Proving Grounds 2.0: Simulated Raid Environments

[Polarthief]

With the Iron Horde at our doorstep, more heroes are needed to step up and face them on their turf: Deep inside Highmaul, Blackrock Foundry, <insert T18/T19 raids here>. To prepare them, our scouts and failed survivor parties have given us intel on how to better face these threats.

The Proving Grounds now has a secondary feature in addition to its current one: Simulated Raid Environments! This new option allows you (and 19 illusions) to test your mechanics and role knowledge on specific fights. You can choose from one of four roles (Melee, Ranged, Healer, Tank) and one of three difficulties (Normal, Heroic, Mythic), and your success is heavily weighed on your performance!
- If you fail at mechanics, such as dodging fire or other avoidable attacks, more of your raid will start failing to dodge as well.
- If your DPS is low (as a DPS role), your illusionary allies will also be lacking DPS.
- If your healing low (except on the pull), you'll notice people dropping quicker.

To better test mechanics, most of the random elements have a much higher chance to target you for things to do, such as avoiding Flame Gouts on Kargath, or being picked for Crystalline Barrage on Tectus. Make sure you do well or your illusions won't have such an easy time surviving!
- To motivate players, your allies will give you cheers and encouraging messages when you do well ("<Name>, good job avoiding that fire!" "Way to kite Kargath into the fire, <Name>!").
- To help players understand mechanics (or roles!) they do poorly at, their allies will also help them out with some hints ("I bet Kargath doesn't like fire" "I need healing! <Name> please assist me!" "We must do more damage immediately to down these Warmages!")
- If at any point the player reaches 1 health, the simulation will immediately end, preventing their death, but also requiring a restart of the entire fight.

Needing some help or friendly morale? You can bring up to 4 (real) allies with you, and they can be any role as long as they fit into the 20-player comp!

Finally, to encourage players to actually take the time to learn these fights on their time, successfully completing every boss in a raid for the first time will reward players with a Normal-quality item from that raid, picked at random! (Normal-quality Cache of Highmaul, for example) These caches will only be given out once per completed raid, per player, however, but you're more than welcome to come back and test your abilities, or simply to brush up before a raid night!


TL;DR
- Proving Grounds now lets you test 20-player raid bosses, alone or with up to 5 players (doesn't have to be 1T, 1H, 3D).
- You'll get ONE cache of Normal-quality raid loot from the raid you completed, for the first time you do it (non-repeatable quest or achievement).
- You can test any difficulty except LFR, and pick any role, even if it's not your role.
- Illusionary allies will do better or worse based on your performance. Imagine your allies to be equal to your skill based on how well you do on a fight. You WILL NOT succeed (and even get curbstomped) at the fight if you do poorly, and you'll pass significantly easier than your guild raids if you do everything perfectly.
- You can try as much as you want, just like proving grounds, to test your DPS/Healing/Tanking, to improve at a mechanic you're bad at on a specific boss (without the glares and negativity of your guildies/peers), to see how a specific new/old boss goes, or your general mechanics awareness.


Idk, just a little idea I thought of that would make Proving Grounds infinitely more useful than it just sitting there as a minor inconvenience for new players to do outdated content (Heroic Dungeons).

[Polarthief]

The sad thing is, this is probably all I would do if it were introduced. Solo raiding, no more annoying people, yaaay.

But you wouldn't really ever progress. It's more just to show you mechanics and how to master them. Perfect for players who want to raid BRF Tuesday night and have all day to practice the new mechanics

PS: Inb4 "OMG JOIN A PTR RAIDING GROUP!" That doesn't let me practice on my time and I have 19 mouthbreathers with me.

[Redpanda]

sounds like a lonely way to play the game.

[Deleted]

What is it supposed to teach you?

That you should avoid fire? That you should do a lot of damage to Mar'gok's adds? But LFR already tries to do exactly that, and it doesn't work.

[Redpanda]

I don't exactly look to WoW to sate my social needs.

not saying wow sates yours social needs but I enjoy interacting with people in game.

[Rotted]

Good idea, but the general player base will never do it, or do it the once to get achi / if it's a requirement for lfr ques

[Deleted]

Group PG works only for tanks and healers because in PG they test skills to keep small group alive in scripted event. There is no tactic for NPCs and encounters, there is only tactic for tanking/healing to test performance. Everything depends on one player - you.

Real raid encounters might have multiple tactics and everything depends on all players in that encounter, not 1 player. Therefore its not possible to simulate encounter without forcing one specific tactic.

Also, big NO to getting rewards from it. Stop trying to turn MMO into single player game.

[Socialhealer]

sounds like LFR

[Barendon]

I actually thought about it recently, idea thief! I think it's really the best thing that can happen to raiding. People practice on their free time and then execute their performance on raiding night, how cool is that?

[sickSP]

What good would this do ? I mean simulating fights that already exist, when you can just .. raid.

[Barendon]

What good would this do ? I mean simulating fights that already exist, when you can just .. raid.

Imagine your guild is stuck on a fight for a whole night, constantly wiping because 2-3 persons keep failing. If those 2-3 players could practice on their free time before coming to the raid, they would perform much better.

[Varabently]

sounds like a lonely way to play the game.

I think the point is to help people actually learn to raid. It could be used as a yardstick to get into pugs/guilds. You could be given a score based on damage taken/dealt/etc. That would help newer players who don't have experience raiding get into the game.

- - - Updated - - -

What good would this do ? I mean simulating fights that already exist, when you can just .. raid.

Except there's this idea that pug raiders have that you have to have completed the raid to raid the raid. Make sense? Nope, but that's how it is. this would let solo players show they CAN do the fights without having to get into a pug.

[Socialhealer]

Imagine your guild is stuck on a fight for a whole night, constantly wiping because 2-3 persons keep failing. If those 2-3 players could practice on their free time before coming to the raid, they would perform much better.

sounds like a very casual guild, sounds like they don't want to get better/don't have time, therefore won't do that anyway.

progression should be done as a team not on your own.

[Aviditas]

I don't know if there would be a reason to do Heroic or Mythic quality. Proving grounds downgrade your gear to a certain extent, basically on par to a heroic dungeon. Obviously it's easier to do regardless of ilvl but still. Would heroic and mythic have a higher ilvl to set itself to? Would you still allow set bonuses to work? (Under the impression they don't but could be wrong)

It seems like a lot of resources to be one and done, and while I'm not claiming to be elite, only 1/7 mythic atm, I can't imagine needing to do this ever outside of the one piece of gear. It's fun doing the fights with friends and learning mechanics in a social setting. Sitting by myself while doing a raid sounds sad.

[Deleted]

The idea I've always wanted is an environment in proving grounds that doesn't limit ilevel and is literally a target dummy with all buffs, so you're testing your actual dps with full raid buffs.

[Socialhealer]

I don't know if there would be a reason to do Heroic or Mythic quality. Proving grounds downgrade your gear to a certain extent, basically on par to a heroic dungeon. Obviously it's easier to do regardless of ilvl but still. Would heroic and mythic have a higher ilvl to set itself to? Would you still allow set bonuses to work? (Under the impression they don't but could be wrong)

i'd love to see someone try design mythic imperator mar'gok in PG, i step out of a mine the rest of the raid plays flawlessly? i interrupt my warmage the rest of the interrupts go flawlessly? i move away from mark of chaos the rest of the raid moves flawlessly?

bawhahaha it's just hilarious to consider oh god now the idea seems so stupid.

[ComputerNerd]

Its a bad idea trying to push through another artificial environment, the results of which will be used as a snap judgement.
The problem has always been a lack of real experience while levelling, something which the rush, rush, rush mentality is making it hard to get.
This is and has always been a community problem, and has not been helped in the slightest by proving grounds.
If anything proving grounds have made it worse.

[Polarthief]

What is it supposed to teach you?

That you should avoid fire? That you should do a lot of damage to Mar'gok's adds? But LFR already tries to do exactly that, and it doesn't work.

Except the damage it deals would be equal to Normal, Heroic, or Mythic, whatever you pick. If you stand in bad things there, you will die. Touching mines on Mar'gok will wipe your raid. LFR's damage is so low that you can stand in something for an entire fight and take almost no damage. You WILL NOT clear the bosses if you do this. You didn't even bother to read the bits of the OP that state "if you do poorly, your raid will also do poorly" and "if you're brought to 1 HP, it's a wipe".

Good idea, but the general player base will never do it, or do it the once to get achi / if it's a requirement for lfr ques

They will when they want to understand a fight better.

Also, the "General Playerbase" doesn't even do NORMAL raiding. Does this mean Normal-Mythic raiding should cease to exist?

Group PG works only for tanks and healers because in PG they test skills to keep small group alive in scripted event. There is no tactic for NPCs and encounters, there is only tactic for tanking/healing to test performance. Everything depends on one player - you.

Real raid encounters might have multiple tactics and everything depends on all players in that encounter, not 1 player. Therefore its not possible to simulate encounter without forcing one specific tactic.

Except you could easily add an aura on the player(s) similar to Resolve: The more damage they take or the less healing/damage they deal, the worse the raid gets. Said aura would make NPCs weaker and more brittle. It's so much easier than you might think it is.

Also, big NO to getting rewards from it. Stop trying to turn MMO into single player game.

Big NO to trying to make me socialize with 24 retards in LFR for my Augment Runes. The reward is A SINGLE TIME, for the record. Also, guess what you're doing right now? On a fansite. Guess what you do when you look up videos for a fight strat? The exact same thing as you could be doing in Proving Grounds 2.0, except you actually get to TRY the boss.

sounds like a very casual guild, sounds like they don't want to get better/don't have time, therefore won't do that anyway.

progression should be done as a team not on your own.

Except there's PLENTY of time between raids where you're sitting on your ass doing fuckall. Right now, I could be practicing Mythic fights (or when BRF comes out, trying those fights prior to my raid on Tuesday) instead of sitting in my garrison. I'd also like to practice my OWN mechanics without having to wait til my raid is less retarded to get to a certain phase I wish to practice.

I don't know if there would be a reason to do Heroic or Mythic quality. Proving grounds downgrade your gear to a certain extent

Except Proving Grounds right now actually scales mobs UP to you, not downgrades your gear. Also, if you wanted to try a specific mechanic or test numbers based on your raid setting, now you can do so.

Its a bad idea trying to push through another artificial environment, the results of which will be used as a snap judgement.
The problem has always been a lack of real experience while levelling, something which the rush, rush, rush mentality is making it hard to get.
This is and has always been a community problem, and has not been helped in the slightest by proving grounds.
If anything proving grounds have made it worse.

Except leveling doesn't teach a player mechanics except their own spells, and it doesn't even teach them a correct rotation. Even when I wasn't "rushing" at Vanilla/BC, I never learned fuckall. There has never been ANY in-game resources to getting better at the game, outside of the Dungeon Journal, and that does it so poorly because it's just a textbook telling you the spells you might encounter.

[NoiseTank13]

yeah no

people want to be the high end raiders, will be high end raiders

people who don't necessarily care about the higher difficulties, won't do them and thus won't really put in the effort to train for something they won't be doing

the only way this has any redeeming educational chance is if it takes an actual existing boss and make it soloable so you know the mechanics, and I can almost guarentee that wont happen.

this just strikes me as another potential static bullshit hoop that people have to jump through.