First time Raid Leader on PU and I failed

[Almiria]

Today was my first time as a RL on PU group on Heroic Antorus.
Since Antorus started I cleared Normal first week and started on Heroic on PU, could't Kill Argus HC until 2 weeks later but it was fine since then, I was clearing HC for the next weeks (At least 11 or 12 weeks, sometimes I was skipping Coven due to a lot of failers and sometimes I killed Argus only for +5 Trinket).
However the last few weeks on PU groups, there is always some people boosting their friends or guild mates, sometimes their friends got many 880 ilvl items, others don't even make the effort to replace heirlooms, and still they ask for curve and 960+ people, when their group is formed, others don't care if they are boosting, but I do and I hate that.
Today I joined a HC group, the leader said he was 6/11M, there was 2 offline people with 6.5M HP, couldn't see their ilvl or stuff (his mates), and when the group was good, his friends logged with their alts (3M HP or so), he gave lead to someone, and came with his alt too. we had a bunch of 965+ ilvl and the leader with his friends who are lower than 940. Over the last weeks, I tried to tell myself that it doesn't matter, as long as we have good dps and heal for a fast clear, but today, I decided to leave and make my own group.

And by the way I'm a tank with 966 ilvl equipped or 970 ilvl if I use my Pantheon Trinket, but I prefer using 2 stamina Trinkets : Parjesh's Medallion 965 and Eye of Shatug 950, I also use Prydaz that gives 2.75M absorb, I like stacking stamina and mastery + absorb rather than versatilty, and I got 16M HP with flask. (https://raider.io/characters/eu/ravenholdt/Almir)

And so it started, I was checking everyone on raider.io to have 4P T21, at least 75+ Artifact traits and 965+ ilvl with multiclear, but I didn't think about Aggramar later, there wasn't enough CC and no DK for Aggramar. We went on 2/3/14
Everything was fine before Aggramar, we oneshoted every boss easily. After Vari a dps left, but we had enough for Coven, I tried to start looking for a DK at that moment, but people are not very interested to join a PU Coven so we went like that 2/3/13 and it was fine, Coven got oneshotted too.

At Aggramar I started looking for people, got 1 DK, but not enough CC, a druid had to CC 2 adds, we had 2 rogues and they had to CC the same add. Also, as I never was a RL before, I didn't know where to put marks, I asked someone to do them.
Everything was fine, until someone said "Rogue CC X Add", and I started paying attention to the adds, I lost my focus and failed tanking a Foe Breaker, got ress, but accepted at the wrong moment and died, it was a wipe.
Someone left (with a CC) and had to find another CC, got a monk and managed the CC marks again, this time, everything on my side was fine, but we had se much dps, and people didn't stop dps before 40%, it was another wipe and other people left. Third time it was a wipe because the other tank stole my aggro with his dps just before I tank a foe, and it was the third wipe.

The other tank had so much dps, around 1.3M sometimes, while I was on my defensive mode with stamina trinkets and absorb, my dps seems very bad on WL https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...venholdt/Almir but does it matter as a tank? I prefer focusing the healing metrics https://www.warcraftlogs.com/charact...kingmetric=hps is it a bad idea ?
On every other boss, I was losing aggro, but it wasn't a problem, but losing it just before the foe oneshotted everyone.

Is there something wrong with me playing very defensive? Should I replace my Eye of Shatug with Pantheon Trinket? Should I focus Vers instead of Mastery, I really like playing my druid with as much HP as possible. There is a bug with WL that doesn't show the Eye of Shatug correctly and don't count it towards my HP, I've got 9.9M HP on normal form and 16M as a bear (19M on World pvp which is very cool as I'm on a pvp server).
Or should I just stay this way and take a tank who's less offensive?
What else can I do to avoid failing like that again?

[Spryte]

Parjesh medallion is pretty bad, if you have the Pantheon tank trinket it would probably be better or the Legendary Tank trinket (AHR). Prydaz isn't that great either, you could probably run with the Thrash leggings, or Legendary Tank trinket or the Survival instincts ring if you have them of course.

[Almiria]

I have every tank legendary, but not the balance one, Lady and the child, I saw many tank druids playing this way and stacking Vers with the cloak, but this is not my playstyle. I will try replacing the Parjesh medallion with Pantheon trinket. I wasn't using Prydaz for a long time, it's the last legendary I got, I was using the leggings, but I was getting some hard hits sometimes from Heroic Vari, even with 16M HP and then I switched to Prydaz.

[capri sunset]

Is there something wrong with me playing very defensive?

It doesn't really matter for pugs but it's just overkill, once you can survive you build damage, that's just natural tank improvement. I think you're falling into the trap of focusing too much on gear as opposed to rotation/cd management, when you start feeling invincible it becomes very clear that you don't need all that and you start looking for situations where you can play better to push more damage.

[Largehorn]

I was getting some hard hits sometimes from Heroic Vari, even with 16M HP

That likely means you were being melee'd with the Misery debuff. Taunt switches on Heroic Var are pretty tight.

[Deja Thoris]

So you killed 9 bosses without incident, wiped on the 10th and decided to blog post it?

And your survivabilityis your issue but if you're not a DK you shouldn't be touching stam trinks imo.

[Almiria]

So you killed 9 bosses without incident, wiped on the 10th and decided to blog post it?

Because everytime I was clearing HC before, there was a lower ilvl tank, 950, 955 etc, and I had no problem keeping aggro, now that I took people around my ilvl, I was being outaggroed.
There is always some friends or guildmates alts being boosted in every group right now, I pref making my own groups from this day onward, it was my first time as RL, so I'm seeking advices here.

[Tech614]

Stam trinkets are literally worthless at this point in the game.

That's not the reason you're being out aggro'd though. The reason is you're failing at dps in general. On my VDH I tank with a Gaurdian druid and do 300-500k more dps then him depending on boss(and not his fault, just the reality of where the 2 specs are ST wise) and never once do I out aggro him. There is a reason taunt comes with a threat buff.

Only in situations of extremely out gearing another tank should aggro ever be an issue. Actually press your damn dps buttons while you have the taunt threat modifier up...

On your last kill of Varimathras you literally did 300k dps. I don't know how that is even possible. That's not playing defensive, that's playing bad. Not an expert on Gaurdian druid to tell you how to fix it but I'm sure there are plenty on this forum who can.

[Better]

You really shouldn't need to think about how defensive you're playing at that ilvl in heroic... It definitely shouldn't be dragging your DPS down to 336K on H Vari for sure. I'm genuinely curious how frequently you run into threat issues in PuGs.

As far as raid leading goes, you should probably get some Weak Auras for tank things. Taunt swaps can generally be called out by them fairly well, in addition to whatever boss addon you may be using, if you put a distinct sound on the WA you can 100% be focused on raid things while still performing properly. As far as just outright losing threat goes, really just look into a class guide for optimizing DPS, and look at your legendary choices. You will probably need to spec more offensive overall.

[TheSerialSniper]

Prydaz on a tank makes 0 sense to me. The point of prydaz is to avoid getting 1 shot by being dumb or help the healers as a dps. As most tanks constantly take dmg, all prydaz is going to do is make the healers overheal you. Stam trinkets should only be used by tanks with abilities that scale off of their hp.

[Alydael]

I have every tank legendary, but not the balance one, Lady and the child, I saw many tank druids playing this way and stacking Vers with the cloak, but this is not my playstyle. I will try replacing the Parjesh medallion with Pantheon trinket. I wasn't using Prydaz for a long time, it's the last legendary I got, I was using the leggings, but I was getting some hard hits sometimes from Heroic Vari, even with 16M HP and then I switched to Prydaz.

My general take on this is that a tank with the correct gear for the encounter shouldn't really have to play or gear defensively. As long as you use your CD's at the right time, survivability should not be a problem.

Also some tanks have rage and such that benefit from more dps. The extra rage gives you more to spend on CD's so in a way, more dps= more survivability.

That's my understanding of it.

[Deleted]

The best PU would be over Lithuania, or, at least, Hungary.

[Almiria]

I will change my gear and review my rotation and try to make a new PU tomorrow, and see if it goes better.

The best PU would be over Lithuania, or, at least, Hungary.

What does it mean?

[potis]

I will change my gear and review my rotation and try to make a new PU tomorrow, and see if it goes better.



What does it mean?

By PU i assume you mean pug, meaning pick up group.

Also at this point in the game boosted alts will appear cause the expansion is basically over.

Also you didnt fail at all, not sure why you believe so, everyone makes mistakes, any group killing Coven is better than 99% of the other groups out there even after so many weeks.

Secondly when it comes to gear.

You are supposed to be playing defensively when you do not trust your group but you must also take into account that you must be able to keep your threat up against other tanks, especially Warriors.

Stamina trinkets are an indicator of a non-experienced tank, you dont trust yourself or know the math around what you are supposed to be doing so stamina is the easy choice, not that druid makes it hard with Versa/Mastery, which isnt wrong, its just not ideal you must generally find a balance between reduction/stamina/DPS that you feel comfortable with.

DPS isnt the strong point for dudu tanks though.

Overall you havent done anything wrong, you are just playing it too safe on irrelevant content while others more experienced are playing as most people are playing at this point, FIGHT FOR THE LOGS or have fun pew pew stuff even while tanking.

[A-sayo]

Disclaimer : tl;dr the whole OP.

The tank main jobs are surviving, holding aggro and positioning the boss accordingly (as well as doing tank mechanics). When you're not comfortable, it is good to play defensively as you did, yet a good tank needs to know its limits i.e how offensive can you go while still being able to fulfill your duties ? The more damage you bring to the table, the faster the boss dies. On the other hand, if you're taking too much damage and healers can't keep you up, then you're not that useful to the raid. There's a balance.

You're 966 ilvl, you shouldn't lose aggro at all during the fight (exception on the pull). You prob won't like it but..gitgud (I suggest you to post on the Druid forum so they help you improve, though).

[Almiria]

By PU i assume you mean pug, meaning pick up group.

Also at this point in the game boosted alts will appear cause the expansion is basically over.

Also you didnt fail at all, not sure why you believe so, everyone makes mistakes, any group killing Coven is better than 99% of the other groups out there even after so many weeks.

Secondly when it comes to gear.

You are supposed to be playing defensively when you do not trust your group but you must also take into account that you must be able to keep your threat up against other tanks, especially Warriors.

Stamina trinkets are an indicator of a non-experienced tank, you dont trust yourself or know the math around what you are supposed to be doing so stamina is the easy choice, not that druid makes it hard with Versa/Mastery, which isnt wrong, its just not ideal you must generally find a balance between reduction/stamina/DPS that you feel comfortable with.

DPS isnt the strong point for dudu tanks though.

Overall you havent done anything wrong, you are just playing it too safe on irrelevant content while others more experienced are playing as most people are playing at this point, FIGHT FOR THE LOGS or have fun pew pew stuff even while tanking.

I find it pretty fun to have as much HP as possible as a bear, sometimes I was playing beside 10M bear druids while I'm near 10M with my normal form It was funny. It's also cool for world pvp to have near 20M (19M HP), but I believe I can switch gear / talents between pve and pvp so I was certainly playing wrong. I will try switching my gear and enchants for more dps while managing to survive as well as I do right now.

[Socialhealer]

choosing only stamina over versa is bad because they both do the same thing, increase the time taken to go 100-0%, but the more you have of one, the better the other one gets, so if you're going stamina trinkets, going for versa enchants & gems would actually be better defensively.

also im pretty sure the chest is the best guardian legendary, the problem with prydaz is the absorb is 100% random you cannot time it to be useful which is stupid as tanks know when they need heals/reduction you wouldn't use barkskin on low damage, so why you would want prydaz to proc then?

[potis]

I find it pretty fun to have as much HP as possible as a bear, sometimes I was playing beside 10M bear druids while I'm near 10M with my normal form It was funny. It's also cool for world pvp to have near 20M (19M HP), but I believe I can switch gear / talents between pve and pvp so I was certainly playing wrong. I will try switching my gear and enchants for more dps while managing to survive as well as I do right now.

Ye its fun to have high numbers but also irrelevant, its simple math which basically over the years are not as easy to find or skewed with stats but if you with your higher HP take 3 hits to die, and the tank with 30% less HP but 15-20% more reductions till takes 3 hits to die then you are the same.

Very bad math but you get the point.

You must find the balance of stamina/reduction and in the end DPS depending what content you are doing and how geared you are, for your gear as example everyone focuses on DPS cause there is no point with HC damage apart from Argus right now or 5+ stacks Antoran High Command, 6 stack dogs etc etc.

[Socialhealer]

I find it pretty fun to have as much HP as possible as a bear, sometimes I was playing beside 10M bear druids while I'm near 10M with my normal form It was funny. It's also cool for world pvp to have near 20M (19M HP), but I believe I can switch gear / talents between pve and pvp so I was certainly playing wrong. I will try switching my gear and enchants for more dps while managing to survive as well as I do right now.

yeah there's a thing called effective health, that top tanks look at over total health, and lowering your stamina to improve versa will lower your total health, but improve your effective health pool.

that basically takes armour/versa/health(block/dodge/parry if you can) into account and gives you a realistic level of health.

[Swampmoose]

Looking at your most recent Argus log, your DPS is in the bottom 8% for your class and ilvl. That's about as bad as it gets. It should be obvious at that point. If you're losing aggro, it's time to adjust.