WoW Web Stats reveals the ins and outs of your raid
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 26th 2008 at 2:00PM
WoW Web Stats(or WWS), if you're not aware, is a popular raid assessment tool written by Lossendil. It has recently received some sweet loving from the author in the form of an overall revamp, and now bears a shiny new orangey-brown coat to accompany that same great taste we know and love.
Using an uploaded combat log(/combatlog in-game) pulled from your WoW folder, WWS parses it into a neat and clean report for your perusal. Right at your fingertips is your basic overall damage meter and healing meter, and if you dig a bit further, there's so much more. With the ability to see each boss encounter and attempt individually, each players' spell usage, the buffs and debuffs on a character in any given encounter as well as a variety of other things, this is a tool that shouldn't be overlooked if you're in the raid game.
I wouldn't recommend using this tool simply as a glorified damage meter. Its always fun to see how high(or low) you are on the DPS chart, but WoW Web Stats supplies far more information and insight than just what your damage will tell you. This is something to keep in mind if your raid is trying out new recruits. For example, using the Abilities breakdown to compare the spell rotation of your seasoned vets versus your recruits will tell you a little about how much they know about their class. For tank recruits, you may want to keep an eye on Omen during the run for their threat output in addition to the WWS report afterwards; TPS is something WoW Web Stats doesn't cover.
Personally, my favorite part of WoW Web Stats is looking at player deaths, and what dug their grave. Counting how many times the shadow priests killed themselves with Shadow Word: Death never gets old. Not that we DO that or anything. Really now, who knew you weren't supposed to cast that during Enfeeble? Our raid leaders also get a kick out of searching WWS reports for various upcoming bosses- they're sorted in order of highest DPS to lowest. Perfect for your inner min-maxing powergamer!
I don't think a full tutorial of how to use the various facets of WWS is necessary, but its worth noting that to get the most accurate readings from this tool, you'll want to increase your logging range. It can also be pretty rough trying to remember to turn combat logging on every time you enter a raid, so I suggest picking up an add-on like Auto Combat Log which will do it for you automatically.
A special thanks goes out to Mr or Ms Anonymous, who submitted the idea for this post at the exact same moment I had it myself. We're soulmates, hooray!
Filed under: Tips, Guilds, Add-Ons, Instances, Raiding, Bosses, Buffs, Forums
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
benternet Jan 26th 2008 2:29PM
Good stuff right here; It's definitely a great tool for any sized raid. It doesn't show the intangibles though, and can be used in either a positive or negative way.
Meyl Jan 26th 2008 5:27PM
Agreed. There are some things it doesn't show - like spells with no damage or healing component (Curse of Shadow, Banish, Polymorph, etc.). So when you compare your raiders' performance, you need to also remember whether they were assigned to special duties.
It is still a tremendously useful tool. Especially if you have players of the same class and similar gear, yet whose performance is very different. The raid leader (or the player seeking to improve) can look at the differences in what the players were actually doing in each encounter, and determine what made one player more effective. Was it different attacks/spells? More consistent use of trinkets? Did everyone use the required buff foods/elixirs/flasks? It also, helps raid leaders to see things they might have missed about grouping players to take advantage of class-specific buffs and abilities.
In August, my guild began posting WWS reports on our guild website after each raid. Our overall DPS went up considerably within two weeks. Almost every DPSer showed significant improvement (50-100 DPS was typical). It shook us out of our collective complacency and made us really look at what we needed to do better. And it probably didn't hurt that everyone knew that every raid would be recorded and published - the entire guild would see if they were being slackers.
The downside, of course, is that it can foster competitiveness. Healthy competition is one thing, but ego-stroking and mockery is another. For that reason, my guild also put in place written policies about using WWS. They boil down to "no public bragging about how leet you are" and "make constructive comments".
All in all, I wouldn't want to raid without it (or another similar tool).
Adam Holisky Jan 26th 2008 6:03PM
Great Read, Alex.
I've been an avid user of WWS for many many months, and I swear by this and recount. Being able to go back and look at a fight, step by step, stage by stage, has really changed the way I play the game.
Neil Jan 26th 2008 6:08PM
I'm hoping that when 2.4 comes out, the improved combat log really helps to make things like threat meters, damage meters, and WWS even better than they are currently. Even though I can't stand damage meters, or at least people who are constantly worried about being on top of them.
Alex Ziebart Jan 26th 2008 6:14PM
2.4's combat log is sure to bring us some shiny new toys. I know that Omen will be getting an overhaul in 2.4 for sure, so that's definitely something to look forward too.
rick gregory Jan 26th 2008 6:53PM
Also you can combine multiple logs when you generate the report. People can manually upload the logs to a guild server or the java client can be configured to ftp or email logs to a particular address. You should still increase the range, but this helps if, for example, the one person logging dies and releases.
Razhlok Jan 27th 2008 9:06AM
WWS is a wonderful tool. I've been a subscriber to their unlimited account for 4 months now and I'm quite happy with it. It has been very useful to me and my guildmates.
Mandarin Jan 29th 2008 3:11AM
1 queston:
If two Shamans drop Searing Totem, who gets the damage added to their WWS report?
That's one problem of using the /combatlog file today.
- Asirae
http://enhancementshaman.wordpress.com/
Jack Gagliano Feb 18th 2008 11:44PM
i would love to use this, except for i get an error trying to register a new account.
i have tried to email someone, but you can't do that unless you register on their server and you can't do that because of this error.
See below:
HTTP Status 500 -
type Exception report
message
description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.
exception
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Request processing failed; nested exception is javax.mail.MessagingException: Could not connect to SMTP host: wowwebstats.com, port: 25;