Whether I like it or not, I've had a lot of reasons to look at dps numbers in SWTOR in the past few months: partially because I know I can't choose to hide my performance from others anymore, partially because certain operations have been so tough that looking at everyone's numbers and ways to improve has been very... relevant.
On a whim, I put "SWTOR combat logging" into Google today and was kind of shocked to see that most of the results were forum posts from 2012 full of now-dead links. So I thought to myself, why not use this as one of those opportunities to actually post something useful on here?
How to enable combat logging in SWTOR:
Go to your in-game preferences (bound to Ctrl+P by default) and select "combat logging" on the left. You'll see a checkbox called "Enable combat logging to file" on the right, which you'll want to tick. This will save all your combat data from each play session into a text file on your PC, which can then be found in your documents under Star Wars - The Old Republic > CombatLogs.
The game warns you that this is "a feature for advanced users that may require active disk management", which is their way of saying that if you play a lot, you'll want to make sure to clear out the combat log folder every so often or your hard drive might get clogged up with thousands of text files after a while. I hadn't cleared out my own since February and when I checked on it just now it was over 6 GB large, oops.
As for how to view the information recorded in these logs in a way that makes sense to a human, you currently have three main options that I'm aware of:
This is a separate program that you download onto your computer and run alongside SWTOR to watch your numbers (and now also those of your group mates) rise and fall in real time. Personally I find it somewhat clunky/limited for more detailed combat analysis (such as "just why exactly did we wipe there, I'm not sure what happened") but it's great for getting a quick overview of dps and healing numbers.
It also sports additional features such as timers and overlays. Timers can be a bit fiddly in my experience, but when they work they are the closest you can get to having something like a boss mod addon in SWTOR, as you can set them up to give you sound cues when certain abilities are triggered or to show countdowns to important boss moves.
Overlays can be set up to show you additional information on screen such as a boss's health percentage (without you having to keep the boss as your focus target) or to give a healer a better overview of their heals over time on different targets.
About the only thing it doesn't do is allow you to review your logs online and share them with others, but for that it has integration with...
Not to be confused with the herb - I've mistyped this in my browser many times. Parsely is the longest-running site for people to upload their SWTOR combat logs and where you can compare your performance to that of other players, meaning it's full of interesting stats. With 7.0 and the changes to combat logging, it got a big revamp and now also allows you to do much more detailed analysis of your logs, making it possible to break them down in different ways and even allowing you to watch tactical replays of fights.
SWTOR Logs is a relatively new kid on the block, but the site's creator isn't new as they also maintain well-known logging sites for other games, such as Warcraft Logs and FF Logs. I'd say that this has pros and cons: An example of a con is that SWTOR isn't their main priority, which is part of why it took several months for the site to be updated for 7.0. On the plus side though, if you're familiar with one of its sister sites, you'll find the UI very intuitive since it works in exactly the same way, and you'll likely appreciate the very powerful filtering tools that allow you to drill down to a very detailed level. I'm definitely biased here as I've been using Warcraft Logs for quite some time, and I've also spoken to the creator on Discord and found them to be very responsive to fixing bugs. You mileage may vary, but I can definitely recommend giving this one a try if you're interested in looking at logs at all.
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