Proving Grounds - Damage to Silver!

As I talked about in the tanking version of this article, Proving Grounds will play a somewhat bigger role in Warlords of Draenor. In order to queue for random heroic dungeons, you'll need to first qualify by completing the Silver Medal in your given role. This will give you an achievement that is account-wide, but does not carry over from Mists - so you'll have to do it again if you did it during Mists.

One thing that I hadn't mentioned (it may not have been on the Beta yet) is that when you hit level 100, you'll be sent on a quest to complete the Bronze medal proving grounds in any role in order to get a shiny new iLevel 610 weapon. This should function very similarly to the Arena of Annihilation weapon as a good "grats, you hit 100, have a halfway decent weapon!" I'm sure both normal and heroic dungeons at 100 will award higher-quality pieces, but this will definitely start you on your way.

So, damage:

Damage, known to most as DPS, is the role that every class can play, and it's also generally the easiest role, as it's far more forgiving. One of the reasons for this is that you'll almost never be the only DPS in your group, and so the load is shared by the largest number of people.

This is, to be frank, why some DPS players may have coasted by, not realizing how, well, bad they are.

Having bad DPS is something you can compensate for. In 5-person dungeons, bosses don't have enrage timers, so as long as the healer doesn't run out of mana, you can have really poor DPS and still succeed. So while I think most players are smart enough to get a sense of whether they're good at their role or not, this could prove a rude awakening for some players. Then again, if you are comfortable and familiar with a spec, you shouldn't have any trouble getting Silver. On my Beta-built level 100 Frost DK, I beat every wave with about half of my allotted time to spare.

So what will you face when you do the Damage Proving Grounds? Once again, the feature is set in the Temple of the White Tiger (much like Arena of Annihilation, come to think of it) and you'll be dealing with illusions based on Pandaria creatures.

Unlike for tanks and healers, there's no helpful NPCs here, and the enemies simply don't attack you, except for one targeted ability you'll have to deal with.

Saurok: Saurok in this are very simple. They simply stand still and let you attack.

Virmen: Likewise, Virmen simply stand and allow you to attack, but they come in large groups, so you'll want to use AoE abilities to take them down.

Mogu: The Mogu will generate a shield that protects them from all attacks from the front. You'll need to get behind them before you attack them. After a few seconds, they'll re-cast the shield while facing a different direction. so if you haven't killed them by then, you'll have to move.

Jinyu: The Jinyu are healers, and will begin to cast a heal when any of the illusions (including itself) are low on health. Take these guys out first, and interrupt them if you can. I don't know if there's a difference in how they work for classes that don't have interrupts (though I suppose that's only a small few these days.)

Mantid: The Mantid are the trickiest illusions, but also useful in a way. They will create a glob of amber that will chase after you. You'll want to kite the amber in such a way that it hits an illusion rather than you, as anyone near it when it goes off will take a bunch of damage and be stunned for several seconds, including the Mantid who cast it.

Putting it All Together:

The challenge teaches you some of the principles of good DPS - you'll want to remain focused when dealing with problematic enemies, but things like the amber glob will also test your situational awareness. None of the challenges are all that horrible, but it will require a decent, solid floor of competence that is sometimes lacking in random groups.

Whether people think to apply the lessons taught here in dungeons is a whole other story.

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.