Instance Running 101 Explored Part 3

DPS.

The third part of the 'holy trinity', the DPS are mainly responsible for damage, and also for assistances such as 'crowd control'.

But first, damage. 'DPS' stands for 'Damage per second'. As a simplified example, if a mage blasted a mob for 5000 damage, and then didn't do any more damage for 5 seconds, he would have done 1000 DPS. Similarly, if he'd opened with 2500 damage and then 2.5 seconds later did another 2500 damage, he's also be maintaining 1000 DPS.

Each point of damage is a point of threat. Tanks typically don't do as much damage as the DPS classes, so they have to rely on other threat-generating abilities to stay on top of the aggro chart. This means that a good, well geared DPSer with a good rotation can very easily take aggro (and then probably die), no matter what the tank does.

This is where the true skill of DPS comes. Getting the best rotation for the most damage per second without passing the tank's threat generation. This involves trying to smooth out damage burst (doing 1000 damage every second is better than doing 5000 damage every 5 seconds), using threat dump abilities, and speccing the talents that reduce threat.

Once the DPSer is sure he's not going to out-threat the tank, then the fun begins... maxing out the magic DPS number. Huge arguments fill forums over the best spec, the best gear, the best stat priorities per class.

Crowd control is another element that the DPS is normally responsible for. Mages sheep, Locks seduce and banish, rogues stun, druids root, shamen have totem pets... there are also buffs, totems and auras that help the rest of the party, many of whom come from the DPS classes.

In summary, the DPS's job is to damage the assigned target to death as quickly as possible, while not taking the targets attention from the tank, and staying away from damage as much as possible.