The Proving Grounds

The Proving Grounds

The Proving Grounds is a new mechanism that allows individual players to practice in a five-man dungeon like atmosphere. Players can practice damage dealing (DPS), healing, and tanking with four other non-player characters. There are four levels of difficulty: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Endless. The battles are very similar to that of a real five man dungeon. The Proving Grounds is an instanced dungeon that Wild entered by talking with his druid trainer.

Wild selected the healing scenario. Four non-player characters were added to make up the five man group: Wild, a tank, and three DPS. Wild's gear was automatically set to a standard set in order to balance the event - in other words, the level of gear didn't matter. All of the normal buffs and debuffs that a dungeon group would be expected to have were provided automatically, except food and flask buffs, which Wild would have to provide for himself, but didn't bother with for this first test. By standardizing all of this, the only non-standard factor was the player.

The dungeon challenge was to defeat several waves of attackers (five waves, I think) while keeping everyone in the group alive. Wild could not use his Rebirth spell (to revive a dead player). A single death would end the battle in failure.

Let me first point out that I knew nothing about the above the first time I entered the Proving Grounds. All Wild knew about it was that he could get there by asking the Druid Trainer, and that Wild could "practice" his healing there.

Wild has not healed anyone but himself in many, many months, but he still had his spell bars and stuff, so how hard could it be? Wild smiled complacently at Trial Master Rotun, and asked for the lowest level of difficulty, the Bronze. The battle started after a ten second countdown. Wild's tank died on the third wave. The poor tank apologized to Wild, promising to train harder and do a better job next time. Ok, the tank is nothing but pixels, but I still felt bad for him and my group. I'd failed them.

So ended my first visit to the Proving Grounds.

I thought Wild's healing reflexes would just automatically kick in once I got started. The sad fact, though, is that Wild has lost those reflexes - the hand/brain reflexes that know what key or button to hit without thinking about it or looking for it on the keyboard. I'm not sure how long it will take to beat the rust off of Wild's healing abilities. I know I won't be putting real players at risk until Wild has re-mastered that art and can defeat the Proving Grounds at least up to Gold.

After licking his wounds and bolstering his confidence with a few days of killing elites on the Timeless Isle, Wild made some adjustments and returned to the Proving Grounds. Wild rebuilt his mouseover spell casting into the same mold he used when raiding. The comfort level went up greatly, although I knew I'd still be checking on spell casts visually for awhile, until it became automatic again. Wild also used his flask and food buffs.

This time things went better. The first two waves of mobs are pretty easy, but Wild was nervous and overhealed, which would bite him later. The third wave, I believe, is where the group started getting hit with AoE assaults and Wild had to really pick up the healing. Still not much to worry about - except that I failed to check Wild's mana pool, which had gone down by half before I noticed it and was at the start of wave four. Wild Innervated on the fourth wave to gain mana and managed to keep everyone alive. Wave five was another large AoE assault that just went on and on. Wild shifted to Tree of Life, but innervate wasn't up again, yet, and Tree of Life isn't much good if you are out of mana. The tank was still hanging in there, bless him, but a DPS died, and that's a fail. The scenario ended.

Things Wild did wrong: Waited too long to innervate (check mana often!), so didn't have it available  a second time; did not use Nature's Swiftness, which would have saved mana; didn't use swiftmend, another mana saver; did not use efflorescence effects from wild mushrooms, which also alleviates mana and greatly increases healing; waited too long before shifting into Tree of Life.  Wild has a minor excuse for the wild mushrooms. Wild is not used to them, and never had them for healing during his raiding days. Wild had just set up a new glyph so that the powerful efflorescence  healing effect was procced by wild mushrooms instead of swiftmend. Wild completely forgot about dropping his mushroom to get that effect.

It's sounds crazy, but Wild was as nervous in the Proving Grounds as he is in a real dungeon with real players. I love it, though. Wild can go back into the Grounds over and over, working on memorizing his spell casting and making use of all the abilities Wild has at his disposal to manage his mana and keep his team alive.