I do 18k DPS.

Okay, I get it. I've got some pretty good gear for our small pond server. Big deal. Since snagging that Starcaller title from Algalon I've had more and more people whisper me in game asking me about gear and rotations and what have you. Fine. Whatever. I'm more than willing to trade war stories and/or explain my gear selection choices to you. I mean, what's a good retribution paladin without some good discussion to back him/her up? But there's one question that I just can't stand: what's your DPS?

Though, more often than not this question takes the form of "wuts ur dps?" or "how much dps you do?" Either way, the question is the same, and utterly meaningless. To be perfectly honest, I don't run meters at all. I let my girlfriend run them, and if I'm curious, I'll lean over and ask her what I did on a particular fight. In guild runs, DPS shouldn't be a competition. I mean, there are benchmarks that I want to make every fight. For example if I'm not doing over 5k, I get a little frustrated with myself, but I'm only competing with myself and nobody else.

The DPS question is really a moot one because every fight is different by way of some mechanic. Some fights see melee doing awesome DPS (see Kologarn for retribution paladins), where some fights see casters running the table (Onyxia phase two, anyone?). Ultimately your individual DPS doesn't matter as long as you're towing your end of the rope. If I do 6k DPS...hell, if I do 10k DPS, what does it really matter if the rest of the raid is doing 2k a shot? The individual cannot carry the group, or if he/she does, there are limits to it. We've started to see those limits in a 25 man ToC pick up group we've been more or less herding through the instance. Our guild manages to bring six people or so, then another guild brings the rest. If your DPS spread for the raid looks like this: 6.5k, 6k, 5,9k, 3k, 2.9k....chances are you probably won't do so hot on those later fights. But you know, the three DPS from our guild that we take, we tow the line, and we do our jobs, and that's the best we can do sometimes.

Fail 25 man raids aside, the DPS question is one I've begun to answer with the title of this post: "I do 18k DPS". Alright, maybe it's something of an exaggeration, but I'm getting there. The point is, individual DPS doesn't really matter. Stop being so self-centered. If you focus solely on your individual DPS, you're more likely to tunnel-vision and end up getting smoked by a burrowing Anub'arak. There's an old adage I like to stick to as something of my big guns, as it were: "dead DPS do zero DPS". Now, that's not to say you won't get screwed over every now and then, just be cognizant of your surroundings. Bleeding onto the keyboard isn't worth it.

That being said, I've done a little math to back up my original statement. You'll have to slog through it, though, I'm not much of a math major.

So, for any integer where n > 0, we have (this will be my retribution DPS for the night):
By applying the binomial theorem to the above we get:
Since the 2n over n is the largest term in the sum, we have:
as desired. So now let's apply that little lemma to our next computation by way of induction where n > 2, for example let's say n = 2m+1 where m > 0. By way of binomial expansion we have:
Each prime p with m+1 < p <= 2m+1 divides 2m+1 over m, which gives us:
By induction, (m+1) for any variable of DPS < 4 to the m+1, so:
Therefore, I clearly do 18k DPS. QED