Recount for Raid Leaders

Recount – to recount how bad your friends are.

Overview – Recount is a very powerful tool for analyzing raid data during a raid. However, you have to be exceedingly careful to use the right information from it in order for it to be beneficial. Staring at raw numbers and criticizing based off of them is entirely too common. Hopefully this guide will give you some tips on how best to use that data.

Death log – Likely the most important part of recount for both raid leaders and tanks alike is the death log. As seen in the picture above, the death log is an action by action count of what happened in the prior 10-15 seconds before a person died. This is invaluable in multiple cases.

First, tank deaths. The deaths portion of recount allows you to see exactly how much damage the tank may have been taking, and who specifically was healing them. It enables the raid leader to see if a healer was slacking, or if the tank stepped in something, or simply had a bad string of hits.

Using the death log intelligently can clean up many things. Example “It looks like Yuebe was really focuses on healing the tank but I thought we had assigned her to orb 1 heals?” By clicking the report button (the trumpet) you can link the death log to the raid, showing specific members exactly how they died (both for curiosity and to let them know).

HPS vs OverHeals – Also called “healing meters”, these are the most difficult to read correctly and analyze. Most importantly, do NOT think that the most healing done or HPS done means that that specific healer is doing that much better, a lot depends on the class and what job they have. For instance, a tank healer will likely have lower HPS and higher overhealing because they will simply be spamming the tank, whereas a raid healer will have higher HPS because they are healing more total damage/the whole raid. Also, druids will almost always have higher HPS at this point in Cataclysm, based on the mechanics of the class. Shamans, Priests, and Paladins all have mitigation, while druids have straight throughput healing. Basically, don’t bash other healers based on HPS =) Dig a bit deeper and compare apples to apples.

Another important part of the healing area of recount is the spell usage. If you have a healer that is not performing up to par, it may be due to the spell usage. After browsing a few logs of healers, it should be easy to tell what the breakdown for heals used should be, and you will be able to see if your healers are following that or not. Note that this is most easily done in world of logs, but once you’re comfortable with reading spell breakdowns can be done during a raid to make quick changes. Finally, overhealing. The thing to remember about overhealing is that if a healer is not going out of mana, OVERHEALING IS NOT SIGNIFICANT. Only use overhealing for any meaningful discussion if the heals get tight and healers are running out of mana. Otherwise, it is completely worthless.

DPS (Damage Done) – DPS and damage done are much the same, but I’ll deal more with damage done, as it’s the more important measure generally. The only time where you’ll really care about actual dps is during burn phases, and that can generally only be analyzed in World of Logs, so that will not be discussed here. Damage done is rather self-explanatory, it shows the damage being done by your raiders during an encounter. There isn’t much to discuss, other than to remember that people have different jobs, and that the damage done is not indicative of whether or not they’re doing their job correctly. Keep this in mind if you notice lower damage done.

The primary time you’ll be wanting to analyze this mid raid is on fights such as Baleroc and Majordomo, because they’re both enrage timers/dps checks of a sort. You can simply see who is doing less, and tell them to up their game (nicely, of course    )

Dot Uptime – While I prefer to analyze DoT uptime on World of Logs post-raid, if you’re close to beating an enrage timer or a little low on dps, a snapshot of DoT uptime can help you notice if a raider is losing dps. For classes such as moonkins, mutilate rogues, among others that rely on near perfect DoT uptime, a quick look at your specific raiders’ uptimes can let you know if they’re not performing well. Again, this isn’t a great measure of dps in general, but it can help in a pinch.

Damage Taken – Damage Taken is useful primarily for tanks, and on fights where avoidable damage won’t necessarily kill you, but will tax healers. It’s pretty useful if you have two like-tanks standing in front of the same type of add(s). Why is joey taking more damage than Suzie? Oh it looks like Joey isn’t keeping Shield Block off CD and Thunderclap on the add. Blah blah.

Alysrazor is a great example of where damage taken is extremely useful. Her brushfires (especially on heroic) hurt, and each time anyone is hit by them, it moves the healers off of the tanks, which can cause a quick tantrum death. This leads to a very important point, if by checking the death log, a tank is dying due to not receiving enough heals, it may not be the healers fault. You’ll want to examine the damage taken meters and see if people are taking avoidable damage. By hovering over the bar and clicking on the person, you can see a list of the abilities they took damage from, and how much total. Basically, if someone is taking lots of damage from avoidable effects, this gives you a measure to show them, and hopefully improve their raid awareness.

Dispels and Interrupts – Finally, there are 2 other areas of recount that can be of great assistance mid-raid. These are the Dispels and Interrupts. They go hand in hand with essentially telling you exactly how any interrupts or dispels a certain raider is doing. It’s quite self-explanatory, but more or less it tells you who’s doing their job. A great example is on Alysrazor where interrupts are crucial. If one side is failing at their interrupts, simply see who isn’t doing it and let them know.

Finally as a side note, if you’re not comfortable reading statistics and numbers reliably, have someone reliable do it for you! Personally, I’m a math major and can sit and pour over statistics forever, but many people are not mathematically inclined. Don’t be afraid to ask for help! ~Poppopfizz