Review your key in 10 minutes

Review the key with a cool head, that evening or the next day, not between two pulls. Keep a single question in mind: what would save the most time next time? Not: whose fault was it?

The Wipe to Win report already sorts mistakes from the most to the least costly: read it top to bottom. Every line can be watched in the replay, a few seconds before, and the replay's "Mistakes review" plays them all in a row. You need the combat log and advanced combat logging: preparing your logs.

Always start here. A death costs time, one player less in the pull, and often a second death right after. For each one, a single question: what would have prevented it?

Only look at the first deaths of a pull. When the whole group goes down, the third and fourth are just the aftermath of the first: the report already sorts this out, only the first two deaths of a wipe count.

Why you die details every cause, including the ones that are not the player's fault.

The same spell going through three times is not three reflex mistakes: it is a spell nobody knew they had to kick. Spot the two or three spells that keep coming back and decide who takes them next time.

Look at missed kicks too. Repeated double kicks mean the rotation is unclear, not that someone plays badly. The interrupts guide explains how to organize.

A defensive never pressed during the whole key, a potion saved "for the boss": that is margin you never used. Note when each one would have helped: it is often the same pack, key after key.

An offensive cooldown held too long kills nobody, but it costs time. On the longest pull, it would have helped.

The timeline of the detailed view shows every pull, end to end. Look for the one that lasted clearly longer than the others, and replay it: a pack healing itself, a caster left alive too long, a scattered group.

That is where most time is won: a minute taken back on a single pull is often worth more than everything else combined.

Keep at most two things to change for the next key, and tell the group in one sentence: "I take the healer in the second pack", "I use my defensive on the last boss's frontal". Ten complaints change nothing; two decisions do.

Sharing the key lets the whole group see the same thing, without arguing over who remembers what.

• Stopping at DPS: it is the easiest table to read, and the least useful to understand a failed key. Keys are lost on deaths and time, rarely on a few percent of damage.
• Looking for someone to blame: a death often has three causes, a cast that went through, a defensive kept, a late heal. Fixing the simplest one is often enough.
• Reviewing everything: ten minutes on the right moments beat an hour on the whole key.
• Only reviewing failed keys: a timed key often hides the same mistakes, at a level where they still got away with it.