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.