Reading damage from logs

“Total damage” sounds like one number, but an EVTC log splits it across two event shapes and a dozen result codes, and summing the wrong ones silently inflates or deflates every player’s total. This page gives the filter rules, with numbers observed in a real revision-1 WvW .zevtc log (arcdps build 20260114, ~6.7-minute fight) inspected while writing this page. Field layouts are on the cbtevent page; enum values on the enum reference.

All damage lives in ordinary combat events — is_statechange == 0 — and splits on the buff byte.

Strike damage (buff == 0)

Direct hits. value is the damage dealt (combined barrier + health, per the official field notes), src_agent the attacker, dst_agent the victim, skillid the skill. Only three result codes are actual connecting strikes:

result	Meaning
0	CBTR_STRIKE_DAMAGENORMAL
1	CBTR_STRIKE_DAMAGECRIT
2	CBTR_STRIKE_DAMAGEGLANCE

Observed: 8,194 such events totalling 8,401,224 damage (of which 5,745 were crits — WvW zerg fights crit a lot).

Everything else in the result column is not health damage and must be excluded from damage sums:

• 3–7 (BLOCK/EVADE/INTERRUPT/ABSORB/BLIND) — the hit didn’t land; value there is not applied damage.
• 8/9 (KILLINGBLOW/DOWNED) — marker events; see downs & deaths.
• 10 (DEFIANCE_DAMAGENORMAL) and 12 (CROWDCONTROL) — defiance-bar and CC records, not health damage. The test log had 2,174 crowd-control events; adding their value fields would have inflated total damage by ~18%.
• 11 (SKILLCAST) — an on-use signal, no damage.

Buff damage (buff == 1, value == 0)

Damage-over-time ticks (conditions, and damaging auras/traits). The classic encoding, confirmed in the test log: buff == 1, value == 0, and the damage is in buff_dmg. Observed top sources, with names taken from the log’s own skill table:

Skill id	Name	Tick events	Total damage
737	Burning	1,070	650,404
19426	Torment	351	240,108
736	Bleeding	1,132	157,262
30285	Vampiric Aura	946	74,028
723	Poisoned	454	66,808

The value == 0 check is what separates these from buff applications, which share buff == 1 but carry the duration in value and zero in buff_dmg — see boons & buffs. Sum buff_dmg for buff events, value for strike events, never both fields of one event.

Barrier

When a strike is partially or wholly absorbed by barrier, the event sets is_shields and overstack_value holds the barrier-absorbed portion (value remains the combined total). Observed: 495 of the 8,194 strikes were barrier-flagged, absorbing 252,127 — so “damage to health” and “damage dealt” differ by about 3% in this fight. Boon-ball WvW squads run heavy barrier; ignoring is_shields overstates damage that actually reached health bars.

Minions and pets

92 of the observed strike events had a nonzero src_master_instid — necromancer minions, ranger pets, turrets. Their damage belongs to the master: resolve src_master_instid against the agents’ instance ids before crediting, or minion damage silently vanishes from player totals. Note WvW siege ownership is its own case — see the version notes on siege owner vs. operator.

The checklist

To compute a player’s damage output:

1. Take is_statechange == 0 events where the player (or a minion whose src_master_instid resolves to them) is src_agent.
2. Add value where buff == 0 and result ∈ {0, 1, 2}.
3. Add buff_dmg where buff == 1 and value == 0.
4. Track overstack_value on is_shields events separately if you want damage-to-health vs. damage-absorbed split.
5. Divide by fight duration from the squad-combat timestamps — see timestamps & duration.

For decoding the raw event stream these filters run over, see Parsing EVTC logs.