Healer representation in the Proving Grounds

After writing yesterday’s article on tank representation in the level 100 Proving Grounds, I got curious about whether the lopsided statistics there were similar to what you’d find in other roles, and started digging further. However, I’m not sure that we can get anything other than a rough sense of class representation from the DPS statistics, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to distinguish between the various specs on WoW Progress. The only way around it would be to look up hundreds of players’ Armory specs, guess which spec they were using for their record-breaking PG run, and assume that they haven’t simply changed one or both specs since then. That feels shaky at best. What I can say is that melee DPS dominate representation among the top scores right now, and rogues, ret paladins, windwalker monks, and death knights seem to be driving that.

Healers are more like tanks in the sense that, with the exception of priests, you know how they’ll be specced. Unfortunately we’re not any better off trying to distinguish between holy and disc priests here than we’d be with their DPS brethren. If we have any priest players in the comments, is one spec preferred over the other for PGs?

Healer representation among the top 200 scores in the level 100 PGs is surprisingly balanced compared to the tank version … at least, until you get to shaman:

• Druid: 28% (56)
• Priest: 27% (54 — again, both disc and holy)
• Paladin: 26.5% (53)
• Monk: 14% (28)
• Shaman: 4.5% (9)

As usual, a few notes so we don’t get too crazy with conclusions here:

• I’ve played a guardian/restoration druid for years and did Endless 30 on both specs before WoD hit. I can attest that the resto druid is well-equipped for PGs, not least because Force of Nature is tailor-made for it (even if the talent is rarely taken for other purposes).
• While I wish we had a better handle on which spec is driving priest representation, the class itself still seems pretty solidly placed.
• Blood elf paladins are better represented than other paladin races among the high scores. I don’t know whether this reflects racial preference within the class itself or whether Arcane Torrent is just really useful for Endless.
• Mistweavers are still underrepresented, which is something we looked at almost a year ago exactly, albeit for raids. Whether this reflects the monk’s status as the newest class in the game or something else is going on, I don’t know.
• Shaman just can’t seem to catch a break. I feel like every time I’ve looked at healer representation or performance, they’re either destroying everything in sight or dead last.

As with the tank numbers, I’ll continue to check the numbers every now and then to see whether patch changes have an impact.