WoW Web Stats is a very useful tool for reviewing an evening’s raid and checking up on yourself and your raid to see where improvements can be made. You simply upload your combat log and it will parse it into charts and player details. But don’t think it’s only useful for making sure you’re topping the DPS chart! You can browse the complete combat log, and more importantly, you can filter the log to isolate specific events or players.
The filter tool has it’s own specific syntax. WWS has a small help file on using it, but it’s pretty limited in its description. I previously wrote a post about some specific useful filters for the Sartharion with 3 drakes fight. Well, that was me giving you a fish. Now, I’m going to teach you how to go fishing!
The simplest type of filter is the all filter. If you type a single word, or few words in the text box, it will use the all filter, which will return any entries where there is a unit or spell with that name. If you use multiple words, it will use or to separate them by default.
For example, If I type Brajana in the filter, it’ll return every event that has my name in it, or involves me. It could be me gaining an aura, or me dispelling something, or me dying. As long as I’m part of the action, it’ll be there. You can use this for spells as well, I can type Aimed and get all casts and debuffs of Aimed Shot cast by or on anyone. (Be careful typing Aimed Shot, because this will return anything that has Aimed OR Shot in the line!)
This is great for quick searches, but you probably won’t glean much knowledge from this method.
Using generic searches isn't always helpful.
This is were more complex arguments come in handy. An argument for the filter is always in the form keyword=term. The syntax requires use of or and and to string multiple arguments together.
There are 3 major types of data that make up a combat log entry.
The event is what has happened. An event usually has a prefix and a suffix, separated by an underscore. Some combinations don’t fit together, but test out the ones that make sense to you. Here are all useful prefixes:
- SWING_
- SPELL_
- SPELL_PERIODIC_ (this is DoT damage or HoT healing)
- ENVIRONMENTAL_ (such as falling or standing in lava)
And suffixes you’d want to append on to this include:
- _DAMAGE
- _MISSED (this includes all failures: absorb, dodge, parry, immune)
- _HEAL
- _ENERGIZE (mana/rage/energy gains)
- _INTERRUPT
- _DISPEL
- _AURA_APPLIED (buffs and auras are included)
- _AURA_APPLIED_DOSE (for stacks of buffs, such as Vindication or Hunger for Blood)
There are a few special cases which don’t use the regular prefix/suffix format:
- UNIT_DIED
- ENCHANT_APPLIED (Spellstones and Poisons, possibly Shaman weapon abilities)
- DAMAGE_SHIELD (for things like Retribution Aura and Thorns)
The second part of a log entry is the unit. There can be up to 2 units in an event, specifically the source and target. When filtering, you can use unit= which will refer to the target or the source, or the single unit in something like a death.
More precise results using the unit filter.
If you want to search for a specific name, use double quotes. If you want to use part of a name, don’t use any. For example unit=”Brajana” or unit=Braj will both find me, but unit=Braj will also find someone named Brajanabread, for example.
Use source= for the origin of the action. This is the person casting a spell or doing the damage. Use target= for the recipient. Pretty simple!
Something useful for more generalized unit searches is the flag property. This is used when you want the unit, source or target to be of a certain type, but not necessarily a specific character.
The useful options for the flag property are:
- PLAYER
- PET
- HOSTILE
- NPC
- FRIENDLY
- OBJECT (This includes things like the towers in the Flame Leviathan gauntlet)
The third portion of a log entry is the spell or ability. For the purposes of the filter, everything is classified as a spell. This will go hand-in-hand with all SPELL_ events, and is often combined with one of them using an and operator. Like names, this can also use partial string searches or exact searches using double quotation marks.
By combining arguments for the event, unit (target/source) and spell, you’ve got plenty of ways to customize the data you can view from WoW Web Stats.
Using multiple arguments for precise results.
Hopefully this will help you to pinpoint events and details and harness the power of the combat log! Here are a few generally helpful examples to get you started:
List all player deaths:
unit.flag=PLAYER and event=UNIT_DIED
List all ability failures:
source.flag=PLAYER and event=SPELL_MISSED
List all interrupts and dispels on enemies by players:
source.flag=PLAYER and target.flag=HOSTILE and (event=SPELL_INTERRUPT or event=SPELL_DISPEL)
List all my procs of Mirror of Truth trinket (useful for generalizing proc rates):
source=Brajana and event=SPELL_AURA_APPLIED and spell="Reflection of Torment"
This one is useful to displaying a simple log of a player’s ability rotation (discluding auto-shot/swing) on a specific mob:
source=Brajana and target=Patchwerk and event=SPELL_DAMAGE
Found a cool addon? Want to share a UI tip? In the mood to contribute a guest post? Have some ideas for future posts? Feel free to 
Great tips! I have been playing with some of these for a while, and it really helps to identify problem areas or get a better sense of where your raid can improve (especially once an encounter is on farm status and you can eliminate some of the variables in positioning and strategy that can make your stats for the kill unreliable).
One technique I’ve found useful in analyzing healers especially is to look at their heals in conjuction with boss abilities, for instance, to look at all of my healing and Kel’Thuzad’s frost blasts, I’d do this:
spell=”Frost Blast” or (source=”Serrif” and event=”SPELL_HEAL”)
Now I just look through the log for frost blasts, and I can see exactly what I did around that time. Who I healed, and how that related to the ticks of frost blast.
I’m under the impression that WWS is no longer accurate and has been broken since 3.0. It doesn’t seem have been updated and does not appear to work for ulduar fights (last time i checked)
consider using World of Logs or Wow Meter Online (wmo)
WWS was broken for a little while when 3.1 first came out, but it seems to be parsing properly for me (my example is from a 25-man Ulduar run, as you can see from XT-002 and Kologarn’s Right Arm).
Although I have had reports of numbers possibly being wrong, I haven’t had anything confirmed to me about any specific abilities.
Unfortunately with WMO you can’t go through the combat log quite as easily as you can with WWS, which is why I still prefer it. We usually have both posted up since they each have useful features! I would recommend doing that so you can figure out what is running most accurately for you.
WWS is in fact having issues with bad splits and general errors in tabulation. I am a long-time WWS user (I am on my 2nd year of full-time subscription). However, recently, I have started using a new service at WorldOfLogs.com. They take a different approach and offer breakdowns and information that was not available via WWS. They are still in beta and my hope is that they will come up to par with what we had with WWS in the early days, but they have enough already available that I can use them exclusively to delve in the performance of my raids and is more reliable than WWS and even has active development and support (WWS forums went away a few months ago). Check them out, I think they have the beginnings of a great service.
One thing I haven’t found in anything but WWS is a searchable log. Everything else is just a meter with perhaps death logs. I want to see how people healed through frozen blows. I want to see why the lock took 40k damage from chain lightning. I want to see who was dispelling Fusion Punch and how quickly. Other tools might have better breakdowns, but there’s no real substitute for searching through the logs.
@Serrif:
I agree. This is the most important feature for me, and I haven’t found any other sites that do it quite as well. There may be bugs in other areas for WWS but the log is working fine. But using multiple sites is a good idea.