Yes, but Nef phases 1 and 3 depend heavily on DPS. If you cannot get the draks/skellies down fast enough, or do not have the mana available to do so, you cannot get past these phases. Period. Further, phase 2's class calls gives every class something to learn.

I also disagree about firemaw; I've seen many a firemaw attempt go bad because rogues/mages/locks/hunters couldn't get a hang of strafing in and out of LOS. Broodlord is aggro sensitive, so it's another fight where DPS actually has something to learn (less so for mages now, but the point remains.) And the clear to broodlord isn't exactly something mages have seen up to that point.

Even on Sartura, DPS must learn to move and get out of the way. Our early sartura attempts were plagued by people (DPS included) stuck in the "Wait, you mean I don't get to stand in one place?" mindset. DPS had to learn to move. This is especially important since if too much DPS dies, Sartura is impossible regardless of how good your tanks are at controlling her. And yes, we've reached that time limit with too little DPS alive to bring her down before.

Skeram is more than just a sheeping gimmick, it's about focus fire. It's a check on your raid's ability to co-ordinate all your DPS onto one target. Wipes here are often due to failing that very basic premise.

There is a difference between saying that DPS learns its role after the tanks learn theirs and saying DPS isn't involved in the learning process. Sure, for some fights (e.g. Flamegor and Ebonroc) it's all about the tanks or the healers. But some is not all.

If your DPS doesn't stay alive (cf. Sartura), manage the adds correctly (cf. Razorgore, Fankriss and Nefarian), doesn't move in the right way (cf. Firemaw and Sartura), doesn't control their threat generation (cf. Broodlord) then indeed you can have a problem. Using consumables can only get you so far. Getting better DPSers isn't going to help you if they don't make the right decisions. Or if you've already got your top-end DPS in and they're not cutting it. Or if they don't know when to hold their fire. And I haven't even discussed fights that require DPS to use their other abilities (e.g. poly, decurse, counterspell, tranq shot, mana drain, etc.)

I've seen nothing to discount my premise. Even a tanking centric fight like Vael is a gear check on your DPS: If you can't down Vael after your tanks have the transitions figured out then you probably need more DPS/better geared DPS. Consumables won't help you on Vael one bit. (Even chugging fire pots and getting the UBRS buff will do you relatively little good if you do not have the gear for the fight.)

Sure some fights are mindless point and shoot encounters. But many of the newer encounters buck this trend. If you think DPS has nothing to learn in AQ and (i'm told) Naxx, you're deceiving yourself.

You mean except for Razorgore, Nefarian, Skeram, Sartura, Bug Trio, Fankriss, Emps, C'Thun, Anub'Rekhan, Faerlina, Maexxna, Noth, Gothik, Gluth, and Thaddius.

Also, FFS, your name appears next to every post you make -- it doesn't need to be added a second time. Stop signing your posts. And take a look at the forum rules.

Sure, my basic point was that DPS isn't involved till _after_ the tanking and healing gets worked out. As I've stated before, it doesn't matter how well I, or the other 19 DPS folks, in the raid perform if the tank goes down and starts working his way thru the rest of the raid. Also consider that DPS has very little "learning opportunity" if the encounter is over in a minute b/c the tank gets 3/2/1-shotted and the boss proceeds to have his way with the rest of the raid.

In other words, there is a fair amount of tolerance allowed for DPS mistakes, not so for tanking/healing. If your DPS/healers move perfectly during Sartura, but your tanks go down, you wipe. Conversely, if you lose a few DPS/Healers during Sartura, but you keep the tanks up, you win. Same reasoning can be applied to Twin Emps and Anub'Rekhan. My guild recently went into Naxx just to test the waters, and we spent about 2 hours wiping on Anub, always on the first transition. It doesn't matter how well I do killing the spider adds or aoeing the little bugs if the transitions don't go well, but conversely, if I do a sub-par job on the adds/aoeing, but the transitions go well, then it becomes possible to win the encounter.

i think this example actually crystalizes where you're wrong. the mistakes of healers or tanks that wipe you are most obvious and are generally accompanied by a loud DONG from your ctraid, so you remember those the most. but if those adds don't die quickly, or the scarabs don't get nova'd/aoe'd and get on your tank/hunter/healers..well, all of those will wipe you too. it's just not as glaringly obvious what happened, because instead of your tank dying and your whole attempt suddenly going to shit, it's the little things coming apart piece by piece that kills you.

Nothing you've said here contradicts the statement you've quoted. If _I_ do a subpar job on the adds/bugs, there are 15+ or so others also working the adds/bugs, therefore there is more tolerance here. You can have a mage go LD (linkdead, disconnect) during the fight, and your DPS team can still handle the adds/bugs. If I make a dumb move like fire frost nova at a bad time, there are 4 other mages who can pick it up. The same statements can't be said about your MT/hunter team. A "dumb move" or a disconnect by either of them wipes the raid (especially the MT), not so for the DPS squad b/c DPS is distributed among so many people.