The one place in this game where nothing is at stake
Every other sentence on this site is about a decision with a cost attached — a kit you can lose, an objective that announces you, a fight with no recovery route. The training grounds are the exception, and they are considerably more capable than most players realise. You are not hitting a practice dummy. You are running a private lobby where you choose the opponents, how hard they hit, what they are wearing and whether they are allowed to move.
- This is the answer to “should I respec for this build” that does not cost a run.
- It is also the only place where you can be certain what you are fighting, which is worth knowing if you have been trying to identify bots in real matches.
Setting the lobby up
The setup has one counter-intuitive step in it, which is probably why the feature is underused: you open a public lobby first and then close it. Do that once and the rest is dials.
- Open the training grounds from camp and create a public lobby.
- Immediately mark it private, so the lobby is yours and nobody joins it.
- Spawn bots — the same types you meet in real matches, and as many as you want.
- Set what they are: class, count, difficulty, gear quality.
- Use the chests in the lobby to kit yourself out before you start.
What each dial is for
What each control does is the creator’s account of the feature. What it is good for is ours — a capability is not a recommendation, and the table keeps the two in separate columns so you can see which is which.
| Dial | What it does | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Which class | Spawn bots of any class, several at once and in any mix. | Learning the matchup you keep losing. Knowing what a class can and cannot do to you is worth more in a duel than a gear upgrade, and it is much cheaper here than in the mist. |
| How hard they are | Raise the bots’ difficulty above what you would ordinarily run into. | Practising above your bracket on purpose, so the lobby you actually queue feels slow rather than fast. |
| What they wear | Hand the bots higher-quality gear than they would normally carry. | Finding out whether a fight you keep losing is your play or their kit — the one question a real run never answers, because you rarely get to inspect what killed you. |
| Freeze | Stop the bots where they stand. | Drilling a combo, a cast order or a positioning habit with the pressure removed, then unfreezing to see whether it survives contact. |
| Restore | Refill your health and your healing items at any point. | Running the same fight ten times without a resupply trip. This is what turns the lobby from a demo into a rehearsal room. |
| The chests | The lobby is stocked with chests of equipment, items and potions. | Testing a loadout you have not bought yet — worth doing before you spend at the auction house rather than after. |
Which class
- What it does
- Spawn bots of any class, several at once and in any mix.
- What it is for
- Learning the matchup you keep losing. Knowing what a class can and cannot do to you is worth more in a duel than a gear upgrade, and it is much cheaper here than in the mist.
How hard they are
- What it does
- Raise the bots’ difficulty above what you would ordinarily run into.
- What it is for
- Practising above your bracket on purpose, so the lobby you actually queue feels slow rather than fast.
What they wear
- What it does
- Hand the bots higher-quality gear than they would normally carry.
- What it is for
- Finding out whether a fight you keep losing is your play or their kit — the one question a real run never answers, because you rarely get to inspect what killed you.
Freeze
- What it does
- Stop the bots where they stand.
- What it is for
- Drilling a combo, a cast order or a positioning habit with the pressure removed, then unfreezing to see whether it survives contact.
Restore
- What it does
- Refill your health and your healing items at any point.
- What it is for
- Running the same fight ten times without a resupply trip. This is what turns the lobby from a demo into a rehearsal room.
The chests
- What it does
- The lobby is stocked with chests of equipment, items and potions.
- What it is for
- Testing a loadout you have not bought yet — worth doing before you spend at the auction house rather than after.
The three things actually worth practising here
A rehearsal room is only useful if you bring something to rehearse. These three come out of what the launch-week guides say decides fights, and each maps onto a dial above.
- Your own class, played by someone else. Mirror matchups teach the most because the opponent’s kit is built for the same job as yours, and because you already understand every decision they are making.
- Breakaway timing. It has its own cooldown and its own charges, and the failure mode — mashing dodge while staggered and never actually escaping — is a habit rather than a knowledge gap, which means it needs repetition rather than reading.
- A build before you commit to it. Talent resets are free, so the cost of testing is a trip here rather than a respec fee, and the chests mean you do not have to own the gear first.
What it will not teach you
A bot moves in straight lines and is slow to switch its attention off a monster. That makes it an honest test of your rotation, your cooldown discipline and whether a build does the damage you think it does — and a poor test of anything involving another mind. Nothing here rehearses a third party arriving mid-fight, an opponent who disengages on purpose, or the decision of whether to take a fight at all. Those cost gear to learn, which is the game working as designed.