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Avoidable Damage in Mythic+: What Warcraft Logs Records, and What It Does Not

"Stop taking avoidable damage" is the most common piece of Mythic+ advice and the hardest to check in a log, because the log has no idea what was avoidable. This guide is how Keystone Delta gets to a number anyway, and where that number stops being trustworthy.

Warcraft Logs has no avoidable flag

Its own Mechanics view has an "Avoidable Damage" table, and for the current dungeons it is empty. The open-source addon lists that used to name avoidable spells (Details_Elitism, ElitismHelper) stopped being maintained seasons ago. A damage event tells you the spell, the source and the amount. Whether you could have stepped out of it is a judgement somebody has to make per dungeon.

Archon's lists

Archon makes that judgement, by hand, per dungeon and per season: one list of avoidable spells and one of interruptible spells. Keystone Delta stores those lists per season and matches every hit against them on spell id or name, because the id Archon lists is the cast and the id in the damage event is often a different one for the same spell (Triple Shot casts as one id and lands as another). Dungeons without a list get no avoidable figure, only the mitigated share, and the page says so rather than showing zero.

The Mitigated column is already in the data

Every DamageTaken row carries a mitigated amount: what armour, absorbs and active defensives removed before the hit reached the bar. Mitigated share is that amount over the amount plus what landed, which is exactly the Warcraft Logs Mitigated column (77% for a Guardian Druid on our example, checked on the site). It is the one defence number that exists for every dungeon.

Reading the per-player numbers

• Damage taken a minute, per minute of combat, not of the run, so standing still does not flatter anyone.
• Avoidable share: how much of what hit you was on the list. Ten to fifteen percent is ordinary for a melee at high keys; twenty-five and above on one player is a positioning story, and the page names the two spells behind most of it.
• Avoidable damage a minute, for comparing two players of the same role at the same key level.
• Interruptible damage a minute: hits from casts a kick could have stopped. This is the group's kicks as much as the player's.
• Mitigated share, most telling at the same spec: the same tools, a different result, which is active mitigation pressed before the hit rather than after it.
• Self-healing against damage taken: a tank's sustain, or on a DPS the damage the healer did not have to cover.

Deaths, and what was ready

For each death the tool shows the hit that carried the overkill (not the biggest hit in the last five seconds, which is often a different spell), whether it was one hit, burst or sustained, and every defensive the player had used anywhere in the run with its state at that moment: ready, active, or cooling with the seconds left. Externals other players had ready are listed too. Effective cooldowns are read from the log, so talents count. Range and line of sight are not in the log; the button was. A defensive never pressed all run is not listed, because the log cannot tell "always ready" from "not talented".

Per season

The profile page reads your damage taken by ability from every logged run and shows deaths a run, mitigated share and avoidable share across the season, per dungeon, with the biggest avoidable hits in each. The finding that matters is the one a single run cannot give: a dungeon where you die twice as often as elsewhere, or a season-wide avoidable share of fifteen percent that comes down to two spells.

Where it stops being trustworthy

The lists are somebody's judgement and they are per season; a new dungeon has no list until Archon publishes one, and a list from a previous season can name spells that changed. Matching on name catches the cast-versus-hit id problem but can also catch an unrelated spell with the same name. And "avoidable" is not "your fault": a healer standing in a swirl to finish a cast that saved the tank made a trade, not a mistake. The number tells you where to look, not what to conclude.

Frequently asked questions

Does Warcraft Logs mark avoidable damage?

No. Its Mechanics view has an Avoidable Damage table that is empty for the current dungeons, and no field on a damage event says whether the hit could have been avoided. Keystone Delta uses Archon's hand-made per-dungeon lists instead.

What is the Mitigated column on Warcraft Logs?

The amount armour, absorbs and active defensives removed from a hit before it reached the health bar, as a share of the hit plus that amount. Keystone Delta shows the same figure as mitigated share for every player.

What does a defensive ready at death mean?

The player had pressed that defensive earlier in the run and, at the moment of death, it was off cooldown. Range and line of sight are not in the log, so it says the button was available, not that it would have saved them.