Enabling Combat Logging in WoW 3.3.5

Before you can analyze a fight on Epog Logs, your World of Warcraft client has to actually write the fight to disk. The 3.3.5 client (used by Epog and most other Wrath-era servers) has a built-in combat logger that records every damage event, heal, aura, cast, death, and resurrection in your group's combat into a plain-text file. This guide walks through turning it on, finding the file when you're done, and the one extra setting that catches a few subtleties an analyzer cares about.

The /combatlog command

Inside the game, type the following in chat and press enter:

/combatlog

That's it — logging is now on. You'll see a small chat confirmation. The exact same command turns it back off when you type it again, so a typical raid flow is: /combatlog just before pulling the first boss, raid for an hour, then /combatlog right after the last fight ends. There's no in-game UI for this; the slash command is the only switch.

If you tend to forget, a popular workaround is to bind /combatlog to a macro and put it on an action bar. Some guilds also use addons (such as AutoCombatLogger) that flip logging on whenever you enter a raid instance and off when you leave. Either approach works fine — Epog Logs only cares about the resulting file.

Where the file lives

The combat log is written to a file called WoWCombatLog.txt inside your World of Warcraft installation, in the Logs subfolder:

Windows (Epog via Ascension Launcher): typically ...\Ascension Launcher\resources\epoch_live\Logs\WoWCombatLog.txt
Standalone WoW 3.3.5 install: <your WoW folder>\Logs\WoWCombatLog.txt
Mac: /Applications/World of Warcraft/Logs/WoWCombatLog.txt

If the Logs folder doesn't exist yet, the game creates it the first time you run /combatlog. The file is plain UTF-8 text — you can open it in Notepad if you're curious about the format. The 3.3.5 client uses what's known as the CLEU format (Combat Log Event Unfiltered), where every line is one event: timestamp, event type, source, destination, spell ID, and event-specific payload. A long raid produces a file in the tens to low hundreds of megabytes; that's normal.

Advanced Combat Logging

WoW 3.3.5 has a separate option called Advanced Combat Logging, found under Esc → Interface → Network. Tick this box. With it enabled, the log records additional fields per event — most importantly, the source/destination unit GUIDs (which let an analyzer cleanly attribute pet damage to the correct hunter or warlock owner) and the absorb amount on damage events (which is otherwise invisible).

Without Advanced Combat Logging, your damage and healing numbers will still be parsed, but pet ownership becomes guesswork in some edge cases (especially with default pet names like "Wind Serpent" or "Voidwalker"), and shield absorbs go uncounted. It costs nothing to leave on, so leave it on.

Common gotchas

The file overwrites itself. Each time the WoW client starts and you run /combatlog for the first time that session, the existing WoWCombatLog.txt is wiped. Move or copy the file out of Logs before your next raid if you want to keep it.
Logging needs to be on for everyone whose damage you want detailed. Only events your client can see go in your log — that's the same scope as your combat-text and meters. For raid-wide accuracy, the more guildmates logging, the better.
The file is locked while WoW is running. Some combat-log uploaders can't read it until you fully exit the game. Close WoW before uploading if you hit a permissions error.
Roughly 1 MB per minute of raid combat. A 3-hour raid night yields roughly 100–200 MB. Disk space is rarely a problem, but be aware if you're on a tiny SSD.

Next step

Once you have a WoWCombatLog.txt sitting on disk, you're ready to upload. Continue with Uploading and analyzing your first log.