mana? If they do that they would have to fully restore mana every X number of waves to normalize it.

[lokatii]

Again, the delta between the different specs is acceptable in raids, and I'm saying it's not in PG.


Why should I uninstall? And there's no point in getting better in PG as it doesn't reflect raiding (the real end game that everyone sees you do) at all.

I'm not saying you should uninstall... I'm saying practice will make you better. Also raiding doesn't reflect individual skill. Can't really get carried in Proving Grounds

[Deleted]

It may be useful, but it's not required for raiding because, especially at the heroic level, there is no room for error. Mistakes in that situation are pretty much a one-shot. That's why real raiding guilds wouldn't use it as criteria. It doesn't test the skills that an actual raiding healer needs. In all honesty it's more applicable to LFR or Flex raiding than it is to Heroic Raiding. If raiding guilds wanted to cope with other players' mistakes they wouldn't conduct mock job interviews complete with applications before accepting new members.

While I agree that the healing proving grounds is probably the worst designed of the three. I do disagree that heroic raiding got no room for error. It got room for error, not always, but a lot of the times. And it is how you deal with those errors that heroic guilds excels in. Just some example for bosses.

This week, my co-tank died on immerseus heroic with us having no CR left. I adapted to his mistake and solo tanked the rest of the boss (he died on the pull so basically solo tanked the entire fight). We actually had 5 people alive for the last 3 splits, because people failed like shit.
On Protectors Heroic, my co-tank once again died on the first He transition. I once again adapted to this and solo tanked the rest of the fight.
For a fight like Iron Jugg heroic, maybe someone placed a mine completely retarded and nobody can reach it. Either dealing with healing up the mine explosion or someone that is not supposed to soak figuring out a way to quickly soak it is extremely possible. Once again, dealing with mistakes.
Dark Shams there are just a million mistakes people can do. Dealing with those mistakes are almost always possible.
For thok, whoever is kiting does not sufficient speed boost when Thok is faster than Usain Bolt. We have several times saved lifes by our feral druid displacer beasting in the whoever is kiting popping stampeding roar while our priest runs ahead and life grips, realising that the kiter failed in having sufficient distance and speed boots to deal with kiting, thus dealing with something that would have lead to a death.
For Siegecrafter heroic, dealing with people getting accidental fire buffs and similar things was quite easy to learn. Getting a fire debuff was a huge fail and quite lethal, but it was still managable. The same goes for dealing with the wrong person gettig a stack, especially in the pull. A huge fail, but still manageable.
Or just a simple thing as dealing with a rocketfuel leak.

Etc etc. The list goes on and on. Mistakes are extremely punishing in heroic content, but they do happen. Mistakes always happen, how you deal with those mistakes defines your guild.

Recently? Because I know they nerfed the NPCs at least on the healer one and now they can't even clear mobs from the current wave before the next one hits. I believe you can get endless 30, but not "within a few pulls."

It took me 4 pulls on my tank going in completely blind on patch day to get to 34, got to 54 the next day on about the same amount of pulls, maybe even less.
It took me about the same to get dps endless 30
It took me more pulls than I would like to admit to get the healing endless, but that was due to doing it with a healer in full pvp gear and shitty enchants gems, reforges etc. I decided to wait out the week, got atleast half PvE gear from running flex and LFR etc, gemmed it for spirit and went back in and one shotted it once my gear was not 100% terrible.
What took me the longest time was actually making a working tactic for <You're doing it wrong>

Most of my friends had about the same taking 1-5 pulls to get endless 30.

What are you talking about? It teaches you how to macro your interrupt on a specific mob and that's about it. There's nothing to avoid on the ground, there aren't any stack or spread phases, and you're faced with serious mana management issues that don't even exist in real raids. Most of the time in raid you stack during high damage phases. In PG the NPCs deliberately spread so that you can't just drop your AoE heal and power through.

I am guessing you are talking about the healing proving grounds. I got to agree that the healing proving grounds as I mentioned earlier felt like the worst design for me. Still, you have to remember that this is a test run for proving grounds, and I still think it was decent. Still, what I said still stands. Soloing anything that is remotely challenging teaches you how to adapt and figure out stuff for yourself, both of which are critical points of being a good raider.
I would really suggest you to watch this video by Evrelia about it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdeyG-VZ0Sc
Since he really took the words out of my mouth. I have been soloing stuff since WotLK and I can really say that soloing stuff has taught me more about heroic raiding than heroic raiding has.
Mana management issues for sure exist for my healer alts, granted my healing alts do not have the legendaries yet or BiS gear. PGs in the current state are not directed to people in full raid gear. So I think that mana is an issue is a good thing. Still, I agree that the design of the healing proving ground needs the biggest improvements.

It being nothing to avoid on the ground and stack/spread phases is to me irrelevant. That is stuff a monkey can do, proving ground teaches players something far more valuable. Though I do agree, this is something that probably should be added in future proving grounds. Proving grounds are still quite limited, they cant put every mechanic in the game into it.

That's about the only useful thing that it does from a raiding perspective, but even then it's not complete. Hexes and polymorphs, for instance are disabled in Healer PG.

Again, feel like you do not really appreciate the value of what soloing teaches you. It is not a coincidence that a lot of the famous soloers are also considered to be some of the best players of their class. I have been a raid leader and recruiter in dozens of guilds ranging from 10 to 25 man, normal and heroic, casual and hardcore guilds for over 6 years. I have seen pretty much every type of player, every type of raid group. I can for sure say that the biggest asset a player can have is a mind that thinks for itselfs, finds its own way to deal with things and always strive to improve yourself. That is exactly what proving grounds is a bit. I can teach a monkey their rotation, to move out of fire, all of those stuff is irrelevant. What proving ground teaches you is not something that you as a raid leader can easily teach someone. The player that realises "I just took a stacking DoT that I should not take, I better pop barkskin and a healthstone" is far more useful than the raider that dies from it. The player that notices "The tank always dies when the boss casts this spell, maybe I should pop my hand of sacrifice on the tank" is far more valuable than the player that needs to be told to do so.
As far as recruiting to a heroic raiding guild, a player that said he soloed some hard boss or have gotten to endless 60+ in proving grounds yet lacks raiding experience/gear is far more interesting to me than a player that got nothing but a little bit of raiding experience.

This is where 99% of players are.

You just need to queue up to a LFR to notice this is false. The sad truth is that a majority of the population in WoW are on the level where they need to be handheld every stop on the way. If you only count raiders, not even a third of the raiders are at this level. If you then take it to the next level and count everyone in WoW, 99% is so far from the truth.

Consider that Paragon, the guild that got a world/western first kill on 10-man Garrosh, wiped on him over 486 times. I think you're overestimating the amount of strategizing that goes on in successful heroic raiding. The strategy is only part of it. The rest is developing muscle memory for the mechanics. Proving Grounds does not exercise that.

Of course proving grounds teaches you muscle memory. How can you think it does not?

Not to mention the fact that gems and set bonuses have a drastic impact on its outcome as well. To truly be scalable everyone should be given one set of unmodifiable gear to work with. Much has been made over certain gemming and reforging strategies. This, again, is not applicable to actual raiding. Most raiding guilds don't reforge between bosses. Maybe some do, but I would expect that to be done only at the highest levels of raiding.

In my guild people reforge and regem between pretty much every boss. I do however believe that the set bonuses and legendaries are disabled in proving grounds. Never tested it as I do not have set bonuses on any of my characters.

Well, it is called endless for a reason. I can't see why I would want to go past 30 anyway. Once you have the title what's the point?

For one thing, PGs got leaderboards. Its the same reason people continue to do challenge modes after getting gold. Why continue to do Arena after getting gladiator? Why continue to do anything after being done with it. It is the same reason I spent over 600 wipes in sunwell over several solo raiding nights trying to solo it on my hunter during T11 (Soloing sunwell was extremely hard then). I downed M'uru solo and Omnitron Defense System 25Heroic in the same week, the M'uru kill I was far more satisfied and proud over. It felt overall a lot harder. I did not even need anything in sunwell, was not really interested in the bow.
It is the same reason that I still solo Ulduar every week even though I do not want anything from it.

At what level of mana? If they do that they would have to fully restore mana every X number of waves to normalize it.

Dunno about you but I always had 100% mana after each round of waves as you are allowed to drink between wave x9 and x0

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not saying you should uninstall... I'm saying practice will make you better. Also raiding doesn't reflect individual skill. Can't really get carried in Proving Grounds

I think this is hitting a soft spot for many people. Several people are hitting a brick wall in proving grounds. They then go on a rant on the forums "Proving gruond dont got anything to do with actual raiding bla bla bla" because they can not face the fact that maybe they are not so good at playing their class as they thought they were.

[Deleted]

Did you just ignore the entire point of the post with a random list of people who have beaten it endless?
Its not indicative of healing in raids. Each monk there did a specific cheese stat spread that they would otherwise not normally do due to the 463 ilevel.

If a player is forced to do that, then the entire system is a failure.

Well, in my first post I posted my whole list for reasons why PG force you to to be a good player by requiring you to plan and to evaluate your talents/stats/spells in a specific environment (that's what a good raider should do before each individual boss fight). But you ignored that, so I thought maybe showing you the fact that MW monks are not the hardest class to complete PG with. You still continued to attribute your failure (or unwillingness to try?) to bad mechanics instead of lack of skill.

As it happens my main is a BrM/WW monk. I intended to get my 3rd proving grounds title on my disc alt, but instead I chose to do an experiment. I haven't played MW since a few weeks into hitting 90, but I had some random gear. Certainly not challenge mode BiS with a lot of pieces not having too many sockets. I filled in a few enchants and gems I was missing and I headed to PG to start practicing for gold.

I will admit that it took me way more time than I expected (about 2h), although a big part of that was getting used to healing on my monk again. Especially not having specific a specific addon set-up for healing hurt me quite a lot. The mana management at start seemed very hard, but once I started realising what each mob did and which of my spells were more effective to deal with each situation it got a lot smoother. On my kill I had around 40% mana and 18 mana tea stacks.

I've already mentioned in a previous post here which abilities I guessed would be the most effective in proving grounds and they proved to be more or less correct.

I also did a lot of sub-optimal things, like fistweaving a bit too much (but it's fun), not using touch of death (could have glyphed it at least), not planning my cooldowns very well, only using thunder focus tea 2-3 times and I still managed to kill it in a reasonable time frame with no preparation.

I do not consider myself an exceptional player by any means, so I am sure you could do it if you stopped complaining about how hard it is for monks and actually looked at it objectively.

- - - Updated - - -

I think this is hitting a soft spot for many people. Several people are hitting a brick wall in proving grounds. They then go on a rant on the forums "Proving gruond dont got anything to do with actual raiding bla bla bla" because they can not face the fact that maybe they are not so good at playing their class as they thought they were.

So true. I hope they expand and perfect PG because it's one of the few features that you cannot get carried in (either by a group or by simply overgearing it).

[MistsofBoredom]

Completely pointless feature. Right up there with voice chat, a waste of development time.

[Firebert]

I'm not saying you should uninstall...

If you can't even get Gold just uninstall the game.

I'm saying practice will make you better.

Practicing how to play a solo musical instrument piece doesn't make me better at playing a different instrument in an orchestra. That's how removed DPS PG is: yes, you're doing relatively the same thing, but in a completely different environment with a completely different goal.

Also raiding doesn't reflect individual skill.

The game isn't about individual skill.

Can't really get carried in Proving Grounds

Not asking to be carried.

[Deleted]

Not asking to be carried.

there was no guidance in game on how to improve, so I'm never touching it again.

Yes you did.

[Snorkles]

Yes you did.

How is that asking to be carried, out of curiosity? Would you consider someone googling 'how to <insert class> PG?' and then following the instructions from a guide carrying? Or anyone that's ever used Icy Veins to find out how their class works?

[Deleted]

How is that asking to be carried, out of curiosity? Would you consider someone googling 'how to <insert class> PG?' and then following the instructions from a guide carrying? Or anyone that's ever used Icy Veins to find out how their class works?

I do not know if I am just old school in my gaming mentality, but I think asking for someone or something to help you complete a simple task is asking to get carried. Its one thing to refer to a complex spreadsheet to find out what stats and/or rotation is optimal, but completing silver in proving grounds needs no such drastic measure. I think it is fine to ask for help for endless, or to ask for help on your class or similar, especially if you are new to it, but asking for help for silver in a proving ground, that is just asking to be carried.

The amount of effort to achieve that yourself is close to 0, not even wanting to put in that effort. Instead quitting because everything was not layed out on a silver platter is the characteristics of the instant gratification generation.

Also, there is guidance in game. All the way through leveling some class npcs and tooltips helps you to figure out the basics. The NPCs in proving grounds also tells you exactly what to do. Just browsing through the spellbook of a class you have never played before for 5 minutes should be enough to get you through silver. It is not like the game is offering you no assistance. The in-game assistance is limited, but enough for the easier PGs. Giving up that easy to me, is asking to get carried.

Basically, there is a difference between asking the question "How to build a rocket engine" and "How to put butter on my sandwich using a butter knife?".

[Deleted]

Fail for me, simply because I got Silver, failed on Gold, and there was no guidance in game on how to improve, so I'm never touching it again.

not sure if we did same providing grounds, but every time i got a new type of opponent in the dps challenge the npc would give a hint/advise and you could work out a strat with that on how too beat gold.

now i must admit i havent finished gold yet, keep messing up 9th wave thinking it is the last and wasting my dps cd's. probally should try it sober and not sleep depraved.

[Firebert]

lol@Firefly. It's your delusion that I couldn't stand that got you onto my ignore list in the first place.

not sure if we did same providing grounds, but every time i got a new type of opponent in the dps challenge the npc would give a hint/advise and you could work out a strat with that on how too beat gold.

The advice is terrible, and the strat for the monkey for Arcane is try to make him blow up before he moves out of the circle you need to stand in, and not get hit by Amber.

[britishbubba]

lol@Firefly. It's your delusion that I couldn't stand that got you onto my ignore list in the first place.

The advice is terrible, and the strat for the monkey for Arcane is try to make him blow up before he moves out of the circle you need to stand in, and not get hit by Amber.

Seems like it would be as simple as deeping the monkey, and throwing a barrage into it. If you can't kill it during the deep, frostjaw it and get another free cast off. Although I just wouldn't play a turret spec in any solo activity. It's just asking for a bad time.

[Firebert]

Seems like it would be as simple as deeping the monkey, and throwing a barrage into it. If you can't kill it during the deep, frostjaw it and get another free cast off. Although I just wouldn't play a turret spec in any solo activity. It's just asking for a bad time.

The nerf to everything means that Frostjaw Deep Frost Bomb Barrage doesn't do it as Arcane, just not enough stats.

And you see why I'd like a spec-balanced PG? :3

[Otimus]

I have done endless 30+ as tank, dps and healer quite a while ago. Here is my opinion about proving grounds.

First off, to all players in this thread saying that you learn nothing and completing them says nothing. You are dead wrong. I do not even know how you are thinking. Of course you learn a ton from it. There is a reason most raiders I know one shot all up until gold and get endless 30 within a few pulls. If there was no correlation between the two, then that would not happen. While proving grounds do not maybe teach you your patchwerk rotation, you got to ask yourself. Is that really important? It may not teach you exactly how you are going to heal several raid bosses etc. Proving grounds teach you something far more valuable and necessary for being succesful in raids. It teaches you critical thinking, how to adapt to an encounter and figure out your own tactics for how to deal with an encouter. It also broadens the knowledge of your class toolkit. You only have to go to the second page in this thread to find this comment



Which to me is a proof of the problem in WoW and how good it is that proving grounds is designed the way they are. Generally speaking, the WoW population is in a great need to be handheld like a toddler on every step they take, they need to be told what to do, they can not figure it out on their own. This is a fairly toxic atmosphere for a game as it does not encourage game development. This is the reason so many people are so unsuccesful in raiding and they never will be. The are to dependant on other people figuring out and telling them what to do. The ability to figure stuff out on your own is far more valuable for raiding than anyone in this thread seems to concieve. The NPC in proving ground is even doing handholding far more than I would like to see. The NPC tells you for every new type of mob that spawns exactly what it does, to me that is not needed, but I guess it is nice for some people. What it does not do however is tell you exactly how to beat it with your class and spec. It tells you, this is the mob, this is what it does, deal with it. As players are inside proving grounds alone. In the end, you yourself have to use your own mind, think about your classes mechanics, the mobs mechanics and how to deal with them. This is one of the reasons I was reluctant about writing a guide to proving grounds, since proving grounds to me is just that, figuring stuff out without a guide. In the end I decided to write a guide for Endless Tank, but I deliberately did not touch gold tank as I feel like players should figure that out on their own.

I would strongly suggest the people in here that consider proving grounds to give useless training to check this video made by Evrelia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdeyG-VZ0Sc
Where he touches the subject of how Soloing raids make you a better player and raider. The same logic can be applicated to proving grounds.

We often said in our guild that there are 4 levels of raiders. The first level would be the people that lacks the ability of thinking for himself, adapting while also lacking the skill of playing the game. What some people would refer to as "LFR raider". Me myself, would avoid using that term as there are plenty of good players in LFR. The second level is the people that needs to be told what to do, handheld at every step, they can get the job down, but they need a lot of guidance. This is typically the kind of players that struggle with normal modes, but atleast get a few of them down and maybe even clear the raid before the end of the tier. The third level is the players that need some form of handholding in terms of reading a few guides, getting a few tips here and there. But overall they are fairly independant. They can figure out some strategies for themselves, when to use certain spells, how to survive certain things etc. This is typically the type of players that clear normals fast and get a fair bit into heroic content but rarely clear the entire heroic content unless it is was content that recieved serious nerfs while current such as ICC or DS. The fourth level is the players that do not need guides or help. Sure, they still keep tabs on current discussions revolving around their class, noone can know everything and new things are always found out about classes. But these players are highly independant, they adapt well to the encounters, they make good use of their toolkit, they figure out when to use what etc and how to beat the fights. These are the kind of players that when first time they reached the snail trash before Ji-Kun, they noticed the snails had a debuff that said "Will instantly devour anyone that comes in close range", and figured, "Hey, I do not want to be devoured". They do not need to be killed by something to figure out the mechanic and know it is bad. They move from fire the first time they see it, not after being killed once from it. These are the heroic raiders and those that clear heroic modes fairly quick.

Now of course, that is extremely generalised and simplified. Truth is that there are several levels in between and above those aswells. Class knowledge and rotation knowledge also of course play a huge part, but what I have found during the years is that players that inhibited the skills of independance and adaptation also learned their classes well. I guess it goes a bit hand in hand. The point is that what proving ground teaches you is necessary to advance in the raiding pyramid. And the players that learn those key feautures also takes the time to learn their classes main rotational abilities, making them to me secondary.

What can be improved proving grounds

There are not enough different proving grounds. Hopefully this is something that will come in the feauture. More and more proving grounds focusing on different aspects of the game.

The 463 scaling is a bit weird to me. I would have liked to see different scalings for different item levels, see above different proving grounds needed. One for 463, one for 502 and one for 535 could have been an idea.

I do not like the endless concept as it encourages farming optimal gear for proving grounds, PGs should not be about the gear. Gold is fine as it can be done regardless how shitty your gear is. But it becomes a problem in endless.

I think that pots and flasks that only work inside proving grounds aswell as 300 stat food should be sold by the vendor in there.

Endless is way to long. Going after wave 60+ just takes so much time, especially since it is pretty much facerolling for the first 30-40 minutes. I think some revision of endless needs to be done. One thing that me and my friends discussed was allowing players skipping waves. If you have beaten wave 30 you would be able to start at wave 10, if you have beaten wave 40 you can start at wave 20 and so on. Basically so you "only" have to repeat 20 minutes of waves that you have completed before.

What I can see in the future of proving grounds

I can see it being expanded further. Low level proving grounds granting experience. Granting more experience the higher difficulty you play at. I could even see the highest difficulty allowing to to level way faster than all other methods of leveling. Leveling right now is just a pointless grind, you learn nothing about the game while leveling. PGs for leveling would put a bigger purpose in it. Allowing players that display capability of playing the game to level faster would allow those that struggle more time to practice and learn.

I can even see it granting gear at maximum level. Running a PG is far more rewarding for a persons skill level progression than say running an LFR. I would see no problem with PGs at the hardest difficulty granting LFR level loot and at lower levels granting dungeon level loot. A player spending 30 minutes to do 30 waves of endless PG has spent a lot more effort into it than someone that spent 30 minutes killing a boss in LFR.

It can be expanded into a lot more proving grounds, not all of them has to be wave defenses. We could have proving grounds that reassembles dungeons with trash and mini bosses, another one that reassembles raid bosses, maybe even northrend beast style with several mini raid bosses etc. The possibilities are there.

All in all, I think proving grounds is great. A lot and a lot of things can be improved. But considering it is in its trial phase, I think it got great potentials. PGs are miles better than most other futures released lately.

You shouldn't have to "figure out" how to play the god damned game on your own. Games don't do this anymore. Games haven't done this really at all anymore since the 90's :x

It'd be one thing if WoW was inherently intuitive and you learned as you do, but it's not. You have to go to outside sources for this sort of stuff, or just be very, very, very, very game adept, which is, frankly, not what an MMO audience usually is. Be a little realistic here, and try and not be insulting about it. It's not about "having your hand held" or whatever petty insult you want to throw at certain people. The game just doesn't tend to teach people how to play :x You have to want to learn to play right, and then search out how to do that, because if you don't, unless you're very game adept, you're almost always going to be playing WoW wrong, and there's some inherent flaws in that design, and it's not just laziness and what have you.

(I'm not talking about Proving Grounds, so much as WoW not teaching people jack squat of how to play it.)

[britishbubba]

The nerf to everything means that Frostjaw Deep Frost Bomb Barrage doesn't do it as Arcane, just not enough stats.

And you see why I'd like a spec-balanced PG? :3

not really, because to benefit arcane, PG would just be a training dummy that does nothing. I personally have no problem with swapping to a spec that actually have synergy with what I'm trying to do.

[Devilyaki]

Oh ya that thing was added..

[Deleted]

You shouldn't have to "figure out" how to play the god damned game on your own. Games don't do this anymore. Games haven't done this really at all anymore since the 90's :x

It'd be one thing if WoW was inherently intuitive and you learned as you do, but it's not. You have to go to outside sources for this sort of stuff, or just be very, very, very, very game adept, which is, frankly, not what an MMO audience usually is. Be a little realistic here, and try and not be insulting about it. It's not about "having your hand held" or whatever petty insult you want to throw at certain people. The game just doesn't tend to teach people how to play :x You have to want to learn to play right, and then search out how to do that, because if you don't, unless you're very game adept, you're almost always going to be playing WoW wrong, and there's some inherent flaws in that design, and it's not just laziness and what have you.

(I'm not talking about Proving Grounds, so much as WoW not teaching people jack squat of how to play it.)

But you do not have to figure out how to play the game on your own. The World of Warcraft official getting started guide helps you out with the basic stuff, controls etc. It teaches you everything you need to know to be able to play the game. The in-game tooltips on spells and other stuff helps you figure out most of the stuff revolving around your class. With a bit of common sense you can often figure out your optimal dps rotation without even using any exteral source. Of course this is easier on some specs than others.

The only thing you actually have to go to outside sources to figure out is the really really optimal min-maxing and cutting edge stuff. Of course you can also find this out by yourself, but that requires a lot of figuring out. This step is however completely unnecessary unless you play at the cutting edge of content.

The only thing that you actually have to figure out is how to use your toolkit to beat the challenge infront of you. This is something that exists in every single game in this world, including angry birds. No game that I am aware of comes with a build in walkthrough complete for the entire game, telling you exactly what to do. To go back to the angry birds example, even such a simple game has the same model as WoW. During the game, the game tells you, hey these birds are your ammonition, they have different characteristics. These are your enemies, use the ammo wisely to beat the level. In the exact same way, leveling up the tooltips tells you exactly what every spell does. When you enter the proving ground it tells you exactly what each enemy do. I do not understand how you think that no other game requires you to figure stuff out. I would honestly like an example of any game (preferably a bit mainstream game) that does not require a bit of figuring out at all.

Even so, we get a conflict of interest. We have people complaining widespread that raiding is too hard. People simply do not possess the capabilities to perform their roles to the needed limit and figure out how to overcome the challenges that raiding provides. Blizzard then introduces Proving Grounds that teaches players the basics of having to figure out how to beat and encounter and how to utilize your class for niche scenarios. It then gets complaints because it needs to be "figured out" how to beat. Fairly obvious blizzard are trying to help people into raiding by teaching people the raiding mindset. "This is my class, this is the encounter I am up against. How do I beat this encounter?"

I still cant comprehend how you can considerig figuring out for yourself how to overcome a specific challenge/boss/map/level to not be a part of a game.

[Deja Thoris]

You shouldn't have to "figure out" how to play the god damned game on your own. Games don't do this anymore. Games haven't done this really at all anymore since the 90's :x

"Figuring stuff out" is a life skill that you should try to apply from anything from a game to a maths problem to dealing with people. It's one of the most valuable skills you can learn. If you just want stuff spoonfed to you then welcome to mediocrity.

[Otimus]

But you do not have to figure out how to play the game on your own. The World of Warcraft official getting started guide helps you out with the basic stuff, controls etc. It teaches you everything you need to know to be able to play the game. The in-game tooltips on spells and other stuff helps you figure out most of the stuff revolving around your class. With a bit of common sense you can often figure out your optimal dps rotation without even using any exteral source. Of course this is easier on some specs than others.

The only thing you actually have to go to outside sources to figure out is the really really optimal min-maxing and cutting edge stuff. Of course you can also find this out by yourself, but that requires a lot of figuring out. This step is however completely unnecessary unless you play at the cutting edge of content.

The only thing that you actually have to figure out is how to use your toolkit to beat the challenge infront of you. This is something that exists in every single game in this world, including angry birds. No game that I am aware of comes with a build in walkthrough complete for the entire game, telling you exactly what to do. To go back to the angry birds example, even such a simple game has the same model as WoW. During the game, the game tells you, hey these birds are your ammonition, they have different characteristics. These are your enemies, use the ammo wisely to beat the level. In the exact same way, leveling up the tooltips tells you exactly what every spell does. When you enter the proving ground it tells you exactly what each enemy do. I do not understand how you think that no other game requires you to figure stuff out. I would honestly like an example of any game (preferably a bit mainstream game) that does not require a bit of figuring out at all.

Even so, we get a conflict of interest. We have people complaining widespread that raiding is too hard. People simply do not possess the capabilities to perform their roles to the needed limit and figure out how to overcome the challenges that raiding provides. Blizzard then introduces Proving Grounds that teaches players the basics of having to figure out how to beat and encounter and how to utilize your class for niche scenarios. It then gets complaints because it needs to be "figured out" how to beat. Fairly obvious blizzard are trying to help people into raiding by teaching people the raiding mindset. "This is my class, this is the encounter I am up against. How do I beat this encounter?"

I still cant comprehend how you can considerig figuring out for yourself how to overcome a specific challenge/boss/map/level to not be a part of a game.

I think the dissonance here is that you think WoW's gameplay is a lot more intuitive than I seem to.

In something like, say... Assassin's Creed, for example, you're plainly told what everything does, as you're able to do it, and given, immediately after learning what to do, something you have to do with it. WoW doesn't do that. You have to want to know what to do. Unoptimal/improper play is rewarded and acceptable until the endgame, where it isn't. Almost everything in your toolset is unimportant and unprovoked until then. There's a big gap there, where the game doesn't actively teach you how to play it. It just says "Stuff is here, it does some stuff probably. Figure it out."

In that Angry Birds example, it's pretty plainly clear. Pull band, hit pigs, break things. When you get a new bird type, it immediately shows you a visual example of what that thing does, and how to use it, and how it applies to the game. Again, WoW doesn't do anything of the sort.

- - - Updated - - -

"Figuring stuff out" is a life skill that you should try to apply from anything from a game to a maths problem to dealing with people. It's one of the most valuable skills you can learn. If you just want stuff spoonfed to you then welcome to mediocrity.

It's not about wanting stuff "spoonfed" to you. Way to jump to one extreme to another :x Did you just cherry pick one line out of what I said, and ignore the rest so you could make a quick insulting blurb?