Best melee dps

[Hadrian]

Give up your ideas of the vast and mysterious unknowns that alter the ingame result completely different for every character.

No one said anything of the sort. Quite obviously all of the situational damage in this game is dependent on ... the situation. There is no mystery as to why one class/build is superior in a given ideal situation.

And yes, drawing aggro on my finesse build doesn't mean I am doing more DPS, but it can mean that. I mean, I have 20% aggro reduction and I doubt the barbarian beside me is reducing his aggro. Part of dealing DPS is having the ability to stand there and deliver that DPS. The point is simply that raw DPS comparisons don't always show in game results because ideal situations don't actually happen. That's what is being repeated in this thread.

Well going off of post #114 in the thread Aaxeyu referenced, a monk with some multiclassing would "beat" both fighter and barb. That's kind of silly though considering the assumptions one must make for the monk.

Yeah, there is no doubt that a very well geared monk can hang with the big DPS builds. Basically, any well-geared and built melee character can have effective DPS. For a new player looking to make a DPS build, though, I'd think barbarian is the easiest to make effective.