Log Review

Ok. So you had a bunch of pulls and are wondering how you can improve for the night. Time to hit the logs.

I'm going to grab one log from tonight and go over my own performance but the concept applies to all logs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28



This is log I will be using. Convert the time,  four minutes fifty seconds, into seconds or 290s.
First thing I do when I begin to look at a log is go to the Casts tab and check to see what my cpm is:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28&type=casts

For this log my cpm, or casts per minute, was 50.3. My goal for my spec is 50 so that's good. If you are unsure what you should be shooting for just find some top parses in your ilvl and see what cpm they are getting.

Now we need to see if those casts were valuable. This will require knowledge of your class and again you can look to other parses for hints if you aren't sure. Typically though you want to cast spells with CDs as often as they are off CD, big CD bearing spells at appropriate times, and use up as many procs as possible.

For Holy Priest the ideal use for our 290s fight would be as follows:

Prayer of Mending - 29
Divine Star - 19
Divine Hymn and Lightwell - 2
Circle of Healing - 24

and if we look we see my numbers were

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28&type=casts&source=3

PoM - 13/29
DS - 15/19
Hymn - 1/2
LW - 2/2
CoH - 25/24

So PoM up time was not very good at all. Something I need to work on for sure. Everything else looks decent. The missing Divine Hymn isn't a major issue as that is a raid CD so the second use may not have come up. You will notice two entries for Hymn with one stating 4 casts. Hymn is a channeled spell that ticks four times during the channel so that is a good way to see if it was clipped or cut short.
Also you may see 25 CoHs and think, "wait it says out of 24" it does but one of my spec abilities lowers the CD on circle so the actual number could be higher. I most likely held off and missed a few that I could have gotten.

So those are my main abilities. The rest are almost filler but we can still look at them. First up what was the uptime on renew?
99.85%
100% is what I'm shooting for so that's not bad.

Next we have to head over to the Buffs tab to look at a buff that should be up as much as possible and a proc. Before we head off let's grab the number of Flash Heals cast as that is what the buff empowers.

Flash Heals - 39

Once we go to the buffs tab we want to click the "self applied" box to filter out all buffs that did not generate from our-self.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28&type=auras&source=3

and filtered
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28&type=auras&source=3&options=16

Now look down for the Surge of Light buff and note the number of times it was applied.
25. Each application is a free cast of Flash Heal so we want to see 25 Flash Heals. I had 39 which means I had to hard cast 14 (though that may not be 100% accurate but matching buffs and casts is a more advanced logging technique).

Next we want to check Twist of Fate up time:
67.05% is pretty good and most of it is after phase one which is even better.

Finally we go to the resources tab and check to see how well I used my mana.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28&type=resources&source=3

and swap the resources to mana:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/py3689jHrG1vTDLa#fight=28&type=resources&source=3&spell=100

we ended the fight almost oom which is good if we had gotten a kill. Depending on how much longer the fight lasts though that could be an issue.

So that is a very basic look at personal performance. If you can master this basic look it will give you a good idea of some places to begin looking for improvements and help you understand the more advanced logging.
Just remember, major cool down bearing spells should be used as close to optimal as possible, procs are found in the buffs section, and resources is a good place to find things like Holy Power or Orbs.