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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.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Proving Grounds
WoW Insider posted a couple of days ago about Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera's blog on the new Proving Grounds feature coming in the Patch 5.4 PTR. Just as you would expect following that post, the proving grounds have launched on the PTR. Wowhead's Perculia has put together a great summary that expands on Neth's blog and provides a good deal more detail in the encounters, mechanics and so on that players can expect to meet in the Proving Grounds. Having spent some time in them today, coupled with Perculia's research, I feel relatively well placed to provide a short run-down on what to expect in the different sections and difficulties. First up, where are they? The proving grounds are located in the same spot as the Arena of Annihilation, the White Tiger Temple in Kun-Lai Summit. If you get there and can't find the NPC, and instead see a white tiger, you are phased and need to complete the opening of the Vale quests. Fortunately, it's only three quests. Once you're there, speak to Rotun and get started.
Patch 5.4 PTR: Proving Grounds Preview
Ever since the Proving Grounds feature was announced back at the very start of Mists of Pandaria, players have been desperate to get their hands on this new feature. We all thought Brawler's Guild was Proving Grounds, we all felt a little sad when it wasn't (although Brawler's Guild is amazing), and we've all been waiting so long. But the wait is finally over, and Blizzard Community Manager Nethaera has posted a blog detailing just exactly what we can expect from this new content. She starts off by giving the reader a bit of background on the idea, before launching into what we really want to know: just exactly how it will work for each role. Tank: You will be tasked with protecting an NPC from oncoming waves of enemies, which will test your tanking skills in various ways. Fear not, though a friendly NPC will assist, by healing you, and damaging the enemies. Damage: Sometimes you just have to go it alone. You'll melt the usual faces, while handling a variety of mechanics including interrupting heals, chasing down runners, timing cooldowns, avoiding harmful mechanics, and more. Healer: Four NPCs will join you to form a full party. It will take a special healing touch to keep your friends alive, as you work together to face the challenges of attacking enemies. source
The Queue: Proving grounds, good warlocks, bags, and more
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. I'll let today's questions speak for themselves. Onwards! sergel92 asked: Any word on Proving grounds? All i heard was that it's for patch 5.4, but I haven't heard any news on it.
What will the mystery feature be?
Back in January, Ghostcrawler teased us all with the possibility of a new, as yet unannounced new feature coming at some point in Mists of Pandaria. Now, with the recent spate of Dev interviews before patch 5.2's release, it's come up again. With this tantalizing hint that the new feature will come out with the last patch of the expansion and it will provide new content for players, we're left to speculate. What is this feature? The first thing that comes to mind is, for me anyway, the long-awaited Proving Grounds concept. The idea of content that solo players can use to hone and demonstrate their skills interests me greatly. But how would it have a lot of new content for players? How is it going to be implemented? And that's even assuming it is Proving Grounds at all. Since we're speculating, why not speculate more? Here's a few ideas for what the feature could be, all of them pretty much based entirely on what I'd like it to be. One thing seems clear to me, that being that this new feature won't be something like tri-spec, based on the emphasis on new content for players. As cool as it might be to be able to switch between all three of your class specializations, that's not content.
Talking patch 5.1 with Dave Kosak & Cory Stockton
Patch 5.1 introduced a lot of new content, and a lot of new lore -- and who better to explain it all than Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton, and Lead Quest Designer Dave Kosak? We sat down with both, along with Community Manager Zarhym to talk about some of the new features found in patch 5.1. Along with questions about the Brawler's Guild, both Kosak and Stockton addressed scenarios, daily quests, tweaking old content, that pesky matter of player housing, and what's to come in patch 5.2. Patch 5.1 was an incredibly fast patch. Is this going to be a trend with Mists? Cory Stockton: Yeah, for sure -- this has been our goal for a long time. We can't promise that we're going to have the exact same amount of content in the exact same amount of time, but it's definitely our intention to deliver patches in a time frame similar to this with a similar or larger amount of content. It just all comes down to each individual patch and the details of what we can do, but it's definitely our goal. Dave Kosak: We'll alternate between patches that have raid content and patches that don't have raid content as sort of required by what players are doing in the game and try and space it out. But our objective has always been faster content delivery, and we're hoping that players are seeing that we're trying to live up to that.
Arena of Annihilation provides a quick and easy blue weapon at level 90
Ever since Nagrand, the latest version of Ring of Blood has been a great rite of passage. Once you're close to max level, you beg, wheedle, or cajole 4 friends, strangers, or even enemies to join you in fighting a series of elite mobs, with the final reward being a blue weapon that will serve you well until you get something better from a heroic dungeon. Luckily, this tradition continues in Mists, and it's even easier to get started. Once you're 90, head to Kun-lai Summit and the Temple of the White Tiger. Gurgthock will be standing next to a gong just outside the temple proper, and he'll give you a quest to enter the Arena of Annihilation, with the reward being the choice of a couple weapons tailor made for your class. Once you get the quest, what you'll want to do is queue for the Arena of Annihilation scenario. Open the Dungeon Finder Interface (The hotkey should be "I" by default) and choose the Scenarios option. Choose Specific Scenarios from the drop down menu, check the box next to Arena of Annihilation, make sure no other boxes are checked, and hit Find Group. Within moments, you'll be in the Scenario and well on your way to your weapon. Once you defeat the final boss, Wodin the Troll-Servant will be waiting right there in the scenario to reward you. The weapon will be a nice, solid rare weapon of ilvl 450. It's not as good as a heroic dungeon drop, but if you just dinged 90, it's bound to be better than the quest green you're likely using, and it'll help boost your item level so you can run heroics that much faster. It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!
E308: What an awful, awful Duke Nukem trailer
So ... huh? After sitting through the above four minutes of explosions, nuclear symbols and flashing lights, we have learned nothing about the upcoming Duke Nukem Trilogy for the DS. Quite frankly, this isnt the kind of trailer you want to show at E3, when countless other videos opt to show gameplay footage and new details. Also, four minutes long? Sure, there's a bit of metal rocking out there, but wouldn't we rather watch a music video instead of the words Critical Mass and Proving Grounds blasting all over the screen? You bet.The rest of the Fanboy team thinks this irritable blogger is missing the joke of the (clearly satirical) trailer. They are probably right.
