Your sentiment of separating burst from sustained makes sense, especially with DoT classes being so prevalent in EQ, but I'd argue that "burst" is defined closer to 10-30s.
I'd stretch it to 60s being your absolute best of everything duration. But so many now want to sell you on 5 minutes or under. I hope the devs really don't listen to the vocal posters and stick to dps is dps. But there are some major things to fix to make that true.
All these rankings based off times or the concept of burst versus sustained are an outdated way of viewing classes. Balance for modern raiding has to be centered around mobility and ability/cast times. Mobile, quick casting/ability classes are going to consistently outperform the rest, especially with DoTs.
in current era raids berserker is getting crapped on i dunno what it matters if you start a raid and do ok then get crapped on and end up in 10th as a zerker. The struggle is real who cares if you start strong when you end weak in the total do yourself a favor and dont be like me pick another class.
Given the OP wants to know what I think "-should-" be the top DPS on a raid, my baseless opinion is: 1. Wizard 2. Berserker 3. Rogue 4. Monk 5. Ranger
They don’t have to melee to do 95%+ of their dps, they can choose to tho for a boost. Meanwhile if a melee can’t be within range (say on shei) they get to do less than 5%. If a caster is called to run pets/dots keep going, melee does not have much of anything like that (maybe a disc/poison dot or something).
Not my point. You said the INT casters did not die all night on raids. Meanwhile the melee ate around a dozen deaths, which you attribute to melee. Your casters should be meleeing, and if they are... why are they not dying? I melee the entire night on a raid, and not once did I die from melee. So what is getting your melee that is not getting your casters?
Casters actually take less damage to Rampage and various other things if they use their own self runes and such compared to melee, especially with bosses being generally close to, if not full strike through so the higher melee avoidance doesn't really do anything on raids Ripostes shouldn't be a thing since the strikethrough change to basically make anyone 100%+ value immune
#1 Zerkers/Wizards/Necro - These should be top because they literally blow their teats out trying to damage mobs, or are a necro. #2 Monk/Rogue - These guys were the old one wins in the front the other in the back, but then they made berserkers. They are pure melee though so they should be able to rip . #3 Ranger/Bst/Mage - They don't really have anything cool going for them aside from pets, or arrows so they need this win. #4 Druid/Shaman/Enchanter/Bard - Adps kings they should be too busy helping others attain max to get there themselves. #5 War/Sk/Pal - Should be too busy trying to stay alive, or keep others safe. #6 Clerics - Do no harm~