Learn how to better yourself as a player

while maintenance was happening i came across this article that is real helpful if you dont know how to troubleshoot your own gameplay and make yourself a better player. we as officers look over the logs to gauge the guilds/players skill levels, but its even more helpful to look at them yourself and know where you need to improve as a player. you can find our combat log links in the combat log forum, we use WOL, which is what this article talks about.


taken from:
http://www.worldofraids.com/topic/16004-building-a-better-raid-reading-the-logs/?s=ff4e403e91a630ef1b52f8e2b155e616


"One of the things that I find most valuable in a raider is the desire to improve oneself. While a lot of players have this drive, at least subconsciously, many of them don’t really know how to execute on it. Sure, there are guides on Elitist Jerks and other assorted caches of knowledge on the ‘net, but one things these guides don’t teach is how to troubleshoot your own performance – just because you can read a rotation doesn’t mean you can execute it properly.

WoW Web Stats popularized the idea of combat log parses, but World of Logs (WoL) perfected it. The trouble with WoL reports is that there’s just so much data. Reading a World of Logs parse can be confusing and intimidating at first, so here’s a helpful little guide to help anyone who’s new to the idea.

First off, this guide does assume two things: first of all that you have access to World of Logs reports. If you don’t, it’s quite easy to start logging and uploading them yourself. Just check out the site for instructions. (Aside: I recommend a mod like LoggerHead if you’re like me and always forget to turn the log on). Second, this guide assumes that you are a DPS player and that you know what you should be doing, rotation and/or priority-wise. Reading logs for tanks and healers is more of a subjective thing.

The Basics

Okay, so let’s start from the start. The basic page of a log is the dashboard. If you look near the top of the screen, there’ll be a number of dropdown menus. The first thing that you’ll probably want to do is select a specific boss fight. Full logs include trash which generally isn’t a good representation of your DPS. It’s better to take a small snapshot to gauge your performance. I recommend a straightforward fight like Festergut or Deathbringer Saurfang (if you’re melee). You can use somewhat movement-intensive fights like Lord Marrowgar but adds fights like Deathwhisper make it difficult to get a good read on how you did.

Go to the dropdown labeled, “Full Report” and pick a specific boss fight. Now select “Damage Done” from the “Dashboard” dropdown to get a look at where you stood in the overall DPS rankings. I recommend this step as it provides a few handy stats: DPS, DPS(e) and Active Time. DPS(e) records your DPS for the overall fight. DPS records your DPS for the time you spent DPSing. Raw DPS will always be higher, but this can be misleading if you have a high idle time. Active Time gives you a percentage of how much time you spend actively DPSing – if this number is markedly low it means you’re spending too much time not killing things, which is bad because killing things is kind of your job.

Moving on. Find your name in the list and click on it. You’ll see a graph with some tabs over it. The graph shows how your DPS fluctuated throughout the fight; it’s neat but difficult to pull useful date from. There’s a lot of useful date here, but for brevity’s sake, we’re just going to focus on two tabs: Damage by Spell and Buffs Cast. These two tabs are the keys to troubleshooting your DPS. There are two fairly easy ways for most classes to check their performance: Uptimes and Effective Cooldown Usage.

Long Cooldown Usage

Buff uptimes are easier to track, so we’ll start there. Go the Buffs Cast tab. The first thing that you’ll want to check is your long cooldown buff usage. This is simple to do: check the Buffs column (left side) look for all of your long cooldown buffs. This includes DPS cooldowns like Avenging Wrath and Rapid Fire, utility effects like Tricks of the Trade, trinket use effects, and even racials like Blood Fury and Berserking. Any ability with a cooldown of 30 seconds or longer is good to check. Simply consider the length of the fight and ask yourself: did I use this ability as much as I could have? In a 5-minute fight, you should be using 3-minute cooldowns twice, 2-minute cooldowns 3 times, 1-minute cooldowns at least 4 times, and so on. If you find yourself forgetting to use these abilities enough, consider macroing them in to some of your primary abilities.

On a side note, make sure you know what your trinket’s on-use effect is called. Sometimes, it matches the name of the item, but sometimes it has its own name (for example, Mark of Supremacy’s activated ability is labeled “Rage”). You can check the name of the use ability by going to Wowhead, searching out the item, and clicking on the effect’s text in the item window.

(De)buff Uptimes

Next up, you should take a look at your buff and debuff uptimes. Both are tracked in their respective columns. WoL helpfully lays out the amount of times you gained each (de)buff and the percentage of fight time that the (de)buff was up. Even cooler, if you click the pound sign (#) at the end of each column, it produces a timeline with a green bar that shows specifically when the (de)buff was up and when it dropped off. This can great for pinpointing specific times when you let key (de)buffs drop off so that you can fix the problem, although this does require some understanding of fight mechanics and boss timers.

Anyway, the main idea here is to just to see what your uptimes are and, if they are low, think about how to bring them up. Some (de)buffs, like say a feral druid’s Savage Roar, completely define a class’s playstyle and demand a near-100% uptime. If you find yourself having trouble keeping key (de)buffs up, the easiest solution is often to rethink how you have your UI display them. There are a lot of great mods, like ForteXorcist and Power Auras Classic that can help.

Next up is the slightly more complicated practice of determining your effective cooldown usage. This is more helpful for classes that rely less on DoTs and more on priority-based cooldowns, such as Retribution Paladins and Marksmanship Hunters. Click over to the Damage by Spell tab.

Cooldown Usage

Now, take a look at your key abilities; things like Whirlwind or Chimera Shot. First, divide the fight length in seconds by the ability’s cooldown. This will tell you the maximum number of times you could have theoretically use the attack. Compare that number with the number of times you actually hit or missed (or were parried, etc.) with the attack. You have to kind of wing it a bit here – a lot of factors can throw off your cooldown usage, such as movement and clashing (two or more abilities coming off CD simultaneously). If you’re at, say, 80% usage that might not be a problem on more complex fights. If you’re at 50%, then you know there’s an issue. On simplistic fights, it should be very near 100% - at least for your top priority abilities.

When in doubt, look around for some other players of of your same class and spec (either in your raid group or in another log) who pull more DPS than you and compare their effective cooldown usage to your own. You might also think about taking a close look at those players' armories. See how your key stats, such as attack power, spell power, armor pen or haste compare to theirs. If you're at roughly the same gear level as they are but your stats look way different, you might need to think about regearing or regemming.

Again, the simplest solution to solve this problem is just to rethink your UI. Even a simple mod like OmniCC can be invaluable in cooldown tracking. Power Auras Classic can also be great for this task. If you’re really struggling, try something like Ovale, which quite literally tells you what to cast next.

And the Rest?

Some classes benefit more from these types of analyses than others. Classes that rely more on a primary nuke with a cast-time (such as Mages, Elemental Shamans and Balance Druids) will have a bit more trouble making the most of these logs. To figure out how efficiently you were using your time, you’d have to factor your average cast time for each spell and then calculate the amount of time you could have theoretically spend casting by subtracting your non-nuke GCDs from the overall fight time… and that’s not even factoring in movement. Variations in Haste rating due to procs and other effects could skew the data even more.

While you can try to work out the exact numbers, you may be better off just thinking critically about how you play: Are you always casting something? Are you moving too much? Are you utilizing abilities like Blink that can reduce time spent moving? Are you Iceblocking through, say, Festergut’s first Pungent Blight so you don’t have to move to get Innoculated? There are a lot of little things you can do to maximize your time spent casting. A little outside research can really pay off here.

That’s It!

That covers the basics of reading a World of Logs log for DPS. There’s a lot more to the site though; almost too much. It can be overwhelming, but just explore the site one feature at a time and try not to be intimidated. "