I'm seeing Miss type [Spell Name] not supported errors showing up for some reports. My guess is that this is caused by either an undocumented change or a bug in the client. If anyone that encounters this issue can send me a ZIP'ed copy of the textual combat log (maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com) that'd be very much helpful!

If it is indeed an combat log format change causing this issue, your reports should not need to be re-uploaded after a fix has been applied.

EDIT: The issue is caused by running an old client version. This should not normally happen. We'll implement measures to cause uploads from these outdated clients to fail and provide a sensible error message. In the mean time, please follow the instructions below to resolve the issue manually.

If you still have this issue, clear the Java application cache via these instructions and try again. If it still doesn't work, send me an email.

The WoL client has been updated to support 4.2-style combat logs.

If you experience any issues related to this update, like not being able to launch the client or failing to upload a log, please reply in the Client 4.2 update issues topic on the forums or send me an e-mail, maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com.

<< Important information for combat log uploaders >>

Applies to Live Reports

Intro

Lately we've seen an increase in questions regarding incomplete logs, where the last kill in a live report shows as a wipe. Therefore, I've decided to dedicate a short frontpage post to this issue, explaining its cause and effects. Finally, I will present steps you can take to ensure this doesn't happen to your logs!

Cause

The most common cause of an incomplete log is that the textual source log (i.e. WoWCombatLog.txt) is simply incomplete. To understand why this happens, you must know that WoW doesn't write each combat log line to disk individually. Instead, it saves them up to write a bunch of them to disk at the same time every X lines or bytes -- most likely for performance reasons related to disk access time.

For this reason, the DEATH event for the last encounter may still be "saved up" when your raid ends, meaning it has not yet been written to WoWCombatLog.txt and cannot be uploaded by the WoL Client. If you close the Live Report window at this time, the last combat log chunk containing the last encounter's DEATH event will not be included in the WoL report and hence WoL will classify the last encounter as a wipe.

Solution

Luckily, there exists an easy workaround to this issue: log out of or quit WoW before closing the Live Report window. When exiting or logging out (i.e. returning to the character selection screen) of the game, WoW flushes the last combat log chunk, writing it to the WoWCombatLog.txt file. The WoL Client should pick up on this within a second and will upload that last chunk.

If you want to be completely sure your report contains that last DEATH event, simply click Open Report before closing the Live Report window to view the report in your browser. Check that the last encounter shows as a kill, not a wipe. If the WoL Client doesn't seem to have picked up on the last chunk, click the Sync Now button to force a re-check and refresh your browser.

That's all Folks!

For questions or more information, post on the forums or send me an e-mail at maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com.

EDIT: The servers have just been patched to include full absorbs into the damage done numbers on the player- and spell details pages. Spirit Link's effective healing as shown on the analyze healing and healing done/taken pages should now match (HealingDone - DamageDone) on the detail pages.

Intro

If you've noticed the special handling WoL has implemented for Spirit Link Totem's effects and are left wondering about the details, this post is for you! If you're left with questions after reading this, post or send me a PM on the forums. Alternatively, you can e-mail me at maihem [AT] worldoflogs.com.

Spirit Link?

With patch 4.1, the Spirit Link mechanic was introduced. For those not familiar with it: its main effect is that it equalizes the % of max HP for all party/raid members in a 10y radius every second for 6 seconds. To do so, it deals nature damage to those with high % of max HP, while healing those with lower % of HP. This damage/healing mechanic is where our story begins...

Damage, healing, friendly, hostile

World of Logs, being a combat log analysis tool, splits the events from the logs into several categories, like Damage/Healing Done/Taken, but also Friendly Fire (damage raid->raid) and Hostile Healing (healing raid->hostile). Spirit Link, its mechanic consisting of both damaging and healing raid members, was screwing up this categorization: Spirit Link's heals were counted as healing done (raid->raid), but its damage, which is the "source" of the healing, was counted as friendly fire. This distorts the statistics and reduces their usefulness, as Spirit Link's healing is not actual "healing done" in the sense that it adds to total raid health. Nor is its damage component actual "friendly fire" in the sense that it decreases total raid health. Instead, it reallocates health from some players to others, leaving the total raid health unchanged... or does it?

Quick fix, further issues

Assuming that Spirit Link's damage and healing should be equal -- after all, low-health players are healed for the amount high-health players are damaged for -- we decided to completely ignore Spirit Link events as a quick fix while researching the issue in more detail. Soon after implementing this change, we were notified that this assumption is false -- Spirit Link's damage can apparently be resisted as well as mitigated (by e.g. PW:Barrier), while its healing is unaffected. That meant we could not simply ignore Spirit Link altogether, but had to find a better way of dealing with the damage vs healing issue.

Final solution

After researching the details of Spirit Link and brainstorming on the problem at hand, we decided that what we really wanted was for WoL to show actual, net healing done. Historically, we've always tried to achieve this -- deducting overhealing from heal events and guesstimating/tracking shields and counting only absorbed amounts as healing are prime examples of this policy. For Spirit Link, specifically, we decided to classify its damage as negative healing, essentially subtracting it from its healing. This would leave us with the amount of HP that was actually added to the raid health pool, i.e. the net amount healed for. This solution is currently in place and seems to be working quite well.

Caveats

During testing of the final Spirit Link handling change, we discovered that, while Spirit Link may generate positive net healing, it can also lead to negative net healing. An example we came across showed one player (a tank) getting a major Spirit Link-sourced heal with overhealing. Since overhealing is not counted toward healing done (as it does not increase raid health), the total "effective healing" is lower than the damage done, generating a negative total healing amount. Note that this is working exactly as intended, as raid health is actually decreased by this instance of Spirit Link use.

Furthermore, the change has only been made to the aggregate views, i.e. the Analyze, Damage/Healing Done/Taken, Friendly Fire and Hostile Healing pages. Actor details pages are unaffected and will still show the raw damage/healing amounts for Spirit Link (though overheal is still deducted as usual). Keep this in mind when viewing Spirit Link effects.

Details

For those interested in the fine details of Spirit Link aggregation. The rules for calculating Spirit Link healing are as follows:

For type HEAL events: totalAmount - overhealAmount
For type DAMAGE events: -1 * (totalAmount + absorbAmount)
For type MISS/ABSORB (i.e. damage/full absorb): -1 * missAmount

When looking at the Expression Editor, note that overheal is listed separately as (O: <number>). For the following HEAL event:

[00:00:00.000] Spirit Link Totem Spirit Link TargetPlayer +20000 (O: 1000)

• totalAmount = 20000 + 1000
• overhealAmount = 1000
• total healing = 20000

For a DAMAGE event like:

[00:00:00.000] Spirit Link Totem Spirit Link TargetPlayer 750 (A: 250)

• totalAmount = 750
• absorbAmount = 250
• total healing = -1 * (750 + 250) = -1000

For a MISS/ABSORB event such as:

[00:00:00.000] Spirit Link Totem Spirit Link TargetPlayer Absorb (1000)

The resulting healing is simply -1 * 1000 = -1000.

The latest raids widget is now available for embedding. It's an borderless, frameless, transparant iframe, so you can it it inside your own sidebar/widget containers on your site.

The example shows how it looks like on the Guild Launch default HTML widget. See the widgets help page for more information.

Edit: Added hide time option to fit into a 160px sidebar, like the right side on Guild Launch. You can see all 3 variants on http://woltest.guildlaunch.com/.

We're going to do some major hardware and software upgrades on 14-16 May, between 12:00 and 15:00 CEST, the site may be unavailable. I'd like to thank our subscribers again for their support, with their help, we're going to basically double the available processing power and memory.

The short version is: we're going to be down for 1.5 hours on Friday for the database migration, the work on Saturday should have no impact on the availability, but you never know. On Sunday, we'll be down for about half an hour the final step of the data disk pool migration. You can find the details on the Maintenance & Downtime forum post.

Battle of the Best Special Events @ RPC 2010 + Interviews with Kungen from Ensidia and For the Horde via live-stream

The Role Play Convention 2010, one of Germany's biggest gaming exhibitions, will take place this weekend at Cologne.

Our Battle of the Best partner allvatar.com will be there and present four Battle of the Best Special Events with WoW top guilds For the Horde, Refuge, Irae AoD and the BotB wildcard winners Ascension. Allvatar will also have live-interviews with Kungen from Ensidia and the guys from For the Horde. All of the action will be shown via live-stream on www.BattleoftheBest.com.

Live-Stream schedule from Role Play Convention 2010 (all times in CEST)

Saturday, 17.04 11:30 to 12:00: Interview with Kungen from Ensidia on the RPC stage

Battle of the Best Semi-Finals:

Saturday, 17.04 14:15 to 15:15: Irae AoD vs. Ascension (Battle of the Best wildcard winner )
Saturday, 17.04 18:00 to 19:00: For the Horde vs. Refuge

Sunday, 18.04 12:00 to 12:30: Interview with Tyrania and Tarilya from For the Horde

Battle of the Best Small Final:

Sunday, 18.04 13:00 to 14:00 : Losers of the saturday-battles

Battle of the Best Grand Final:

Sunday, 18.04 15:00 to 16:00 : Winners of the saturday-battles

Don’t miss the show and tune in at battleofthebest.com or visit us in Cologne.

We've added 16G ram to the number cruncher last Sunday to reduce the amount of "Server too busy, try again later" responses you see. It should also help a bit with the latency around midnight in CET.

There are also some changes/bug fixes on the site, here's the list:

• Fixed idle limit timer not resetting after fighting The Lich King, merging lots of trash and bosses into a single fight.
• Added minimum damage done numbers for the new bosses, made the rules a bit more flexible and added exceptions for bosses like Anub'Arak.
• The ranking info page is extended slightly, added duration check and warn when visibility isn't public (= will not be ranked), rest is still work in progress.
• Fixed dynamic graph not working @ analyze page, assertion worked as intended, sometime calculations of samples needed was wrong.

Fresh from the svn logs:

• Added an experimental plotter for events, it's very static at the moment, but we'll add more options later. (Example, go to the timeline tab + click plot. More info.)
• Fixed the Lich King's end of fight idle timer. The extreme RP takes more than two minutes.
• Changed the fight detector to ignore self-inflicted damage, like Hellfire to stack up the trinkets pre-pull.
• Better Valithria kill or wipe detection and an analyze page graph error with really long raids (8+ hours). Is sleep really optional for real raiders? :P

Good news everyone, Valithria "kills" (or are they heals?) are now correctly recognized, taking the portal should no longer split a fight and Toravon has been added to the bosses. We're now running a check on the 3.4.2 logs to index them correctly, rankings can be inaccurate until the next update at 3 am CET.