How to Analyze SPriest DPS using WoL

[Arlee]

A lot of people ask about what to look for in logs to tell if the spriest in their raid is doing what they need to be doing (is it a gear problem or are they just performing badly??) or how to interpret their own logs. This is just a quick guide to give people a good general idea of what they should look for in someone's logs.

This post makes a few assumptions that you should be aware of.

• You already know how to upload your logs onto WoL
• You know how to find a particular log on WoL

If you don't know these things please read the info here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/help/index/

Using this Log as an example. (I just found the first priest I saw listed on a random fight).

First thing first hover over "Dashboard" to get the drop down menu and select "Damage Done".



Then hover over "Full Report" and select the boss fight you want to look at.



In general when trying to figure out why a spriest's dps is low fights where you kill the boss (and preferably the priest didn't die) are the best to choose because they will give you a more complete picture of what is going on. If your spriest has issues staying alive for entire boss fights I would suggest getting that sorted before worrying about dps.

So now that you have the fight you want to look at selected you need to see the details for your priest. All you have to do is click on the Priest's name to go into the details for that fight.




Click the "Buff's Gained" tab, and check to see if they have any Surge of Darkness procs (to see if they were spec'd FDCL or not) and any procs of Divine Insight in the left column.



Some things to consider when looking at the Buffs gained tab:

• If they were spec'd FDCL and don't also show Glyph of Mind Spike on this tab that's just bad.
• Often people who are low on Mind Blast casts did really good on casting Mind Spike whenever they could. Getting the balance between FDCL and casting MB on cd can be hard in a raid setting and does take some practice.
• If the person did have Divine Insight you don't just add those procs to the number of MB's that could have been cast because it just shortens the time you have to wait between MB's.
• Often if a priest has both DI and FDCL Mind Flay usage will be very low. This is fine.

In the case of our example priest he was using FDCL but not DI.

After looking at those things I click over to the "damage by spell" tab. Fight duration was 6:16 or 376 seconds (6 minutes x 60 seconds + 16 seconds).



The CD on Mind Blast is 8 seconds. So logic might seem to indicate that you should just divide the fight duration by 8, but there is also the cast time to consider and the fact people aren't machines. In general I give a little leeway and go with 9-10secs. It's largely a personal thing of how perfect you expect the priest to be. Also remember with FDCL, there will be casts that have half or no cast time; and with DI some will come off CD early and have no cast time at all. In general I think most anyone should be able to hit a 9.5 rate.

376/9.5 = 39 possible MB (rounded down) which is exactly how many this priest had.

Now take the number of MB and add that to the half the number of Shadow Word: Death, in this case 7 and divide the total by 3. (39+7)/3 = 15 is the number of Devouring Plague that should have been cast. 17 was actually cast which means a couple of times he cast it before he had 3 orbs which is slightly less good.

MB and DP casts are generally the area where the most dps is lost for most spriests. Though most know those two spells are really important with everything that goes on in a raid it can be easy to miss when they are ready right away.

In this detail you probably notice that all the dots are listed twice. You can pretty much ignore the bottom section, that is just how mastery procs are shown. The top section is where you see the uptime on dots. You want to see 90%+ in general.



Mind Flay is sort of an exception. Uptime on that will be lower if both FDCL and DI are used, higher if just one of those is used, and higher still if neither. It's really just a filler so I wouldn't stress about that too much either way. However, if your priest's active time is low and everything else checks out (not likely) then you probably would want to tell the spriest to MF more.

The last thing to consider when reviewing a spriest log is mechanics of the fight (are their periods where not being able to dps in unavoidable?, are you giving the spriest a job to do that requires him to change how he dps'?, etc...), did the priest die during the fight, and did you need him to do utility things like healing. All of these things should be thought about when trying to figure out why dps might be low.

[Syri277]

great guide! this helped me analyze myself in a complete way, i usually looked at logs with blank eyes xD
now i know exactly what's wrong with my dps, thanks a lot!

[Gande]

Love it, showing this to my roomie so I don't have to analyze his guildie every night for him.

[Yvaelle]

Good guide Arlee! You could probably also mention pet uptime as minutes in fight truncated to cool down as another common DPs losses, or potion up time being either 25 or 50 seconds depending on whether they are expected to double pot.

Also love your new Sig!

[Arlee]

Good guide Arlee! You could probably also mention pet uptime as minutes in fight truncated to cool down as another common DPs losses, or potion up time being either 25 or 50 seconds depending on whether they are expected to double pot.

Also love your new Sig!

Thanks I was also thinking about adding something a the last tier talents as well as the things you mentioned but I was trying to cover the simplest things that most people who have issues are generally missing. I might add another "If all the above looks good then look at this stuff" section though.

[Relapses]

If you keep this up, I'll run out of reasons to respond to people in the Fix My DPS thread!

<3

[Hiraishin]

Really a great guide, thanks for it