Traditionally, intensity is referred to as the percentage of your one rep max. SO if you can bench press 200 pounds 80% of your 1RM would be 160 lbs. Just thought I'd throw that in there...
There is no one right answer to the question. The point is that you stress the muscle and rest it which brings about adaptation (ie, size and strength).
Some people rarely even go to failure so it isn't 100% necessary for success. You can use chscrew144's method which works fine. When using any type of pyramid scheme though, I prefer doing something slightly different and, after a thorough warmup doing the sets with the higher intensity and the lower reps first and lowering the intensity (weight) and raising the reps on each set.
So if I was bench pressing the work I did for the exercise might look like this:
(After a thorough warmup)
Set 1: 205 lbs x 8 reps
Set 2: 185 lbs x 10 reps
Set 3: 165 lbs x 12 reps
Try both chscrew144's method and that one, see which works best for you, and let us know how it works out.
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