The DPS classes in the group should have the highest damage as this is how the bosses are killed. The tank, on the other hand, needs to have the highest threat in order to keep the bosses from squishing the DPS/healer classes.
Threat is based on damage (and healing), but it is altered by different things in the game. For example, warriors that tank have to be in defensive stance to do so. This defensive stance allows for specific abilities (such as shield wall, taunt, shield block, etc) to be used as well as providing a multiplier for their threat. If you think of damage to threat being a 1:1 ratio, then a warrior in defensive stance adds 2.0735 to their initial damage value of 1, turning that ratio to 3.0735 points of threat to every 1 point of damage. So a warrior tank in defensive stance that does an attack that damages their target for 2,500 points generates 7,684 points of threat. There are several other things that a warrior tank has to generate more threat as well, talents in their tree, casting vigilance on friendly DPS class, etc.
This mechanic allows tanks to concentrate on gear that mitigates damage and adds to their health pool instead of gear that increases their damage because they have these modifiers. So for a tank to maintain aggro, they need to control 100% of the threat on a given target, where it takes a DPS class to do 135% of the tank's threat to gain aggro from the tank (I know it's screwy that it's 135%, but there are reasons for that including range to the target, etc.). If the warrior tank is doing 100 damage-per-second, and their threat generation is 307 threat-per-second, then the DPS classes in the group need to keep their damage below 414 damage-per-second (135% of the highest threat number) to allow the tank to keep aggro on the target. Now these are small numbers compared to what you will see in dungeons, but they allow me to show you how threat works.
My warlock does about 12,000 dps in heroic dungeons and about 15,000 dps in raids. In order for the tank to keep aggro on the target, they need to put out at least that much threat. To keep from pulling the boss off of the tank, I need to make sure to allow the tank several seconds to build up some threat before I start my attacks and then during the fight, I keep an eye on my addon 'Omen' which basically is a bar graph that shows the threat numbers of all the players in the fight. If I see that I am getting close to 100% of the aggro, I will back off or cast 'soul-shatter' which is a threat modifier which reduces my threat on all nearby targets by 50% before continuing my attacks.
So, back to your question - although a warrior tank's actual damage may only be 4,000 damage-per-second (the very bottom of the dps for the group except the healer) their threat generation is higher than mine - 12,000 threat-per-second (me at a 1:1 ratio of damage to threat) vs 12,294 threat-per-second (tank at a 1:3.0735 ratio of damage to threat).
Here's an article that explains more about threat and how it is generated and modified:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Threat
Hope this helps!
- Aaron
--- In World_of_Warcraft_List@yahoogroups.com, Maribeth Schneider <marribeth@...> wrote:
>
> ok all, I have to ask - prior to Cataclysm, I have always been told the
> tank should be highest damage out there to keep aggro but now I am hearing
> DPS should be higher than the tank. Wouldn't that steal aggro from tank?
>
>
>
> --
> * Maribeth*
> * *
> *
>
> For with God nothing shall be impossible. -- Luke 1:37
> *
>
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