Tank characters are basically big guys wearing big, heavy armour who sit there and soak up the damage so that the "squishy" characters --- and to tanks everyone else is a "squishy" - don't get hurt.

Normally tanks generate a lot of aggro*, which causes the enemies to focus attention onto them. While their primary goal is to absorb the damage, that doesn't mean that they can't put out a decent amount of DPS**. Because of their massive ability to deal with damage, they are normally fairly easy to solo with - just slow. Tanks should be focused more on DEFENSE than OFFENSE.

*Aggro - aggro is, simply, aggravation. If you hit an enemy it's gonna see you and realize that you're trying to kill it - so it's gonna try to kill you first. You've aggravated it. Most combat systems deal with increasing and decreasing aggro attacks, levels and ranges. Normally tied to the amount of damage one does, however with Tanks that can change.

For example the fighter can go in there and snag his one guy, generating 5 points of aggro. Which over-rides the tanks so he gets attacked by his guy - but he's fine since that's what he's designed for. The tank hits someone else, adding another 5/11 aggro points, etc. The scale begins to tip upwards as more of your teammates begin to join the fight. The mage can attack again without much worry, the fighter can kill his guy. Everyone lives. La - dee- da.

This is a very simplified explanation of aggro - it doesn't take into effect distance, the type of attack, various spells and counter-spells to increase/decrease aggro. However understanding the classes better will help understand aggro rules and what not. I can go into those more detailed scenarios later on. For now though let's press on.

AoE = an Area of Effect spell - quite simply the difference between shooting an arrow at one guy and tossing a fireball that scorches the earth in a 30' radius.

**DPS/DPA/DPU/DPH= Damage per Second, Damage per Attack, Damage per Usage, Damage per Hour. While it may seem overly complicated to have multiple definitions for "hitting a guy", there's actually a very good reason. Let's discuss:

Damage per Second - Maybe the easiest one and where everything else stems from. Damage per second is, quite simply, how much damage you can put out per second.

Damage per Attack - This is not damage per second. This is how much each individual attack does.

What's the difference? Take two attacks. One does 10 points of damage and the other does 15. Now obviously the second attack, 15, has the highest DPA. But let's tie this into DPS. We'll have the first attack take 2 seconds to complete and the second take 3.5. Refer to the following table.

Damage per Usage: There's always a modifier. Different games call them different things but there's always something - let's call it a bar - through which you can channel your abilities. Abilities being skills, magic, etc. And, we'll just call that bar "Usage".

Let's say attack #1 does a billion points of damage to every enemy within a mile. Oh boy! What a spell! BUT - while casting it, you use up everything that was in your USAGE bar. Which means what?

Imagine that there is one tiny little rat that escaped the attack, still with its abilities. It will still aggro on you. Congratulations, you just got killed by a tiny stinky, little rat. You couldn't defend yourself because you were out of the stuff that was in your Usage bar.

DPS, DPA and DPU all factor into:

Damage per Hour - Damage per hour is the optimum DPS/DPA/DPU attack string.

Normally DPS varies depending on what mob-type you're fighting. DPH - is how much damage you can put out per hour fighting at maximum efficiency without pause.