Guide: Guardian Druid Proving Grounds (Wave 30)

[Deleted]

A little something I made after finishing wave 30 yesterday, hopefully it will help some of you, as I personally think the tactic is a bit counter-intuitive

[Siri]

I'll also provide some input since I did the tank challenge as a druid too.
Personally I found Typhoon more useful than Entanglement since the root can break really early, I preferred the consistency of the knockback and snare preferable to a sometimes-great-sometimes-awful aoe root.

Remember that Barkskin is on a 30 second cooldown now. That's potentially two uses per wave. I didn't pre-plan any usage of SI/Ursoc but rather just kept them for emergencies, I didn't find any wave reliably dangerous enough to warrant pre-popping SI.

I preferred having a bit more stamina. I used stamina flask/food and I also used the relic of niuzao because it was the only one I had, there might be better options. I found the buffer better because damage intake is soooo spiky at times. I still had crit gems though.

Treants are VERY valuable. Either to relieve some pressure or to keep a mob busy while I'm doing other stuff.

It is possible to manipulate which mob she shoots first. If you stand where a pack will spawn and hit one mob really quickly your NPC helper will shoot that target instead of the one she'd normally go for. I primarily found this useful on wave 4 to get her to kill the wind-guard first. The conqueror only enrages once anyway and an un-enraged conqueror is not particularly dangerous. Also, the wind-guard will be alive for the next wave and the knockback is really annoying when you want to position things in fire.

Start each wave with enough rage to use SD before you start getting hit, especially waves with wind-guards. It's easy to assume that conquerors are the highest damage output mob, this is not true. At least that's my experience.

Glyph of Faerie Fire is nice to pick up adds from a bit of extra range.

Some stuff for each wave:
1. Nothing really.
2. SD before the mobs reach you, and one additional time. At 48 seconds or so, Typhoon them, stampeding roar and run to where the first ambusher spawns to pick him up. When the varmints start getting close put down Ursol's Vortex then get into cat-form and dash. Be ready to pick up the second ambusher with a taunt and/or faerie fire but it's not a huge deal if your NPC gets hit a bit, it's better to mitigate the damage on yourself.
3. I put two treants on the flamecaller on the left hand side just to make sure he doesn't hit your helper much. Faerie Fire the left ripper and run to the right flamecaller, picking up the second ripper on the way. Interrupt the first Fireball and lead the three mobs on you into fire. Put a treant on the flamecaller you have aggro on so he doesn't fireball you, it actually does a sizable amount of damage.
4. I stand where the pack is going to spawn and instantly hit the wind-guard, I want it to die first so it won't knock me around during wave 5. When the conqueror enrages put a treant or two on the wind-guard to make the enrage damage easier to handle.
5. Ideally you have a conqueror left from the last wave, he won't enrage again, don't worry. Just pick up the new mobs, interrupt the flamecaller and put all four mobs in fire and then put a treant on the flamecaller. Pick up ambushers so they run into fire.
6. You definitely want berserk for this wave, SD needs to up all the time and you need rage to heal yourself. This is the only wave I found entangle better than typhoon on because at worst it will only break on one of them (since your helper doesn't aoe) which is totally managable. I put a treant on one of them to make the pack easier to pick up. I want to keep my taunt ready just in case so the treant provides a short distraction.
7. Just make sure you use Typhoon/Ursol's to kite during the enrage so you don't have other stuff hitting you. If you lose aggro on both remaining wind-guards at the same time and faerie fire isn't enough to get aggro back on the second one just use a treant.
8. Wave 8 is the same as other flamecaller waves, just stand in a position where you don't have to move to get the monkeys into fire. When my wave 9 starts all monkeys from the previous wave are dead, 100% of the time.
9. Kite this wave with typhoon/ursol's + stampeding roar/cat dash. Be ready with treants/taunt/faerie fire.
10. Deal with this as with other flamecallers, only this time it is even more important to have your treants on the flamecaller so you don't have to eat his pyroblasts. Even the large conqueror's enrage isn't that bad as long as that's the only damage you're taking. If you play properly with the fire, the whole wave will be dead a few seconds into the intermission, giving you some time to do whatever.

[Deleted]

I tried something similar, just wasnt able to pull it off as easily, so that's why I went with the talents/stats I did

But yeah, going further than wave 40 you'd probably have to change stuff around, and just practice the execution

[Siri]

It obviously worked well for you, just wanted to provide a different approach. The only thing I'd actually consider wrong is not using Force of Nature. They're absolutely incredible in the proving grounds. I also tried using Dream of Cenarius instead of Nature's Vigil, not really sure which way to go here. Vigil is really nice but I didn't find myself using it much so the extra 10% passive crit on mangle felt nicer.

[Dreyen]

I find dream of cenarius to be too unreliable to be worth it. Vigil is probably more reliable on top of being more damage, hotw is the highest damage but probably not the best talent for this.

[Siri]

The damage you do is virtually irrelevant, disregard the extra damage from vigil entirely and only compare the healing. You want to actually tank as little as possible, that's why I didn't really like Vigil. On the other hand the heal from DoC is ready quite a lot and it can easily save you. That was my reasoning anyway.

[JStormrage]

Thanks for the tip on the Treants, I personally gave it a go till wave 9 as it the proving grounds was the first quest i picked up I got to Gold easy as dps cat and then Guardian but after that I lost interest as its a bit draining on focus.

[Deleted]

The damage you do is virtually irrelevant, disregard the extra damage from vigil entirely and only compare the healing. You want to actually tank as little as possible, that's why I didn't really like Vigil. On the other hand the heal from DoC is ready quite a lot and it can easily save you. That was my reasoning anyway.

Agreed, but I guess it's about whether you like the reliability or not, you're running with about 40% crit at 463 i lvl, + the 10% from DoC on mangle, so procs are not that often as they are with current gear (540+)

[Siri]

Nah, I know. It adds up in the rage department though and when you do have the doc heal it heals for a lot. Vigil doesn't really counter spikes even when it is up and spikes are what kills you (most of the time at least )