Why bother to use WoL?

[Deleted]

We consider to use WoL for our raiding in my guild, but an officer asked the question why bother? We can already see who has got the highest DPS on recount.

What are the arguments for using it?

[Krooner]

Recount/Skada sometimes have range issues. I don't know if that still holds. Also, combat log analysis isn't possible for the theorycrafters for example you can't see if the tank popped sheild block right after he taunted Rag everytime he did it using the current mods...

[Samic]

WoL isn't to see who has the highest dps. WoL is to analyse both raid, and personal performance. say warlocks dots uptime, cooldown management, and "hmm, that shit could have been avoided" moments. Personally I find it to beyond helpful..

[Emerzion]

WoL isn't just for checking DPS, it's for checking exactly how someone died, how much DPS people are doing during a burn phase, what spells they are using during that burn, if they are using potions, debuff/buff uptime, cool down usage, etc.

It is very in-depth logs of exactly what is happening during an encounter.

[Agallochh]

You can look up what specific moves are used throughout the fight to determine WHERE low DPS people are having problems.

And they're a great resource for when you need to find out what is happening wrong on some bosses. For instance, your tank is dying to Alysrazor hatchlings. You may blame a healer, yet not know that as the Hatchling was going into tantrum, your tank took a couple hits from a worm's lava spew in addition to a melee swing from a tantrum'd bird.

It may be something you don't notice, but if you were to post your WoL here and say "We are having X problem with Y boss" some people may be able to find out where you're losing control and add some nice constructive criticism... at the cost of nothing.

Why NOT run WoL?

[sockzz]

it's a more accurate and in depth analysis of everything going on in a given encounter. good for seeing whose doing what when, how many times they took damage from whatever, what cool downs someone used in a situation etc

[Kivimetsan]

Much more complex than recount. If you dont know how to use it properly, then its not really useful (I dont use much because im an idiot) but if you figure it out, it can work wonders for your raiders.

[Thickasabrick31]

WoL tells you why the top DPS is the top DPS and why the other warrior with the exact same (or better gear) has much lower DPS. As well as plethora of other useful information. /thread

[eternalwhitemoon]

As the others have said, it captures a LOT more information than Recount.

Personally, my most frequent use of it is to see buff and debuff uptimes. For instance, is person X getting as much use out of trinket Y as they should? Did person Z use damage-reducing ability A frequently? Things like this.

I also like to use it to analyze talents and internal cooldowns and such.

[brolly]

world of logs is the best site ever

You can find out who wiped your raid or what went wrong when you simply can't see it otherwise

And i love it for the dps rankings, which makes it possible to compete with every player out on world of logs. (i think all of the top 1000 guilds use world of logs so its pretty accurate how good you are)

[Deleted]

There is also another site that can take your WoL log and give you a nice overview about various things.

http://raidbots.com/comparebot/4ea48...000332#potions

[PHsname]

WoL goes much, much, MUCH deeper than Recount or Skada ever will.

It's more accurate than both. Skada is actually a crap addon that barely works the way it's supposed to. Its accuracy is a joke.

WoL automatically parses data for you into neat little tables that can tell you a LOT about what went on during a pull. You can tell who died to what, you can tell who wasn't playing their class well or correctly, you can tell who took damage to what and when. You can see who used pots, you can see who had bad buff uptimes, you can even see how DPS was during certain points in the fight.

Hell, you can even use their custom parser and go through the combat log line by line if you need something in particular without going blind.

WoL isn't a DPS meter, it just happens to have one. If you have no use for WoL, then that's up to you. It's hard to use it before a certain level of progression-oriented raiding. Personally, I don't think I could raid without WoL anymore. It's gotten us many, many boss kills.

[ice216]

early looks at WoL may look like its just a more complicated recount. But as others have said it saves so much info you can literally look up anything. When is the tank using their cds, how was corruption(cho'gall) managed, ect.

[banur]

The easiest thing would be if you head over to WoL and browse through the logs and look at the features. That way you can decide if you want to use it.
If you think that all the different stuff is too much and you only need the dps check, it would be overkill and more work to use WoL.

[Djuntas]

Recount, but improved + Flex/e-peen to compare yourself with other players.

[Blueobelisk]

Yeah yeah analyze who got hit by bad stuff and all sorts of stuff whatever.

Personally, back when I was in a scrub guild that was working on Rag kill (normal lol), I wouldn't bother flasking or well feding or potioning because we weren't WoLing and I knew I'd put up enough DPS to top Recount (which I did).

For me, without WoL ranking, there is no incentive for me to try extra hard on nerfed content that isn't real progression or isn't hard.

[PHsname]

Yeah...what Blueobelisk said is also a good point. We call out people who aren't properly min/maxing, and a lot of that info comes from WoL. We're progression-oriented enough that it's a serious problem if everyone isn't doing their best. We're hardly good at this game, but the effort needs to be there.

We recently found out our hunter hadn't been using a pot during hero in p3 of Heroic Rag for the last couple weeks...that really fucked us over. We called the hunter out on it, and her DPS shot up by like 40% during p3...

That's a significant benefit you can only catch if you look through logs.

[Illana]

WoL has a lot of in depth analysis ingame addons do not provide.

[lold]

Because DPS is a minor part of someone's performances in the high end of things.

If you do normal modes people prolly don't care much about how they play and are probably unwilling to improve so its kinda pointless i agree, but WoL is an amazing tool for anyone and any guilds that really wants to get better at PvE.

[PromiscuousPenguin]

WoL has a lot of in depth analysis ingame addons do not provide.

Completely agree with the above, recount/skada can only go so far.