Training Grounds

The sparring yard at the edge of camp (the Training Grounds entry in the Camp menu) hosts three stations: the Training Dummy (DPS test), Armor Training, and Weapon Training. Training is a pure mechanic — no trainers to talk to, no unlock: your gear simply learns from use, from level 1. The menu entry shows your two best weapon classes and their tiers.

Both tracks share the same six-tier ladder: T1 = 2,500 rep, T6 = 52,500 cumulative. Earned tiers are permanent — rep is never lost, even when you swap equipment.

Training Dummy

The post plays out a 5-minute fight, simulated instantly, against an enemy of your own level at the rarity you pick. It costs nothing — the run happens on a copy of your character, so no durability, potions, XP, loot or quest progress are touched — and you can repeat it as often as you like.

Dummy	HP	Damage	AR / DR
Common	×1	×1	×1
Rare	×1.8	×1.3	×1.2
Unique	×3	×1.6	×1.4

Those are the same rarity multipliers the game spawns in the field, so the three dummies are a common, an elite and a boss-grade enemy of your level — a real dungeon boss then adds another +10% HP and +5% damage / AR / DR on top, and swings ~6% faster. Higher rarity means more DR, so your hit chance (and with it your DPS) falls as you climb the list.

• The dummy hits back, on a fixed 2.25 s interval so repeat runs stay comparable. Rage, blocks, thorns and on-struck procs therefore behave as in a real fight — but your HP is topped back up every tick, so you can never die on the post and every number is an “at full HP” figure.
• A 15-second unmeasured warm-up runs first, so buffs, rage and cooldowns are at their steady state before anything is counted.
• The dummy’s HP pool is exactly that of a real enemy of its rarity and level, and it refills just before it would die: Crushing Blow scales with the target’s current HP, so the health bar has to sweep like a real fight. (Apex Predator reads the post’s rarity instead, so it pays on a rare or special dummy and on nothing else.) The measured window is then trimmed back to the last completed sweep, so the headline can report a little under five minutes.
• Dummies carry no resistances at any rarity, so elemental and damage-over-time hits land at full value in the breakdown.
• Left out by design: Last Stand (you never leave full HP), on-kill healing (nothing dies), and Rampage, which starts pre-stacked at its cap instead of building from kills.
• The report splits damage by source — weapon swing, elemental, damage over time, Crushing Blow, Thorns, Retaliate — and adds hit chance, life leeched, time to kill one enemy, throughput including respawn waits, damage taken, how much you blocked, how long your HP would last, and how many blows would have killed you.

Armor Training

While wearing 3 or more pieces of one material, every enemy attack that lands on you earns rep for that material: +0.5 at 5/5, 75% of that at 4/5 (+0.375) and 50% at 3/5 (+0.25). Blocked hits count (the shield taking the blow is still armor training); dodged and missed attacks earn nothing, and damage-over-time ticks don’t either.

• T1–T5 — each tier adds +2% to the set’s primary stat, active at 3+/5 worn: cloth run speed, leather attack rating, metal defense rating.
• T6 — a unique mechanic, active at 5/5 worn:
  • Cloth — Reinforced Weave: each cloth piece donates +25% of its defense rating into your DR pool.
  • Leather — Quickfit: global +25% attack speed.
  • Metal — Tempered Steel: every metal piece weighs 25% less.

Weapon Training

Every landed auto-attack swing earns rep for the wielded weapon’s class — normalized to attack speed (one sixth of a rep per second of swinging), so a slow hammer and a fast knife train equally per minute. A main skill is that swing and trains normally (a multi-hit one like Zeal earns once per swing, not once per hit); active-skill casts and counter-attacks earn nothing. Shields are their own class and earn +2 rep per successful block — the same block also counts as armor training.

A landed shield strike (Shield Strike, Aegis, Smite, Judgement) trains like a swing on the shield’s own speed and splits the rep like a dual-wield pair: Shields and the weapon you hold earn half the normal rate each. A Smite Sentinel with a sword feeds Shields and Blades at half pace each; with no weapon in the other hand the shield takes the full rate.

All tracks are paced to progress at roughly the same speed on level-appropriate ground; a full T6 in one track is a matter of a few hundred hours of combat, not a weekend.

Class	Weapons	T1–T5 (per tier)	T6 mechanic
Blades	Swords, Scimitars, Greatswords, Claymores	+2% attack rating	Riposte — after a block, your next landed swing deals +50% damage
Axes	Hatchets, Axes, Greataxes, Halberds	+0.5% crushing blow chance	Breach — crushing blows shred 10% of the enemy’s defense for the fight (up to 5 stacks)
Blunt	Maces, Hammers, Mauls	+1% enemy attack reduction	Concussion — 10% chance per landed swing to stun for 1.5 s
Daggers	Knives, Daggers	+1% attack speed	Exploit Opening — +3% life leech, doubled below 30% enemy health
Staves	Quarterstaffs, Bo, Battlestaffs, Ironstaffs, Khakkharas	+2% defense rating	Parry — +10% block chance, and the staff blocks with no shield at all
Shields	All shields	+1% block chance	Bulwark — after a block, the next unblocked hit that lands on you deals −50% damage

T1–T5 bonuses apply while wielding the class (Shields: while a shield is equipped); T6 mechanics likewise. Riposte, Bulwark primes and Breach stacks show as status icons in combat, and their procs are named in the combat log.

Parry is the exception to “no shield, no block”. With Staves at T6 and a staff in your main hand you gain +10% block chance and block with the staff itself — an ordinary block in every other respect (the same damage reduction, the same rage from Rage On Block gear), logged as parried. It earns no Shields rep, because there is no shield: that track still needs one.

A two-handed weapon trains its class exactly like a one-handed one — a greatsword or claymore feeds Blades, a greataxe or halberd Axes, a maul Blunt, a staff Staves, on the same speed-normalised rep per landed swing. What it costs you is the Shields track: its rep comes only from successful blocks and shield strikes, and its bonuses only apply while a shield is equipped, so a two-hander leaves that class dormant. (Shield Mastery and the staves T6 Parry are the block-chance sources that do not need a shield, so a Blades two-hander can still trigger the occasional Riposte.)

Dual wielding splits the rep. With two weapons worn, each hand’s landed swings earn rep for its own weapon’s class at half the normal rate. The two hands swing twice as often, so together they earn exactly what one weapon would: two swords feed Blades at the usual pace, a sword and an axe feed Blades and Axes at half pace each. Only the main hand’s class has its T1–T5 bonuses and T6 mechanic active — the off-hand weapon’s class trains, but its bonuses stay dormant. An off-hand mace never concusses, an off-hand axe never breaches, and an off-hand blade never spends a Riposte prime (any block still primes one; only a main-hand swing consumes it). Swap which weapon is your main hand — right-click the off-hand weapon on the paperdoll, or use the Main hand button in its item sheet on mobile — and the bonuses swap with it. Shields is dormant here too, for the same reason as a two-hander.