An important aspect of raiding is reviewing and refining your performance. Their are a number of ways that this can be done, but one of the best ways is to utilise a Combat Log Analysis tool to view your primary statistics like; Damage Done and Healing Done.

One of the advantages to this type of analysis is you can compare yourself to other people in the raid, especially other members of the same class and assignment for the night, that being said numbers are just numbers and a lot of factors have to be taken into consideration for the numbers to make sense.

I’ll use healing as the example in this case as it’s is what I know best

Generally I am on tank heals, and usually along with a Pally or two, so my affective heals may be down on my fellow tree who is on raid heals all night. DPS numbers can vary as well, Ranged DPS who are standing and delivering damage to a boss versus Ranged DPS who are on add duty etc etc

That all said and done lets get into the nitty gritty of reviewing two of the more popular tools out there;

• Wow Web Stats (WWS)
• World of Logs (WOL)

These are by no means the only tools out their but they are both pretty solid, and widely used amongst raiders

The Upload

Both systems provide an upload client via a java application but WOL provides some additional features which blows WWS out of the water in this round.

1. Live Report Session
   Allows you to track your live log file while you are in an instance, a very useful way of having details available on the fly. Great idea but for me without dual screen I see it as a potential bottleneck for resources and bandwidth (my net sucks)
2. Select Log Timeframe
   No more hacking, editing log files, you are presented with a time frame that you can then select the part of the log file you wish to upload! This is a real time saver, with WWS if you forgot to move/clear your log file, it will upload only to tell you the log is too long and fail /nerdrage

Summary

WOL provides a really nice ‘Dashboard’ that gives an overview of the log file including Damage Done, Dispells, Interupts and spells etc. WWS on the other hand jumps straight to a basic Damage Done report.

Reports

Again WOL seems to be more comprehensive with the reports available although both allow filtering by common data such as; Boss, Attempt, Player etc. WOL does not however allow you to do a class level report, this is a bit of a downer for those wanting to compare performance amongst all healing priests for example.

If I look at a comparable report, in this case Razorscale death, both provide your standard bar graphs showing the highest (in this case Healing Done) at the top. WOL goes one step further to present a nice interactive line graph showing the timeline of the healing as well as other useful information such as who died when.

Where WWS is really let down though is that some of the fights for Ulduar simply dont work, this has lead people to comment that WWS is dead (or dying) although they said that about Naxx and they all got fixed (eventually). The fact is we are unable to get information about our key progression fights, such as Yogg and fights like Iron Council are all over the place with WWS.

Support

Over the last few months WWS has fallen way behind in the area of support. WWS seems to go AWOL on its paying customers which is terrible really, we are paid up for another 3 months I think. WOL has a very active and proactive community and support base.

Cost

Well both have free offerings, where you can store a set number of reports at a time, 10 for WOL and I’m not sure about WWS but I believe it’s about the same. If I compare the unlimited type accounts;

• WOL – $140AUD, €80Eur, $112USD
• WWS – $100AUD,€57Eur ,$81USD

So WWS is clearly cheaper but I believe you are getting more value for money with WOL personally.