Deaths & Resurrections

A death in the combat log is a sequence of lines, not one event: the killing hit, a burst of aura removals, and UNIT_DIED. A resurrection may or may not leave a line of its own.

UNIT_DIED

10/7/2026 20:46:39.450-4  UNIT_DIED,0000000000000000,nil,0x80000000,0x80000000,Player-1168-0A234B,"Examplename-Realm-US",0x514,0x80000000,0

• The source is always empty (0000000000000000, nil). The destination is the unit that died.
• One UNIT_DIED line is written per death. A player who is resurrected and dies again gets a second line.
• The killer is not on this line. It comes from the damage lines before it.

The Killing Blow

The killing blow is the hit that took the unit to 0 HP: the last damage line on the unit before UNIT_DIED with an overkill of 0 or more.

• Hits can still land on a body that is already at 0 HP in the instant before UNIT_DIED. They carry overkill = -1 and are not the killing blow, even when they are the last damage line before the death.
• Falls, lava and drowning are ENVIRONMENTAL_DAMAGE lines with an empty source; the environmental type (Falling, Lava, …) is the killing "ability". See ENVIRONMENTAL_DAMAGE.
• Some deaths have no damage line at all: SPELL_INSTAKILL (forced kills, Purgatory expiring) and encounter scripts.

Who Killed Them

The source GUID's prefix (Player-, Creature-, Pet-) says what kind of unit the killing line names as its source. It does not say who is responsible:

• Encounter debuffs can name the victim as their source. Some boss debuffs are applied, stacked and tick with the afflicted player as the source, so the killing tick reads as the player damaging themselves. When the victim is the source and the spell is applied to them as a DEBUFF, the killer is an encounter mechanic. A player's own buff that damages them (self-damaging runes and trinkets) is self-inflicted.
• Encounter auras can have no source at all (0000000000000000).
• Pets, guardians and vehicles kill on behalf of their owner or controller; see pet ownership.

Auras at the Moment of Death

When a unit dies, its auras are removed in a burst of SPELL_AURA_REMOVED lines written before its UNIT_DIED line: at the killing blow's timestamp, a few milliseconds ahead of UNIT_DIED, and often ahead of the killing hit's own line.

20:46:39.427  SPELL_AURA_REMOVED  … → Examplename   (one line per aura on the player)
20:46:39.427  SWING_DAMAGE_LANDED Venomfang Juggernaut → Examplename   (the killing hit)
20:46:39.450  UNIT_DIED           Examplename

The auras a unit had when it died are the ones active just before that burst. Removals in the final burst before UNIT_DIED were still active at death — a buff "removed" 20 ms before the death was up when the killing hit landed.

Deaths After a Pull Ends

On a wipe, the last players often die after ENCOUNTER_END: to the boss's final casts, ticking debuffs, or the encounter resetting. Their UNIT_DIED lines land just outside the [ENCOUNTER_START, ENCOUNTER_END] window, but they are deaths of that pull.

Resurrections

SPELL_RESURRECT names the resurrecting unit as source and the resurrected unit as target. It covers both battle resurrections and out-of-combat mass resurrections:

Spell names are localized (Vision der Ahnen on a German client); match on the ID.

Soulstone

• Soulstone (20707) is a buff on the living player, and it is removed when they die — whether or not they then use it. Most SPELL_AURA_REMOVED lines for Soulstone are deaths, not self-resurrections.
• A warlock who casts Soulstone on an already-dead player writes SPELL_RESURRECT 95750.
• A player who accepts their own Soulstone writes no SPELL_RESURRECT line. The only evidence is the player acting again (casting, dealing damage, healing) or having health again after their UNIT_DIED, with no resurrect line to explain it.