Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

I am hoping you all can help me out with something. I guess I don’t understand how the combat log works. The numbers never add up… Does it not include ALL damage you receive?

Yesterday in WvW I went in as an 18.5k level 80 Mesmer. I meet a thief and his hit numbers registered in the combat log as very very low (figured he was up-leveled) and yet he put me down very quickly. So after death I totaled the damage recorded in the log. the total damage recorded was just over 2k, that was the total of ALL hits. He was the first and only person I had fought so far so the log was empty before that, so no way to be confused with any other info. So how does a 18.5k Mesmer go down with 2k worth of hits?

And this isn’t a fluke it happened constantly. Can someone explain what I am missing?

Packets of damage caused by DoT (damage over time) & conditions for one thing

Well, I assumed DoT was counted, because it says on wiki that Direct and AOE damage was logged and that logged aoe would be shown separate for each pulse. But I guess they don’t count DoT as pulsed damage? Which makes no sense at all to me? I mean why bother to log any of it, if you are not going to show it all? Anyway, thank you for taking the time to answer my question.

What you see in the damage is log is the damage caused by the damage portion of the skill. What you do not see is the damage caused by the conditions it applies.

For example, with Sneak Attack you will see kittens of fairly low damage, but you won’t see the damage caused by the Bleeding condition.

One reason not to log condition damage is the way it’s sent to you. While you might be taking damage from 18 stacks of bleed, poison and burning, what the server send you is data on each stack of bleed and burning. So what you would end up seeing in the log in this case would be 18 instances of Bleeding damage every single second. That would clog your damage log to a point where it’d be filled in a few seconds.

That and it’s not like you cannot see the bleed damage on your screen easily. Which is exactly where you should be looking.

I’m under the impression that some attacks in PvE don’t show up in it either. There have been a few times when I have gone from almost full, taken a hit, and go down. It’s hard to imagine I nearly instantly received 10k damage worth of bleed.

serapheles.5409:

I’m under the impression that some attacks in PvE don’t show up in it either. There have been a few times when I have gone from almost full, taken a hit, and go down. It’s hard to imagine I nearly instantly received 10k damage worth of bleed.

Retaliation and reflected damage don’t show up.

Thank you Olba for the thorough example and explanation. Very much appreciated.