How to Use Warcraft Logs

By Bolas Updated: 2025/03/19

Warcraft LogsWhy are Logs important?Uploading LogsCombat Logging In-GameOptions > NetworkSystemAdvanced Combat Logging/combatlogDeadlyBossModsBigWigsWorld of Warcraft\_retail_\LogsWoWCombatLog.txtUploading with the Warcraft Logs ClientStep 1: Create an AccountWarcraftLogsStep 2: Download the ClientClick hereStep 3: Splitting LogsSplit a LogStep 4: Upload your LogsGo!

Public are viewable by anyone and show up in rankings and searches.

Unlisted are only accessible by having a direct link to the logs, and won't show up in any searches.

Private are completely hidden and will not show up even for people who have a direct link to it. The only people who are able to view them are you, or your guild if they're uploaded to a guild page rather than as a personal log.

Live LogsLive LogAnalyzing Logs

Analyze: This is the general page of the report. Most of the time you'll probably be using this section and you can think of this as the "regular" mode with the majority of the information. If you're looking for specific things or want to see how your group is performing as a whole, this is your first stop.

Compare: This is for comparing two players to each other. You can either compare two players in the same raid or compare two players across two different logs. It's usually more helpful when comparing two of the same class/spec in a single raid, but it's also very good for seeing how other players of a similar class/spec are performing in other raid groups.

Mechanics: Each encounter has ways to screw things up, and this section provides an overview on encounter-specific mechanics, and who's taking extra damage or causing problems. For example, you can see who is (or isn't) using a healthstone or potions, taking avoidable damage, or dodging boss mechanics.

Rankings: Wondering how your performance compares to other players of your spec? This section shows how your damage or healing ranks compared to everybody else who's killed that boss. Explained further below.

Replay: This lets you see a top-down representation of the encounter in real time, complete with movement, individual spell casts, and major events. It can be sped up or slowed down at will, and will even show the direction each player or NPC is facing. Explained further below.

The BasicsTablesTimelinesEventsQueriesTables

Damage Done/Damage Taken: These are two pages that are largely the same. This is the damage breakdown page where you'll find pretty much all of the information that you'll be looking for as a DPS or tank. For individual players, the table will break it down by ability; for a group view, it will break it down by player.

Healing: Same as the damage breakdowns except for healing done instead of damage. To look at healing received rather than healing done, use the second dropdown menu to select a specific player.

Threat: This essentially shows you who or how many things are attacking certain players. This can be helpful to see things like how fast adds got picked up when they spawned, but it's usually pretty obvious during the encounter what happened. This section will very rarely be used.

Buffs/Debuffs: Shows you buff and debuff uptime, including stacks, how many times it was applied over the encounter, and overall uptime. For buffs, it's usually best to look at one player at a time so that the information is easier to find. If you want to look at the uptimes of enemy debuffs like DoTs, you'll need to select enemy debuffs rather than friendly and then select a friendly player as a source.

Deaths: As you might expect, this page will show you all of the deaths that happened during an encounter. Not only will it show you who died and when, but it will reconstruct a short timeline of the events leading up to the death, including how much damage they took and from what, healing received, and the last time they used a personal defensive.

Interrupts and Dispels: Again two separate pages, but ultimately the same sort of thing. Both will sort by debuff and spell that gets interrupted or dispelled. Interrupts also includes casts that don't get interrupted, along with who interrupted what spell. Will not show interrupt casts that didn't actually interrupt an ability; those can be found on the casts page.

Resources: Health, Mana, Holy Power, Rage, Runes, etc. Anything that counts as a resource for a class can be found here and tracked. This is a great page to see if your class resources are being used well, including if you wasted any by going over your cap.

Casts: All ability casts from each player over the course of the encounter will be displayed here. It's useful for seeing whether or not players missed some ability casts, but the information is usually easier to look at as a timeline rather than a table.

Click everything - Almost everything you see on the page is clickable and will give you more information. Click on a player when you're viewing damage and it will show you their damage done with a spell-by-spell breakdown. Follow that by clicking on a spell, and it will show you the target breakdown for that spell. Click on one of those targets and it'll show every enemy with the same name and the spell's damage to that one. Click it one more time and you'll see just that target and just that spell. Click things and you'll almost always find more detailed information.

Hover over things - Most of the bars on each page will let you have more information on it. Hover over a spell in an individual player's breakdown to see the spell's Critical Strike rate and how much the average hit or crit was. DoTs will show critical ticks as well.

Use aura filters - At the top of any table view on the left and right, you can find "Source Aura Filters" and "Target Aura Filters." These will filter out all of your data to only show when the auras (buffs and debuffs) are active on you or the target. Great for seeing only how well you're doing cooldowns up or with specific debuffs on your target.

Dropdowns and menus - Don't be afraid to explore and experiment. For example, you can change the data from being organized by player to being organized by ability with a drop box on the right above the graph. In the same area, you can exclude player's pets or include overkill damage from the log.

Find tooltips - When looking at abilities you can see the tooltips for them by hovering over the icon for it. This can be very helpful especially for abilities that enemies cast.

EventsTimelinesSummaryReplayPins & QueriesWarcraftLogs+QueriesPlayer RankingsParses & RankingsRankings100Parses90th

100: Gold is a rank one parse, meaning it is the highest anyone had performed at the time.

99: Pink is an extremely high percentile parse, but not quite rank one.

95-98: Orange is a very high percentile parse, which is generally composed of the best and typically most geared players.

75-94: Purple is an above average parse, which performed well, but could still have some improvements to make.

50-74: Blue is an average parse, which is just that - average.

25-49: Green is a below average parse, which generally indicates the player is having some difficulty.

0-24: Grey is a poor parse, which usually means the player was dead for a significant portion of the encounter, is severely undergeared, not managing their rotation, or in rare cases is handling a specific job in the encounter which prevents them from normal contribution.

All Star PointsSearching Logs

Item level - Filter based on the item level of the individual rank.

Raid size - Choose a specific raid size to look for. Can be useful for Normal/Heroic logs, but not relevant for Mythic.

Fight length - Filter based on the length of the encounter.

Fight date - Filter based on the date that the log was recorded.

Raid composition - Either choose a specific number of each role to be present in the raid, or you can choose specific numbers of each spec to be present in the raid. For example, checking Retribution Paladin as 0 and Arms Warrior as 2 would filter for encounters that used 0 Rets and exactly 2 Arms players.

Abilities & Items - Filters logs based on whether players used a specific ability, or had a specific item equipped. You can either only look for logs where the ability or item was used, or you can look for logs where nobody used them.

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Comments

Comment by 1939944

Thanks! good guide

Comment by mbrahm

At Step 3, you have to make sure you have enabled "Advanced Combat Logging" via the System settings Network pane.

Comment by Grathuer

how many people must be in the guild, for a kill to give the guild a server ranking. For example if we kill a mythic boss and 10 are from one guild and 5 are from another and the last 5 are all from random guilds, who gets credit? Just curious as to what the threshold is for guild credit.

Comment by Vortilion01

What's the best way to find best players for a specific class and role to compare to regarding equipment, Talents,Essences etc.? E.G. how do I look up the best Balance Druids to compare to to find inspiration? Do I look in the Nya'lotha | All-Stars area?

Comment by KingGelbin

Website used by toxic Chads.

How to Use Warcraft Logs

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