The Great Push 2023 - Proving Grounds Recap

Last week, the Season 2 Mythic+ tournament began, as teams are once again battling it out in The Great Push!

The tournament started things off with five days of Proving Grounds that pitted all the registered teams against each other. Only the 18 best teams would prevail, and it was five days of tumultuous events and developments that required quick adaptation to come out victorious.

Since the Proving Grounds were not live-streamed, many of the developments were hidden from prying eyes or difficult to follow, and many were only able to see the final results, or heard rumors of what actually happened during these exciting 120 hours. This way, we have pieced these developments together for you, with our Proving Grounds recap.

We’d like to extend a special thanks to Picco, Ashine, Fem, and Splat for lending their time and insights towards this article.

Table of Contents

Proving Grounds Format

While The Great Push has now received a full-season format just like the MDI, the overall format is very similar to the last TGP that we saw in Shadowlands. To start things off, everyone was able to sign up for the TGP Proving Grounds, which were held from July 5th - 10th.


Teams were once again given two dungeons with a specific set of affixes, and throughout those five Proving Grounds days, they had to play these keys up and time them at the highest level as possible – and as fast as possible. Out of all the competing teams, the 18 best teams moved on to the next stage of the tournament.

The Ranking for each team was based on both their highest timed key in both dungeons, as well as their timer. If teams had a tied score based on key-level, the combined timer of both dungeons would be taken into account to decide on each team’s ranking.

The Dungeons and Affixes

For this year’s TGP Proving Grounds, the two dungeons and Affixes were as follows:

Dungeon	Affixes
Freehold	Tyrannical Volcanic Sanguine
Uldaman: Legacy of Tyr	Fortified Storming Bursting

The Affixes in Freehold were those of a typical “Push Week”, although Tyrannical was expected to become a problem if the key level would go high enough. Since the tournament realm does not offer the opportunity to obtain high levels of avoidance gear, mitigating some of the boss damage did indeed prove problematic.

In Uldaman, Storming was one of the main problems. The dungeon is very tight, with narrow hallways and not much room to maneuver – an environment where Storming is an especially annoying affix. On top of that, Uldaman was one of the dungeons that did not yet receive major tuning changes at the time of the Proving Grounds, unlike some other dungeons. As a result, Uldaman has been considered to be one of the toughest dungeons this season has to offer. In fact, until Patch 10.1.5 (July 10th), there were only a handful of timed +26 Uldaman keys on the live servers.

Results

Despite the challenges that were thrown at all the participants, we saw incredible performances all throughout the five-day period, with many ups and downs and even a little (or a lot, depending on who you ask) drama surrounding the event. Similar to previous TGP Proving Grounds events, the keys run on the tournament realm were much higher than the highest keys of the live servers, showcasing the potential for exceptional performances on all fronts. While dozens of teams tried to fight for a spot to move on to the next stage of the tournament, only 18 teams could qualify.

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TOP 18 TEAMS

Just as in previous Proving Grounds or Time Trials, teams were ranked by their highest key levels, as well as their combined time in both dungeons.


They were then seeded into three groups. The results for the 2023 TGP Proving Grounds were as follows:

• Group A (July 21st-23rd): Perplexed, Dire Wolves, FSY, Mandatory, skyline, The Greg Push
  
• Group B (July 28th-30th): NA's Last Hope, Legendary, Last Moment, Ready Checks, cool beans, Nocco
  
• Group C (August 4th-6th): Echo, Sheeesh, Last Minute, Y, Empyrean, Sloth

We will of course be covering the entire TGP, so make sure to follow our Raider.IO TGP Live Coverage once the action starts heating up again!

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FREEHOLD

Arguably the biggest surprise of the Proving Grounds happened in Freehold. While the first day of the event was relatively uneventful, with teams focusing on playing up their keys, it didn’t take long for a special strategy to be revealed; it was none other than our multiple MDI and Shadowlands Season 4 TGP champions Echo who showcased a new strategy in Freehold that left everybody stunned (they have since confirmed that it was not them who came up with the strat, but a good friend of theirs).

The strategy itself was fairly simple. It turns out that the Cannon Barrage ability on the Harlan Sweete encounters hurts almost all of the mobs in the dungeon. In addition, the ability had no range limitation, meaning that as long as someone was in combat with the boss, the rest of the group would continuously get the mechanic on themselves, allowing them to clear the majority of the dungeon with it.



Of course, teams immediately thought of utilizing a second tank – typically a Death Knight – to complete most of the dungeon. While the group would start with an Unholy Death Knight, that player then swapped to Blood after the group killed the first boss. The group would then skip ahead to the last boss and bring it into the second phase at 60% HP, as the boss then starts casting Cannon Barrage on three non-tank players. At this point the Blood DK would take over tanking the boss, while the rest of the group moved on to clear the rest of the dungeon, utilizing the constant Cannon Barrage bombardments to clear out trashpacks.

This strategy forced a heavy comp shift for most teams. While DK was not part of any comp on the first day of the Proving Grounds, it quickly became a staple as the best choice for off-tanking Harlan, now that the cat was out of the bag.



The other notable shift we’ve seen at that point, was the move away from a Vengeance Demon Hunter, as teams were opting for the more sturdy Guardian Druid Main Tank instead. Demon Hunter tanks struggle a lot at the higher key levels, as trash begins hitting really hard, even on a non-Fortified week. While the DH would be better for DPS, Guardian provides much more safety – and even they could easily die within the blink of an eye in the highest Freehold keys we’ve seen in the Proving Grounds.

As teams began scratching the +30 and +31 keys, it was Perplexed who had already figured out the seemingly best comp for this level of keys, by bringing in the Demonology Warlock as their third DPS, together with the aforementioned Unholy DK and a Fire Mage. With this comp they quickly managed to snag a +29 two-chest early in the weekend, and ended the event with the fastest and highest Freehold of the Proving Grounds.


Not all teams decided to run with the comp that Perplexed first showcased in their +31 run, however. Most notably, NA's Last Hope went with a very different comp instead, landing only 7 seconds behind Perplexed. Fury Warrior was the class of choice for many other teams that “only” went for a +29 or +30 key.

The main problem in Freehold ended up being survivability on some of the bosses, as a +30 or +31 Tyrannical boss hurts a lot. Furtheremore, teams had to ensure that pulling trash together to die to the Cannon Barrage would not lead to unexpected deaths. Surviving the bosses at +30 or +31 led to many teams to rethinking their gearing choices, pulling out unique items like Choker of Shielding or socketing Stamina gems to live through the incredibly high damage.

Tanks were constantly at risk of dying within the blink of an eye, and it reminded many players of strategies like utilizing Bolstered Ashvane Spotters in Siege of Boralus or killing half the dungeon in Plaguefall with the Plagueborers.

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ULDAMAN: LEGACY OF TYR

Although teams quickly found a way to cheese Freehold during the Proving Grounds, Uldaman proved to be a very different beast. The Affixes were a big troublemaker, as Fortified high-key trash hurts a lot, and Storming in a dungeon like Uldaman with many narrow hallways and small rooms, really makes dealing with the dungeon a major pain.

In terms of the team composition, each team had their own priorities when the event started. There seemed to be two major decisions for teams to make: Which tank to bring, and whether or not to bring a Rogue for Shroud of Concealment and to deal with the Quaking Totems on Bromach.


Similarly to the tank debate in Freehold, the choice of tank came down to whether teams wanted to play with a Balance Druid or a Subtlety Rogue. The teams that went with a Balance Druid decided to run a squishier but higher DPS tank (largely thanks to the 5% magic damage debuff) in the Vengeance Demon Hunter, while teams with a Rogue desperately wanted Mark of the Wild and ended up playing a Guardian Druid instead.

However, two classes were present in all runs, as both Holy Paladin and Shadow Priest seemed to be core to every comp, no matter the tank-choice or strategy. Holy Paladins simply had the strongest healing output, while also being able to contribute high amounts of damage to the run, and Shadow Priests have been one of the strongest DPS for Mythic+ in Season 1 and 2 of Dragonflight. On top of that, both Mass Dispel (it was Bursting in Uldaman) and Mind Soothe were incredibly useful tools for this dungeon.

Over the course of the next few days, no major changes were happening in Uldaman, as teams simply tried to put a +28 key on the board, before spending a majority of their time in Freehold, putting the newly found strategy into action.


Teams seemed to spend as little time as possible in Uldaman once they already got their +28 posted, as getting a higher key-level Freehold would quickly lead to a massive boost in the leaderboard either way. In the end, only five teams did not have a +28 Uldaman completed. One of them was Dire Wolves, who still managed to snag themselves the 6th seed, thanks to their +30 Freehold. Time well spent.


Uldaman seemed to be a dungeon during the Proving Grounds that allowed teams to showcase what classes and which comp they are most comfortable with. Many choices seemed to be had, with Enhancement Shaman, Subtlety Rogue and Balance Druid being present all across the board, just like there was almost a 50:50 split between Vengeance Demon Hunters and Guardian Druids.

Closing Thoughts

The 2023 TGP Proving Grounds ended up being a bit messy, largely due to the developments we’ve seen in Freehold. This isn’t the first time a major reveal of a new strategy ended up forcing teams to replay a dungeon or run they were already very happy with, and re-learning a new strategy and comp takes away a lot of time.

The worst situation is what happened this time around, as the strategy employed felt somewhat cheap, compared to running the dungeon in a “regular” way. It was very reminiscent of the “Plagueborer Strat” we saw in the 2021 TGP of Shadowlands Season 1, which also had most of the trash and bosses dying to a dungeon mechanic rather than the players’ own DPS.


Blizzard reacted swiftly after the TGP concluded, with Wowhead reporting that the Cannon Barrage strategy was hotfixed only one day after the Proving Grounds finished. While this was a great change, similar mechanics still exist in Neltharus, such as how the Burning Chains can be used to blow up entire trash packs in a very similar fashion. With the start of the group stage of the TGP less than a week away, questions are rising whether this strategy will be allowed or not, and so far there hasn’t been a decisive response for or against it from Blizzard.

On the flipside, the Proving Grounds showed that there is an incredible amount of high-performing teams out there, and most of the favorites were very (positively) surprised by how fierce the competition was this time around. This bodes well for a competitive group stage, as only two teams from each group will be able to make it to the Global Finals, and the competition is more stacked than it has ever been.



With the top spots for the Global Finals being this highly contested, we are all looking forward to the upcoming group stage. We hope that you will join us throughout the event with our Raider.IO 2023 TGP Live Coverage!

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