Jan 4th 2009 10:21PM To answer the question of "What is so hard about watching your aggro, slowing your dps and taking the time to move rather than just clicking your imba damage rotation and ignoring everything else?"
Here's the jobs you're setting before your DPSer - watch his threat meter, watch his positioning, watch his DPS timing so he doesn't go over threat, get out of whatever environmental factors may exist, and keep up the spell rotation to get the most DPS he can on the boss so the healers don't all end up OOM and we wipe.
That's a heck of a lot to keep track of all at once. It's certainly just as difficult as the "whack-a-mole" healers deal with. In some ways, it's much more difficult if you have multi-step rotations that get widely knocked off course by needing to move around like a monkey on a hot plate.
Now, in a 5-man, bad dps is just bad dps. Pulling mobs they shouldn't, ignoring threat, etc. However, I'd submit the moron to good DPSer ratio is about the same as the comparable ratios of healers and tanks, there are just fewer of them so you don't see it as often. However, when you run into a bad healer or tank, it's often far more spectacular than a DPSer who doesn't understand aggro management.
Jan 4th 2009 8:30PM You know, the whole "it's usually the DPSers fault" line is getting just as tired as the "blame the healer/tank" bit. There are awful players in all three buckets. Also, it's often very difficult to tell if the DPS pulled the mob because they were doing something stupid or if maybe the tank didn't mark things right or isn't keeping aggro, or maybe the healer doesn't have the mana or spellpower as discussed in the article.
Everyone can make mistakes, but it seems the scapegoat du jour now are DPSers. It's good to see articles like this, because honestly with the healing shortages and tanking shortages, when you run into an awful healer or tank, you feel like they have you at their mercy.