Resto: Proving Grounds Worth Doing?

[Edgeta]

I've been either Balance or feral on my Druid since WotLK; I decided to try Resto out again for Legion. I've only ran two dungeons so far; one went "ok" and the other was a bit of a struggle but we managed it in the end. I don't know if I'm doing fine and the struggle one was because of a poor Tank, or if I'm doing poorly and the ok one was because of a good tank.

My question to the druid community is...do the proving grounds actually help with solidifying your healing; or do they at least give you a good indication of how you're doing as a healer?

[trm90]

I would recommend it yeah, it's really good for understanding 5 man dungeons. The trick to doing PGs well is using your whole toolkit available, not just your main 5-6 healing spells, and that'll translate well to dungeons (by this I mean entangling roots, typoon, swapping forms etc).

But ultimately you need experience in real dungeons the most, don't be afraid to stick to Heroics for a while if you're struggling or can't keep up

[Laurathansal]

The answer is yes.

Proving grounds get considerably harder towards the later stages, and when you start struggling with healing, is when you really learn. And you can repeat it over and over, so If you commit 1 hour of your time to get as far as possible in the proving grounds, you will for sure come out a better healer.

[Alltat]

The Proven Healer title is fun to run around with, but don't expect to learn anything other than how to beat proving grounds waves. It won't teach you about real healing, because that's much less predictable and usually involves more AoE damage.

The one thing it sort of does teach you is how to use things other than just heals, like dispels and stuns/interrupts. I guess a lot of people would benefit from that part. Many healers seem to be entirely unaware that they have abilities other than healing and mobility unless their raid leader explicitly tells them to use things like Vortex and Typhoon on a boss.

[ydraw]

It's also very good for testing your addons are working without having to dive into a dungeon.

[Deleted]

its far away from a common dungeon-experience but it forces you to use at least some of your spells properly to complete it, so it might be useful to come into a class mechanic faster (and without harming others^^)

[aziras]

It's also very good for testing your addons are working without having to dive into a dungeon.

This. Plus it works pretty well for experimenting with spells/abilities. You do not want to fiddle with new mouseover macros or unitframe positioning in a real group. PG gives you a pretty good idea of whether or not a certain setup works for you.

Most dungeon runs will be mindless zergs anyway, so as you are finding your bearings as a healer, it can be good to not have a group that does that. Even if the encounters are not really equivalent it still gives some practice.