An example of a logs review
When looking at either your own performance or at other's, raid logs are a vital tool. We usually log all raids so that anything can be reviewed. It seems unfair to look at people so I've chosen myself as an example, and I had some of the more experienced players go through some logs with me to illustrate what sort of thing they are looking for beyond just pure damage numbers.
I play as a balance druid. This is a spec that has a lot of utility, decent single target damage but not great AOE damage. I'm new to balance this expansion so don't claim to be any sort of expert but this section will show an example of how reviewing logs can help highlight areas for improvement and show up mistakes in play as well as in gear, talent, azerite and essence choices.
We had a mildly frustrating evening on mythic which took us 11 wipes before the kill. We'll use that evening's logs as our example. First up, lets look at the kill and the damage done.
You can see me there (Sarsazor) down near the bottom of the DPS and just above the tanks. Also note Elier, our fire mage who barely needs the rest of us.
I was also one of the deaths at the 4:17 mark with our battle rezzes being used on a healer and one of the higher DPS players. At this point you might be tempted to say - ok, poor DPS and a death. Probably not a great player... and you may well be right. This certainly keeps me awake at night. Looking a bit deeper we can look at the mechanics page and see that I died a slow death, didn't use my health potion and didn't use my defensive (barkskin). So far not doing great things for my confidence and probably not for the confidence of those who raid with me. All things to learn from.
I also didn't use my innervate (mana free casts for healers) or any of my movement control spells (entangling roots). If we look at my essence and talent selection I have breath of the dying and worldvein resonance as uncontroversial raid minors but I also have focused energy slotted in over the AoE essence purification protocol with its bonus against aberrations (which includes Hivemind). All of these things seem a bit odd and are probably reinforcing the image of this druid as one with feathers for a brain.
So... why am I still on the raid team? What did I not do so badly?
The hivemind fight consists of a pair of bosses that have to die simultaneously. They summon in a series of adds throughout the fight which have varying levels of priority and all need to be killed. These are Aqir Drones, Aqir Ravagers and Aqir Darter. Additionally there are Banelings Acidic Aqir, spawned byspawn acidic aqir, who we refer to as the rolly boys, that are waves of adds that roll across the map doing high damage and applying a debuff that reduces healing taken.
Part of our tactic is to group up on Kazir whenever the drones are up to bait them into one place so that they can be cleaved down. In general we are a bit melee weighted and this means that we end up with Tekris rather fuller on health and ranged DPS have to focus Tekris somewhat. The adds that cause us the biggest headache are the Aqir Ravagers (a buffed drone that sadly doesn't show up in the logs) and the darters: the Aqir Drones have relatively low heath and, with our raid composition, balance's slow ramp up on multi target means that we will never do as well as other classes on these and these can be somewhat left to other players better suited to the job. The Aqir Darter, in contrast, are spread across the map and need to be burned down quickly as their damage ramps up significantly with each successive cast. These make up one of the most dangerous parts of the encounter if not dealt with properly and are one of the major parts of our raid leader's calls throughout the fight.
Having some of these things in mind, how can we reassess my performance on that fight?
Going back to the categories above: don't stand in stuff
Here, I'm respectably in the bottom half on avoidable damage taken and, over all the fights of the evening, the kill was the only one where I died early on.
Know your fight / class. Balance is not great at AoE so I've made a choice to focus on the Aqir Darter and as a ranged DPS to prioritise damage to Tekris to help compensate for our melee heavy team on Kazir. With that in mind, I had top damage on darters over the evening and I ranked third on damage done to Tekris (second if you ignore the tank who is always on Tekris), though admittedly a very long way behind our amazing fire mage.
Here is the damage on only the Aqir Darter during the whole evening:
Overall, that evening I had some possibly suboptimal talent and essence choices for the fight, didn't always use my defensives or healing potions as much as I could have and had overall lacklustre damage.
Healing items (healthstones/potions) used during the kill:
Other potions used during the kill:
I did, however, avoid most incoming damage and executed on what I was told to do by the raid leaders in a manner that fits with my class and specification. It is listening to the better players that can make people valuable within the team, even with lower headline DPS numbers!