Proving Grounds: Tank to Silver!

I haven't actually played them myself (I'm leaving myself something new when the expansion goes live,) but theoretically we're going to be getting harder heroic dungeons this time around. The progression path kind of splits off at dungeons. The most casual players are going to be able to go directly from Normal mode dungeons into LFR, whereas those doing organized raiding will be expected to run some heroic dungeons first. However, with harder heroics, they want to make sure that players have proven themselves capable of dealing with more complex mechanics. When heroics became significantly harder in Cataclysm (which, if I'm honest, is I think the single biggest contributor to a drop off in subscriptions that continues to this day,) running LFG became something of a nightmare.

Blizzard's attempt to combat this phenomenon is to require a Silver in Proving Grounds in order to queue for a matchmaking group in heroic dungeons. A couple caveats: First, nothing is preventing you from going with a guild group to one of these dungeons, as it only requires this if you're trying to be grouped with strangers. Second, there are plenty of level 100 normal-mode dungeons (I believe four of them) that you'll be able to run and gear up in. Third, you should be able to get into LFR without doing heroic dungeons. Four, it appears that the proving grounds achievements are account-wide, so as soon as you've gotten Silver Damage, you should be able to run heroics in match made groups on any toon.

All in all, it's a pretty low hurdle, but putting in the effort to complete it will show that you're at least remotely competent at your role.

The proving grounds have not actually changed from the ones brought in in 5.4, but after spending a lot of time in Draenor it's perhaps not so bad to see some Pandaren again. The one major difference is that the NPCs now scale up to you in Proving Grounds, instead of scaling you down.

Ok, tanking!

First off, there will be a Shado-Pan Mistweaver who stands in the center of the room. Your goal is to keep her alive. She will provide a decent amount of DPS and healing, but she is of course far more effective when she's not being beaten on.

You'll deal with enemies in waves. Each wave comes after a set amount of time, so killing enemies more efficiently will give you a little breathing room, but being less efficient will mean that you'll run the risk of being swarmed.

There are several barricades around the room, which I believe block line of sight. That can be useful for corralling some adds, but you'll also want to be sure that you remain in LOS of the healer.

So who do you deal with as a tank?

Saurok: The Saurok are pretty much just basic enemies. They never come in numbers larger than three. Sometimes you'll encounter a big one with two little ones. Just keep their attention and the monk will kill them.

Virmen: The Virmen come in swarms of five or so. The trick here is to establish aggro as quickly as you can. You'll probably have to beat on them for a bit before they turn their attention to you, but I highly recommend focusing on getting their attention early on. I believe they will debuff your armor or something, but thankfully they die quickly.

Yaungol: The Yaungol is a caster who will begin by creating several lava pools on the ground. These stack up a painful burning effect, but it will affect your enemies as well. Try to drag mobs into the lava while not stepping in it yourself, as this will help considerably in getting rid of them. After he creates the lava pools, he will just cast fire spells, so if you can, interrupt him and drag him into one of his own pools.

Mantid: The Mantid has a knock back attack that will cause him to drop aggro on you. Once you have aggro on everything else, keep this guy targeted so that you can taunt back as soon as he knocks you back.

Those are the four types of NPCs you deal with. As each wave progresses, you'll get different combinations of them, and they will come from different angles. As long as you keep them all attacking you, the damage doesn't really seem to be enough to worry too much about, at least at Silver. The key here is control - keep the Virmen off the Mistweaver and use those Lava Pools.

I'll admit I'm a pretty experienced tank - I've never been what you'd call a hardcore raider, but I have been tanking since 2007. So most of the stuff in here came second nature to me. Luckily, it's a private place to learn some of the very basic mechanics of tanking. I suspect that anyone who's actually tanked before will get through it easily, and new players will hopefully get some insight into what it takes to tank effectively.