Massive WarcraftLogs Changes Coming to TBC Classic

• Author: Pride
• Date: February 11, 2022
• Updated: February 11, 2022
• Expansion: TBC Classic

We’re just 2 weeks into Phase 3 and the metagame has not had time to settle yet, including the WarcraftLogs parsing metagame. But players have already come up with all sorts of “cheese” strategies in order to achieve otherwise unreachable parses, which damaged the integrity of competition on the site, to the dismay of a majority of players.

Therefore, WarcraftLogs admin Kihra announced a host of other changes coming to parsing on February 15, alongside the already announced Gnomish Battle Chicken ban, which aim to address some of the most broken aspects of parsing.

Specifically, the following changes will take effect on WarcraftLogs starting on February 15th:

• Anetheron & Azgalor: Damage dealt to the adds in those fights (the infernals and doomguards, respectively) will only count towards your parse if they are killed. If your raid ignores them, damage on them will not count.
• Archimonde: Using the famous “cheese” strategy where your raid stacks on the tree to avoid the Doomfire Strike flames and Air Burst will invalidate your log for Archimonde and the overall raid.
• Shade of Akama: This fight will not contribute to your All-Stars score, for both the Phase 3 partition as well as the new Phase 3.5 partition. You can still parse and get a ranking on that fight, it just won’t count on All-Stars.
• Reliquary of Souls: The intermission downtime period (mana-restoring ghosts) will not be counted in your logs.
• Gurtogg Bloodboil: Your damage dealt when you have the Fel Rage buff will be normalized. This means that WarcraftLogs will automatically reduce your damage to the amount you would have dealt without it. This change was necessary as parsing on that fight would otherwise be a lottery of getting targeted by Fel Rage.
• The Gnomish Battle Chicken is banned on both bosses and trash. If anyone in your raid uses the chicken, your parse for that boss as well as the overall raid parse will both be invalidated, similarly to the Archimonde changes.

These are on top of the previous change banning the Unholy Frenzy buff that players could get by using Mind Control on the Shadowy Necromancer mobs in Mount Hyjal. You can still use the buff for trash waves, but using it on a boss fight will invalidate your parse for that boss, as well as the overall raid parse.

To facilitate these changes, a new parsing partition called “Phase 3.5” will be introduced, beginning as a clean slate on February 15th. Your old parses will still be listed under the Phase 3 partition, and the default view for your profile is the All page which includes your highest ever parse per boss, meaning your previous logs are in no way invalidated. However, players will likely care more about the Phase 3.5 partition, as it is largely viewed as more fair.

This is a pretty drastic change by WarcraftLogs standards, which typically is very hands-off and has historically permitted all sorts of “cheese” strategies to dominate parses. They typically do not change or prohibit things, and they typically hesitate to make changes that affect rankings after a partition is underway. It appears that in this instance they felt that it’s early enough in the partition and the “cheese” is so significant, that changes were acceptable & warranted.

What are your thoughts on these changes? Are you more likely to try to parse now that there are improvements to parsing and “cheese” strategies are banned? Or did you like the “cheese” strategies and would prefer that things had stayed as is? Let us know in the comments below!