A Warrior Proving Grounds Guide – Raging to the Gold

Arms and Fury Warriors will both be able to handle the Proving grounds with little, if any, change in techniques or gear. Stats, gems, etc. willbe the same for both specs.

As you may know, one of the requirements for LFR (Looking for Raid) and for random heroics in the Warlords of Draenor expansion will be a Silver Achievement in the Proving Grounds. One might guess that the reason for this is all the complaining about “the bads” in both of those groups. Anothing might be the “insta boost to 90” system that WoW has implemented, which people feel will flood the world with boobs who have not the slightest idea of how to play their characters.

So, with that in mind, I’m putting up a series of guides on how to get that silver achievement (and higher level achievements) in the Proving Grounds. Some classes and specs will find it easier than others, but everyone should be able to do it.

The Proving Grounds have three areas of expertise:

• DPS/Damage – where you, all by yourself, have to destroy all opposition
• Healing – where you and your team work together to destroy all opposition. Your team is, ahem, not necessarily highly skilled.
• Tanking – You tank and burn down all opposition. You will have a healer who you have to keep alive.

After Silver you can go onto the Gold achievment and then Endless. This is where you fight wave after wave until you get bored of the whole thing. Gold has ten waves, ending with a boss type Sha. Silver has eight, with no major boss.

While the Proving Ground won’t perfectly mimic your raid bosses or situations, you won’t be taking damage, for example, they’re much better than the practice dummies in the big city. The dummies are great for leaning your keybinds and getting your rotations down, the Proving Grounds are the next step up.

One more note: All of your gear is scaled down to 463, including any legendaries you might have. Normal gems and enchants are not scaled, so make sure all of your gear is properly gemmed and enchanted. Their is a reforger on the grounds, so you can play around with stats.

How do you get to the grounds? Just ask your trainer, he’ll send you right over.

BTW – You can get a “You Did It Wrong!” achievement if you tank as Arms or Fury. You could even try the healer one, if you’re good with your bandages. 😉

Warrior Proving Grounds Guide, for Arms and Fury

Notes:

1. Battle Stance, since you will be taking little (if any) damage.
2. Fury: Wild Strikes on procs only, Colossus Smash on Cooldown.
3. Amber-weavers send amber globs at you. Place yourself so that the globs hit the opposition and then burn them down (they take 50% more damage when ambered.)
4. You can Charge through the amber globs, destroying them, without getting ambered yourself.
5. You will see a Berserker buff available, but save those for rounds 9 and 10, which is when you will really need them.
6. Kill Banshees immediately.
7. Interrupt Mystics (healers) as necessary. Burn them down before the others.
8. Spread damage as much as you can before focusing on one opponent, eg: Thunderclap. (Deep Wounds is very nice for Arms Warriors, this will be a bit harder for Fury. )
9. In Gold on waves 8, 9, and 10 you will fight a shielded Sha. He will be shielded, so will bounce most of your damage. When trhe shield drops you can burn him down. Save one berserker buff for wave 9, save the other and you major cooldowns for wave 10,

Talents and Glyphs

1. Tier 1: Juggernaut or Double Time.
2. Tier 2: Impending Victory, just for the extra strike.
3. Tier 3: Disrupting Shout for the interrupt.
4. Tier 4: Bladestorm, although Dragon Roar is a good alternative and there’s Shockwave if you want an extra Stun.
5. Tier 5: Doesn’t matter here.
6. Tier 6: Storm Bolt, for the ranged stun/interrupt. Avatar’s 3 min cooldown makes it a bit less useful here. The Fury Warrior, in the video below, used Bloodbath (which goes well with Dragon Roar.)

Glyphs

1. Glyph of Death From Above – More Heroic Leaps
2. Glyph of Bull Rush – More rage
3. Rude Interruption – Pummel a spell (succesfully) and get more damage. Nice for burning down Mystics.

Gear & Stats

As mentioned above, everything is scaled down to 463. Regular gems and enchants, being lower level than that, are not scaled down.

Hit and Expertise: The caps for both are 7.5% and you do want to try to hit them. If you are capped in your normal (not downscaled) gear then you will also be capped in the Proving Grounds.

After that, you want Crit > Mastery > Haste.

Arms Warrior Going for the Silver

This one is in German, but there is no text so it will be easy to follow. The mobs should be fairly clear. Proving that Arms Warriors have this too easy he has enough time to eat in between waves. 😉

Arms Warrior Going for the Gold

In this video the author describes when he’s doing for each of the ten waves of the Gold achievement.

Proving Grounds (Gold) – Fury Warrior

No description here, just a Titan’s Grip Fury Warrior cleaning up the place. Technique is similar to above, but he doesn’t have the Deep Wounds of Thunderclap.

Arms Warrior Endless Waves

The author goes through a few of the Endless Waves, with some running commentary.

Now go do it on your own!

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