Warcraft Logs - A Comprehensive Guide

[Zagam 1,982]

Greetings!  Zagam here with what I hope to be a long, detailed explanation of an incredible tool to be used in World of Warcraft to analyze, diagnose, correct, and observe anything imaginable.  This tool is Warcraftlogs.

 

1. Getting Started

 

So, you're interested in getting a better understanding of combat logs?  You've come to the right place.  First, head on over to www.warcraftlogs.com and register a user name.  Follow the instructions to activate your account.  Once you do that, log in and click on the button that says "Upload a Log" near the search bar.  This will bring you to this screen:

 

 

Install both the Adobe AIR and the Warcraft Logs Uploader.  Once you do that, log into World of Warcraft.  You'll want to turn on Advanced Logging which can be found by going into your main settings by hitting Escape.  Select System and then Network.  There should be an option that is unchecked called "Advanced Logging."  Select this and then close the menu. 

 

As you are preparing to raid, all you have to do is type /combatlog in your chatbox and you will start recording combat logs into a text file.  After you are done raiding, deactivate the logging process by typing /combatlog again or simply exit the game client.  When you've closed the logging process or exited WoW, go to upload the log using the Warcraft Logs Uploader.  Use the Browse feature to locate the text file.  This can be found in: Program Files -> World of Warcraft - > Logs.  Once you upload the file, you can choose to delete the file or archive it.  Arching it takes up little space, so I suggest you keep it on your computer.  Warcraftlogs will automatically generate a Warcraftlogs Archive folder for you and place the file here.  Now it's time to analyze! 

 

2. Warcraftlogs - The Overall Look

 

When you successfully load your log, you will be brought to a screen that looks like this:

 

 

There is a lot info here including the date of the log, duration of the entire combat log file, whether or not this log is private or public and when the file expires.  When rankings are included with Warcraftlogs, they will be found on this screen as well.  The default display when you load your log will be that of the last pull you had of the raid.  Here, you can see that pull for us is a 9:43 kill of 12 man Flex Garrosh.  Let's take a look at some of the other features in more detail.

 

Here is a shot of the raid composition portion of the title screen:

 

 

Notice how incredibly easy it is to see all of the members of your raid without having to hover over their abilities to see what their role was.  You can immediately notice the Guardian Druid, Protection Paladin, Restoration Druid, Restoration Shaman, and various DPS.  Seeing the specialization of each DPS helps get a sense of what a raid group used to down a particular boss. 

 

Imbedded into each of the graphs of Warcraftlogs is a tracing feature with your mouse.  You can use your mouse to highlight over any portion of the fight for specific details.  On the title page, you can see things such as raidwide DPS, damage taken, HPS, and healing received.  You can also see things such as the time Bloodlust was cast, such as in this picture:

 

 

Also within the graph's functionality, there is the ability to portion out a part of the fight simply by dragging your mouse from a start point to a finish point or vice versa.  From the previous picture, I've selected only the Bloodlust portion seen here:

 

 

You can see in that picture that the DPS of each player below modifies to include the portion of the combat log that falls within this time frame.  This is a great opportunity to see who is doing what during Bloodlust such as checking to see if your raid members are using the potions!  On the right hand bottom corner of the graph, you will notice a small options bar.  It looks like this:

 

 

By default, this selects the Bloodlust option which marks a blue portion on your graph which we previously highlighted.  Other options here include battle resurrections, player deaths, boss deaths, and other mob deaths.  For example, take a look at this shot which shows battle deaths seen in red and when the player took his or her resurrection in orange:

 

 

These are some of the features on the main title page, but the glorious part of Warcraftlogs comes from what's buried inside!  Let's take a look at the individual log analysis!

 

<to be continued...>

[Zagam 1,982]

3. Warcraftlogs - The Individual Analysis

 

Here comes the good stuff.  In the next portion of this guide, I will make many references to DPS, but healing and tanking can be analyzed in exactly the same way.  From the title page, click anyone you want to see details on.  You can click directly on them from the roster portion or you can use the 3rd drop-down column and select a person by their class and then name.  You should arrive at a screen that looks like this:

 

 

This is the "Done by Source" portion and will show the player and any pets/guardians that player used during that particular parse.  DPS(a) is a measure of a player's active DPS.  DPS(e) is a measure of a player's effective DPS.  The difference is that active DPS is your average DPS while you are doing something.  Doing 10,000,000 damage over 10 seconds while being active for 10 seconds would equal 1,000,000 DPS(a) and 1,000,000 DPS(e).  In contrast, doing 10,000,000 damage over 10 seconds while being active for only 8 seconds would give you 1,250,000 DPS(a) but still only 1,000,000 DPS(e).  In an actual scenario, a DPS who dies in the first 30 seconds of a fight will have a very high DPS(a).  As the fight prolongs, his DPS(e) will drop because his corpse isn't doing much of anything.  DPS(e) is always the better measure. 

 

Let's take a look at damage Done to Enemy:

 

 

This is an overall view of total damage done to various enemies within an encounter.  You can see the portion of time spent on particular enemies under the "Active" calculation which calculates the percentage of time spent on that particular mob.  The sum of your time spent on enemies can be over 100% by virtue of dealing damage to multiple enemies at once. 

 

Now let's take a look at the real details which is Done by Ability:

 

 

This is where you'll see the distribution of damage done during the entire encounter.  This particular screen is interactive to see lots of information.  You can see DoT uptimes, miss percentage, and DPS(e) of your abilities.  Notice, in this screenshot, "uptime" is blank.  This was a logging error on my part.  Normally, you will find uptimes as a percentage listed here.  The graph above looks confusing with the layer of colors.  It's actually pretty cool in that you can hover over each color to see the portion of DPS of that particular ability in a graph.  The graph has a key at the top which shows each ability.  Hovering over the graph can show you something like this:

 

 

Further, running your mouse over the detailed part of the abilities display will reveal more detailed information such as hits, crits, ticks, and tick crits.  Notice this while hovering over Chaos Bolt:

 

 

Pretty neat!  This shows 4 non-crit Chaos Bolt ticks...don't worry about that.  There's some explainable phenomona there, but nothing worth mentioning here.  Chaos Bolt always crits, so let's take a look at a DoT to give you the full idea of what this shows:

 

 

Now we can see when Immolate hit, when it crit, when it critcally ticked, and when it normally ticked.  Pretty useful stuff.  You can now analyze any particular log of any individual to see anything damage or healing related.  Let's now take a look at what we are trying to kill as DPS or keep alive as healers!

 

4. Warcraftlogs - Your Target

 

Warcraftlogs builds a detailed table for just about everything.  It gets even better with your targets.  By default, "All Enemies" is the selected sub-heading for your damage distribution.  Let's isolate a target.  You can change your objective target by highlighting the list like this:

 

 

Once you've listed your enemies, note that each enemy has a sub-menu.  This sub-menu is FANTASTIC!  You can do one of two things: you can either click on the main menu for each enemy, such as the Desecrated Weapon OR you can drag your mouse into the sub-menu and find a particular Desecrated Weapon to see details on that.  The detailed sub-menu looks like this:

 

 

Let's say you want to see how much Zagam did to the first Desecrated Weapon.  Click the "1" on the Desecrated Weapon sub-menu and you will see the details before you.  Again, just like previous details, you can hover over abilities to see crit effects, DoT ticks, and uptime percentages.  Here's another picture showing Desecrated Weapon 2:

 

 

Healing can be done the exact same way by changing your target.  It might be interesting to see who was doing a majority of the tank healing and who was doing a majority of the dispels. 

 

With individual damage and targets explained, let's take a look at a broader view of your entire raid on certain targets!

 

<to be continued...>

[Zagam 1,982]

5. Warcraftlogs - Raid Damage Assessment

 

So far, we've looked at individual parses.  Let's say you're curious about everyone's DPS on the Desecrated Weapons.  Your filter would produce this result:

 

 

Notice that I clicked the overall Desecrated Weapon damage, not an isolated, singular Desecrated Weapon.  Now we can see who did what damage to particular adds which is useful in seeing who is best suited for it, who pays attention, who follows orders, and who is able to be depended on.  Now let's take a look at two different Desecrated Weapons.  We'll look at Weapon #1 and #3...

 

 

 

We can use these two examples as an example on how you could find out who was dealing the most damage to adds such as the adds on Norushen or perhaps the Warshamans on Nazgrim.  Very useful stuff.  We've put a large focus on damage.  Let's take a look at a healing example.  First, let's select overall healing and then perform a filter.  Go to overall healing by selecting "Healing" from the first drop-down menu.  Screen should look something like this:

 

 

Notice here that I've already selected the drop-down menu to look at healing abilities by name.  As a Warlock and raid leader, I'm curious as to who is actually using their Healthstones!  Let's take a look...notice in picture, I've already highlighted over Healthstone.  This is what happens when you click it...

 

 

Check it out!  Shows who is using Healthstones and for how much they heal.  Check out the Guardian Druid's 400k+ heal on one Healthstone!  You can track all spells here whether you want to see who received the most healing from a Tranquility or a Divine Hymn or anything else. 

 

6. Warcraftlogs - Buffs & Debuffs

 

So far we've looked at damage, healing, and all the gorey details in between.  Let's take a look at the magic BEHIND the damage and healing.  Here is a picture summary of what will happen if you select "Buffs and Debuffs" from the first drop-down menu:

 

 

Notice here that I am only looking at buffs and debuffs for Zagam.  You can modify this to look at one player, all of the Warlocks, all of the Paladins, or everyone.  Lots of flexibility here, but for a simpler explanation, let's look at this one particular Warlock.  By default, this shows the buffs received, the number received, and the overall uptime as a percentage.  Let's say you want to see the details on Kardris' Toxic Totem and its proc "Toxic Power."  Click Toxic Power to see this:

 

 

Notice that a graph populates with the details of when each trinket proc'd.  This is useful for seeing how much RNG affects RPPM values and how variable proc rates can be.  Notice that you can mouse-over on this graph as well to see time-specific instances of procs and fades as seen here:

 

 

 

This is pretty useful if you want to track timing and want to see how RPPM factors into interval times on trinket procs.  By the same means, you can click Debuffs to see the debuffs placed on Zagam with the same quantity and uptime fields as the buffs section:

 

 

Notice that this is the Garrosh Encounter.  I can find out who is breaking CCs effectively here by tracking my debuffs.  I can see that I was mind-controlled one time.  I can also see that during that MC, I had Nether Tempest applied to me as well as Shadow Word:Pain.  This is a mistake for the Mage and Shadow Priest as they should be using direct damage spells, not DoTs.  This is a quick way to identify bad plays during Mind Controls.  You can also use this to track how often you were targetted by something during an encounter.

 

Let's say you wanted to track something GOOD, like perhaps a Rejuvenation from the Resto Druid and its uptime on the MT.  Your filter would look something like this:

 

 

This is a more detail-oriented approach to the buffs and debuffs, but you can track anything you want here as long as one player puts it on another.  Take a look at another example of a Rogue's Tricks of the Trade uptime:

 

 

This is a good way to see if a Rogue is keeping Tricks up.  Looks like only two uses in just under 5 minutes here!  This is a good opportunity discovery to increase someone's DPS.  With buffs and debuffs now explained, let's take a look at some other utility reports from Warcraftlogs.

 

<to be continued...>

[Zagam 1,982]

7. Warcraftlogs - Casts, Events, and Deaths...Oh, my!

 

Now we can dive into the nitty gritty of individual casts for the absolute final level of analysis.  First, let's take a look at death logs...

 

 

The death log for Warcraftlogs is awesome.  It puts all the players who died along with a list of events leading up to that player's death.  Notice here we have a Monk highlighted.  What this log tells me is over 4.5 seconds, the only heals he received through the Whirling Corruption attack were his own Chi Wave and a Riptide.  With respect to his HP, I think the Restoration Shaman made a poor choice of healing spell using Riptide instead of Healing Surge.  This is a quick way to identify the cause of death, whether it was the player's fault or a healer's fault.  The Monk is not without fault...do you see a Healthstone being used anywhere in there?

 

By changing to an Events viewing instead of an Analytical one, we can see the absolute final detail on spell casts.  This detail list is INCREDIBLY long if you try to look at too much detail.  Notice here:

 

 

The list of 'events' you see on this picture are all the events over a 2 second period of time.  What you want to do is filter down to see more specific detail that might help you answer a question.  Let's filter down to just one player.  Let's use the drop down and select Zagam again.  This is what now pops up:

 

 

This list is still crazy long, but we've reduced it down to see only Zagam's events.  With the list still being astoundingly detailed, let's reduce it down to a 5 second window.  Note in the next picture, this covers 5 seconds of time:

 

 

I got to this screen by dragging my mouse over the graph of combat over time similarly to how I did it on the title page.  This covers 2:00 until 2:05 into the fight.  With this small window, you can see how high I actually spiked in damage.  Destruction AoE FTW at 15M DPS!  You can use this Events log to see what I did to hit this much DPS.  Hint: it was Rain of Fire and Fire and Brimstone spells.  Let's say we only care about one particular ability...in this case, Chaos Bolt.  You can filter out the ability you want to see so that it looks like this:

 

 

Now I can see all of my Chaos Bolts for any time frame I desire.  You can line something like this up with a trinket proc to see if a Destruction Warlock is casting Chaos Bolt during his or her trinket procs which is an integral part of their DPS. 

 

The Events browser has many capabilities that I did not touch up on here.  However, all of the analysis can be done in a similar fashion.  Best way to learn is to just dive into your logs and explore everything you can see.

 

8. Warcraftlogs - Resources

 

Warcraftlogs shows a very simple way to track resources such as a healer's mana, a Demonology Warlock's Demonic Fury, or a Hunter's Focus.  By going to the Resources sub-menu, you can see the plethora of choices to look at.  For example, here is mana and Demonic Fury:

 

 

 

Finally, you can change the Resources sub-menu to Summons and Creations to see things such as Wild Imps, Dire Beasts, or Shadowfiends to name a few.  Here is the example for Wild Imps:

 

 

Warcraftlogs has many ways to view just about anything imaginable.  The website is still in its beta version with many new updates coming.  It is already a very high-functioning program that I strongly advise you all to start using.  If you have any questions on how to look at a specific log, let me know and I'll guide you through it!  There is still some functionality to the site that is yet to be implemented known as "Pins."  When they are more functional and developed, I will use the last reserved post to fill in information about them.  Until then, cheers, and enjoy analyzing you and your guilds' logs!

[Zagam 1,982]

Reserved

[drumsmani 47]

I have been logging my guild runs using warcraftlogs for the last month or so. I'm tempted to start using the advanced combat logging, especially for the combat replay functionality that it enables on warcraftlogs, but I don't know how much additional lag that is going to introduce. I would probably risk it first in a flex run as opposed to normal. Has anyone experienced noticeable lag with this option turned on?

[Zagam 1,982]

I ran 4 raids with Advanced Logging enabled and experienced ZERO performance issues. 

[Krazyito 521]

The difference between advanced log and normal logs is how much space gets taken up in the log file.  Basically it just gets bigger and you have to clean out your log file more often.

[Zagam 1,982]

You should be deleting/arching every file after you upload it anyways...I don't see any issue to the file being larger via advanced logging.

[Krazyito 521]

*Quickly goes and deletes 1gb log file*

[Orthios 271]

Wow, this looks nice, I'll definitely register when I get the time.

[Kazistrasz 216]

I have to say, after we used this for our weekend alt group and looked through it, it's so much more powerful than WoL is as well as prettier. The fact that it's still in alpha and is this good simply makes me wet with anticipation of what it will be like on official 1.0 for WoD.

 

Also, three cheers for Zag for yet another super useful guide.

Edited January 16, 2014 by Kazistrasz

[NullDummy 0]

As a log addict like me, it's always interesting to see new tools. Thank for pointing this one out. I will try this for sure.

 

however, there is an application that does a really good job too.

I used it since about few years already, it's called WowCardioRaid (http://tixu.scribe.free.fr/indexen.php), and the latest beta shows combat replay too in a very comprehensive view. 

It 's not well known, but you should probably take a look at it too if you dont know it. It's just like wol on steroids, and it works insanely well.

it's still the best tool to understand what happens.

Edited January 17, 2014 by NullDummy

[Ceraius 34]

Has WorldofLogs changed into this? Have I missed something? :P

[Gwenymph 414]

I'll add to the positive feedback for Warcraftlogs.  I started using this at the recommendation of Krazyito 6 weeks ago and am impressed.  I'll also echo Zagam, I did not see any performance drop off by running advanced logs.  Looking forward to where they are headed.  Also worth noting that if there are things you'd like to see added or streamlined, create an account and post on their Forums.  They are pretty reliable at responding to the feedback left there.

[noso 1]

Hello everyone.

 

I have a small question regarding warcraftlogs. When looking at the log of our yesterday raid, i see my water elemental mentionned as an external source of damage. It's not counted towards my personnal dps

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/wyBf8kCbv2QpG4AK

 

Does anyone know why so? is there a possible correction to that? (it's not very problematic, but my ranking suffers a lot of that :) ) 

 

Cheers

[Soulzar 42]

TL;DR

 

I kid I kid..

[Krazyito 521]

Hello everyone.

 

I have a small question regarding warcraftlogs. When looking at the log of our yesterday raid, i see my water elemental mentionned as an external source of damage. It's not counted towards my personnal dps

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/wyBf8kCbv2QpG4AK

 

Does anyone know why so? is there a possible correction to that? (it's not very problematic, but my ranking suffers a lot of that :) ) 

 

Cheers

This is just a big in how WCL reads the information. The developer already know about this and will fix it in time.

[Geko 0]

Amazing guide! I decided it was time to stop slacking on logging our raids. I am a learning raidleader so I am probably able to improve my raidleading by studying our logs and being able to present people chunks of data that represent their ''mistakes'' etc. 

 

I was using World of Logs untill I came across this guide. I instantly fell for Warcraftlogs by just scrolling through this topic and looking at the warcraftlog pictures. It looks alot more user friendly. So I got rid of World of Logs and installed everything for Warcraftlogs instead.

 

I just tried an experimental first upload of our last raids logfile for the first time with the WCL client and I think the general action itself went succesfull, however after looking on the site I came to the conclusion I did something wrong.

 

For some reason, even though I am ''in a guild'' on the WCL site I can't see the log I uploaded on the calendar there. Instead my experimental upload got located under my personal logs. Am I completely missing out on an uption in the WCL client which makes me able to select whether to upload as personal log or as guildlog so it will show up in the calendar?

[Orthios 271]

Make sure that when you upload a log, that you select where you upload it to. I uploaded one of my logs twice, once under my personal logs, and once under the guild logs.

[Krazyito 521]

Just FYI, you should probably not stop logging to WoL until WCL is more integrated into other sites with their rankings.

I say this mainly because the rankings of WoL will start to be less useful with a smaller data set and some people like to try to get high ranks.

I personally will be uploading to both until WoD when Pro-raiders, raid bots, and wow hero's, have WCL integrated it.

[EddyG17 2]

I didnt see it anywhere, so I'll mention it here.

On Warcraft logs, next to every item, You will see a plus sign. This feature adds that item to your graph. This is a very nice feature. For example, you can go to buffs and add your trinket procs. Then you can go to cast and add chaos bolt casts. The resulting graph will show whether or not you casted chaos bolts with buffs up. You can also see if you consumed your backdraft stack on a chaosbolt or not, etc, etc.

[Hybrys 199]

I didnt see it anywhere, so I'll mention it here.

On Warcraft logs, next to every item, You will see a plus sign. This feature adds that item to your graph. This is a very nice feature. For example, you can go to buffs and add your trinket procs. Then you can go to cast and add chaos bolt casts. The resulting graph will show whether or not you casted chaos bolts with buffs up. You can also see if you consumed your backdraft stack on a chaosbolt or not, etc, etc.

Yeah, that's called 'Pinning'.  It's been a feature that's been a bit buggy since launch, but can be great to compare buffs to what usage.  Your example is kind of perfect for that.  (Backdraft being consumed on what)

 

Here's an example of my log w/ Lava Burst and Lava Surge pinned.  The light blue is the proc uptime (which gives me a reset, instant, and free Lava Burst), and the yellow line is each cast.

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Kw2VyWcXjzqA7LPM#type=damage-done&source=9&pins=0%24true%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%24100648077.0.0.Shaman%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%2477762%5E0%24true%24%23909049%24damage%240%240.0.0.Any%24100648077.0.0.Shaman%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%2451505

 

You even see when I game the cooldown and spell queuing system to give me a double LvB by doing a zoom on that location.

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Kw2VyWcXjzqA7LPM#type=damage-done&source=9&pins=0%24true%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%24100648077.0.0.Shaman%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%2477762%5E0%24true%24%23909049%24damage%240%240.0.0.Any%24100648077.0.0.Shaman%24true%240.0.0.Any%24false%2451505&start=11403686&end=11409166

[kitsu 55]

how do you view a mana return like resurgence for a resto shaman?

 

on world of logs its listed as a "power gain" under the "buffs gained" tab.

[drumsmani 47]

I'm able to add pins to track when and how much mana got returned from each Resurgence proc, but when I try to add a summary pin, it summarizes the total number of times Resurgence proc-ed rather than the total resource return. It maybe that the resources section is still being worked on. (http://www.warcraftlogs.com/help/pins)

 

They have also recently added some support for manual expressions. I'm not too familiar with that language to experiment and see if this information is possible through that.