Patch 5.4 PTR: First look at the Endless Healer Proving Grounds

Olivia wrote up a great overview of the Proving Grounds for tanks, healers, and DPS. Today I'm going to be going a little more in depth on the healing side of things. Bronze and silver were excellent warmups. I wiped once on gold due to my over confidence on the final wave but managed to overcome it. This is what the Endless difficulty on Proving Grounds looks like for healers. You'll gain a certain amount of points per round and it will continue to tick upwards until either you or a party member dies in battle. Thankfully, the NPCs will appear in your party frames. There's a spiffy achievement if you're able to reach Endless Healer: Wave 30 which nets The Proven Healer title.

Watch the video above as I play through the Endless Healer for the first time! I also narrate my spell choices and reasoning as I heal through the assorted waves.

You'll face a wide variety of threats. There will be NPC mobs that periodically enrage and hit your tanks really hard. You'll have a hunter NPC who will actually stand in fire (or not move from them). You'll have to dispel a debuff that will explode after 6 seconds dealing AoE damage. You'll have to spike heal players back to full health because there's no other way to remove the DoT. There are AoE spells. There are fires and other ground effects you'll need to react to.

Things I need to work on

Mana management: You saw my bars going into wave 7 and I was almost suffocating for mana. But I queued into this completely unprepared anyway. Didn't have any flasks or food to use as a healer. I didn't use my Mindbender on cooldown nor did I fire Hymn of Hope. I felt that I could've used Divine Hymn earlier to buy myself 8 seconds where I didn't have to use other spells and just get that cooldown working.

Cooldown timing: There were a few times where I needed a key dispel but it was on cooldown. Mass Dispel was also on cooldown. I can probably time those better but it seems like there will be periods where you're caught between a rock and a hard place. Sometimes you just have to eat the AoE explosion in favor of burst healing another NPC target up instead.

Something I forgot to mention in the video is that flasks and food will work. Potions will not.

Proving Grounds is a great workout for both new and experienced healers. If you want to practice a new spec or a new class, you can do it in here without jumping into a dungeon and risking getting yelled at. And c'mon, this is another way to build up bragging rights among your friends and colleagues about who the better player is. 7th wave is a good start for being unflasked and unprepared in general.

Alright, Dawn Moore. Your move.